2011, a look back...

Before reading on, you should read my first blog, "2011 I long the most for...", for I will use it as s reference of my anticipation and what I got in 2011.

So, another year have gone and passed. 2011 where in many ways a great year, game wise. But what did it do for me, what games did I play and which of them is the game of the year? Let's start with my expectations. The first thing I mentioned last year was the "year of the threes" as many trilogies were to end this year. Sadly, of the three threes I looked forward to the most, I never got around to playing Gears of War 3 and never saw the sight of Mass Effect 3 or Diablo 3. May be I put my hopes on that people in the business will be keeping their deadlines. Yeah, no.

The next game I talked about wanting to play was L.A. Noir. Yeah, never got around to playing that either... I don't know why, maybe the controversy surrounding Team Bondi put me off. Maybe not, but play it, I did not.

I was to buy a Wii or A PS3 this year, the main reasons being The Last Guardian and Skyward Sword. Never got a Wii, so never played Skyward Sword, I did get me a PS3 in april though, but The Last Guardian where nowhere to be seen so that's great... not.

And then we come to what I believed to be the best and greatest game of this year, Catherine! I never released in Europe and I couldn't import it for the Xbox. So guess the most anticipated game of 2012!

P.S. And I never got to see the new awesome DMC that everyone hates!

So what games did I play that where released in 2011? Some actually, and here's what I thought of them.

Little Big Planet 2
Yeah, this is my dream, I get to do my own games. And I was very satisfied actually. I did make a lot of games, and the story didn't bore me either. The game editor is done very well and you really can make almost any game you wish. If you put enough time on it. I had a lot of fun with it in any case.
9/10

Bastion
The big surprise of the year, Bastion delivers a solid dungeon-crawling hack 'n' slash in the absence of Diablo 3. Basic story with a moral depth, just the way I love it. The characters are great and the storyteller sets the mood to RPG-night with your friends. A really great game.
8/10

Batman: Arkham City
If you have never encountered Batman before, this is a good place to start. If you have, it will be a great reunion. If you, like me, love Batman and the world he lives in, this is a goldmine. With awesome gameplay and an ever better story, Arkham City is great.
10/10

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Yes, I know, everyone loves it, and who can blame them, this is a huge game. When I decided to start and play through all the games I haven't played through yet, that I have at home, I decided to start with Skyrim... Bad move... after barely 20 hours I lend it out to my friend, to be able to focus on the other games I had. I eagerly await it's return.
10/10

Shadow of the Damned
I have only one thing to say, this is the ultimate answer from the video games to a B-film. The story is so bad, it's awesome. The gameplay is great as well. But when a film only lasts 2 hours max, you have to endure Mr Way-too-Mexican and his big boner the whole game. Luckily, it's not a bad game.
7/10

The Game of the Year is:
Batman: Arkham City

But what about everything else that has happened in 2011? Oh come on, read my blog, it's right here, I have covered everything I think was important. If you want me to write about something, just leave a comment and I'll address it. So from me to you all, Happy new year. And game on.

List of games released in 2011 I have to play in 2012:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Gears of War 3
L.A. Noir
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Portal 2
Rayman: Origins
Xenoblades: Chronicles
Pokémon Black/White

Gaming makes you violent! Right?

Gaming makes you violent, a statement that brings up anger and hate towards conservatism in many gamers, ironically enough. But are they that far off? I will once again start my brain to explore this statement and finally come to a conclusion to the question, does gaming make you violent?

First of all, why would gaming make you violent? The most obvious answer to that would be, if you see violence, you do violence, therefore conducting violence in a video game would make you prone to do the same in the real world. This would be quite true if it wasn't for a couple of things, that humans can see that there is a difference from the real world and the gaming world, and that we have something called a conscience. We don't do thing that would hurt people for real, because it's okay in the gaming world.

But most children doesn't have a conscience the same way that adults have. Some doesn't see their selfish acts until they're 12-13 years old. But there is, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, a reason why most violent games are not supposed to be played by children under the age recommended on the cover. I believe that allowing a child of ten or twelve, or even older, play games like Grand Theft Auto or Gears of War, could be bad for them. I'm not saying that they will grow up to invent chainsaw machine-guns and go around shooting people, but I'm saying that they might grow up to think that violence born from hate is justified. If you hate someone enough, you are allowed to smack them in the face. I don't think that is a healthy attitude. Violence born from love, you love someone so much that you can't stand to see them beaten up, so you use violence not more than necessary, to get the beater away. To take someones life is never okay, but I'm getting of topic.

There is a saying that goes, that which your heart is filled with, comes out your mouth. If you love games, that you're going to talk a lot about games with your friends, same with everything, films, music, football or horses. if you are fed with violence all the time, you are going to be jaded from violence, the same way that if you eat raw fish all the time, you don't find it as disgusting as someone who has never done it, the same way that someone seeing blood at a hospital all the time is used to it, while one who doesn't might be chocked by it.

Recently, founder of id Software and creator of Doom and Quake, John Carmack, said that gaming does not make you violent, his evidence were that if you go to a gamers-convention, you are less likely to get beaten up than at a collage campus. He said that gaming rather reduces violent behavior. This is, as the statement gaming makes you violent, not entirely true. But there is some truth to it. I can only take myself as an example. When I was ten to twelve, I got bullied a lot, because I was very rewarding to bully, I got very angry and often hit people I couldn't handle. When I was in seventh grade I started to walk home from school after a day where I was angry and go and play super smash bros. I took out my aggression on the figures and my anger, not on my classmates that had hurt me. I started calm down, and is a calm person. Gaming helped me get my anger out. Then, if you do like I did, but start picturing your classmates as the ones you're beating up, that might actually fuel your anger, so there is always a difference in how you do things.

Now, nothing is set in stone, just because you shoot people in the face in halo, does it not mean that you are more likely to shoot people in the face for real, but somewhere we need to understand that what you see and experience affects you. I mean, how many of you weren't just a little hungry to start a underground fight club, where people could beat each other for fun, no hard feelings, when you saw Fight Club? Gaming in itself doesn't make you violence. It might help someone violent to become not so violent. It might help it to become more violent. But nothing of this can be blamed on games. Games are fun. Violent games are really fun. but as with everything else, don't let it take over your life. I wouldn't want to see you on the news.

2011 I long the most for....

During 2011 a lot of games are going to be released, but the question is, what should you buy, and what should you avoid? The question is in itself difficult to answer when the games are not yet to be released, but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you about the games I think is most interesting and I look forward to the most in 2011.

In 2011, many interesting releases made. 2011 is the year when the threes are released. Just around the corner, we have Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Killzone 3, we yearn after Gears of War 3 and Uncharted 3 sometimes later in the year, and when the year draws to an end we get Mass Effect 3 and Diablo 3 I hope anyway.

My three threes is probably Gears of War 3, Mass Effect 3 and Diablo 3. The latter I wonder whether it will be released this year. However, I hope so. Gears of War looks just as rudely good as their predecessors did. Co-op for four is something my friends and I will have lots of fun with. Mass Effect will be just as epic as its predecessors, this is something I'm convinced of. And I like the fact that the third game will vary more depending what you do in the second game.


Another game I'm terribly keen on is LA Noir. It looks so fantastically designed. It can be fun for once to play policemen in a Rockstar game. The whole concept of hearings, how they play on facial expressions and the fact that I just want to be Willem Dafoe's character in the Boondock Saints, makes LA Noir a definite buy once it comes out.

I own an Xbox 360, no Wii, no PS3. In 2011, mainly two games, one for each console, makes me very eager to acquire me the consoles. For the PlayStation 3 The Last Guardian is such strong momentum that it’s only surpassed by the second game. Aesthetics, the graphics... Yes, we don’t know terribly much more about the game really. The reason for the attraction of this game lies rather in its predecessor. Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is fantastic games and I don’t see how Ueda can fail with this.

The second game is, of course, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a game that is what we wanted Twilight Princess would be. Don’t misunderstand me, I loved that game, but it just makes me even hungrier for what's coming. So here I really have no doubt it will be yet another Zelda success.

But which game do I look forward to the most? You how know games and happened to have seen my background may be able to guess. In 2009 I fell in love with a game called Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. Now that same team releases the at least as adult, somewhat sexual, and equally twisted Catherine, a story about a man who cheats on his girlfriend Katherine, with the woman Catherine, I can not help but just long. Be prepared for remorse and probably the best written story in 2011. Released in February in Japan, we in the West can only hope that it will hit us this year, if it gets here at all. Not convinced of its greatness? Check out the trailer below.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiuPt-xv4Pg

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what great games gets released in 2011, Bulletstorm, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Ocarina of Time 3D, Dragon Age 2, Okamiden, Pokemon Black/White, Brink, Portal 2 (The cake is a lie!) , Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Shadows of the Damned, El Shaddai, Rayman: Origins, Duke Nukem Forever (!), Rage, and last but not least, a game I like to talk more about, DMC. To say nothing of 3DS, and the platform as the iPhone and Android is the indie games. 2011, here I come.