Icrontic picks: Five games that we loved in 2011

2011 was a fantastic year for gaming. We’ve said it many times this past year: It’s a great time to be a gamer.

A lot of attention focused on the fourth quarter of 2011, with major mass-market releases such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim, but many other fantastic games came out in 2011 as well. However, there are also games that came out more than a year ago that still hold up and keep us in love with gaming. We asked some Icrontic members and staffers to name five games that they loved this year, so without further ado, here’s the rundown. Note that these are in no particular order, and that they’re not games that necessarily came out this year, but were enjoyable this year.

Brian “primesuspect” Ambrozy

Anomaly Warzone Earth—A surprising Indie title that shook the tower defense genre up in a grand way; by making you the creeps. They call it a “Tower Offense” game, and that seems appropriate. I didn’t want to fall in love with this game, but I keep going back to it. It’s just the right mix of challenging, frustrating, and rewarding.

Skyrim—I have put over 200 hours into this game. That pretty much means I must have been enjoying it, otherwise why would I have thrown myself so hard into the world of Tamriel with its hardy people, supremely in-depth history and lore, and fearsome monsters? Yes, the game is buggy and frustrating at times. Yes, it can be monotonous, and yes, the combat is lame. Still, I can think of few games that I’ve had more fun with and fallen more deeply in love with than Skyrim.

Dungeon Defenders—Multiplayer gaming in the Icrontic community is always a good time, but some of the best times I’ve had in 2011 were with Icrontians in the brightly colored Dungeons. A co-op first/third person tower defense/action RPG, Dungeon Defenders crosses many genres and does them all well. Besides being a great game, the developers are continuously adding new and compelling DLC that add tons of replay value.

Team Fortress 2—This game came out in 2007. I still play the hell out of it, even though it is fundamentally unchanged. Even through all the updates (going Free to Play, adding massive amounts of new content, and adding item crafting and trading), it’s still the same core game, and it’s still a total blast. This is the only game I can truly and without question say changed my life; the friends I’ve made in TF2 are lifelong.

Portal 2—With Hollywood-grade voice acting, masterful storytelling, and that elegant ability to pull you along through the story enough to have those “just one more room” moments, Portal 2 is high art in gaming. The moment when you are reunited with GlaDOS sent chills up my spine and gave me goosebumps and that’s when I knew that Portal 2 hit every note perfectly.

David “NiGHTS” Kenkel

Battlefield 3—Revival of a great FPS franchise that takes rock, paper, scissors to a whole new level. More important, still, is the stance DICE took during development: PC first, consoles second. While it didn’t unseat COD as the modern-day FPS king, it reasserted itself as /the/ cooperative online shooter.

Limbo—Less a game and more a work of art, I can honestly say Limbo blindsided me. I went in not knowing what to expect, other than the traditional sidescrolling adventure it seemed to be billed as. Simplistic puzzles to keep the game interesting yet continuously flowing, and the eerie setting of this dreamworld left me wanting more after it was all said and done.

Bastion—I still fire this game up after having completed it twice. I never, ever play games more than once (Half-Life 2 excluded) and this one continues to call me back. Storytelling, art direction and wonderful developers made this game truly a diamond in the rough. It’s one of the first games you think of to defend “The Year of Indie” title that 2011 should be given.

LA Noire—It’s a shame the larger gaming populace expected this to be GTA:1947. I’m a sucker for Noir films, so you can imagine my excitement at the chance to experience one firsthand in a digital world where I got to be the hero (or is that villan?) A game that focused more on the mystery, crime-solving, interrogations and investigation than it did combat and action—LA Noire was a welcome change to modern-day gaming.

Team Fortress 2—There’s not much that needs to be said, here. A game that took Free to Play to the next level continues to push the envelop through Steam’s digital distribution channels. Valve continues to redefine what we should consider the benchmark for a modern day title and the support it should receive from its developer. You’d be hard pressed to keep Icrontic and Team Fortress 2 out of the same sentence (and we like it that way).

Ryan “Cannonfodder” Benson

Battlefield 3—This game brought me back to my heyday. I really love the squad aspect of this game. The feeling of accomplishing goals as a team really drives me, and this game is the epitome of that feeling.

Team Fortress 2—While I have fallen off the “most time on the Icrontic server” list, I still play this game on occasion. And every time I play, I still enjoy playing with the group. This game is like walking into the bar that everyone knows your name.

Kerbal Space Program—This is the only single player game that I’ve felt deserves being on any sort of favorites list. Jimmy introduced me to this game, and I fell in love with it. The physics, the direct effect you can have with the designs made, and the openness of the game really made me continue playing it. I’ve been itching to get back now that they’ve added a moon… (I’m starting the download now!)

Dungeon Defenders—Any game that can pull a large group of Icrontians in deserves to be on a top five list. This game got a lot of time from me, and I enjoyed every bit of it. There’s been more content on this recently too (putting this list together is going to mess up my free time!)

Portal 2—This was easily the best story-driven game I’ve played this year. The characters in this game were amazingly real—and they were robots. I felt a personal connection to robots—how awesome is that? Combine this with the type of spatial puzzles that I can’t seem to put away, and you have yourself an amazing game.

Nick Mertes

Team Fortress 2—This game is over four years old and still gets more play time than any other game in my library. The best part? It’s still gaining new content and evolving. I pre-ordered the Orange Box and still consider it the best $50 I’ve ever spent on a game. Ever.

Skyrim—I’m not a huge fan of the RPG style in general, but there are exceptions, and Skyrim is one of them (this is my first Elder Scrolls game), as is the Neverwinter Nights series. I got it during the Steam holiday sale and I’m having loads of fun playing, and my wife is having fun watching (she doesn’t enjoy playing video games). The huge open world is fun to explore (until I run into a bear or mammoth), and the numerous quests are varied enough that I haven’t become bored with completing them.

Greed Corp—This is an indie turn-based strategy game played on hex tiles. It’s a very simple concept and a total blast to play. The graphics are exactly what they need to be, and nothing more. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the game is also available on iOS and Android as well, making this a great game to play anywhere.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution—This game has everything—a great and compelling story, varied gameplay, incredible graphics, and great sound. There isn’t a single thing I didn’t enjoy about this game.

CB Droege

Skyrim—The Elder Scrolls has been my favorite single-player franchise since I was introduced to Daggerfall years ago. Narrative is the most important aspect of a solo gaming experience in my opinion, and The Elder Scrolls has more narrative than one player can hope to wring out of it. It’s great to be able to compare my story in the game with where my friends each went on their individual journeys. I hear a lot about the modding community for the games as well, but I’m not into that, as I prefer to play through as intended—and I’m never disappointed.

Sanctum—Once a week I meet with a group of guys who share my love for cooperative video gaming. We have the most fun when we find a title that pushes us to work as a team, rather than just playing side-by-side. The best games are the ones that allow us to divide into roles and shout at each other about what’s going on while we figure out how to make our team function under duress. So, we were excited to find Sanctum. As a co-op tower defense game, we had to spend a lot of time in discussion about tactics, expaining merits of plans to one another, and figuring out compromises. We didn’t actually play much of Sanctum, mostly because the levels took at least three hours to play, but it gets a place on this list for being the game that introduced my group to cooperative tower defense.

Dungeon Defenders—This is the multi-player game which, according to Steam, I’ve sunk the most hours into this year, and for good reason. Dungeon defenders is another co-op tower defense game, but with some improvements over Sanctum. The levels don’t last nearly as long, the characters are more differentiated, and the players have more to do durring the actual combat waves. I’m not personally a fan of the visual style—I find it too busy, and it occasionally gives me a headache—but it might be the most teamwork we’ve been forced into in a long time, and I’ll miss it when we move on to something else.

Minecraft—I love LEGO, and I love co-op games. Minecraft is like co-op LEGO with monsters to fight. It’s not really ‘teamwork’, since the game doesn’t give us any goals that we have to team up to complete, but I enjoy working with friends to build neat things, and it involves nearly the same level of discussion and interaction that the best co-op games do.

Wii Sports Resort—It may just be a tech-demo of sorts for the Wii Motion Plus accessory, but I’ve gotten a lot of play out of it. Especially on days when I can’t make it to the gym, it serves as a nice way to get up out of my desk chair for a bit. I especially like the sword-fighting and archery. I feel like I’ll be well-trained when I finally pick up a copy of Skyward Sword. It’s also a great physical party game, for when we have friends over—especially if it’s another couple and we’re looking for something to do after dinner.

Dan “Myrmidon” Putnam

League of Legends—Easily number one in terms of time played. The purchasing model (that is, F2P plus GIMME MONEY PREEZ for skins) is very healthy, the community is self-policing, and the developers are almost as in touch with the community as Valve is with theirs. The game itself is simple as hell, but the sheer combinations of teams and weird stuff that can happen makes every game totally different—I mean, chess is the same way, right? This is my first DOTA-style game ever, so I’m still pretty starry-eyed about it.

Terraria—Any time I go to play this game, I play it nonstop until it’s over, then don’t touch it again for ages. With the recent patch (which DOUBLED the size of the game), I’m going insane trying all crafting combinations. I’m pretty sure getting new items stimulates the same part of my brain that cocaine does. I pretty much shat when the wall of flesh appeared and started wrecking my face off, and I still get the ‘oh god oh god oh god’ feeling of fright when running from enemies when I have low health. Play the mediumcore mode. It makes the game WAY more visceral.

Portal 2—Humorous games have a special place in my heart. And also my pants. On Saturdays, those are the same places… but I digress. Cave Johnson, Wheatley (and also dropping Wheatley), abortion-companion cubes, turret operas—And let’s not forget co-op mode… which I haven’t tried, but I understand is going to blow my face off. Possibly twice. The Portal series is the group of games I used to get my girlfriend into gaming. I couldn’t be happier.

Mass Effect 1&2—Dear God. This may be my new favorite series, which breaks my heart. Why, you ask? Because it means I have to give money to the the most horrible of evil empires, Electronic Arts. The real stroke of genius in this game was hiring Jennifer Hale and Seth Green for voice acting—Jennifer is one of the most talented voice actors I’ve ever heard (and as a failed actor, I’ve heard a lot). It’s very difficult to convey emotion with only your voice WITHOUT going over the top (i.e. Duke Nukem, or any of the WoW voice actors). It can only be excruciating to record MODULAR voice bites and still keep that emotion. And of course Seth Green as Joker is just LOLOLOLOLOL. Oddly enough, this game coincided with my discovery of Buffy, so I kept thinking Joker was secretly a werewolf. So yeah, that’s a thing.

Playing the game on the hardest difficulty with only pistols is a must. Your pulse may not race as hard as in other games, but you’ll find that the emotional sentiment is still wrenching, and the comic relief is still, well…relieving. It’s almost—ALMOST—worth paying EA one red cent.

The Void—I am aware I finished this game at the turn of the year. However, I fired it up once since then, which I think makes this entry acceptable. This is, without a doubt, my favorite game of all time. The intense melancholia of the game is nothing short of one great big prolactin hug, the horrific nature of the Brothers becomes etched in your mind, and of course the feeling that you only JUST survived the game is a fair rush. The ending is only lacking if you haven’t let the game get into your mind.

This is a game that you must play with a emotional state of mind. Any emotion will do—especially those complex ones like `I hate such and such gender and also have strong feelings about Isaac Newton’s absence of sexuality.’ I won’t judge you. Also, obligatory nudity mention.

Andrew “Basil” Brush

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2—Relic seem to understand something that few other RTS makers do—that it’s hard to make an RTS that captures the full scale of war. Rather than make a half-hearted effort to recreate a major offensive, Relic went in the other direction and brought the RTS down to squad level. Each squad leader was given a name and a face, they were given personalities, upgrades and unlocks, and as a result Dawn of War 2 engaged me in a way which simply spamming faceless units in other RTS games never has.

Mass Effect 2—Aside from planet scanning, the plain weird heatsink/ammo mechanic and some of gaming’s dodgiest accents ever, this is close to my vision of a perfect game. Mundane but solid cover-based combat, great writing and the ability to be a massive prick to everyone make it incredibly satisifying to play.

Fallout: New Vegas—I’ve loved the Fallout series from when I roamed the wastes with a turbo plasma rifle and a suit of hardened power armour, in isometric view, right up to the current first-person games. And I love New Vegas. It builds on Fallout 3, with its many changes improving an already stellar title. It has all the guns, special ammo and mods for an FPS junkie but retains its RPG heritage with skills, perks, followers and tons of excellent story telling.

Minecraft—Nothing beats indulging your creative side in a game that lets you build practically anything you can imagine and then plant a massive stone phallus on top. Well, except doing it on the Icrontic server with friends, that is.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine—This is the first game I bought through OnLive. Can’t say I much liked the service, but Space Marine itself is fantastic. Unforgiving, viscerial combat with everything from a plasma cannon to a power axe just doesn’t get old. I think it says a lot that I’ve found myself, on more than one occasion, avoiding completing objectives just so I could continue to mess about with a jetpack and thunder hammer. Top notch game, but not an easy one.

The Icrontic Community

There’s a pattern here; games that are fun to play with other Icrontians seem to make numerous appearances on these lists. What were your top five this year?