The 2011 Wishlist

We’re well into 2011 with January soon drawing to a close and I’ve decided to share my personal 2011 wishlist of games new and old.

The other games I’m looking forward to this year, but I can’t find covers for, include The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim ,Final Fantasy Versus XIII and L.A. Noire. I’ve been hearing rumors about a GTA V as well but that’ll probably be a 2012 release. 

Top 5 for 2010

2010 has seen a big rise in gaming for myself and I’m very fortunate to have had access to a great selection of games right from the get-go.

As such I’ve decided to choose my top 5 from the games that I’ve played throughout last year.

And here they are in alphabetical order in both text and a cover art display:

• Assassin’s Creed II
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Bioshock
• GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

As far as 2011 goes, well it’s already off to a great start with Final Fantasy XIII. One of these days I’m going to have to get my hands on a PS2 and go on a Final Fantasy binge.

Lisa's top 10 games of 2010

1. Dead Rising 2
2. Assassins Creed: brotherhood
3. Red Dead Redemption
4. Gran Turismo 5
5. Castlevania: lords of shadow
6. GTA: episodes from liberty city
7. Guitar Hero: warriors of rock
8. Fallout: new vegas
9. R.u.s.e
10. Heavy Rain

The Great Slump

The great slump, the long break; a period of time a gamer experiences when they have little interest in gaming. It can happen to any gamer and probably will more than once in their gaming life. For some it can occur every couple of weeks or months, maybe just once a year. The variance in how long it lasts is great too although I believe all gamers eventually go back into gaming sooner or later.

The reasons for the slump are also quite varied and personal. For some the lack of anything new on the market can drive them into the slump. For others it can be a case of too much repetition in the games they’re playing or perhaps the trophy hunter who needs a break from the tedious hunting.

I’m experiencing a sort of slump at the moment. It all started when I decided to try and finish Mercenaries 2… again. Everything was going well and I was enjoying the game; who doesn’t love blowing up buildings or running through sheds with tanks? Unfortunately I always get to the middle of that game and my interest dries up. I don’t get why but it’s happened twice and it remains unfinished. It’s a shame but there you go.

It didn’t matter too much, however, because we’d just picked up Gran Turismo 5. So I threw myself into that and I was loving it. I was doing great in A-Spec and I even better in B-Spec. I was building up a great fleet of black cars and finally managing my money a little better. It was all going so well and then my interest peaked and went; again I don’t know why. I guess the game just couldn’t hold me.

This left me in a crap position. Ideally I would’ve liked to play Red Dead Redemption, collect all the trophies possible, then follow it up with Undead Nightmare. Unfortunately with it being so close the Christmas investing in a new game just isn’t viable. In about a week and a bit I’ll be heading away to spend Christmas with my girlfriends family and when I get back I’ll have Final Fantasy XIII which I’ve been looking forward too; RDR and Undead nightmare will have to wait.

So here I am in the slump but unlike many slumps this one has some gaming in it. While I can’t start anything new I can fall back on old reliables to get me through. I love a game with a great storyline so I’ve fallen back on GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City. Why? Because both episodes and, indeed, GTA IV have well written storylines that are just fun to play without the worry of trophies or any such thing. I’m hoping these will carry me through the slump to Christmas and after that… a new year of gaming. 

Gaming Frustrations

How often have you been playing a game and become so frustrated that you wanted to toss the controller across the room or violently kick the nearest inanimate object?

Unfortunately it happens to us all for one reason or another. It might just be that the objective laid out before you is insanely difficult, you might be facing an unholy uber boss of stupidity or maybe, just maybe, the game controls are ridiculous?

Is the irony lost on us? Here we are playing a game and getting so irritated that it ceases to be fun; the entire point of a game. Is it a phenomenon among gamers that we all possess a deep hidden rage within us that can be brought to the surface by an annoying game sequence?

We all have our breaking points, our Radecs. Anyone who has played through Killzone 2 will know what I’m referring too. Remember Radec, remember your reaction to that terrible last battle? Remember how your murderous rage drowned out the men in white coats as they hauled you away? 

How about the ending to Red Faction: Guerilla? Do you remember ascending Mount Vogel like Moses up Mount Sinai? No..? Probably because Moses didn’t have to contend with the equivalent military of a small country. I mean come on they really, and I mean really, try and push you on the last part. While you’re clawing your way up that mountain you’re probably being dragged into a deep pit of despair.

Then we come to the little annoyances. Many games have quite interactive climbing abilities these days, games such as the Uncharted series or the Assassins Creed series. It’s fun climbing our way up through giant caverns or bell towers and seeing beautifully rendered scenery below us. But there’s always those really awkward jumps you have to make that really drive you nuts. It’s not the jump itself that makes it awkward though, it’s the controller. Although the joysticks on modern controllers are far better than using the older d-pads sometimes they have trouble differentiating Right from Down… sending your character flying off a guard tower like a sack of potatoes… and hitting the ground like one too. Ouch! Wait until it happens repeatedly and ouch turns into a string of nasty expletives.

Despite the numerous frustrations, great and small, that we find in various games we keep playing; why? Is it an addiction or are we simply masochists? I don’t think it’s either. With each game we’re taken to a new world, something different that escapes the boring reality of life. A little bit of mind numbing frustration isn’t going to cause us to give all that up is it?