Games of 2011 – Elliot

SpaceChem

I know, even I find it difficult to believe that my favourite game this year is not one of the hype-fuelled behemoths that we were looking forward to as early as last year. Yet it was in January, when I first played through a puzzler I’d previously heard nothing about that I had my greatest gaming experience of the year.

In my university degree I’m lucky enough to be taking Game Studies, which is literally the academic study of video games. As I write this, we’ve just completed a module on game aesthetics, where we covered various different aspects of aesthetic theory including beauty and the sublime. The sublime was not, to my surprise, simply a word used to describe something that looks pretty. Instead, it’s a word used to describe something that makes everything else surrounding it seem small and insignificant – it’s an idea of pleasure through pain. SpaceChem, through its intense difficulty and brain melting puzzles, batters you to within an inch of your intellectual life until you’re ready to cry and then suddenly, through either luck or divine intervention, the solution reveals itself to you.

That euphoric ‘eureka’ moment is a moment that has not been matched by any other game this year. It’s helped by the fact that in SpaceChem almost every puzzle is so difficult that the moment can often arrive multiple times in one play session. Once you reach that point of enlightenment, constructing and watching your solution play through flawlessly is a joy to behold; a sublime joy that only SpaceChem can provide.

The fact that I knew nothing about SpaceChem prior to being asked to review it 11 months ago probably contributes to its value. For any game to come from obscurity and beat several games that I expected to be brilliant (and they often were) is a huge achievement. I think I now own three copies of the game, two of which I’ve paid for, yet I don’t feel bad or stupid for that. In fact, I’ll keep throwing money at Zachtronics for many years if I have to, because if they can keep producing games that match the quality of SpaceChem then it will be a very worthwhile investment indeed.

Portal 2

It was every bit as good as I expected it to be, it might even be my second favourite Valve game. The singleplayer campaign was undoubtedly the best I’ve played this year, enough new mechanics were introduced to keep things fresh without cluttering our minds and Valve’s finest humour was on display throughout, but none of this should come as a surprise. After playing through the co-op, I couldn’t help but be disappointed at the ending, which was more of a whimper when compared to the bang of the singleplayer’s climax.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

One of very few games that once I’ve finished I look forward to playing through again. In my first playthrough I was an impatient stealth hacker who only travelled to places by bunnyhopping nine feet into the air. I’m yet to start my second playthrough, but I’m eager to try the ‘kill everything that moves’ approach. Deus Ex would have been my outright game of the year were it not for the inexplicably awful boss fights, a criticism that’s been thrown at it by just about everybody else who’s played it. What a shame.

Honourable mentions:

Football Manager 2012, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Fifa 12, Scoregasm, Star Wars: The Old Republic