Erik Wolpaw has written or co-written
ten games including Psychonauts, the Left 4 Deads, Team Fortress 2, Alien
vs. Child Predator, Portal, and Portal 2. He has been recognized
by the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry as someone who made a
game about an alien who killed registered sex offenders from North
Carolina, and he is currently employed at Valve.
10. Elijah
You know how at Passover Seder you
leave an empty seat for Elijah? This is just like that, except
replace Passover with this list and the prophet Elijah with the dark
knight Batman. In other words, this position is reserved for
my huge backlog. There’s a whole bunch of stuff
that’d have a decent shot of making this list if I’d actually
managed to play it in 2011. Stuff like Arkham City, Dead Space 2,
Uncharted 3, Trenched, The Gunstringer, and Rayman: Origins. This is also where
I’m putting games I played for 30 great minutes and then my DS
broke, although only Ghost Trick falls into that category.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Number nine through number two are
basically interchangeable. I’m listing them more or less as they
occurred to me. So if you’re angry that "Gavel" is three
spots ahead of "Upholstery Hammer", just pretend you pled your
swear-filled case in the forum and I was like, yup, that makes a lot
of sense, I’m reordering the list and I should probably go *crag* myself. So that I don’t ruin the surprise, I took
that example from a list I made for a magazine about hammering
things. Also, number one is number one. So if you’re mad about
that, I can’t help you.
9. Serious Sam 3: BFE
I love Serious Sam games, and this is a
spectacular return to form for Croteam after the pretty lackluster
Serious Sam II. I never get why people call Serious Sam "mindless".
Other than once a year when I nominate myself for a million dollar
MacArthur Genius Grant, I don’t consider myself a genius. So maybe
I’m an idiot, but I’m thinking all the time when I play Serious Sam. About weapon selection, ammo supplies, enemy
wave management. And I’m doing all of that thinking under serious
time pressure as huge packs of monsters sprint towards me. You know
what? Screw it. Serious Sam 3 is the thinking man’s first-person
shooter.
8. God Hand
It’s the best game of all time and it
got re-released on the PSN store this year and so it qualifies for
this list. Don’t like that? Maybe you should take it up with the
International Criminal Court. Also, if it’s the best game ever, why
isn’t it #1 on the list? Maybe you could ask the warden of
International Criminal Jail, where you’re probably spending the
rest of your life after lodging your earlier frivolous complaint that
made the International Criminal Court so mad.
7. Sonic Generations
Other than last year’s amazing list
of the Top
10 Hottest Female Sonic Characters, it’s been a long dry
stretch for this franchise. But, man, Generations is the perfect
blend of nostalgia and sensible updates. A great, great gamey game.
6. Bastion
It’s on everybody’s list because
holy crap it’s good. Supergiant crafted a game that feels totally
complete, as if no corners were cut. It’s a really spectacular
example of designing around the constraints of a small team. Great
writing, acting, and a stirring soundtrack as well.
5. (tie): Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman/Cladun X2
Technically, ZHP came out in late 2010,
but bear with me here. For the first four months of this year, I
spent a ton of time travelling all over the place promoting Portal 2.
It was a tiring, lonely, and generally all around anxiety-producing
experience. These two PSP games saw me through a lot of long plane
flights, train rides, and hotel stays. NIS America is famous for
publishing high-personality grind fests like the amazing Disgaea
series, and these are both great examples of that tradition. For some
reason, I can only play these types of games on portable systems,
which is why the new Disgaea didn’t rank. Anyway, these two are
inextricably linked in my head to the craziness surrounding the
release of Portal 2, and so, bam, there you go. They’re on the
list.
4. Driver: San Francisco
If this was a “Heroes of Game
Writing” list, Driver: SF would be number one. It’s a game
writer’s nightmare scenario: We need you to revive a basically dead
franchise and also we need you to explain why the main character can
suddenly fly and also he can possess people and also it still needs
to be a serious police procedural and also you can’t get out of the
car. The writers not only managed to deal with these constraints,
they thrived under them. Driver’s writing is clever and funny while
still taking its absurd core premise seriously enough to carry you
through a ten hour story. Plus, the game is really fun. I expected
nothing from Driver and was blown away.
3. (tie) Dungeons of Dredmor/The Binding
of Isaac
Another tie! Only this time it’s
because these two polished, excellent, accessible, funny rogue-likes
have kind of fused in my memory. That means it’s possible one of
them is carrying the other, but I’m pretty sure they were both
great. Look, some of my fondest life memories are much, much hazier
than the vague, pleasant impression of gathering loot and dying a lot
that these games left me with.
2. Saints Row: The Third
If Valve ever cans me, I’m going to
show up at Volition begging for a job, because Saints Row seems like
it’d be a huge amount of fun to work on. Instead of coming up with
a brand new description, I’m gonna repurpose something I wrote
about GTA in 2005:
“When I was a kid, I was fascinated
by a really detailed fake ad in National Lampoon for a ghetto train
set. I was too young to realize that it was a joke, so every
Christmas I'd beg my parents to buy it for me. Eventually, my parents
went broke and we moved to a real ghetto. Time passed, and a bunch of
stuff happened, like I got a job selling hot dogs and a chronic
illness. Just when my life seemed to be winding down to its painful,
embarrassing conclusion, Rockstar actually released the detailed
ghetto train set of my childhood dreams. It was a Christmas miracle.
The end.”
Anyway, that all applies quadruple to
Saints Row: The Third. Volition made the smart choice to embrace the
violent absurdity inherent to the open world, clockwork-city crime
genre. And they didn’t just embrace it, they penetrated it with a
giant purple dildo etc etc. For me, the biggest sin a game can commit
is to be bland, and whatever else you might say about Saints Row,
it’s not bland.
1. Dark Souls
Number one. By a mile. I loved Demon’s
Souls, and I love Dark Souls even more. It has a great, original
sense of place, a spectacularly tense risk/reward structure, and the
best melee combat of all time. No other game makes me feel like I’m
actually smashing things with a 50-pound hammer. It also has a very
scary giant bird and a uniquely weird vibe. It feels like anything
could happen at any moment, and I love that feeling. One of my
favorite games, period.
Special Achievement: Conduit 2
I didn’t actually play Conduit 2, but
I did watch the incredible
ending on youtube. If they follow through with the promise
they make in that scene, Conduit 3 is my most anticipated game of the
decade.