Aperti Gnosco

Last year I beat 12 games, 11 of which were on the 360, and one (which I had started years ago and finally decided to finish) was on the PS2. I doubt I play enough games in order to accurately assess the best game of the year or anything like that (especially because I don’t buy new games for full price anymore), but I certainly played some awesome games, so I’ll talk about those. Oddly enough I don’t think I really played my DS or PSP much. I really should pick up some of those games, but haven’t gotten around to it. My PSP is dumb because I was trying to mod it to get it to work with homebrew stuff, but I ended up not being able to do it easily so kind of gave up. I tried playing some of the old adventure games on the DS, but got frustrated with them as they were ridiculously difficult and it was hard to play, put down, then play again a month+ later.

Fallout 3
Such a fantastic game. The depth of this game and the storyline possibilities astounded me. There was such a massive amount of content and stuff to do that the world never seemed to get old. The weapons were fun, the bad guys were awesome, and I just wanted to do more. So much so that I put 50 hours into it and then got into the “I don’t want to beat it because it’ll be over mode”. I finally had to force myself to finish it because I knew that if I didn’t I’d probably put the game down and never end up beating it. If you love RPGs and good character interactions, this is the game you really, really need to play. Also, the music was fantastic. I love, love, love that era’s music and so kept the radio running all the time even though it just played the same 30-40 songs over and over and over again.

Mirror’s Edge
I loved this game more than I probably should have. The art style is nothing short of beautiful, the movement of the character is fantastic, and the music and atmosphere really made this game fun to play sometimes. Note the sometimes part. Any part in which you had to run from people shooting guns at you made me want to blow my brains out. I really think that people should pick up this game to experience it though, you can probably find it for pretty cheap now. I loved the time trial DLC stuff as well, but then again, I’m a whore for time trials. I borrowed this from work, but I’ll probably end up buying it some time just because I had such fun with it.

Shadow Complex
Modern day Super Metroid. If that doesn’t sell you, you never played one of the best games ever and need to first go play Super Metroid. Absolutely loved everything about this game except for the story, which is atrociously bad (to the point where it’s more funny than bad). Best $20 game I’ve spent money on since Katamari Damacy.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
One of the most complete and well executed games I’ve ever played. Everything fit well together from the voice acting (god I love the guy who does the Joker’s voice, it’s so fucking creepy), to the ambiance, to the gameplay, to the outstanding combat mechanic, to the challenges at the end. Please, please go play this game. Just be warned ahead of time that it may corrupt your save game file causing you to lose everything you’ve ever done in the game. Yep, it happened to me. Yes, it’s common. If that hadn’t happened, I’d probably still be playing it. I’d say this game is even more complete than Fallout 3 and reminds me a lot of the feeling the Ratchet and Clank series gives me. Just pure awesome.

Trials HD
This is nothing other than a time trials game in which you’re a person on a motorcycle traversing insane courses using nothing but the bike and some awesome physics. I’ve played this game an absolute ton and love it. Most people will probably like it for a bit and tire, but my god do I love this stuff. I played it so much sometimes that my shoulder muscle would hurt from holding the right trigger (the gas button) constantly.

If you’re curious, here’s my list of games I’ve beaten. It doesn’t include games like Trials HD since you can’t really beat it, but I think I’ll probably remedy that this year and include all games I’ve played. Hopefully that’ll be a more accurate representation of everything I’ve played since I certainly have at least 5 more games to add to that list that just really don’t have endings.