TSA’s Top 100 of 2011 Recap: 75 – 71

We’re back with the the second week of our Top 100 recap, already a quarter of the way through the list. Today’s five games encompass four genres and in a break from the norm for our recaps so far, they have all been released.

With an eleven month wait between last summer’s Japanese release and the European release this June there was plenty of time for our anticipation of the sequel to build.  We gave the first game an 8 in our review and with the gameplay updates in WKC2 going down well with Japanese reviewers and Famitsu scoring it 33/40 things were looking good.

Something must have been lost in translation though.  WKC2 only managed a score of 5 in our recent review which is more or less in line with the Metascore of 59 it has accrued at the time of writing.  The game has yet to see an American release though, that comes this September, and it will be interesting to see whether our American cousins like the game any more than we Europeans.

Among the issues raised with the game are that it feels much more like a WKC Part 2 rather than a true sequel, which may or may not matter to you.  Our review also called out the “hair-tugging difficulty spikes” as particularly irksome but congratulated the game on its “Unique gameplay style, [which strikes] a balance between MMO and JRPG”.  Ultimately, if you are a JRPG fan with several hundred hours to spare the fact that the original WKC is included in the box with WKC2 means you are likely to get plenty of value from it should you choose to pick it up.

Operation Flashpoint games strive to provide more realistic FPS action than other FPS’ that set their warfare in modern times and have you riding around in rubber dinghies sinking the opposition’s warships.  We are talking the kind of realism that attracts players who are qualified to point out that the game has got the tail numbers on one of its myriad helicopters wrong.

At the time of the game’s release back in April Alex took a look at it and asked the question of whether today’s gamer, particularly on consoles, was really interested in playing an FPS that sells itself on its hardcore realism.  He found solid gameplay that in hardcore mode rewards the player by building impressive tension but nonetheless “involved far too much time in the back of a truck” at least during the first few hours of the game.

Across the different platforms the game scored consistently on Metacritic with 66 on PC, 67 on PS3 and 69 on the 360.  Scores like that suggest it could be worth picking up if a more realistic FPS, that will not necessarily float everyone’s boat, is your thing.

Like the majority of the superhero games that made our Top 100 of 2011 list the suspicion has to be that it was almost solely due to resident comic fan Kris voting them up.  It’s not that some of the rest of us do not like superhero games, just that when they are tied to a movie release experience has taught us to be cautious about expecting much from them.

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters is unfortunately not one of those rare exceptions to the rule that shines out like a beacon of hope in blackest night but neither was it irredeemably bad.  In our review we scored it an “above average” 6 saying “for those who take the risk, there is a satisfying game to be enjoyed, mainly thanks to the simplistic yet diverse combat mechanics as well as drop in co-operative play”.

The cloud agreed, with the game achieving Metascores of 60 for the PS3 version and 59 for the Xbox 360.  Perhaps we can attribute its slightly lower score for the 360 as being due to the fact it is not an FPS as a corollary to Operation Flashpoint: Red River’s Metascores?  What it can claim with its Metascore for either platform is that it was significantly better received than the film which can only manage a “generally unfavourable” 39!

For those of you with younger family members in your household who enjoyed the film or if you are the sort that might be attracted to a budget title that plays okay and has a platinum trophy which is considered one of the easier ones to attain (in as little as six or so hours to boot) then this might be worth a punt.  Or at least a rent.

“All things considered, Crysis 2 is a triumph.”  That is how we began the conclusion to our review.  A review which awarded it a very respectable 8 making it the joint highest scoring title out of the five games in today’s edition of our recap.  For a while, despite our anticipation of the sequel to the graphically-mighty and widely acclaimed Crysis, it looked like Crysis 2 was poised to disappoint.

After playing it at last year’s Eurogamer Expo Kris was pretty dejected. “Gameplay wise it just feels so completely and utterly bland, he said, “there’s nothing that stands out as particularly special or unique”.  It is not that Kris is especially anti-FPS either, he is more than happy to spend many hours running around in a suit of visored armour, though admittedly it is generally green.

We were not the only ones who considered that CryTek managed to turn things around by the game’s release.  Its Metascores were 84, 85 and 86 on 360, PS3 and PC respectively.  More importantly though you found much to like about it, gracing it with a Buy It rating in our first ever WeView.  You commented on the “fantabulous” graphics, the versatile and much-hyped nanosuit and even went so far as comparing the multiplayer to that of Halo.  High praise indeed.

If you were the kind of person who became attached to your little Oliphant-commanded Pikmin when you played it on your GameCube and winced whenever a handful of them were gobbled up by a frog then Swarm probably is not for you.  If, however, you found secret joy at the sound of their cries of anguish when they were thrown across the garden by a mis-timed explosion then it is probably right up your street.

Swarm has you guiding your flock/herd/flange/whoop of little blue guys across delightfully deadly landscapes finding new and creative ways to end their existences.  Existences that end with what our review described as “hilariously graphic death sequences”.  This is one of those games where failure can sometimes be almost as much fun as success.

The more attentive ones among you will have already worked out that like Crysis 2 we gave Swarm a “very good” 8 out of 10 which was more generous than the Metascores of 69 and 70 the downloadable title achieved on 360 and PS3.

The two games have shared a curious link here at TSA that does not stop at the review scores or even the fact that they featured at 72 and 71 in our Top 100.  The two titles released on the same day (in North America and just a couple of days apart in Europe) and strangely, Crysis 2 got a mention in Swarm’s review, “In terms of aesthetics Swarm is not Crysis 2”, presumably solely down to the mind-share the futuristic FPS had managed to garner at the time.

We could tell you more about why you should have played Swarm but there can be no more entertaining way to bring today’s recap to an end than to show one of the Swarm trailers.  This is the game’s launch trailer and strongly suggests that unlike Green Lantern you may want to keep this game away from the younger members of your household…

Hopefully you have not been left too disturbed by that trailer and will be back tomorrow for the next instalment of our recap as we countdown from 70 to 66.