The 2011 Video Games Retrospective
A look back at the previous year in interactive entertainment, with a twist
Weirdest game of the year
Runner up: Catherine
Atlus's Catherine, in which a man balancing two female relationships regularly falls into dreams where he completes puzzles coupled with running away from demonic sheep. The game mixes eroticism with psychological drama, a sort of indescribable experience, like trying to give a speech in the nude while members of the audience throw inflatable lady parts at your head.
See, on the surface there's a quirky little bit of augmented reality where the player can take a picture of their bedraggled visage and have it plastered onto flying balls that shoot you. Harmless right? Or is it...
I played the game on a younger member of the family's 3DS. After nearly complaining to Nintendo regarding their face capture tech (which took me from a solid 7, down to a child's drawing reconstructed by a psychopath) I watched my disembodied face take flight. All went well until the facial monstrosity burst through my living room wall and proceeded to kiss me to death.
I dropped the 3DS, went into my room, and wept while reflecting on how that was the most significant level of emotional attachment I'd experienced that year.
Furthest Anticipatory Nosedive
Runner up: Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever was released with not so much a bang but a fizzle, and what did people expect, thirteen years had passed. Anticipation was simply too large, there was no way it could have fulfilled peoples' expectations. The only way the public could have gotten a happy ending with their purchase was if each copy came with a ticket to a shady massage parlor.
Winner: Dead Island
I don't really want to say much more. You know what you did, trying to tug on gamers' heartstrings only to release the product to much disdain. They might as well have constructed a reflective CD that as you went to put it in your console you could see what you may look like if a vandal drew a poorly, an anatomically incorrect schwing-schwong on the public's temple.
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