My favorite stuff of 2011 - Part V

2011 Game #5 - Raymon: Origins


Before it came out, Rayman: Origins was billed as one of those "throwback" games that have a retro appeal. Well, there's nothing retro about Rayman: Origins. It is nothing like the platformers we played as kids. The only artifice of oldschool platforming present is the number of explorable dimensions. Everything about Rayman: Origins exudes personality. Every moment is completely unique. It's a platformer, sure, but it uses contemporary ideas and sensibilities to create something that bridges the gap between oldschool and modern gaming, a gap that isn't as huge as we sometimes think it is.

2011 Game #4 - Radiant Historia


Over the years, after getting my hopes up over "Chrono Break" and the attention drawn by Chrono Trigger DS, I've slowly come to the realization that there will never be another Chrono game. And that's okay, especially if games like Radiant Historia are out there. Radiant Historia is the kind of game I thought we just weren't going to see anymore. It's a JRPG that isn't just an 80-hour long anime about teenagers dressed as Japanese rock stars saving the world. It's a brilliant game with scope and maturity nearly unseen in its market today, and in all honesty, it's probably the finest example of its genre in this entire hardware generation.

2011 Film #2 - Rango


I really wasn't looking forward to Rango. Unless he's paired with Terry Gilliam, I usually find Johnny Depp intolerable. He's less an actor and more a walking, talking ad for HotTopic. But Rango really floored me. It was way smarter than I thought it was going to be for a kids film, if you even want to call it that (when you break it down, it's an animated remake of Polanski's Chinatown, not kids stuff at all). It went places I was definitely not expecting. But most of all, it was just damn fun. Pixar has held the monopoly on great computer-animated films in the past, but with movies like this and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, they need to start watching their asses.

2011 Game #3 - Trine 2


When everyone else was counting down the days until Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War 3, or whatever summer-blockbuster-style game that tends to come out between September and November, I was counting the days until I could play a fifteen dollar downloadable called Trine 2 with the same sense of anticipation. The wait was longer than I would've liked, as I only finished it hours before this write-up, but it was worth it. Trine 2 is the perfect sequel. Everything that made the first game great is still there, and then there's a whole lot more. The mechanics are way more refined, the stages are much more complicated, the battles have much more variety, and by God, it could be the most beautiful game I've ever seen. If you're missing out on Trine, you're missing out on some of the best gaming there is.

2011 Game #2 - Stacking


Double Fine has been one of the most reliable producers of quality interactive entertainment in the industry since its inception. You'll recall that Costume Quest was my favorite game of last year. This year, Double Fine gave us two hits: the Kinect-only adventure Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, and the indescribably brilliant Stacking. I really don't need epic, open sandbox worlds, explosions, gore or a bombastic, heartening score. Sometimes, a little game with a lot of heart is all I need to have one of the best gaming experiences of my life. Double Fine did that last year with Costume Quest, and they did it again this year with Stacking. I can't wait to see what those crazy people cook up next.

2011 Show #1 - Parks and Recreation: Seasons 3 and 4


Parks and Recreation, oddly enough, is the exact opposite of Louie. It is optimistic to a fault. Where so many other comedy shows get their kicks from mean-spirited humor, and even great shows like Louie exemplify the hopelessness and ephemerality of our existence, Parks and Recreation is so powerful a show that it gives me faith in humanity in spite of all the horrible truths I know about it. Amy Pohler deserves every award the Emmy's have for an actress, because she has made Leslie Knope a character I love as much as some of my friends. It's so rare today to see a show with so much heart, that doesn't need to make every moment sarcastic and critical, that isn't afraid to expose the genuine emotion of human existence. Parks and Rec isn't just a show, it's a mantra. This mantra is expressed beautifully in the gift-giving scene of the episode Citizen Knope (easily the best episode of the entire series), where Donna displays her bathrobe, and emblazoned on the back in pink rhinestones, "You can get it!" Thank you, Parks & Rec. You don't just make me laugh, you genuinely make me happy... every damn week.

2011 Film #1 - Midnight in Paris


I was initially worried that Midnight in Paris was going to be a little pretentious. Would Woody Allen be able to fight off his own ego long enough to create something that felt genuine, or was it going to be another soulless, self-fellating mess like Vicky Christina Barcelona? To my surprise, Midnight in Paris is fun, sentimental and silly in a way films rarely are these days. This time-traveling rom-com might not have the artistic weight of films like the Artist, A Dangerous Method or The Descendants, but I'm of the opinion that a good time is a good time, and when it comes to movies, Midnight in Paris was the most good time this year.

2011 Game #1 - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception


I'm just going to copy and paste some of what I said in my thoughts and reflections post a few months back:

Uncharted is neither the sweeping yet subtle work of art that games like Shadow of the Colossus and Flower are, nor does it aspire to the infinite levels of playability that games like Mario or Castlevania achieve. It does not provide a particularly long campaign or an immersive, sprawling world that you can lose yourself in for weeks at a time. Uncharted instead takes all of those tools, techniques, and methods and compresses them into a singular gaming event, representing the industry as a whole and at its best. But what it takes greatest care in doing is understanding that what really makes people attach themselves to games isn’t the overall product of a game, but the series of many player-specific moments that culminate in the player’s overall perception of the gaming experience. That time you and your best friend had an incredibly intense match in Street Fighter that ended in a double K.O., that time you stayed up past 3 a.m. on a school night playing Super Metroid and got the shit scared out of you when Crocomire still wasn’t dead even after he fell in lava and all his skin melted off, that time you first played Chrono Trigger and paced back and forth in your mind while you, as Frog, had to decide whether to kill Magus, the man who turned you into a frog, killed your mentor, and had put the entire world in jeopardy by summoning Lavos, or, knowing what you know now about his childhood and his motivations, to give him a chance at redemption. As much as we game reviewers try to justify our opinions by providing a thorough analysis of the quality of a game’s contents, from its graphics to its music, whether or not it has glitches that break the game, etc., at the end of the day, it’s moments like those that really make the decision for us. And Uncharted is made entirely of those moments. It is one mesmerizing experience after another, the baseline of a unique tune where most other games only get one or two crescendos of comparable awe.

But even more important than all that, in an industry ruled by epic space sagas with aliens galore and war simulators that pit you against thousands of anonymous abstractions of people with no sense of a moral compass and no inkling of emotional resonance, Uncharted is a decidedly human story. Uncharted certainly isn’t realistic: Nate constantly tumbles through collapsing infrastructure and bumbles his way through one catastrophe after another unscathed like some kind of badass reincarnation of Buster Keaton. But the lengths at which Naughty Dog and their many partners in the Uncharted endeavor have gone to give its human characters as much verisimilitude as possible while still subverting a discomforting sense of uncanniness is something that should be studied by everyone who’s ever even thought about digital animation. But what really sells it is how those digital characters interact—nothing in the world of video games has ever sounded quite like what goes on in Uncharted’s dialog sequences. Lines are cut off, people talk over each other. It’s broken. Sometimes random. If John Cassavetes had lived long enough to direct a video game, Uncharted would be it. And it’s also smart, sharp, and at times, painfully poignant. It has all the components necessary to make you believe in and care about the fake characters who populate these three stories, to the point where the thought of losing one is as heartbreaking as losing a member of one’s own family.

I never get excited about things anymore. I’m an immense drag on the hype other people in my circle of influence tend to get swept up by in the months leading up to a big release, be it game, movie, or what-have-you. That kid who got that box of NES games from his brother and basked in their light in wide-eyed wonder is long gone, replaced by someone much more skeptical and less adept at giving in to childhood elation. It’s not because I’m genuinely disinterested in life, it’s just that I’m deathly afraid of disappointment. But Uncharted peeled back those layers of adulthood, and after playing the first two Uncharted games, I let my guard down and allowed Uncharted 3 to be my reason for living for the past few months. Though, in a way, I cheated, because I knew that there was no way it could possibly let me down. At the unraveling of Uncharted 3’s climax, Nate finally confronts Marlowe, the game’s primary antagonist, who, in her final moments, tempts Nate to his doom by hoisting up the ring she stole from him, the ring he proudly wore around his neck as a sign of his greatness and his ambition for 20 years, and asks him to prove himself worthy of it. After three adventures for fame and fortune across four years of expedition, after endangering the lives of strangers and friends alike for the sake of his own ego, Nate turns to Marlowe and says, “I have nothing left to prove” before letting his prized possession sink into the sand with her. Indeed, in the myriad worlds simulated by the devices of the video game industry, truer words have never been spoken.