In what is becoming a somewhat unintended tradition, here is 2011 in review. I'm still in the same place for now the third consecutive year which is a record of some sort. Otherwise, a pretty uneventful year, really but that's not necessarily a bad thing. On to the gaming!
Rift: *****
This is what I want to see out of a new MMO studio: a well realized world with interesting encounters and a lot of player-friendly features. The UI is top notch and the launch was exceptional and I may have already talked about it some. The only major downsides were that there really was only two months or so of content and I didn't have a reliable crew. I'll give them a pass for the latter, but the former really is inexcusable. I'm told now by people who still play that they've consolidated servers--never a good sign. I enjoyed my time there, however, and it stands as a shining example of how you launch an MMO.
Mount & Blade Warband: ***
A reasonable graphical refinement of the original Mount & Blade with some fun new gameplay additions. Otherwise, they've slowed down the campaign and not fixed a bunch of the terrible game play issues. It does become tedious after a while but I haven't yet felt the need to mod it. Really pretty disappointing if I'm honest.
Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword: **
More of a commercial mod with the original engine, they've managed to take all the really broken things and make them worse while also taking out some of the things that made the original game great. One of the notable additions is firearms which is absolutely great if you can get your guys to hit (and one shot) their targets--not real great when the opponent does so to you. I suspect that this is much cooler if you know the fiction it's based on but I don't.
Dragon Age: Awakening: ***
A pretty reasonable expansion for Dragon Age--enjoyable but with a couple pretty jarring flaws. You can import your old character from Dragon Age: Origins in Mass Effect style which is great...unless your character died at which point no one (yourself included) seems to be aware of it. No really notable characters (I can barely remember any of them, TBH) and while the story was good, as Yahtzee likes to point out, Bioware doesn't get points for that anymore.
Dragon Age 2: ***
Mixed bag here. On the one hand, it's a pretty good standalone RPG with a very good storytelling presentation (even if the story itself wasn't up to Bioware standards). On the other hand, it had to follow Dragon Age: Origins which IMO was hands down better. DA2 was set in the same world but with totally different characters and only the vaguest of tie-ins with the original Anders notwithstanding. It also broke up the world into terribly disjoint areas which you moved between with very little attachment. The characters were interesting but really lacked the standout Shale or HK-47 that we've come to expect though Merrill and Aveline get honorable mention.
Serious Sam III: ****
I am an unabashed Serious Sam fan since the original when working on my first title people kept saying "you can't just make a shooter where you shoot monsters". Since then they've made exactly a game where all you do is shoot monsters, usually a pile of them. The environments are detailed, the monsters are ugly, the levels are unbelievably well designed, and the one-liners are on point. Sam Stone is a better Duke Nukem than the Duke himself. While I don't usually like to review games I haven't finished yet, unless it takes an uncharacteristic turn for the worse, I think I'm going to be pretty happy with it.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: ***
And this would be why I haven't finished it yet. I'm on record as wanting this game to succeed because if it doesn't, it probably marks the end of the big-budget MMOs--the kinds of games that I really like. Unfortunately, I think it falls short despite poaching a lot of people who should know better from a former employer (formerly Mythic Entertainment). SWTOR's approach to story telling is largely instanced and is probably the logical extension from LoTRO's method which is nice but the high points are pretty spread out probably due to the sheer volume of content. The voicing is also a nice addition but that comes with good and bad (female jedi knight & male jedi consular: painful). On the downside, there are a LOT of bugs, the game hurts (a lot) for a lack of multi-specs and customizable UI, and minus the thin per-class quest line there is almost zero replayability per faction. I can't shake the feeling that they needed another 6 months to sort out some of the rough edges and if I'm honest, I think I would have preferred to get KOTOR 3 instead. We'll see what the end game's like, but I suspect I'm going to be disappointed.
