My Top Five Games of 2011
I don’t want to get too hyperbolic here, as I feel like this next statement could be seen as potentially “controversial”, but after a lot of internal debate and soul-searching I’ve realized that 2011 was the year that saved video games. For myself, at least. This may have just been the first tentative steps of adulthood breaking through this warm coat of arrested development I’ve knit for myself, but the last couple of years and especially 2010 started to sour me on the entire video gaming experience. I mean, last year could have been largely defined as “more of the same”; so much came out that was either a painfully derivative sequel (see Crackdown 2), buggy to the point of near-broken (sorry, Fallout New Vegas), or just chock-full of motion gaming garbage that looked and felt less like video gaming than it was an attempt by publishers to chase the Wii casual-market dragon. There were a couple of gems in 2010, to be sure (Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, and Super Meat Boy quickly come to mind), but it felt like a year of high promises eventually being proven empty. So I walked into 2011 with less than stellar expectations.
