Playdar's Best Winterval Things, for Games

Here it is - our gift to you. Please accept it into your heart like a picture of a duckling standing on the head of a sleepy kitten, or into your soul like the brooding resentment which once emanated from the one person you ever truly loved, growing as you failed to satisfy them day on day through the miasma of your emotional inadequacy. Merry Christmas!
But enough of that. Welcome, fellow bots, semi-bots and the soon to be assimilated to the second ever Winterval Games of Winterval Celebration. We've pooled our mind thoughts onto a USB flash drive, plugged it into the netbook of shame, and now we're downloading our brains into your local host server. Don't be alarmed! It won't hurt very much. And then we can all sleep.

It's been a something year for games. Games out of every hole, pouring forth like a waterfall of pixels and voxels and clogging up all the drains. Except there weren't any voxels, obviously. Also - what is a voxel?

This year we've crawled through all the sewers on our hands and knees to bring you the best possible games coverage that our tiny brains can handle. The dizzying highs, the sickening lows, the months of inattention. We've been there through it all, together - like barnacles clinging to your rusty hull, slowly compromising your structural integrity.

So, with the ritual de-lousings and deep-fryings of Saturnalia around the corner, it's time to dip our wicks in that cold, sticky pool of memories, and extract some festive morsels. Behold!
Most fun thing of all the things

Hey, look, we're putting the most important award first, because we're not assholes. The most fun thing award goes to the thing that was the most fun, in games. The games that we played anyway. Objectively the most fun thing might be something else but I wouldn't use the Move if you paid me and Al has night terrors about the Kinect. It's a real problem and we're seeing a therapist and a butt doctor but that's not important, now.

So we thought long and hard about what was the most fun thing that we did this year. After two emails we arrived at Portal 2, although it was a sort of begrudging "I guess" selection. We had fun making our robots hug and firing goop around, in a not gay way [Ed - oh... okay then]. But really Portal was fun because co-op. Just being friends and working things out together and having a buddy there to share the whole thing with.

In single-player games when something happens sometimes I make a noise or do a shout or turn to give a high five and there's no one there. There's never anyone there. So then you have to go on an internet forum to talk about it and expose yourself to the raw, festering wounds that are other people's opinions. Which sort of spoils it a bit.

What I'm really saying is that any co-op game could have won. Just design a co-op game where you can hug each other and complete a task and it's the best thing. Shooters don't count. Unless it's goop. I mean I played Kane & Lynch 2 in co-op this year and laughed until I was dead. But I'm not giving K&L2 any awards. Even if there were butts. Glorious pixellated man butts.
Worst thing which was bad

And so to the second best award. We don't like to be mean or anything but this one didn't take long to dribble forth: LA Noire. Of course there were worse games than LA Noire this year. But we can't talk about the endless rehashes and thoughtless, drudging facsimiles like Mario Sports Mix or Spiderman: Edge of Time. We didn't play them because they cost money and are clearly awful and we're not complete idiots.

So that narrowed the field down to games that sounded good - games that should have been good and people were excited about. The ones that you would actually buy, as a semi-legitimate human being. And out of all of those games none left such a sour taste as LA Noire.

I already wrote a pretentious diatribe about why the game fails on a very basic level. Some shite about consequences that I'm embarrassed to read back. Forget that. I was trying to be nice and not too mean on a game that had obviously had a lot of time spent on it.

But the thing was a hideous mess of genres, fatally compromised by trying to shoe-horn in a load of populist GTA crap to make it sell. Everything was constricted and prescripted, but wrapped up in the pretence that you were in control. The whole mess was unstatisfying, boring and a sad waste of thousands of hours of talent. The memory of it festers and lingers and grows like a mould on the brain, worsening with each fresh conversation about its failings.
Best cheap thing

Well if you're talking about "new" releases, there was a point this year where you could buy a Beta version of Minecraft for ten euro or something ridiculous. No other game will make you re-evaluate your creativity quicker. Given the building blocks to make anything, and all I can muster is a foggy bridge made out of dirt.



Thousands of hours of pointless busywork and little reward, but hell it was cheap, and you can't deny there is a certain pleasure in just being able to build crap out of dirt and sand. Like computer Lego. The real question is why didn't Lego make this game first? Missed a trick there. Also ... why do American's call them "legos"?

Anyway. Apart from that there were loads of Steam sales this year - I think at one point you could pick up the Introversion pack, which includes Uplink, Defcon and Darwinia for about four English dollars. Any time you can buy Uplink, you should do it, because it's just the best. So that gets an award too. Awards for all the things.
Thing that made us feel an emotion or a feeling

I defer to Al on this one because no emotional seeds have yet been able to grow in the barren soil of my cold robot heart. So, the best emotion or feeling this year came from Bastion. To quote directly:

Think about the exact opposite of the feeling you get when using the tube at rush hour. Bastion. They should put that on the back of the box. Except it was a download only game. Whatever.
Thing that was good but could have been better

I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution for this one. It was good, right. Fun to shoot men with tranquilizer darts, sneak around, pretend to be a good guy by not killing anyone. Here's some quotes from my Goodbye:

An iconic milestone in open-ended gaming shoe-horned in to a corridor sneaker. Disappointment condensed into a little plastic disc. Maybe it would have been better if I had never played Alpha Protocol.
Thing most ruined by trying to appeal to the masses

Talking of games which were ruined by trying to appeal to a wider audience, this one goes to Dragon Age 2. If ever there was an argument for not designing a game based around feedback, this was it. Listen to too many focus groups and you lose all artistic drive and voice, ending up with something that occupies the populist no-man's land and doesn't please anyone.

The casual fan found Dragon Age 1 too complex and difficult, so they dumbed the hell out of the sequel to snare that action-oriented market. They made the world smaller and the combat simpler, giving everything a parochial, Fable-esque hue.

This lack of complexity or depth was reflected in everything from morality to loot. From the review:

A party RPG where I can't choose my companions outfits? Get it out of my sight.
Most possibilities of dicking around and being an idiot

Clearly the answer is Skyrim, although it seems a bit obvious. Unfortunately there isn't much dicking around in Skyrim that you couldn't have done 6 years ago in Oblivion, with one notable exception. If you haven't been caught up in the Fus Ro Dah phenomenon, you must not use the internet. Behold:



Or there's always flooding the world with ordinary foodstuffs:


Or renaming your enchanted weapons:



Unfortunately as yet there's been nothing to rival the quiet brilliance of Mr Mochi


[Ed - there was a projectile/anatomy-based Skyrim joke here, but it's gone now. This is best for everyone in the long run.]
Best third thing in a series of three things

2011 was a year of thirdquels, thirdies, triquels, threequomes, or whatever made up word you want to use to describe the third thing in a series of things. There was the third Assassins Creed 2, the third Modern Warfare, the third Battlefield, the third Uncharted, the third Just Dance, the third Killzone, the third Dungeon Siege, the third FEAR, the third Deus Ex, the third Gears of War, the third Resistance, the third Serious Sam. Third third third.

But which one was the best, of all these thirds? There's a big argument to be made by Uncharted, which was bigger and crazier than the two that went before. Battlefield, too, has one of the biggest hats in the ring. MW3 was full of famous buildings falling down, but the multiplayer managed to take a step backwards from Black Ops. Battlefield, while slick and fun suffers from a severe lack of charm. While Uncharted is the actual best third game, this award is going to Gears of War 3, mostly because it had co-op, but also because it genuinely improves on the previous games.

The single player retains the tight, solid third person shooting that makes the series so often copied. It's easy to forget just how good the action in Gears is until you play another over-the-shoulder shooter. Satisfying and meaty, the real key to GoW3 is that it mixes things up with set pieces, varied locations and memorable moments to break up the endless horde-shooting that plagued Gears 2.

On the hardest setting the whole thing buzzes along and keeps the adrenaline going. For a game that's about shooting alien men with guns, Gears 3 is one of the best around, and the co-op is well implemented. It was sort of ruined by the crappy final boss fight and blocky, unwieldy story, but it was one of the few threquotes that managed to be noticeably better, rather than slightly-worse-but-more-explosions, than the other contenders. Good work.
Best thing that was good

And finally the surprise entrant. Remember where I said we weren't assholes for putting the best prize last? Well that was a lie. We're complete buttholes, ask anyone.

Competition for the Best thing that was good award should have been pretty fierce this year. There were so many big titles released, in what was probably the best year for games, ever. Here's a list if you want to remind yourself. But actually when we really thought about it the pool of stand-outs was pretty small. If you consider what it takes to be noticed amongst the crowd in such a year, I'm sure you'll appreciate just how good we think the winner must be. So, with much pleasure, I give the Best thing that was good award to Football Manager 2012. Could it ever have been anything else? Bye!
Serious bit at the end about the proper best thing out of all the good things

Lol. Of course most of the actual Industry awards will go to Skyrim or Modern Warfare this year, depending on who is sponsoring it all. But to be honest Skyrim didn't even figure in our GOTY chat. If you read our back and forth about it recently, you'll understand. It's a great game, to be sure, but it lacks that charm that us wanky types at Playdar look for more than anything. Complexity > heart, you might call it, if you were a computer. Sure it's fun and all that, but when it's over it's just an empty feeling and that "buh" sound, where you realise it's left no impression.

I mean this year also had things like Arkham City and the new Zelda. There was also The Witcher 2, but we didn't play that because it was only out on PC and we're both very poor and/or bad at managing our money. I'm sure that would be up there too. But in the end the whole thing comes down to this: Bastion, or Dark Souls?

Al loved Bastion but hasn't played Dark Souls. I loved Dark Souls but haven't played Bastion. You can see the dilemma. But because I'm writing this article and Al is a stupidhead, it's got to be Dark Souls.

I played all the games this year, and nothing sunk its fangs deeper into my crotch than From's despair-ridden knight-em-up. The game still haunts me, pushing other thoughts aside as I dream, months later. A game created with a single vision, a consistent world filled with endless inventiveness and wonderment. And all of that, wrapped up in one of the most solid, memorable and deep combat systems ever created. With god damn co-op and multiplayer thrown in as well.

You know that feeling you get in the chest, a sort of tightening, when a stranger is unexpectedly generous to you? That's a feeling in Dark Souls when you summon a dude to help you beat a boss, and he gives you a bow before vanishing forever. Sublime.

It's just so god damn good. And it's not as hard as everyone shouts about either, it's just that everyone is soft as shit these days. The stupid cycle, where games get stupider because gamers get stupider, culminating in a game made up entirely of quick time events using the same button (guess which game I'm talking about), is abhorrent. Dark Souls is your antidote.

It's heartwarming and full of love, and makes me feel happy inside that people are out there willing to make this sort of thing. It's everything that Deus Ex and Dragon Age and Killjoy 3 and Just Dance 5 and Uncharted: Drake's Lemon Cake aren't, and that's great. It's like Zelda for grown ups, which is more important because Zelda is still great and magical and wonderful.

You owe it to yourself to have Dark Souls and I feel sorry that you missed the first flush, that initial rush when everyone was falling in love with it and discovering it and talking about it. That's gone, now. People have min-maxed the best strategies and there's nothing left for you to discover first. You'll find people online who will destroy you and spoil you because they've played it too long. But for those brief months at the beginning of its life, Dark Souls was that once-in-a-generation gem, the '96 euro semi against Germany, Mandela coming out of prison, that bit in Groundhog Day where he punches Ned Riarson. Oh boy.

[Ed - bye!]