Review of the Year 2011: July

July; the calm after the storm that is E3. Well, no, not really, there were about three weeks before July started to let the gaming world setting down. So, July – the calm after the three weeks after E3 happened.

July was a relatively quiet month in terms of news; nothing too big happened, which is to be expected at this time of the year. However, there were a few things that gained relative interest from gamers. Firstly, Sony confirmed their take on the online pass trend, with the ‘PSN Pass’ which would soon be appearing on all Sony published games that feature an online mode.

This confirmation was the final straw for some people, and there was a large backlash against online passes, which now seem to feature in every single game under the sun. Not confirmed, but we’ve heard from a source they’re even recalling N64s, adding online functionality, and then patching in online passes for all of the games.

Aside from that absolute bombshell, Nintendo announced they were to drop the price of the 3DS by almost a third due to sales not meeting their requirements. This was a bold move by Nintendo, who tried to appease early adopters of the handheld console by announcing some free classic NES and Gameboy games for those of us who picked the console up before August.

Oh, and we thought that Vita’s release date had leaked and that is was arriving in October, due to a flier from Blockbuster. However, as we now know, this information was wrong and it would instead release… wait, that didn’t happen in July so I can’t go into any further detail.

[drop2]July wasn’t a great month in terms of game releases; we were served with very few excellent games and many mediocre ones. In terms of excellence, it was all about downloadable titles.

We saw the release of LIMBO on PS3 and the brilliant platformer Ms. ‘Splosion Man released on Xbox live, shortly before the Summer of Arcade promotion which included Bastion – a brilliant RPG with sublime narration and visuals – and From Dust – a God-sim game that was well-received by those who played it.

With retail releases in July, nothing really managed to stand out. We saw Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Earth Defence Force, Captain America: Super Soldier, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron and UFC Personal Trainer all hitting shelves. Also released were the terrible Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Call of Juarez: The Cartel.

517 articles were penned in the month of July by our team, with reviews of the games throughout the month, opinion pieces and many bits of news and other content. We also kicked off our Top 100 of 2011 recap, looking back over those games that we had listed at the end of 2010.

Outside of our little gaming bubble, the real world carried on and we found out just how low news companies could stoop when it was revealed that News of the World had hacked into the missing Milly Dowler’s voicemail in order to find out more information for themselves.

Breaking some news before anyone else is one thing, but public opinion turned against News International as the consensus emerged that they’d stepped significantly over the line. The scandal dominated the news for July, and the News of the World was shut down on the 10th of July due to the overwhelming public outcry.

The most terrible news of July was undoubtedly the attacks in Norway on the 22nd. At twenty five past three, a car bomb killed eight people and injured many others in the centre of Oslo. Less than two hours later a brutal attack on a youth camp occurred, when a gunman dressed as a police man opened fire and killed sixty nine people attending the camp.

It was the worst attack in Norway since the Second World War and shocked the world. Even though a man – 32 year old Anders Behring Breivik – was arrested and then charged, the shock did not subside and the fact that nearly eighty, mostly young, people lost their lives that day due to one individual seemed to much to bear.

2011 saw the coolest July since 2000 over the UK. The east of Scotland and the north-east of England had twice the usual rainfall, with some flooding across Scotland (we should probably just become amphibians). However the Midlands had a relatively dry month and the South of England had close to average sunshine. So, another distinctly average month for weather and games; July wasn’t all that.

In fact, I don’t think I like July any more.