Bioshock Infinite tells the story of Booker DeWitt, an alcoholic ex-soldier with a fair share of regrets. After building up a large sum of gambling debts, a mysterious entity hires him to find a girl named Elizabeth and escort her to New York. It turns out Elizabeth is a captive of sorts in Columbia, a massive flying city. Originally built by America, Columbia has since seceded from the union and gone a little bit crazy.

It’s an interesting setup and the first quarter of the game actually plays pretty well. It has all the elements you might expect from a Bioshock game: audio logs, loot containers, magic and gunplay, charismatic personalities that love to monologue, strange vending machines, and the like. The problem is that most of the features have little, if anything, to do with the overall narrative. About a third into the game, the story does a very sudden shift into new territory and spirals out of control from there. By the time it’s all over with, you can tell that this replacement plot of sorts is the story the game’s creators actually wanted to tell. I almost feel like it devalued the earlier portions of the game.

And that brings me back to why this game is disjointed. Let’s take a look at it piece by piece. In the first Bioshock, plasmids (essentially magic spells) were a core part of gameplay. Balancing the use of plasmids with the use of guns was part of the fun of combat and the wide variety of plasmids allowed for a variable approach to situations. But the true strength of plasmids was that they were also an integral part of the game’s narrative and world. Plasmids were responsible for the downfall of Rapture, as they slowly drove the citizens insane and turned them into splicers. Even the origin of plasmids (a substance found in sea slugs during the city’s construction) was integral to the game. The use of plasmids was required both to be successful in combat and to understand what had happened to this city.

Compare that to Bioshock Infinite. In Infinite, you acquire vigors (plasmids, just renamed) that have similar effects on gameplay. While I can’t say for sure, I didn’t feel as if vigors were as numerous or useful as they were in the original Bioshock. But more importantly, vigors are absolutely meaningless to the narrative of Bioshock Infinite. Vigors are introduced during a city fair of sorts, but we never truly understand what vigors are or where they came from. We never see if they have had an impact on Columbia. At the end of the day, it just feels like vigors are present in this game because “it’s Bioshock.”

That actually sums up a lot of the problems with Bioshock Infinite. It makes much less sense that there are vending machines selling guns in Columbia than it did in Rapture. But again, “it’s Bioshock.” Recorded audio logs seem few and far between and next to no insightful information is given about Columbia itself. But they are in the game because “it’s Bioshock.” In the original game, we found dozens of audio logs from all manner of people. It was through these logs that the city of Rapture was so well realized. In Infinite, audio logs tend to only come from the major characters and, after a point, only deal in the refocused narrative.

Then there’s the Songbird. This giant mechanical guardian has been billed as Infinite’s equivalent to the original game’s Big Daddies. This comparison is almost unfair, I’d say. The Songbird is a mystery. Its job is to protect Elizabeth and once you break her out, it begins to hunt you. Or at least that’s what you think will happen, but it doesn’t really because you only see the Songbird maybe three times over the course of the game. Even more, we never find out anything about what the Songbird is. Through its expert world-building, the original Bioshock made absolutely sure the player knows what a Big Daddy is. It forced us to observe them, fight them, see how they’re created, and eventually even become one. When you have an antagonist, even an indirect one, you should be able to understand it by the time everything’s said and done. I never understood the Songbird. I never discovered how it was created, how and why it did the things it did, and I certainly never felt hunted by it.

It was disappointing because the sequence where you first encounter the Songbird is extremely strong. The way it’s framed in your view to only give you a quick glimpse reminded me of classic films like Alien and Jaws. After that encounter, it’s much less impressive. You only see the Songbird a couple of times and every time you do, it’s during sequences when the game takes control away from you. While I don’t have the solution, it would have been nice to see the Songbird while I was actually in control of my character. It may surprise some to learn that you never even fight the Songbird. It’s a giant, flying, robotic plot device.

Columbia is visually well-realized, but that’s kind of all it is.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that Bioshock Infinite fails to merge gameplay and narrative in the expert way that the original Bioshock did. While yes, plasmids and Big Daddies were plot devices, they were also important parts of the gameplay experience. You could even call Rapture itself a plot device, but it was still important in every single aspect of the Bioshock’s experience. The Songbird is a plot device, but it exists wholly outside of gameplay. Vigors exist in gameplay but seem to be totally irrelevant in the narrative. Most disappointing of all, Columbia itself is important for gameplay mechanics but seems also to be totally irrelevant to the narrative.

The story that Bioshock Infinite wants to tell you could have taken place in any secluded city in the world. The fantastical hyper-patriotic floating dystopia of Columbia means little, if anything, in the overall narrative. In the first Bioshock, Andrew Ryan said, “It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea; it was impossible to build it anywhere else.” I have always felt like that quotation also meant that the story of Bioshock was one that could only take place in Rapture. The city itself was so intricately folded into both narrative and gameplay that it would have been impossible to set that game somewhere else.

I think that because all of these elements failed to mingle successfully, it made other parts of Bioshock Infinite suffer as well. The combat is just…boring. Vigors don’t change things enough and the variation of guns seems to be artificial. A couple of the guns have two or three variants that behave in different ways. Why not just make a different gun for each of those versions, each with a unique model? It would have been more interesting than re-colored versions of the same gun. But the combat really suffers because, as I said, there has been no effort made to integrate it into the narrative. The combat is pretty much Bioshock combat through and through. But without the narrative hooks linking the combat to the rest of the world around you, it just feels bland and repetitive. However, I will say that using the rails that connect floating building to floating building in order to flank enemies was fun for a bit.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Bioshock Infinite, though. Visually, the game is breathtaking. The art style is very well realized and the city of Columbia is definitely an impressive sight to behold. The color palate is bright and appealing, especially in an age where most first-person shooters are brown or gray. Also, the animation seems to be top notch. Elizabeth’s facial expressions during her conversations with Booker are subtle and realistic and it goes a long way. The story that the game wants to tell you is pretty good too. I think that if they had just made a game without the Bioshock name, telling this story, Infinite would have been a hundred times more successful than it is. It’s a story (and ending) that will leave you thinking for a good week or so after it’s over.

I went into Bioshock Infinite with high hopes. I had seen a bit of the promotional stuff showing off Columbia and I was excited to experience the floating city. I looked forward to understanding what it was and what went wrong for it and ultimately having an effect on it myself. Sadly, about a third or so through the game, I realized that Bioshock Infinite was not the game I was hoping for. Mechanically, it had all the parts of the game I thought it’d be, but the soul and complete vision was missing. Still, I encourage everyone to play Bioshock Infinite and form their own opinion on the matter. But while I keep returning to Rapture every so often, I don’t think I feel the need to visit Columbia ever again.

Rather than dumping you in and expecting you to build a deck from scratch, Magic 2013 provides the player with a series of pre-made decks, all designed to do a specific thing. If you want big creatures in the late game, the green deck seems pretty good. If you want a large army of smaller creatures, there are both red and white decks that can do it for you. There are even decks designed to make the opponent discard most of his or her own deck, or to heal you beyond any chance of losing.

These pre-made decks make it easy for new players (or people like me, who haven’t played in years) to get into the game without dealing with the frustration of deciding things like “how many lands should I put in my deck?” or “should I have more creatures than spells or vice-versa?” Smartly, the game unlocks a new card for the deck you’re using each time you win with it, so you’ll be able to customize the deck more and more as you play. Magic veterans may be turned off by the inability to have complete control of your deck, but I feel like this game serves more as an introduction to the game and deck building than an true-to-life simulation. It’s certainly made me want to pick up and play the real game.

Magic 2013 features a campaign with plenty of modes and challenges. There are standard matches against A.I. (which can also be played in the custom games mode), as well as encounters, which are basically matches that challenge you to beat a specific situation. There’s also a 4-player free for all mode with some twists involving passive effects, and even a 2v2 sort of deal. The multiplayer is where the game should shine, since most of these modes are available for online competition, but most of the people online were too good for me to handle. Sometimes it seems like they just…do things and I lose.

And that brings me to the mechanical problems with this game. It loves to do things without telling you why or how those things are happening. Oftentimes, an opponent’s card will be flashed in front of you for a fraction of a second before it triggers the intended effect. You can choose to zoom in and read it but that doesn’t stop your opponent from continuing to act. A lot of times it can be difficult to keep up, which results in you not learning what went wrong for you. It’s worst in online play because other players are bound to have cards you haven’t seen or unlocked yet.

My other problem is with how the game controls. You navigate between the various cards in your hand and on the board with the control stick, rather than the d-pad. Instead, the d-pad spins the camera to look at things from your opponent’s perspective (which there’s really no reason to ever do). It’s baffling to me that this flat, largely 2d game is not controlled by the d-pad. Even weirder is that you can’t look at any card any time you want. The game only allows you to select and zoom in on specific cards at any given time. This can be exceedingly frustrating when you don’t know what a card does and it’s sitting right in front of you.

Apparently a Magic 2014 is already in the works, so here’s hoping the mechanical issues are solved in it. Even despite the frustrating controls, playing Magic 2013 has been a lot of fun and I’d definitely recommend it to those curious about trading card games. If you’ve been playing Magic for years, you probably won’t prefer this to the real thing, but everyone has to start somewhere. Now, who wants to pick up some Magic starter decks with me? I’ve got the urge.

Space Marine follows the story Captain Titus, a space marine (surprise, surprise) tasked with protecting a Forge World and the Titan being built there from an onslaught of Orks. A Forge World is basically a factory planet and Titans are pretty much giant mechs. The story is pretty thin, though some interesting twists do happen during the somewhat short campaign.

What’s more interesting is the Warhammer 40K universe that the game takes place in. It’s such a bleak and brutal setting. Standard weapons fire what are pretty much miniature rockets, chainsaws are swords, and orks have somehow pieced scrap metal together into spaceships. I’m pretty unfamiliar with the setting, but the game definitely has gotten me interested in it. I hope this franchise continues and provides more robust stories along the way. Also, I love that even the Orks have British accents. I never tire of hearing a surprised Ork shout, “Spoice Muhreens?! We got a foight here!”

Gunning down space Orks has never been more fun.

Space Marine plays largely like any other third-person shooter. Instead of a cover system, you use quick combat rolls to dodge incoming fire or attacks. There’s a sense of weight in everything you do. Captain Titus looks heavy in all his armor and you can feel it while moving around. Rolling will cause you to thud heavily on the ground and the sprint animation looks like it takes a large amount of energy for Titus to move like that.

The shooting mechanics will feel familiar to most people. Most of the guns are an equivalent to other games; there’s an assault rifle, pistol, sniper rifle, etc. There are also some more creative guns, like a mine thrower, a burst fire flamethrower-type thing, a laser cannon, and more. The game puts just as much emphasis on melee as ranged fighting and equips you with things like chainsaw swords and electrified axes/hammers.

The melee fighting is a lot of fun. There will be several moments when you are completely swarmed by Orks and have the opportunity to just go nuts with your melee weapon. You can chain together simple combos with a few different moves, as well as use brutally animated finishing moves to refill your health. This is actually the only way to refill your health, which is pretty cool. The only problems I have with the melee combat is that I wish it were a little bit deeper in terms of moves available and also I wish there were more finishing move animations. There’s only three or four, so if you’re healing a lot then you’re seeing them over and over.

Multiplayer features pretty deep customization.

Space Marine also features a pretty robust online multiplayer. There are tons of unlockables for your marine, be they armor parts, jetpacks, weapons, or perks. You can also customize the paint scheme for your armor or pick a scheme from one of numerous Space Marine chapters from Warhammer 40K lore. All the standard modes you expect are available: team deathmatch, capture and hold, capture the flag, and some coop content. Capture and hold probably works the best. The multiplayer stuff is a lot of fun and I was glad to see that even now, several months after release, there are still tons of people playing it.

Overall, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is a great package. It’s easily accessible and by no means requires you to be an expert in the 40K universe. The actual gameplay is familiar and fun, but it’s a shame some of the melee stuff isn’t more complex. The multiplayer has so much to unlock that you could easily get a big enough chunk of time out of the game to justify buying it. It doesn’t hurt that it seems to go on sale pretty often. Here’s hoping we see more Space Marines from Relic in the future.

The most striking thing about The Old Republic is that it features a very heavy focus on story. Each of the eight character classes has a unique storyline in the game. The Republic trooper’s squad defects to the Empire and he has to hunt down his traitorous former comrades. The Jedi consular battles against a Dark Side plague that has been infecting Jedi masters. The Imperial agent experiences the distinct differences between the Empire and the Sith. The game almost feels like eight separate Knights of the Old Republic games.

To support this heavy story focus, every quest in the game has a fully voiced intro and conclusion. Every quest. Even the smaller, general ones that every class can do. This one element makes a huge difference in making the game feel less like monotony. I’ve yet to hit a point where I’ll speed through dialog just to accept the quest; if I did that, it’d pretty much just be like World of Warcraft.

Thankfully, the quests that follow the dialog aren’t monotonous either. Very rarely will a quest objective be “kill x number of things.” Actually, killing a certain number of something is usually a bonus objective tied to each quest and is totally optional. Knowing that you’re not required to kill 30 space cats or whatever helps a lot in making the questing stay fresh longer.

Even if you just want to use a lightsaber, there are plenty of options of how to wield it.

Mass Effect-style conversations are in place as well. You can make good or bad choices, which will alter minor things and get you access to various special items. The really interesting thing about the conversations is that you can do them with groups of other players as well. When in a group, you’ll see all of the group’s characters talking and the game will essentially roll the dice to see who gets to talk. It’s really successful in making the multiplayer element mix well with the heavy story focus.

The Old Republic also features some really small yet smart tweaks to the general MMO gameplay mechanics that we all know. For example, auto attack is out of the game entirely. One of the things that bored me so much about MMO combat in the past was that on weaker enemies, you would tend to just let the auto attack play out over and over. It was boring to both watch and play. Combat in The Old Republic feels faster and more involved because of the lack of auto attacks. You’re encouraged to be constantly on your toes and use your skills as much as possible. It doesn’t hurt that the combat animations are really cool and it makes the fighting that much more fun to experience. Enemies in the game also are a lot more aggressive earlier on and will use special skills more often than in other MMOs.

The combat tweaks work well, however small they may be. Also altered were some minor things with regard to transportation. Rather than binding yourself to a single location that you can travel fast to (the hearthstone mechanic in WoW), you bind yourself to each new location you find. Then, when you use your fast travel item, you can travel to any location you’ve already found on your current planet – it’s your choice. Again, it’s another small change that makes a world of difference when actually playing the game.

Fan favorite planets like Tatooine and Hoth are present.

Crafting has been tweaked as well. Every player gets several companions (similar to other BioWare games) who will help them in combat or help them with crafting. You can send your companions off to collect crafting materials for you or even to actually craft items with the materials you’ve got. This design just puts crafting on the backburner so you can keep playing and doing quests while your crafting skills increase in the background. It’s super nice to not have to stand around in a city watching your character twirl his hands around while making the same item over and over.

Really, The Old Republic just doesn’t feel like an MMO. It feels like a Star Wars RPG made by BioWare with a big focus on multiplayer content. For the most part, this is why the game is so good. There are some downsides, though. For example, the game is heavily instanced. A lot of the areas in the game are wide and open, appearing to be set up for a large number of players, yet because there are so many different planets (and two or three instances of each planet), the locales can sometimes seem kind of empty. I’m curious if the capital planets of the two factions will start filling up more once people start hitting the max level.

Other than the instancing and spread of planets causing areas to seem a bit deserted at times, the only other problem I’ve really had with the game is difficulty getting groups together. At first, I thought that the problem was because no players are creating tank or healer-type characters. After a bit more time with the game, I think the problem is really that there’s just not an easy way to find group members. There’s no sort of automated grouping system in place, so most of the time you just end up spamming chat channels to find other players. You can flag yourself as looking for a group, but in my experience no one ever really uses it. The spread of planets could also be hurting the game here. With everyone spread out across the universe, it’s just difficult to find the best place to search for other players. This could easily be fixed with a universe-wide “looking for group” chat channel.

Companions make both combat and crafting much easier.

My complaints here are such minor issues that they shouldn’t hold you back from checking out The Old Republic. The game really is outstanding. Whether you’re a BioWare fan, a Star Wars fan, or an MMO addict, there’s going to be something in the game that really impresses you. The main question now is whether or not subscription numbers will stay up and the game will keep expanding and providing new content. Right now, though, it’s a great game and I do recommend it.

TrackMania 2 is a game that’s exceedingly difficult to describe. At its core, it’s an arcade-style online racer that’s focused on time trials. In reality, that sells the draw of the game a bit short. The game is also a great example of a worldwide community, user-generated content, and casual fun.

Single player content is present but pretty much irrelevant. Its pre-made tracks are very basic and only really good for learning the controls the first time you fire up the game. The single player stuff has leaderboards and medals to earn for beating pre-set times, but there’s not really incentive to go after any of that stuff.

Where TrackMania 2 really shines is in online multiplayer. How it typically goes down is you join a server with 50-100 other people and race time trials for about six minutes per track. Here, all of the tracks have been made by the community. It’s also worth noting that you’re not bouncing against other players’ cars; they race next to you in real time, but the models are ghosts so that no one is in anyone else’s way.

At the end of each track, everyone is awarded ladder points based on fastest time. The leaderboard system is great, allowing you to check your standing at the worldwide, national, and statewide level. Thankfully, poor performance won’t cause you to lose standing. Only other players outperforming you will cause you to fall in the ranks. I enjoy telling people that I’m the number three player in Oklahoma, but I often neglect to tell them that there are only 46 TrackMania 2 players in the state.

The quest to further increase your standing (especially on the smaller, statewide ladder) is one of the greatest draws of the game. This is boosted by the fact that the game isn’t very hard and it’s easy to become competent at it with just a little practice. Because all of the tracks are user-made, there are some challenging ones, but usually six minutes is more than enough time to figure it out.

In fact, figuring out the tracks and the best way to run them is almost like a little puzzle game. The cars have very basic controls and typically all you need are directional buttons and a button for the e-brake. Then, it’s just a matter of figuring out where to place yourself on the track (the “racing line” idea) and whether to use drifting or grip to turn corners. Grip is usually faster and fine for high speed tracks, but sometimes drifting is a must. Also, drifting just looks so cool.

At the end of the day, that’s pretty much what TrackMania 2 is. You can customize your car’s paint job and some servers will run custom music tracks to keep things fresh, so user influence is essentially king in multiplayer mode. There’s also the Valley expansion to look forward to, sometime in the future, which will expand the game’s environment variety.

If you’re the type of person who likes to get all OCD about your lap times in racing games, the idea of retrying a track over and over for six minutes just to shave mere miliseconds off your time will probably be a dream come true. But TrackMania 2 also provides a great time if you want to just play casually for a while. The six minute-per-track design makes it an easy game to jump in and out of when you have some time to kill. Then again, once you start playing, you’re likely to develop a “one more track” mentality and keep playing way longer than you intended.

That does it for the 2011 Wrap Up. It’s been an exciting year and here’s hoping 2012 is even better. Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and don’t forget to play some games over the break!

I was never a big fan of the Elder Scrolls series. I actually found Oblivion to be profoundly boring. Layer poor combat and a mishmash of bugs on top of that and I simply couldn’t understand what people saw in the franchise.

Because of all this, I went into Skyrim reluctantly. The Internet has been absolutely ablaze with praise for the game, but it’s always better to see the game for yourself. I’m surprised to say that my experience with Skyrim has been largely pleasant. There are certainly problems, numerous ones at that, but I do understand the draw of the series a little better.

I learned early on that it’s key to completely disregard the main story in Skyrim. Not because it’s bad, which it isn’t, but because it’s essentially unimportant. The draw of Skyrim seems to be the idea that you can explore everywhere and just take side quests for whatever you feel like doing. Even if you don’t want to take side quests, there are so many locations to explore and dungeons to clear that the game has more than enough content to support you. When walking around in the wilderness, icons will pop up on your compass when you’re near locations of interest. You may be trying to head to one specific place, but you’ll still feel compelled to make the detours and discover as much as possible. It doesn’t hurt that almost every location is tied to a side quest or an extra task.

The visuals only serve the desire to explore even further. The landscape of Skyrim is detailed and beautiful. Often you can see for miles in any direction and, for the most part, you can travel to anything you can see. The fact that you can see ruins on mountaintops, hike up to the ruins, and experience changes in weather and scenery as you make the trip just enhances the game’s great sense of scale.

If exploration has been the greatest experience of my time with Skyrim, crafting has been my second favorite activity. The crafting system is fairly standard; you smelt ores into bars, use a forge to combine leathers and metals into equipment, and then use workbenches to improve the equipment. There’s just a very tactile feel to crafting. It’s authentic and usually immersive.

If I had to pick a third greatest strength for Skyrim, it’d be the character progression. Skill trees are designed to look like constellations, with each skill being a star. It makes picking skills visually interesting, while the skills themselves all seem worthwhile in one manner or another. It’s great that your abilities level up as you use them, too. As someone who’s never fond of “jack of all trades” RPG characters, I was pleased to be able to just focus on three or four specific skills with which to specialize my character.

The exploration, crafting, and character progression are all good enough to make Skyrim worth checking out, even if you’re doubtful. However, the game isn’t without problems. The most serious of which is the combat. Not unlike Oblivion, combat in Skyrim feels very much like you’re just flailing until the other guy dies. There’s no sense of tactics or strategy in the combat. You can block, shield bash, cast spells, etc., but the different combat abilities never feel like they have a specific reason to exist. When compared to a game like Dark Souls, where everything you can do in combat is very deliberate, precise, and specific, Skyrim simply doesn’t hold up. It’s not unplayable; it’s’ just not very deep.

Other problems in Skyrim are made up of minor design and technical oddities. A lot of times during conversations, there will be only one option when replying to someone. This annoys me more and more each time it happens. If there’s only one option of what to say, why is it there to begin with? It seems like it’s just a “press button to continue conversation” mechanic.

Other strange issues the game has involve visuals. The animation isn’t really all that much better than Oblivion, despite the new engine. First-person animations when you do things are fine, but watching the repetitive animations of other characters can be kind of depressing. Also, when characters speak, only the bottom half of their face animates. And since I mentioned speaking, the voice acting is downright awful. I don’t know that I’ve encountered a single voice in this game that isn’t painful to listen to. There’s one specific Swedish voice that makes up both numerous plot characters and random characters. It’s incredibly jarring to hear so many people with that exact same voice. It’s also really weird when different shopkeepers and guards all say the same thing.

All of the problems Skyrim has are manageable, though. If you’re looking for a game that you can easily lose yourself in (and for several hours), this is the one that’s going to do it. The extreme openness of the game may turn off people who prefer to be guided more, but if you’re looking for a cool world to explore, Skyrim is probably the best equipped game since Fallout 3 to provide that.

Today, let’s talk about Battlefield 3!

Battlefield 3 may very well be my last big online multiplayer shooter. It features everything I love and hate about that style of game. The greatest thing that BF3 has going for it is that it’s presented and focused in a wildly different way from Call of Duty.

You wouldn’t be able to tell from the single player campaign, though. The single player is yet another story of a soldier being interrogated so that the gameplay can occupy various flashbacks. If you think this sounds familiar to Black Ops, you’re not wrong. The single player isn’t bad per se, but it’s entirely unremarkable and unmemorable. Not unlike Black Ops, sometimes it feels linear to the degree of being a long rail shooter.

But who comes to the Battlefield series for single player? Before Bad Company, BF games didn’t even have single player stories. The multiplayer component of BF3 is truly unique, chaotic, intense, and addictive. The reason it feels so much different from Call of Duty is due to the sense of scale. Sometimes maps seem like they go on for miles. Oftentimes, it’s true. In spite of that, the matches never feel overwhelming or overcrowded.

The squad system returns yet again and creates a very focused feeling around the various pockets of action going on at any given time. Your squad may be engaging another squad around this office building, but there are groups of tanks and trucks fighting up the road, an APC delivering a squad to a distant control point, and jet fighters dogfighting overhead. Everyone has a separate little battle to win, and doing so contributes to that overall objective, be it holding a control point or overrunning an enemy on the defensive.

It gets really crazy when you start to think about all these things happening around you being controlled by actual players. You can be running down a path and suddenly a burning jet falls into a building and explodes. That was an actual player, likely shot down by another actual player who is still flying up there somewhere. Moments like these are really immersive and, at the same time, feed into the whole “multiple small battles feeding into a larger one” feeling.

BF3 isn’t devoid of all online shooter problems, though. Though the game focuses on objectives rather than kill-death-ratio, you will never be able to change the fact that some people are insanely good at these games. You will die a lot; you often won’t even know from what direction you got killed. I know that a lot of the time, I couldn’t understand why the guy I was shooting was able to kill me before I killed him. Sometimes you’ll get into a bad streak and it will totally snap your interest in the game. You’ll definitely get fed up with players who fire endless amounts of mortars into the Paris streets map.

Other problems with the game sway to the technical side of things.  I’ve fallen through the world a couple times. Other times, my interface simply didn’t exist and I couldn’t even bring up the menu to quit. A simple respawn after death, etc., solved the issue. Finally, for some strange reason, the game never works the first time I launch it. It always takes two tries at first. The game launches from a web browser, which may have something to do with it. It’s nice that you can browse servers without launching into the game, though, especially if you end up deciding not to play.

So why could this by my last massive online shooter? It just does everything I want. The gameplay is objective based and requires teamwork. The visuals and first-person animations are stunning and very immersive. The game just feels like it’s done what I want these games to do and I can’t imagine it going anywhere from here. Maybe it’s time for a new style of shooter to take over. Sci-fi, perhaps? In the meantime, I’ll keep enjoying Battlefield 3 until the modern military craze dies out.

3. Saints Row: The Third

The only “3 game” on my list is Saints Row: The Third. While the other 3s this fall could be classified as other iterations in established franchises, Saints Row really felt like it was just now finding itself. Saints Row 2 featured some ideas and concepts that got the ball rolling, but SR3 feels almost like the first game in a new series inspired by the original two.

But that’s not why SR3 stands out. Think about how many serious games came out this fall. Games full of desperate soldiers, dramatic deaths, tenuous relationships, and taglines like “brothers to the end.” That’s all well and good, but after several months of drama and tension, SR3 felt like some sort of amazing experience intended to end the fall season on a lighter note so that we’re not all depressed during the holidays. SR3 doesn’t take itself seriously in any sense; even serious events in its own story are mocked.

SR3 gave us missions where our characters continually think up horrible plans, go along with these plans, and act surprised when they actually work out. Then it gives us tools to complete these plans like a gun that causes people to be eaten by sharks or a luchadore mask that sets people on fire. Everything in SR3 is centered on generating fun, crazy experiences for the player. The upgrade system, the car modifications, the character customizer, mission choices, and everything else are designed to build into a more and more ridiculous sandbox experience. Thank you, Saints Row: The Third. If this fall’s games were the heavy four-course dinner, you were the light, delicious dessert.

2. Bulletstorm

If Saints Row: The Third brought the fun to gaming at the end of the year, Bulletstorm did it at the beginning. Not unlike Saints Row, Bulletstorm had a fairly depressing marketing drive behind it and really sold the game’s writing short. People who avoided the game because of the advertisements really missed out on something special, though. Bulletstorm totally ignored modern first-person shooter storylines and told a crazy tale of crazy people who were stuck in a crazy place. Oh, and you get to do some really crazy stuff.

Rather than encouraging us to use cover and headshots to progress from scripted sequence to sequence, Bulletstorm advanced a new way to play shooters. By essentially performing ridiculous stunts in how to kill people, it rewards you points that you then put forth into performing even crazier stunts. This creates the potential for some of the most insane, hilarious situations seen in a shooter. Clever guns like one that fires drills and another that fires two grenades with a chain between them cause things to happen that are so cartoonishly absurd that you can’t help but grin at the mayhem you’re causing.

What really surprised me about Bulletstorm, though, was the story. Like Saints Row, it’s always aware of how ridiculous it is and it never gets bogged down. The writing is smart and the characters (the main one especially) have surprising depth. Of all things, I never expected to see a genuine character arc in something called “Bulletstorm.” It saddens me that the game didn’t sell very well because it deserves better. If you’re bored this holiday season and sick of modern military shooters set in brown and gray industrial environments, pick up Bulletstorm. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

While I was never a fan of the original Deus Ex (I played it way too late and it aged poorly), I understood why people liked it. It’s the same reason people like Alpha Protocol, despite its shortcomings: the atmosphere, the personalized character, and the freedom of action to name a few. Human Revolution cashed in on all these strengths and reminded us that first person shooters don’t have to be mindless hoorah-fests. Human Revolution is not only my favorite game of 2011; it’s one of my favorite games from this entire console generation.

Atmosphere is probably the most memorable element of Human Revolution. The world combines old renaissance styling with harsh futuristic and utilitarian lines. The clash between old and new, right and wrong, and the murky area in between is reflected in every element of the game, be it player choices, architecture, costume design, dialog, and pretty much everything else. Everything feels very cohesive and builds it up to be even more memorable.

It doesn’t hurt that the gameplay can carry its weight, too. Whether you play as a sneaky spy or a terminator-esque cyborg killing machine, every playstyle feels like it’s the playstyle the game was designed around. No one option feels more brokenly over or underpowered than another. You don’t see that often these days, especially in this style of RPG.

I could keep going, but I’m afraid I’ll start repeating too much of my original review if I do. It’s in the blog archives if you’re interested and maybe haven’t played the game yet. All in all, Human Revolution is the must-play game from 2011. It’s engrossing, addictive, thought-provoking, pretty, and exciting. I know that I’ll be replaying it for years to come.

Jurassic Park: The Game mostly follows Dr. Harding (the guy treating the triceratops in the movie) and his daughter as they try to escape the island after Nedry shuts down the power. The characters aren’t deep or really all that interesting, but they move you from scene to scene well enough. It’s a shame there are so many lines taken from the movie, though. It feels like during half the game, all of the characters are just saying, “Remember Jurassic Park?!” over and over.

The game plays like Heavy Rain mixed with an old-school point and click adventure game. You explore the environment by selecting different objects or people and then use logic to complete each sequence and continue the story. For the most part, this actually works really well. The pop-up button prompt system fits easily into the Jurassic Park theme and can make the faster paced scenes pretty tense and interesting.

It’s cool to see the park again, but technical issues hold the game back.

Sadly, there are numerous issues preventing it from being a perfectly executed idea. For example, the button prompts are way, way too small. When you can inspect something in the environment, you see a large magnifying glass icon and next to it is an icon showing you what button to press. The button icon is actually really small and often impossible to see. A lot of times it’s also angled so it can be flat against whatever object it corresponds to, making it even harder to see. Why not just replace the large magnifying glass icon with a large icon of the button? It’s a silly and easily-solved problem, but it’s a big one.

The biggest problem with Jurassic Park: The Game, though, is that it simply doesn’t run very well at all. The game is constantly hitching up and dropping frames, especially when it has to load a new scene after you make a correct choice. Not only that, audio can sometimes cut in or out, lag behind the video, or not sync up to the subtitles correctly. From a technical perspective, the whole thing is a mess and it’s almost game-breaking. It’s worth noting that the game runs this way on PS3 and PC, but I haven’t tried the (disc-based) Xbox 360 version yet.

This is a game that gets by on nostalgia alone. If you have a lot of nostalgia for Jurassic Park, you’ll probably find a lot of enjoyment in seeing/escaping the dinosaurs and visiting all the locations from the movie. If you just like adventure games (or Heavy Rain), you’ll likely find that the staggering technical issues and poor UI design make the game not very fun to play. If you like Jurassic Park, you might still feel that way. The game is episodic; try episode one if you’re curious but if you’re not nostalgic for Jurassic Park, your money is probably better spent elsewhere.

Uncharted 3 sees the return of Nathan Drake as he searches for Ubar, a lost city of legend in the Arabian Peninsula. However, like the other Uncharted games, the MacGuffin isn’t really what the story is about. It’s really about Nate’s relationship with Sully and, to a lesser extent, his on-again-off-again flame, Elena. It feels like everyone has grown up a little bit from Uncharted 2 (and probably a lot from Uncharted 1). In the same vein, everyone looks a little older this time around.

I almost feel like the aging of the characters is some kind of hidden subplot in Uncharted 3. Nate’s ridiculous way of life is challenged at every turn and he is constantly having to confront the reality of its effect on his friends, particularly Sully. This ties into some interesting plot points regarding what Nate is afraid of (beside clowns) that aren’t completely apparent until you start to think back on the cutscenes.

The plot isn't deep but the characters are the real focus.

I could probably talk for pages about the characters in Uncharted games and this iteration is no exception. Uncharted 3 is an excellent sequel to the series but, at the same time, I don’t know that there’s room for another adventure of this sort. I’d love to see more of Nathan Drake and company, but if we’re going to see more stories in this universe, the formula needs to change.

Imagine you’ve just gotten a guitar and practice day and night to master a song. Let’s say that this song is titled “shoot dudes, climb stuff, get treasure.” Sooner or later, you’re going to master the song and want to try playing something else. That doesn’t mean you never want to use the chords in that song again, you simply want to use them in a different formula. The folks at Naughty Dog are exceedingly talented; Amy Hennig is probably one of the best writers in the games industry. I’ll definitely be interested to see what the future holds for this franchise. I just hope it does something more unique next time.

I don’t mean to say that Uncharted 3′s formula is bad. It’s actually quite amazing. It’s actually even better than Uncharted 2. The setpiece moments this time around are absolutely off-the-walls crazy and, naturally, you’ll have full control the entire time. Naughty Dog has shown that they are masters of the divide between cutscene and gameplay. All the cutscenes contain dialog for moving the story forward while the crazy feats and near misses are all controlled by you, the player.

The burning chateau sequence is all gameplay, though you wouldn't believe it from the camera angles.

Half the time, what you’re controlling looks like a cutscene. You can fail, just like in gameplay, but what you’re looking at has the cinematic qualities you’d expect from someone who understands framing and angles and all the important aspects to a camera shot. I tested the waters by playing a bit of Uncharted 3 with some people who don’t play games, and every time they realized I was actually playing, they were legitimately surprised.

The result of sequences like that is immersion. You’re rapidly switching between the punch and counter buttons in a bar fight because you feel like you’re actually there and you need to smash that bottle over that Brit’s head before he does the same to you. It’s like when you’re caught up in a movie and your muscles tighten up during a particularly intense moment. It’s engaging, entertaining, and stressful, all at the same time.

The whole game isn’t intense setpieces, though. There are lulls in the action that give you a chance to catch your breath. You may remember the Sherpa village in Uncharted 2; it was almost surprising how quiet and calm it was and it helped keep the pacing from becoming too ridiculous. Uncharted 3 features moments like this, including one breathtaking one in a desert that features some of the most impressive visuals (and sand physics) I’ve ever seen in a game.

Speaking of physics, you may have already heard about the parts of Uncharted 3 spent aboard various ships. Naughty Dog actually modeled the behavior of waves for these segments, rather than just putting in a set, canned animation for the rocking of the boat. This causes the boats to behave very realistically on the water and no two rocks from side to side feel exactly the same. It’s just another one of those little touches that makes the game that much more immersive.

The desert is possibly one of the best-looking settings in a video game.

Of course, Uncharted 3 isn’t without oddities. Sometimes in the in-game character models seem a little rough around the edges and the over-exposure of sunlight on an area feels excessive. Other times, Nate’s animations are a bit odd. He will often shift his weight when changing direction or reach out to touch objects as he passes them, but sometimes the animations will trigger at strange times that make the flow of his movement a little weird.

None of these things really detracts from the amazing single-player story, though. As for the multiplayer, a lot of the smaller animations and details have been cut for efficiency, so this is not a problem. It was nice of Naughty Dog to make tweaks like that in multiplayer for the sake of competition; the multiplayer feels like it could hold its own against most other multiplayer-focused games out there.

Multiplayer has the levels of customization that we all come to expect these days: character, emblem weapon, etc. The maps feel much more focused than they did in Uncharted 2 (and some of the better UC2 maps are even included). Every ladder, hallway, and ledge has a purpose and will keep you on your toes when going up against other players. It’s also quite easy to party up with friends or even take split screen online, which is something a lot of multiplayer PS3 games simply fail to accomplish.

Combat feels largely the same, but enemies are smarter this time around.

Coop is back from UC2 as well. The scenarios feel much more focused this time around, too. Small cutscenes have been injected in to give you a little more context behind what you’re doing and it goes a long way to get you involved in the mode. The various coop chapters can be pretty challenging, too, provided you play on the right difficulty.

Contributing to this is the enemy AI in UC3. The bad guys will try a lot harder to flank you and flush you out of whatever cover you’re hiding behind. Because of this, it’s a good thing that the new melee system works so well. It’s made up of punches, counters, and grabs and works on basically the same timing model as UC2. It also features some really awesome contextual stuff, like grabbing objects out of the environment to use as weapons.

Little details like that pretty much define Uncharted 3. In fact, most of the beauty of the game is in the details: the way sand moves when you put your foot down, the way boats move in the water, how Nate hops a little in the opposite direction to counter his momentum, the facial animation during the cutscenes; it’s all just a bunch of tiny moving parts to make up an incredibly impressive whole. I do hope that the Uncharted formula changes, but Uncharted 3 is something special regardless. If Drake’s Fortune was the proof of concept and Among Thieves was the polishing of the concept, then Drake’s Deception is the mastery of the concept. This is a game that will stick in your head long after you finish it. You’ll probably push it on all your friends just so that you can discuss it with them.

Also, I would totally throw money at iTunes to download a song called “shoot dudes, climb stuff, get treasure.”