Christmas Reflection

2011 was a lively year for computer gaming, with several brilliant surprises.  Multiple roguelike games saw relative commercial success: The Binding of Isaac, Dungeons of Dreadmor, and Realm of the Mad God.  Bioware managed to disappoint with Dragon Age II, while announcing Mass Effect 3 will have a few more RPG elements than it's immediate predecessor.  But there are two surprises in particular I want to talk about here.  Two things I honestly though I would die without seeing: a good Deus Ex sequel, and Duke Nukem Forever.

Both these games have a lot in common.  They hail from distant, misty ages of shooters: Duke from the once-great kingdom of circle-strafe action, and Deus Ex from the isle of immersive sims.  Both genres were thought to be done, with Duke by decade-long delays and scrapped projects and Deus Ex by public disinterest.  At least Duke had the benefit of nostalgia, largely because the last game in the main series (Duke Nukem 3D) is remembered fondly.  Among those that hungered to return to a world of conspiracy, choice, and trenchoated robo-spies, DX2 was, and I am being as kind as humanly possible as a DX fan when I say this, less than satisfactory.  I won't go into how it failed, but it did, both commercially and critically.

What Normal People See

What Deus Ex Fans See

So two big franchise revivals in 2011.  Gearbox acquired the rough, largely unfinished Duke Nukem Forever, and went to work stitching it together like a desperate surgeon.  And though the body was intact, there was no brain to it, no heart.  It would have been kinder, perhaps, to let it fade into the night and keep our memories of the good times, but as the fates had it, we had to suffer the indignity of parading this tragedy in front of the world.  Duke Nukem Forever is the Terry Schaivo of gaming.

BALLS OF STEEL!

We all wanted the Duke's return to be heroic, to signal that the manshoot need bend itself to the Alter of Halo NO LONGER.  We will carry ten weapons. We will not have our health regenerate.  And we will NOT take cover.  It was to be the John the Baptist to Serious Sam's Jesus Christ, with Bulletstorm and Hard Reset as the apostles.  Instead, Duke had become all we hoped he would stand against.  If you need any proof of it's mediocrity, just look at it's sticker price on Steam: $20.  Six months and it's already shovel-ware.

ENOUGH.  It is Christmas Day as I write this, which is no time for sadness.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a triumph, which reinvigorated my faith in human progress.  Because you see, in many ways, DX:HR is a better game than the original (!).  It's stealth is razor-sharp, rather than vague, it's characters have more depth and development, and the hacking mini-game manages to be entertaining, though I am biased because it's largely just copy pasted from Uplink, the greatest hacking game ever.  Wait, you haven't played Uplink?  Well, fix that: it's brilliant.

What makes DX:HR shine so bright is that the developers worked hard to understand what makes Deus Ex so fun, so compelling, and distilled that essence through the still of a decade of gaming.  It takes the droll cover-based combat, and merges stealth and combat into that system, breathing life and tension into the game.  Mass Effect taught us much about guns and conversations; DX:HR takes this and runs with it, having easily the best social persuasion gameplay in the history of man.  Even the aforementioned hacking was on-point.  But all of this, critically, serves to strengthen a single game, a whole creature of distinctly Deus-Exian design.  DX:HR doesn't play much like the original, but it plays like a DX game should, with the same challenges, same choices, and same memories.

Retractable Face Sunglasses Are A Legitimate Business Expense

It's not all roses: three miserable boss fights and a poorly designed skill tree system stop the game from being anything like perfect, but that's fine.  I don't want perfect: perfect means you weren't daring enough, weren't dreaming big enough.  There's other things too, like the intelligent presentation of not only transhuman issues, but wealth disparity and corporate culture as well.  But I don't want to gush, because Dishonored and Bioshock: Infinite are coming out next year, and I would like to hope I need to save some immersive-sim-love for them.

As a final disclaimer, I don't have anything like a Computer Game of the Year, because I haven't played several key games, mainly Bastion and Witcher 2, and so do not feel qualified.  Of those I played, DX:HR absolutely takes the cake.