Goodbye 2011, Bring On 2012.
After a busy year, a crazy final quarter and the need for sleep I thought it was time to get the fingers geared up again. So without further ado…
Happy New Year!
2011 was probably the best year for gaming so far in the history of the world, spoilt for choice and now vastly out of pocket it seems that everybody spent up and still has a title or two to pick up ‘when it is cheaper’ to get them through next Winter. It’s a tough time when everybody wants your money, especially when sitting looking at a pile of games that deserve to be played, but you can’t help but leave Battlefield 3 in the drive…
My personal highlights for 2011 are some of the most recent titles, Gears of War3, Battlefield, Lord of the Rings, Fifa (again), the Halo redux and Skyrim. Games that disappointed were Dungeon Seige and Duke Nukem, while Modern Warfare 3 was a bit too much of an update with a cluttered multiplayer.
Rage certainly offered the right stuff, but suffered with release timing and the Kinect games that I managed to get hands off with are certainly showing signs of improvement, Disney and Fruit Ninja being my picks for the year.
Missed opportunities? Oh that had to be my ignored campaign for a Real Steel Kinect game, that and Need for Speed: The Run which could have been so much more. Of course there are also the ongoing sad moments around the lack of local XBLA releases for games like Boulderdash too.
The year ahead…
2012, is shaping up well, I am still crossing my fingers for The Last Guardian regardless of the rumour vultures that are circling. Bioshock Infinite will of course be the midyear highlight. There are a few other big names on the horizon and it will be interesting to see how they fit in to the calendar, before we know it E3 2012 will be along and that could spell for an interesting time. There will be Fifa Street, probably more Olympic themed games and Syndicate (although not in Australia, bah). Not forgetting Kinect Star Wars, The Darkness 2, Kingdoms of Amalur, Dragon’s Dogma and the conclusion of the Mass Effect trilogy, personally I can’t wait to see my Commander Shepherd back in action.
Grand Theft Auto 5 will of course be hitting the headlines and it will be interesting to see if this year’s Call of Duty will fix the horrendous narrative of Black Ops. Of course before any of that I have to shore up my missing games from 2011 and work on picking up Uncharted3, Assassins Creed Revelations and the Ico HD remake. A slow start won’t be an issue, because I’ve got plenty of last year’s games to keep me warm.
