Lots of good games in 2011, and this portion of the list has some of the best. Picking up where I left off on Monday, Bastion is a game I took no notice of during its previews during Pax East 2011 when I was there, despite my friends’ enthusiasm over the game. After all, it was an XBLA game, and I had no XBox. By the time the Steam version was announced, the game had already gotten a lot of praise and I picked it up. How awesome was it to have such an excellent story in what appeared like such a retro-style game! The music was stellar, and the gameplay had a lot of nuance. B+.

Batman: Arkham City is very possibly my own personal game of the year. Skyrim is very good, Portal 2 was awesome, and I’m really looking forward to Skyward Sword, but Arkham City had excellent gameplay along with a good story that had an ever better ending. A.

I’d been looking forward to Beyond Good and Evil HD since having first heard of the game. If you haven’t yet realized it, Beyond Good and Evil is just about my most favoritest game evar. It should go without saying that I was a fan of the HD remake. Sadly though, the controls on this version were seriously subpar. B+.

Beyond Good and Evil is possibly my favorite video game of all time. I recently picked up the HD remake on the Playstation Network and happily ran through my sixth playthrough of the game in short order. The HD visuals were nice, but certainly not stunning. There were, however, a few other things I noticed.

Firstly, the camera controls are absolutely horrendous. At times, this makes the game nearly unplayable. In my playthroughs of the PC version of Beyond Good and Evil, I’ve sometimes used a usb game controller, and never have I had this much difficulty looking around in the game. Whomever messed up the camera controls for Beyond Good and Evil HD should be turned over to the DomZ to have their life energy drained.

Secondly, I really wish the trophies had been more stringent. You can get 100% completion in the game without getting all the pearls, without getting all the MDisks, and without getting all the PA-1 units for full hearts. It’s nice that they added a trophy for handing a PA-1 over to Pey’j or Double H, but they could have gotten far more creative with the trophies in the game. How about trophies for getting through the Slaughterhouse or Nutrapils factory without ever being spotted? How about a trophy for defeating a DomZ serpent within 60 seconds? How about for playing the hidden pearl game or redeeming a save game code at darkroom.ubi.com? They could have done so much more, and they didn’t.

Lastly, I can’t count the number of times I tried to navigate menus using the D-pad and found that I couldn’t. Menus are navigated only via the left analog stick, which is annoying.

If you haven’t yet played Beyond Good and Evil, I don’t mean to dissuade you – it’s a great game, and the HD version finally brings it to modern consoles. I just wish that the port had been handled a bit better.

Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection

This spring, Playstation is going to be re-releasing a high-definition version of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as a packed-together collection. I’m not too interested in the fact that it’s going to be 3D-enabled, but I’ll buy it just to replay Shadow of the Colossus in HD, and to try out Ico, which I’ve never had the pleasure of playing.

Dead Space 2

January 25th is only about a month away, and knowing me I won’t buy Dead Space 2 on release day. But I’m definitely going to play. I loved the first game.

Batman: Arkham City

I was late to the party on Arkham Asylum, but I played the game in 2010 and loved it. Sequel? Yes, please. Maybe I’ll get a copy of Arkham City before it’s a year old.

Dragon Age 2

For me, 2009 and 2010 were largely about Dragon Age. I absolutely love the setting and the strategic combat, but I’ve been seriously overexposed. And while Dragon Age was fantastic, I did not love Awakening. As a result, I may not pick up Dragon Age 2 on March 8th with everyone else.

Beyond Good and Evil HD

The thought of playing my favorite game of all time in HD with remastered character models and getting trophies gives me great joy. I’m gonna photograph every animal, win every race, and collect every pearl. Again. It’s coming out sometime in 2011, although nobody seems to know when.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

I’ve been looking for a good co-op RPG to play with my wife ever since we finished Trine and discovered that Sacred 2 is kind of lame. There is very little information out there about the game, and I may wait to see some reviews before dropping the money for two copies. What I do know is that you play as a male warrior who uses two-handed melee weapons and a female archer. Co-op is the main focus of the game, and the gameplay videos look very good. Time will tell. May 10th.

Portal 2

There’s been a lot of hype and a lot of excitement around the impending release of Portal 2. Now scheduled for April 20, 2011, this sequel sees the addition of elements from one of Lungfishopolis’s Free Game Friday titles: TAG: The Power of Paint. Turns out that Valve bought out the TAG crew in the same way that they bought the Narbacular Drop crew for the first Portal game. Portal 2 looks amazing, and I’ll likely download it from Steam on April 20th.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I don’t yet have a motionPlus controller, and this game may force me to buy one. I missed the boat on A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I’d played since borrowing a friend’s NES back in the day. And I love Twilight Princess. I’ve got very high hopes for Skyward Sword, and I likely will be buying this one on release day. That’s supposed to be sometime in early 2011, but there’s been no announcement.

The Last Guardian

I’ve been looking forward to The Last Guardian for a long time. You play a defenseless boy, and must of the gameplay appears to be stealth-based. Your only means of attack is via your huge flying puppy dog companion Trico: the titular last guardian. Given team Ico’s track record, this one should be good.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Before Skyrim was announced recently, I would quickly have answered that The Last Guardian was my most-looked-forward-to game. I loved Oblivion. I really really loved Oblivion. A sequel? Yes, please. And I’ll just say goodbye to another 200 hours of my life.

Simply awesome. You can check out more images here.

Despite the fact that it was originally designed as a Gamecube game, I loved Twilight Princess. The beautifully-crafted themed dungeons, the frequent story moment cutscenes, the varied gameplay, the mini-games, the music, I loved it all. And yet I never played Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker. Call me a late-to-the party Zelda fanboy.

I kept my copy of Twilight Princess. Maybe I’m hoping to get my wife to play it. Maybe I’d consider replaying it myself at some point if I ever got a huge amount of free time. It’s a long game.

4- Dragon Age: Origins (Bioware, PC, 2009)

Although I’ve never played the console version of this game, I heard that it was far inferior to the version I played on the PC. Maybe that’s why the game didn’t make a bigger splash: it was essentially a PC experience, and when ported to the console it lacked something. But there was so much that I loved about Dragon Age. First and foremost, it’s the closest thing to Baldur’s Gate that I’ve seen since… well, since 1998 when the last Baldur’s Gate game was released. Secondly, Bioware’s move away from a linear good/evil scale. Rather than your character’s alignment being affected by decisions that you make throughout the adventure, your companions’ opinions are affected. The same action can please two of your companions and piss off a third companion. I think it’s brilliant, as it steps away from the black-and-white systems of the past and simultaneously builds NPC character depth. Third, the game’s setting is the best fantasy world I’ve seen since Brittania, back in the days of Ultima V in the eighties. I love the fact that dwarves are unable to use magic and therefore are unable to dream. I love the Grey Wardens and the dark drama of The Joining. I love the story behind the creation of the darkspawn: The Fade and The Black City. And I love the background of the dragons, how archdemons come to be, and how they can be defeated. It’s a pity that I haven’t yet had time to finish DAO: Awakening.

3- Baldur’s Gate (Bioware, PC, 1998)

I’m grouping both games here. After all this time, Baldur’s Gate may still be my favorite computer role-playing game. There’s something about the old Infinity Engine and about the makeup of these old games that no other CRPG since has been able to capture. Baldur’s Gate had more character customization options, more spells and magic items, more obscure side-quests, and more areas to explore than any other game since. It’s amazing that twelve years later, Baldur’s Gate is still setting the bar for computer role playing games.

2- Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, PC, 2004)

Valve’s development of the Source engine was an amazing achievement. But aside from that, the story and gameplay in Half-Life 2 were breakthrough accomplishments on a number of levels. Innovative enemies, physics-based puzzles, and the best facial animation ever included in a video game. All of this, and a excellently-written science fiction story about an alien occupation of planet Earth and the unlikely underground rebellion led by a voiceless protagonist who may be backed by a mysterious otherworldly businessman. I’m currently replaying Half-life 2 for the fourth time.

1- Beyond Good and Evil (Ubisoft, PC, 2003)

You knew this was coming. Beyond Good and Evil remains my favorite game of all time. I’ve ranted about it so often and for so long that I won’t repeat myself here – you can go read any of a number of other rants I’ve written about how good the game is. I’ve replayed it five times now, from start to finish, and unlocked every hidden item in the game. I’m ready now for Beyond Good and Evil 2. Bring it on.

If you want to hear it, download episode 14 and skip ahead to 58:00. I’ll paraphrase here.

There’s a painting down here in Atlanta. It is stunning. I stood there at looked at it for ten minutes straight. I just could not believe that anyone could make something that looked this amazing. To me, if a game can do that – that kind of emotional moment – I feel that that would be considered art.

What he said here struck a chord for me. There have been very few games that have had this exact effect on me. I could tell you that a number of difficult moral decisions in Dragon Age and the tense scenarios in Heavy Rain have brought about  emotional moments for me, but to hit the truly good ones, I’ve got to go back a bit further.

My continual references to Resident Evil 2 must have gotten trite to those theoretical few who read this blog regularly, but the terror I felt in this moment, being chased by the T-103 zombie was potentially the most exciting game moment of my life. Similarly, the rooftop chase in Beyond Good and Evil made me sit back after completing it, take a deep breath, and just say “wow.”

 But if I’m looking for a truly emotional moment in a game, the one I’d have to use is the very ending of Half-Life 2, episode 2. It’s made entirely possible by the “acting” of one Alyx Vance, which is of course a combination of excellent voice acting and excellent character face modeling. I swear – that scene just about made me cry. And a video game has never before done that.

So what about the game settings I do like?

Ultima
I first entered Sosaria when I got a copy of Ultima III for my tenth birthday. Sosaria was a crude world, like the worlds of Ultima I and Ultima II before it. Later, I played Ultima IV, which introduced the world of Brittania. Somewhere between ultima IV and Ultima V, I fell in love with Brittania. Between those two games, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I’d spent a thousand hours in Brittania. Don’t be shocked – I’ve heard of at least one person who took 15 years to finish the game. On summer vacations, I’d spend all day playing, and stay up until well after midnight.

The game’s crude graphics didn’t exactly lend a vivid sense of realism, but they forced me to use my imagination in the same way that reading a book does. As I travelled south down the coast from Britain to Paws, I imagined the seashore, and envisioned what that must look like. When I exited the eighth level of a dungeon into the Underworld, I thought of just how dark the sunless world must be, and imagined the dank smell of stagnant air. Travelling through the poisonous swamps near the village of Cove brought to mind visions of The Swamp of Sadness from the Neverending Story, except with more disease and rotted overgrowth. The game’s poor graphics forced me to use my imagination. To me, that was a vivid world, and I grew to know it well.

Starcraft
Starcraft doesn’t have much in the way of landscape – just different maps that you fight on. But somehow, the setting calls to me. It’s a space opera, and the races are far more interesting than Klingons, Wookiees and Sebacians. When Starcraft: Ghost was annnounced, I was very excited to enter that world and see Mutalisks and Ultralisks up close. Walking amongst Protoss pylons in top-down Starcraft is one thing, but to envision a Terran Command Center lifting off or a zergling ambush from first-person perspective is fairly exciting. I would absolutely love to see a game in the Starcraft setting that is not a RTS.

Beyond Good and Evil
It’s not the geography of Hillys that calls to me, but rather its inhabitants. In real life, we think of ethnic diversity in terms of Caucasians, Asians, Africans, and Hispanics. On planet Hillys, the inhabitants aren’t only the human descendants of Apes. They’ve also descended from pigs, rhinos, cats, sharks, and hippos. The notion seems so wildly creative.

Half-Life 2
The opening of Half-Life 2 expresses so effectively the oppressive atmosphere that exists in City 17. The people of planet Earth have been conquered by an alien invasion, and the cities are nothing more than internment camps – even the names of the cities have been taken away. This is an excellent example of the “showing rather than telling” technique of authorship. They show you the horribly oppressed people and then put a crowbar in your hands and let you fight for them.

The story is as epic as the Star Wars trilogy and the setting as rich as any I’ve seen. This page does a fantastic job of laying out the timeline, filling in the backstory, and putting forth theories as to the motives of the mysterious G-Man. I’m eagerly waiting for Half-Life 2 episode 3, mainly to see where the story goes.

Oblivion
I never played Morrowind or any of the other Elder Scrolls games before Oblivion. But when I heard all the buzz about Oblivion on a discussion board I frequent, I had to try it. Oblivion is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played – from the sunny mountain peaks to the swampy villages to the eerie Ayleid ruins.

Tamriel is one of those game worlds where I can easily envision the routes from place to place. The game locations seemed like real places to me. The game’s landmarks and road signs are distinct, and the terrain is varied such that I can find the way from Bruma to Chorrol without even having to consult the map.

Dragon Age
Perhaps more than any of the other game worlds listed above, the world of Dragon Age has been fleshed out wonderfully. The circle of mages that are watched over by templars to ensure that their magic doesn’t enable them to be posessed by demonic forces. The dwarven caste system, so rigid, so unfair. The seven old gods being gradually corrupted by the darkspawn, leading to blights. The enslavement of elvenkind by humanity, which has been abolished, and which has lead to the current split in the elven race. It’s all so intriguing – I’m totally absorbed in this world and its story.

I’d be interested to hear comments from other readers – what is your favorite video game setting?

The two examples I like to look at for gameplay variety are The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Beyond Good and Evil. Twilight Princess has swordfighting, goat-herding, fishing, chicken gliding, sumo wrestling and wolf-howling. Beyond Good and Evil has fighting, vehicle driving, platforming, first-person shooting, puzzle solving, item collecting, air hockey, and my favorite: stealth. All are drastically different types of gameplay, and serve to keep the game fresh as you play.

Variety like this in what I can only term an “action-adventure” game is rare, but it’s hard not to love a well-made game with gameplay diversity as deep as that in the above two titles.

Indigo Prophecy had a good deal of gameplay variety, which is a large part of the reason I liked it, and games like Super Mario Galaxy and Space Rangers 2 certainly try hard. But I can’t think of any games that have come out in the past 2-3 years with gameplay variety close to that of Twilight Princess and Beyond Good and Evil. Can you?

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

When I first started writing the Keepers column, I looked through all the games on my game shelf and made a list of which ones I thought deserved to be written about. I am now at the end of that list.

And so the final game on my list has finally come up: Beyond Good and Evil. Call it a magical Turkey Day special surprise. Or something. It’s difficult to talk much about it without repeating things I’ve already written many times before. Suffice it to say that I have an uncommon fondness for the game. I love it. And I’ve already played the game start to finish five times, the last time being when the vintage game club played Beyond Good and Evil. I’ll say it one last time – if you haven’t yet played the game, buy it here. Ten dollars.

In examining my favorite games, I found that much of what made me enjoy various games was gameplay related: very atmospheric or innovative games, games with a lot of variety, or just games that are excellent examples of their genre.

The one element I was able to identify that seemed more thematic was conspiracy. Perhaps that’s not the right word. Let me explain. The two games I pinpointed here are Beyond Good and Evil and Half-Life 2. In Beyond Good and Evil, you’re a photographer working to destabilize the obviously evil government by obtaining photographic evidence of their wrongdoings. In Half-Life 2, you play Gordon Freeman, a human freedom fighter battling an occupying extraterrestrial army. Without gushing, I absolutely love both games.

While the government conspiracy in Beyond Good and Evil is clear, classifying The Combine in Half-Life 2 as a government may be a stretch, as may be label of conspiracy. Nonetheless, there are definite thematic similarities.

I suppose there’s something about taking on an enemy that’s so obviously more powerful that calls to me. Head-to head, the DomZ and the Alpha Sections would destroy Jade. That’s why it’s largely a stealth game. Head to head, Combine armies would overpower even the mighty Gordon Freeman. That’s why he so often has NPC companions and never fights more than one helicopter, airship, or strider at a time.

Perhaps it’s all about freeing oppressed people. In a totalitarian envoronment, a member of the populace arises to become the classic unlikely hero. Maybe that’s the lure for me.

Resisting a powerful government or occupational force is a theme we’ve seen in movies like Red Dawn and V for Vendetta, but not nearly as often in video games. I suppose the same could be said of Red Faction: Guerilla, but I haven’t yet played that game. Perhaps I should.