2011 - A Brief Year In Review

Feature from Sarge - Monday, 02 January 2012 @ 11:52pm

Let's face it: We're pretty damn lucky. 2011 was quite the year for gamers. Not only the games that were out, but also for the promises of what's to come. We've seen old series make a comeback, like Deus Ex, Goldeneye and even Sonic (although does anyone really care anymore about Sonic?), as well as a year for three-quals. No, seriously, there were heaps, here's just a few that are off the top of my head:

Fear 3
Killzone 3
Battlefield 3
Modern Warfare 3
Marvel Vs Capcom 3
Gears Of War 3
Uncharted 3
Saints Row 3
Resistence 3

Some people are annoyed when this happens and will complain about the lack of originality, if you look at the flip-side, there were a lot of disappointing new IPs this year and oddly enough most of them were First Person Shooters! Brink was met with wide-spread thumbs down, Bulletstorm wasn't nearly as exciting or game-changing as its marketing campaign would had us believe and RAGE was so plagued with PC issues that it was dead in the water before it had a chance to prove itself. I know one person who was pumped for RAGE couldn't get it running on day one. I saw her the other day and asked if she'd got Rage working on her PC yet - her reaction? "Who knows, fuck that game. Seriously. I'm done." 2011 also saw the return of the king of gaming folklore. After being the butt of jokes across the gaming world for 20 years, Duke Nukem Forever finally hit retail shelves. And that's about all it hit, because it certainly didn't hit many households - disapponting sales, and less than favourable reviews saw Duke Nukem Forever become a bit of a dud. Personally, I'm hoping we don't see any sequels, despite what the ending may have hinted at.

so apparently this game sold a couple of copies?

And it wasn't just games that people were turning their nose up at - hardware got it's fair share of retail snubs. The Nintendo 3DS was released this year with not much fanfare. Personally, I only know a handful of people who own a 3DS, and while it's great to see 3D gaming that doesn't require stupid glasses, the 3DS really had little to offer. How Nintendo managed to release a piece of hardware without a Mario or Zelda game at launch is beyond me, and the sales reflected it, seeing a price-drop 6 months into its life-span. Granted, there are now both Zelda and Mario titles available for the 3DS, but it almost felt like a case of "too little too late". With the announcement of the Wii U in the last half of the year, it'll be interesting to see how sales go, with some gaming news sites pretty much calling this Nintendo's last hail mary pass.

Let's face it, this was the only decent thing on the Wii all year

The world also said goodbye to Sony's PSPGo, to clear up some production space for the upcoming PS Vita, which should be in stores in Australia in February this year. However everything else Sony-related was overshadowed with their massive dramas in the first half of the year. In April, Sony's entire PSN system went down, under dubious circumstances. After initial speculation that Anonymous were to blame for the hacking of their system, LulzSec later claimed responsibility. The network went down for over a month, and thousands of users had credit card details and other personal information stolen (which were apparently stored on plaintext files, no less!). To make things worse for gamers, PSN went down the same day that Portal 2 was released, rendering it's much lauded multiplayer mode unusable. PSN is back up now, of course, but for many, the damage has been done. I know for me personally, I haven't bought a single thing on PSN since, and it's definitely not my console of choice, especially for multiplayer games.

As much as the year was filled with games, we also got teased again as we saw some of this year's releases get pushed back to next year. EA decided to give each of their AAA titles a bit more breathing room, so decided to put some more time into refining Mass Effect 3 and let Battlefield 3 have it's time in the sun, as well as the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. Ghost Recon was pushed back yet again, and is due to go up for sale the same day as Mass Effect 3. Others to find themselves being pushed back include the reboot of XCOM, The Darkness 2, Torchlight 2, Diablo 3 (see below) and Star Wars Kinect. And as if it's some kind of rule each 6 months, more rumours of Half Life 3 came out - although at this stage, I think everyone's just trying to out-troll each other. If you're one of the ones waiting on some of these games, it doesn't mean you can't put your money where your mouth is, just ask this guy.

click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click,

But for what we did have released this year, we were spoilt like a fat kid at Easter. And you guys were happy to open up your wallets. My god, were you guys happy to open up your wallets! Modern Warfare 3, arguably one of the most anticipated games of the year, broke more sales records than it knew what to do with. To be exact, it broke all-time sales records in all forms of entertainment, grossing over $1 billion dollars in a little over 16 days, beating even the movie blockbuster Avatar. To give you another idea of how many titles that is, it debuted in the UK at #1 position, and even after an 87% drop in sales by November, it was STILL the #1 game. It was only toppled by Skyrim, which also has gone on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. Skyrim also broke a record of having the highest number of gamers concurrently online, with 250,000 Steam users all logged in and playing Skyrim at the same time.

*sniff*

However, despite all the goodies we got, not everyone got out of 2011 with such bulging pockets, as once again we saw a lot of good people lose their jobs in the gaming industry. After the success of LA Noir, the dirty secrets surfaced regarding the management style and relationship between the Sydney-based Team Bondi and Rockstar, which was quickly followed by the closing of the Team Bondi offices. The employment ban-hammer swung all around the country. THQ shrunk it's numbers, swiping out their Studio Oz office, and Melbourne's Blue Tongue offices, and EA Visceral Studios also closed it's doors.

Then there was the continuing saga of the R-Rating issue in Australia. We finally got a unanimous vote in favour for an R-18 category for video games in Australia! Hurrah! ... right? Well, yes, sort of. It's a positive step, but let's not start patting each other on the back just yet. There's still a loooooong way to go before we see the R-18 in place, so it'll be interesting to see what the future brings before it's out. How long will this take? Well, if you listen to David Emery, the Manager of Applications at the Classification Branch, it will take at leas 2 years: “There is legislation that’s been put to Parliament about the changes,” said David Emery. “What happens next is a long process again — it’s probably going to take another couple of years before you’re actually going to get an R18 that you can apply for, like a conventional classification that you have today."

"shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit"

At the end of the day when all is said and done, it was a pretty action-packed 2011. There's plenty of more to be said about some of the fantastic, and not so fantastic games that came out this year. I would love to be able to go on and on about all the games, but that's what our Australian Gamer Awards are for! You've already seen one category and over the next week or so, you'll see the rest of our categories roll out onto the site - keep an eye for more and don't forget to tell us what you think of our decisions!

LET'S GO 2012!