Played it: Dead Rising 2: Off the Record

When you’re being bombarded with marketing for humourless, over serious, AAA-budget western games, it always feels like a breath of fresh air to play something that’s not ashamed that it’s a video game: something that presents a world with consistent rules and does its best to make you laugh.

Like previous instalments, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record locks you in a semi-open environment with thousands upon thousands of slow moving zombies, and lets you lose to find makeshift weapons, play mini-games, rescue survivors and defeat “psychopath” bosses.

I found the level of challenge, at least in this version, to be tough but fair. It may punish you, but only to try and make you a better player. It may require a bit of dedication, but I didn’t feel that it showed the same contempt for my time that some games do. It allows you to run wild and have fun, but rewards meticulous planning and timekeeping.

It also brings us more Frank West. Okay, he’s yet another white male lead, but in a sea of angry bad-asses out for revenge, it’s easy to like this good-humoured fuck-up with a paunch - a man with groan-worthy one-liners who frequently ends up the butt of the joke himself.

Played it: Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner (HD Edition)

The thing I liked best about the first Zone of the Enders was the cool overworld map, representing a space colony orbiting Jupiter - from which you could descend to more specific arenas full of enemies to be confronted or avoided. The 2nd Runner opts, instead, for a linear progression of levels, some of which allow exploration, but many of which are frantic set pieces.

In every other respect, however, this is a vast improvement on the original: the gameplay requires strategy; the different weapons are all useful in their own ways; the characters are more interesting (even the slightly annoying main character of the first game reappears as a more mature ally); the settings are more varied – and so are the challenges.

In the first game I often wasn’t sure exactly why I failed or succeeded. In The 2nd Runner, it was almost always clear that I failed because I sucked at whatever I was supposed to be doing – whether that was being ganged up on by mooks, learning the rapidly changing attacks of a boss, negotiating a minefield, shooting down giant spaceships or escorting a character who makes Ashley Graham seem like Liberty Prime – and I succeeded by practicing, paying attention and experimenting with different strategies.

In summary, this was probably the most fun I had swearing at my TV so far this year.

Played it: Project Sylpheed

 

After the first mission of this space combat game, we’re treated to the funeral of a character who died during the opening cinematic. Aware that players were given no reason to care about this poor soul, the script makes sure to tell us that “he was a kind man, loved by everyone”. This represents the story elements of Project Sylpheed in a nutshell: events that are on paper dramatic and in execution ham-fisted and artless.

Fortunately, the cut scenes are brief and usually more interested in giving us close-ups of the spaceships that’ll be exploding than providing insights into the inner lives of the characters. The story serves its purpose in terms of justifying why our nimble starfighter should be blowing up red ships and not blue ones, and that is what we will spend by far most of our time doing.

Speaking of time, let’s get this out of the way: each part of every stage has an arbitrary time limit, rarely justified and frequently contradicted. Failing the mission because you didn't shoot down that last lousy fighter in time is pretty frustrating - especially when all that would have happened had you succeeded is the timer would have reset and a bunch more enemies would have spawned. Together with the emphasis on escort missions, it’s often hard to believe your failure is your own fault.

But the battles you get to participate in - dominate, really, with your prototype fighter locking onto dozens of enemies at a time and taking out capital ships with a single torpedo - are massive, colourful and exciting. Swarms of fighters leave spiralling vapour trails between massive spaceships that blast out colourful laser beams and arcing missiles. And you rocket through the whole mess blowing things up left, right and centre. Project Sylpheed looks like the battles I imagined I was taking part in when I played Wing Commander, way back in the day.

The sheer cool factor inspired me to rise to the challenge of these tightly timed escort missions, learning to prioritise targets and dispatch them quickly. And, well, I had fun. I got a real sense of achievement from completing these uncompromising missions, earning points to spend on customising my fighter with huge and even more explodey weapons. And when I did finally reach that last ham-fisted cut scene, I couldn't help but view it with some strange fondness.

Project Sylpheed may be a quirky game with a number of significant flaws, but as the space sim genre is on the cusp of a Kickstarter-funded renaissance, it’s also a solid example of what a modern spaceship game can look like.

Disclaimer: I played the game on normal difficulty, with no DLC weapons and without skipping any missions.

Played it: Zone of the Enders: HD Edition

A game about giant robots flying around an orbital space colony and beating one another up, Zone of the Enders offers shallow but entertaining gameplay and a smattering of those offbeat elements you’d expect from Hideo Kojima (unfairly best known for lengthy cut scenes, which are few on the ground here).

I loved the environments in this thing, soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed both the simplistic bludgeoning of mechanical mooks and the somewhat more demanding boss fights. My only real complaints are that, of the large number of weapons you acquire, only a handful are actually any use, and the whole thing ends pretty abruptly.

Played it: Hotline Miami

The interesting thing about Hotline Miami is it succeeds where many indie games fail: basically doing the same things as triple-A titles, only better and with complete self awareness.

It's also the best kind of challenging. Dying and retrying actually feels like part of the fun: providing an opportunity to refine your ability to dole out ultraviolence and the freedom to experiment with unlikely strategies.

Coupling fast-paced action with a bizarre plot that's explicitly made open to multiple interpretations, Hotline Miami manages to be a game that rewards both deep thought and off-the-cuff thrill-seeking.

I Made a Thing

This thing is about some guy who you want to die, but won't.

Here it is.

2012: Cool Stuff from the Year the World Ended

Belatedly, it's that completely personal and arbitrary annual list of stuff I found last year and really liked. This time for A.D. 2012: the year the media told us people believed the world would end, but almost nobody actually did, and it didn't.

---Movies

The Raid
A combination of incredible, relentless fight choreography and note-perfect direction make this the best action film in years - if not decades.

The Avengers (a.k.a. Marvel Avengers Assemble)
Not just the pay-off for all the fun Marvel superhero films that led up to it, but a special effects blockbuster where the dialogue is just as fun, if not more so, than the explosions.

The Artist
This beautifully filmed drama is a delightful homage to silent cinema.

---Books

The Scar - China Mieville
A typically uncompromising and imaginative fantasy from Mieville, this time taking a decidedly nautical bent and thoroughly conjuring the true immensity and depths of the sea - plus the strange terror of its uncommon denizens.

Knight of Germany - Professor Johannes Werner
The authorised biography of Oswald Boelcke, the father of air fighting tactics. Much of the book consists of Boelcke's letters home, offering a great insight into one of the world's most interesting historical figures. Werner's commentary, meanwhile, almost seems to embody the insecurity of thirties Germany all too neatly.

Rise of the Videogame Zinesters - Anna Anthropy
Like A Room of One's Own, but with more Mario.

---Comics and Manga

20th Century Boys - Naoki Urasawa
The third year running that this genre-defying epic has appeared on my end-of-year list. If I haven't conveyed my love for it by now, I guess I never will.

Batgirl - Bryan Q. Miller et al.
The first truly satisfying big-name superhero comic I've ever read, that provides a satisfying conclusion for a comic-book character with one of the most devoted fan-bases around.

Saga - Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
Inspired in no small part by Star Wars, this science fantasy comic mixes space ships and magic, robots and ghosts - while also not shying away from fully fleshing out the ugly side of its unreal galaxy.

---TV Shows

Fringe
Some shows grow on you. Some shows you know you'll love from the first episode. For me, Fringe was the latter.

You could pitch this show as "The X-Files with real story arcs and a consistent mythology", but it's so much more than that. Starting out as a show about a mad scientist helping the FBI deal with mad science crimes, it sprawls into an epic saga with a broad cast of likeable characters, an endless parade of imaginative gimmicks and a ready supply of heart-wrenching drama.

Chuck
Superficially a nerd wish-fulfilment fantasy, this tale of a white-collar loser turned super-spy won me over with its self-awareness, lovably weird characters, cheerful tone and consistent knack for making me laugh.

The Yogscast
Video game content that values the experience of playing games rather than regurgitating advertising copy. Exactly the kind of stuff television channels seem to have no interest in showing me.

---Games

Dishonoured
World-building is the part of fiction at which games excel, and the world of Dishonoured is intriguing, imaginative, atmospheric and exactly my cup of tea. Also one of the year's many examples of something achieving success outside the narrow military shooter genre that seemed to be dominating the medium.

Xenoblade Chronicles
The Japanese role-playing game we've all been waiting for, set in a mindbogglingly massive and beautifully realised fantasy world.

Metal Gear Solid 3: HD Edition
The perfect storm of complex stealth gameplay, over-the-top characters and barmy storytelling.