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Saturday 31 December 2011

Annual Summary (2011)

Yes! It's that time again! The new year is just a few hours away and just like last year I have decided to summarise my year in this blog post.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS OF THIS YEAR:

This year I bought a PlayStation 3 and have collected a total of 31 games for the system. Here's a list of them and which ones I have finished:

  • [FINISHED] Red Dead Redemption, 
  • [FINISHED] Grand Theft Auto 4,
  • [FINISHED] Fallout 3,
  • [FINISHED] Fallout: New Vegas,
  • [FINISHED] The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
  • [FINISHED] Bioshock,
  • Bioshock 2,
  • InFAMOUS,
  • Final Fantasy XIII,
  • [FINISHED] Assassin's Creed,
  • [FINISHED] Assassin's Creed 2,
  • [FINISHED] Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood,
  • Assassin's Creed: Revelations,
  • Saints Row: The Third,
  • Red Faction: Guerrilla,
  • Dead Island
  • Dead Space,
  • Dead Space 2,
  • Battlefield: Bad Company,
  • Borderlands,
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum,
  • [FINISHED] Uncharted 2: Among Thieves,
  • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception,
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution,
  • LittleBigPlanet,
  • The Orange Box,
  • Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds,
  • [FINISHED] L.A. Noire,
  • Dragon Age: Origins,
  • [FINISHED] Heavy Rain,
  • [FINISHED] Killzone: 2
As you can see I still have a lot to finish and enjoy playing through and collecting trophies. 
Speaking of trophies! I have managed to collect a respectable 509 trophies in my first 'PlayStation 3 year' and I hope to collect many more! 

These 509 trophies are comprised of:
  • 405 Bronzes
  • 89 Silvers
  • 14 Golds
  • and 1 Platinum (Fallout 3)

My Game of the Year

I have played a lot of games this year, some a lot better than others! I've actually been thinking about this a lot over the past few days and I have reached a decision...

The choice was between...


The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I loved Oblivion and now I love this game! The game is set 200 years after the events of Oblivion and is set in the Nordic realm of Skyrim. Mountains and rugged landscapes are situated here and they are look visually impressive along with Skyrim's vast forests and open tundra. The new graphics engine is a great change from the old Fallout 3 and Oblivion engine and looks much, much better though unfortunately still not a competitor against the likes of Crysis 2 or L.A. Noire. The game is massive with an estimated 500 hours of gameplay which includes leveling your skills, completing quests and seeing everything there is to see. The AI can be good and it can be appalling. For instance mammoths that just stand looking at you whilst you shoot them with arrows from the other side of a river that they cannot cross. There also a lot of bugs and glitches which really did ruin the game for me - especially the glitches in player-purchasable houses such as invisible armour mannequins and floating weapons.

Personally it was great returning to the Elder Scrolls world and I really do love this game for the positives outweigh the negatives by a long shot! One thing I must say however is Skyrim just doesn't seem as charmful as Oblivion did, I'm not sure how to explain it but I suppose Skyrim is a different game altogether.



L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire was a game released earlier this year by none other than the great Rockstar games (creators of last year's Red Dead Redemption and the famous Grand Theft Auto franchise). L.A. Noire is a crime-detective game set in the early 1950's after World War II. You play as Cole Phelps who comes back to L.A. after the war wanting to still server his country. He chooses a career in law enforcement and you play as him as he climbs through the ranks of the LAPD. Each level is well thought out and depending on how you choose to work through each case different things will happen. There are interrogation scenes, chase scenes and gun-fighting scenes and each one shows the full potential of the graphics engine for this game. It has the best facial graphics ever scene in the history of video-games with each small, minuscule muscle or fold of skin on the face moving in the most realistic ways. The facial graphics are most notable used in the interrogation scenes where you must study a person's face to see if they are lying or not choosing clues and evidence to back you up.

The gameplay itself if fairly 'standard issue'. It's nothing new and not particularly interesting. You search around for clues and drive through the streets of L.A. sometimes coming across a street crime here and there. The gun-fighting scenes seem a bit clunky and Phelps seems a lot like a robot at times as well as the enemies.
The driving-chase scenes are top-notch however and the soundtrack is the best I've heard this year!


I would have chosen more but I do not have enough time to type this as the new year is nearly here!
 
My game of the year 2011 is...


~~~ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ~~~

GAME OF THE YEAR AWARD 2011


Happy new year everybody, thank you for all of the views, follows and support over this year - happy blogging for 2012!







1 comment:

Daisy said...

Great choice! And HAPPY NEW YEARS to you too. Hope you have a great 2012!