Top Five Games of Twenty Twelve

Argh! is what I think when I look back on new game releases in 2012. What have I played? Why haven't I played all these other games? I could make a far more encompassing list of all the new games I was meant to play, should have played, and was this close to playing, than that of the meagre number I did actually play enough to say, however arbitrarily, 'I have played this and I liked it very much.' New games be damned, is what I think, before hunching over and feeling like I've missed out on everything. Well, anyway, out of that meagre crew of games I really, really, actually played this year I've pulled together a list of 5 which were my favourite - in a very specific order of magnificence! [And all imfho of course] Here they are:

SLAVE OF GOD

Slave of God is a free game whose unique visual presence seems to have inspired a few big games websites to comment on it. Most notably RPS had an excellent guest article written by Cara Ellison, who described the game in experiential terms as a kind of expressionist depiction of a night club. This is pretty spot on and therefore I would urge anyone interested in the game to first of all play it and then read Ellison's article. And then, if the day seems to be leaving you with nothing else, there's always me and this. Hi!

Thirty Flights of Loving

When playing Brendon Chung's short game Thirty Flights of Loving I can't help but be reminded of the sporadic energy which seemed to enthuse the early films of Jean-Luc Godard. A florescent mixture of ideas, influences and oblique storytelling propels this short into a dream-like state which crosses in an out of playful parody, postmodernist tangles and artful themes of memory, love and loss. In equal measures it plays out as a heist, a love story and a dream. Yet at its heart Thirty Flights of Loving remains a fun and inventive piece of interactive fiction.

GOTW: Alan Wake

Throughout the strange, unbalanced thread of Alan Wake's narrative, the writer, who gives the game its name, is mockingly referred to as, among others, Stephan King, Raymond Chandler and, most strangely, James Joyce. Personally I felt more like Garth Marenghi, but it's Stephan King, and his supernatural thrillers, whose presence is most heavily felt throughout. Alan Wake exists in that same liminal place inhabited by many of King's novels - where trashy fiction can be both utter nonsense and kind of important; kind of profound - well, at the very least genuinely enjoyable. Alan Wake gets away with a great deal because it seems to know this; it's trashy nature slips into the game as a whole, leaving memories behind which skitter between pure joy, genuine scares, ham-fisted acting, awful smiles and a few large holes in which moments of the game just disappeared into shear ordinariness. But, as with Deadly Premonition -  the cracked-out Japanese brother to the more straight-faced Wake - the game's faults and instability help it to become endearing. It's a bit messy, but when it hits the mark it does so incredibly well and the messiness only helps to underline the moments of quality.  

Game of the Week: Time Gentlemen, Please!

The history of comical pastiche is one of varying success. Family Guy's parody of Star Wars succeed only in being the most turgidly boring thing ever created by human minds while films such as The Princess Bride and Chinatown showed that, done properly and with some intelligence, pastiche  can be as good as those which they lampoon and pay tribute. Spaceballs fits somewhere in the middle I guess.

                            

This week's game, Time Gentlemen, Please!, developed by Size Five (formally Zombie Cow) Games, who were responsible for Time Gentlemen's freeware predecessor Ben There, Dan That, possibly sits a bit higher than Spaceballs on the scale of Family Guy (-20) to Chinatown (+ 2,000). Despite what I just wrote please don't be put off by my comparison to Spaceballs (the scale means nothing!), Time Gentlemen is a genuinely funny game which pays great homage to the classics of the point-and-click genre while also being a clever and deserving example of it.

Game of the Week: Bioshock 2

Finding myself working far more than I'd ever reasonably want to I thought that a good way to make sure that I continued to write regularly was to make an easy and accessible way to discuss videogames (for myself that is). So I hope to suggest a 'game of the week'. This might be a game I'm currently playing or a game which I think is worth talking about - whether its surprisingly good or remarkably bad. Ultimately it allows me to indulge in a bit of creative bankruptcy and also lets me chat about games I like - win, win. 

Kicking off this week I want to look at a relatively recent, big budget game which kind of deserves a bit more credit than it received. It's Bioshock 2 of course! woop! Now the first game, Bioshock 1, is certainly more worthy of 'classic' status, despite the fact that its plays like a crayon drawing of System Shock 2, but I personally think that it's the sequel which has the better gameplay. It might lack the impact of setting which the first game had, and misses out on having truly insane characters such as Sander Cohen or Steinmen, but I think Bioshock 2 provided a much more convincing and exciting experience overall.