Lists, right. Stacking things up and ordering them, slotting them into hierarchies of... what, exactly? It's certainly not a list of objectively great games. There are, objectively, better games in 2011 than Catherine. Skyrim obviously. But I still like Catherine better than Skyrim, if for no other reason than that it is out-of-its-mind bonkers and, at least in the North American market, absolutely unique. And Shadows of the Damned. Oh, gosh... Shadows of the Damned. I love that game the same way I love Bayonetta--guiltily. So I could have easily placed it on this list. But it's not a great game--not like Gears of War 3, with its polish and razor-fine production, each system operating in perfect harmony with the others, is a great game. But Gears of War 3 isn't on this list because I don't like it as much as I like these games. There are probably several rubrics out there for measuring a game's achievement, importance, or greatness, rubrics against which games can be evaluated and then fitted into a scheme, but the only one I've learned to care about (and the same goes for movies and television and books) is whether I like it. It's a narcissistic hermeneutic, I admit. But I don't care what the Metacritic score for Modern Warfare 3 is. I'd rather frantically push blocks around to form a path so I can escape from the gigantic demon-version of the girlfriend I cheated on (long story), or die over and over again banging my head against a boss until I figure out how to take him down, or neurotically scour every corner of a crime scene for that last little clue that will let me nail the son of a bitch to a wall. So, lists. Here's mine. Click images for trailers.
1 comment:
That said, Dark Souls really is the best game of the year.
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