2011 in Gaming: Completed

I meant to do this last year, but never did. Inspired by Reeve (and originally namatamiku), this is a roundup of all the games I played this year. It will be posted in three parts, providing my thoughts on the games I completed, didn't completed (but intend too) and gave up on. As this is my list I can be as arbitrary as I like, so for qualification I either played it for the first time this year, or completed (or made significant progress in) for the first time. For example, I played the original Zelda years ago, but only completed it in 2011.

This list required some effort, and I probably missed out stuff, so next year I plan to write it as I go. I doubt I will actually do that, but it's nice to be motivational and forward thinking.

For more end of year video game stuff, I was on the last 2011 episode of Downloadable Content talking about our best and worst games of the year. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download part 1 here and part 2 over this way.

2011 in Gaming: Completed

From Dust (360) - The spiritual successor of Populous reminds you why it's so much fun to play God, but does little to live up to past greatness. The wonderful way you manipulate the world and it's elements is ruined by a short and simple game with some terrible AI.

Guardian Heroes (360) - A remake of the Sega Saturn classic, Guardian Heroes is a frantic and crazy beat'em up  that works wonderfully in co-op over Xbox live. It's ultra short, but packs tones of replayability thanks to its branching story.

Batman: Arkham City (360) - While Arkham Asylum was a revolutionary game with an incredible combat system and fluid narrative, Arkham City is only evolutionary. The "open world" adds little to the experience and the story is nonsense, but the awesome core gameplay from the original is back and mildly improved. On the other hand; Batman.

Sonic Generations (360) - Incredibly short and full of padding, but still the best Sonic game (both 2D and 3D) that we've had in years. The physics and speed are just right, and the level design is excellent. Also, the 30 second time trial mode against friends is a blast.

Gears of War 3 (360) - Campaign-wise, an evolutionary sequel that should be given mad props for actually having the guts to provide a definitive conclusion. The package is also full to the brim with extra content, including a radically improved multiplayer and co-op experience.

Assassin's Creed / AC II / AC: Brotherhood (PS3) - Last Christmas I received a PS3 and played these three back to back to back. It was one hell of a video game binge. Each game radically improves over the last, continuing an epic (if totally nuts) narrative spanning generations. Scaling rooftops and assassinating never gets old and there are many addictive tasks that will feed the completionist. I strongly advise reading the Wikipedia article or watching some YouTube videos to get the gist of the first game however, as the gameplay becomes incredibly reparative and dull after a couple hours.

Portal 2 (PS3) - Without a doubt one of the best games of the year and a must play. From the  excellent character development, voice acting and laugh out loud humour, to the perfectly play tested puzzles, the beautiful world and the incredible closing moment, this game has little to no faults. The co-op is also incredible fun.

The Legend of Zelda (VC) - I completed this for the first time this year in anticipation of the new game, and it's still as wonderful as the day it came out. It may seem simplistic in comparison to where future 2D Zelda's would go, but the concept of being dropped into a world with no instruction and setting out on an adventure has never been better executed to this day.

Well, it's just ineffable.

In support of the men's testicle charity Movember I embarked in the last month on the fine and noble quest of growing not just a moustache that could frighten small children, but a full beard to prove just how manly I can be and to raise awareness for said charity. I'm not really sure how much benefit to the world my single beard brought, but the guys at work raised over £6,000 by selling a limited edition whisky, so lets call it a rounding success.

Growing a beard was an interesting experience. Certainly the worst part was how incredibly itchy is became about a week in, but once that was over it was smooth sailing. Because I only had the fella for a month there was no need to maintain or shape it, so it was actually less work than the regular shaving I normally do. I certainly got some comments that I should have only grown a moustache as per the "rules" of the charity, but as was proven in the photo I took during the shave down, it was probably for the best that I didn't.

Unless you're my Dad, moustaches are a stupid concept. Very few people pull them off, and I have proven not to be one of them. As requested, I also took a photo of the obligatory moustache before it went completely.

I was certainly of two minds about shaving it off at the end, with opinion divided between whether I looked good with a beard or not. In the end I opted to axe the beard because of the maintenance it would require in the future and because I look much younger without it. It's certainly good to know I can pull one off though, and might reconsider in the future.

You can see daily photos of the beard's progression and ultimate death over here.

In other news, I was on another episode of Downloadable Content in which we had an open discussion about anything and everything video games. I don't really recall what I talked about, but I'm sure it was all podcasting gold. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download the episode directly via this linkage.

Fuck you! And your eyebrows!

So I've been at home sick all day. That's been just great.

In other news, today (it's nearly 2am as I write this) is my birthday. I'm 23, whatever that means. Birthdays are an interesting thing once all those important early "mile stones" have passed and you have enough money to buy all the things you would normally await birthdays so eagerly for. Sure I will get gifts, but nothing I couldn't have paid for myself. A lot of people seem to get depressed over this fact, but honestly I find it kinda cool. Gifts are such a material thing. What birthdays should truly be about is appreciating that you've been on this world another year and celebrating that fact with the friends and family that care about you. Its also a great time to consider where you are in life and where it is heading. Getting older is certainly a good way to appreciate that everyones time is limited and none of it should be wasted. 

As mentioned in an earlier post, we adopted kittens! Polly and Alice are great, but Sybil (our older cat) isn't very fond of them yet. There have been a lot of standoffs where she runs into them and stands her ground, hissing and growling. The little buggers don't get put of though, as the moment she turns and walks away they immediately follow her. I'm sure they will be a happy family eventually or there will be a violent battle for cat supremacy. Lets hope for the former.

At work we launched a couple neat features that I worked on. The first is a simply awesome dedicated page to our new Christmas Bitters, featuring corny JavaScript snow, looping Christmas music and a "live" webcam feed. In combination with that page you should also read this hilarious blog post, in which Mike truly outdid himself. The second feature I contributed to is a page where folk can create their own whisky. I encourage you to click the "make me a case" button to see my favourite addition to the page.

I also got my own PC! It's an Intel i5 machine with a honking 12GB of RAM and a AM Radeon HD 6700 graphics card with dual 22 inch Samsung monitors. Unfortunately some genius thought it would be a good idea to RAID 0 two 60GB SSD's to give me 120GB of space and absolutely no redundancy. I already lost one SSD, so thats been great. Except for fearing the machine isn't going to work every time it boots though, its been wonderful. Its certainly the fastest Windows PC I've ever used. And look at how professional my monitor stands are! No expense was spared.

It also occurred to me that I forgot to plug the episode of Downloadable Content I was on that was posted over a month ago where we talked about the Supreme Court ruling, which is a nice follow up to this post. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download the episode directly over this way.

You'll have to forgive him. He's from Barcelona.

As predicted in my previous post a full work week resulted in my failure of the Tales of Symphonia Challenge. I managed just over 25 hours in eight days, getting to Gaoracchia Forest, before I had a full week of work in which I wasn't able to keep up my original pace. I then only had the weekend to play the game before two more days of work and the graduation deadline. Alas, no £40 for me, although it did achieve Dave's goal of getting me to play the damn game. I haven't gone back to it yet, but I certainly plan to at a more leisurely pace now that I've invested time into it. I would certainly recommend trying to get hold of a copy if you have an itch for a good JRPG.

Speaking of graduation, I'm now a graduate! The event was held at the Brighton Dome and while entirely too long, with chairs that absolutely sucked and much more clapping than I could really deal with, it was mostly enjoyable. Some of the students even made mockery of the whole formal procedure, which was taken in good humour and brought some life to the event. Overall it was mostly just a good excuse to see some folks from Uni and go out for drinks and food afterwards.

I wasn't particularly a fan of the getup they made you wear, especially when the robe people told me I had a large and awkward sized head. Some photos of said outfit can be seen over yonder.

So with graduation behind me I'm now officially a real boy and this week I started my first week of full time employment. To be honest I've not really accepted this yet, as working for the same company I've been at for two years makes it feel like nothing has changed, but at some point it will certainly hit me that this is it, and I'm not going back to education in October.

Speaking of work, this week we released a pretty major revision to the site with an entirely new navigation structure. The old nav was structured entirely around whisky, which made it almost impossible to find the many other drinks the company has expanded into. Hopefully this new nav will do a much better job.

In animal news, we're adopting two kittens! My older sister practically tripped over a stray cat giving birth to a litter of five outside her house, so we took them to the RSPCA Cattery my younger sister volunteers at, and rather inevitably we've ended up adopting two of them. My younger sister has already named them Alice and Polly (the latter following the Fawlty Towers theme our remaining cat Sybil started), and we should be taking them home in a couple weeks.

I also appeared on another episode of the Downloadable Content podcast which went up a couple weeks ago. In this one we discuss the advent of downloadable add-on content in console games and whether they are good for gamers or designed simply to drive up prices. As before, you can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download the episode directly over this way.

So it occasionally catches fire but they keep perfect time?

My second appearance on the Downloadable Content podcast is online, in which you can hear us discuss the PlayStation network hack and outage at length. It was recorded a month and a half ago, so please excuse it not being the most timely discussion. As before, you can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download the episode directly over yonder.

On the subject of video games, today I completed day 4 of 18 in the Tales of Symphonia Challenge, where I attempt to complete this lengthy JRPG before I graduate for money. You can see daily updates on the twitters, but so far I'm fourteen hours in, having done the fire, water and wind seals. I'm enjoying the game a lot, especially as it's been a long time since I played an RPG this hardcore. I should almost do this more often, as forcing myself to play 3.5+ hours of the game a day really gets you engaged in it quickly. So far I'm loving the combat and exploration of the world, but I'm not entirely feeling the story. In particular the voice acting (which is inconsistent in when it is used) and dialogue can be cringeworthy at points.

So far I'm making good progress, but then I haven't had to go to work since starting the challenge. Next week I have to work five days to make up hours, which could make keeping up the pace difficult.

A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair.

Just a short post to say I was on the Downloadable Content podcast last week talking about the stuff Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo announced at E3. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or download the episode directly. 

This was actually my third appearance on the show, but the first released as Brian records a bunch of episodes and then releases them over time. This episode cut the queue to keep it relevant and timely, so expect a few more of my appearances in the coming weeks. I had a lot of fun and hope to be on again.