Our Top 15 Games of 2011

Dan: Welcome to our annual tradition of announcing the best games of this year, which we’ve narrowed down into 15 slots that were so hotly contested that some of the choices are actually kind of shit. Anyway, we’ll start (as countdowns from 15 often do), with number 15, which is a game where no one could CHART where it would end up, hence it was:

15. Uncharted 3

John: Nathan Drake is possibly the most insufferable character I have ever seen this side of Essex. He makes me want to rip my eyes out and shove them in my ears so I don't have to hear his bull crap anymore. However this in itself really doesn't make Uncharted 3 or any of the Uncharted series bad games, in fact I love them, and this one is more of the same with just a few additions. It is not as good as the second one, partly because the second one was in the top three games I have played on my PS3 and partly because the second one did innovate on the first unlike this inclusion into the series.

14. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

Dan: Halo: Combat Evolved is the best game in my favourite gaming series, so by that logic I should just give the anniversary edition 10 and call it a day. But no, 343 Industries included some new features, so let’s have a look at them. There’s Multiplayer now, with some classic Halo maps thrown in, which seemed to be pretty good to me. The unfortunate thing is: it’s just Halo Reach multiplayer. And as fun and good as that is, I feel those maps should have just been added onto to Halo fucking Reach. But whatever, if this really bothers you then boo hoo, but personally I could just play that fucking campaign over and over again slapping my hands together and drooling. Just like 10 years ago, the campaign is as compelling and great as ever, and the weirdest criticism of the game I’ve heard as of yet is that “it’s the exact same campaign as 10 years ago”. IT’S A BLOODY HD REMAKE, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN? Master Chief vs Samus? A Captain Keyes boss fight? A Cortana sex scene?! There have been a few little changes here and there, mainly the addition of terminals that you can access to get backstory about the Forerunners and shit, if you love to find out about lore. Other than that, it’s the same great campaign of 10 years ago updated with some nice looking graphics. 343 Industries haven’t sold me on them yet, we’ll see how shite (or otherwise) Halo 4 is next year.

13. Dungeons of Dredmor

John: 2011's has seemed to have been the year in which roguelikes have come back in force shaping It like a piece of clay until the genre has completely changed. From games such Brogue and Desktop Dungeons, to even The Binding of Isaac. All have added their own charm to the genre. However the best of all is Dungeon Defenders, a game with the cartoon humour of a violent Looney Tunes, and more ways to customise your character (not in a physical way but in the way you play) than a plastic surgery clinic. It also updates the graphics of Roguelikes, which is nice.

12. Space Marine

Dan: When I first played the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine demo a few months ago, I was blown away by how fucking FUN it was. It was in the days of dread before Battlefield 3, MW3, Rage etc. You know, the boring cover shooting regenerating health shit that I keep fucking BANGING on about like the twat I am. Anyway, I got Space Marine and launched it, and within 10 minutes I was gleefully laughing my way through it. It’s been ages since I laughed at a game, not since Portal 2, but Space Marine was funner than using a shotgun that fires exploding lasers at zombies, which is an apt comparison as there is a gun that feels just like that. The jetpack is like being hooked up to a drip that feeds endorphins, jumping into the air, sniping 5 Orcs in the head and then smashing into the ground, sending another 20 flying off a fucking ledge is infinitely more satisfying than popping out of cover, shooting a bloke, then having strawberries thrown all over your eyes. This game is fucking great at its core gameplay so if you want a game where you want to chill out and kill shit for a few hours, or your some sort of masochist and enjoy Warhammer 40k lore, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Space Marine.

11. Arkham City

John: Just to be clear, this game would have been higher if they hadn't delayed it for so long on the PC and yet still having problems with it, just as the random framerate drops. I also occasionally find the combat, while smooth, be more fiddly than a buttered up fiddler crab, randomly having me attack somebody who I was not aiming for, probably because he stole my chocolate or something.

However once you ignore this, you realise that this game is probably the best Superhero game you have ever played, and when you think that there is more of a chance for a turtle to flip you off than a superhero game to be good, it is very impressive. The main quest is extremely good, as well as the amazing sidequests, such as the Zsasz one, and the great exploration, it really does give this slick game a place on the list.

And now we're into the top 10.

10. Battlefield 3

John: The campaign of this game is the sort of thing you would enjoy, if your list on fun things to do included being repeatedly stabbed in the balls, or being raped by a wild armadillo. I don't know who would want to watch a movie instead of play a game, but that's what this is... probably made by Uwe Boll. It is your generic Modern regenerating health shooter, which involve you staring at more strawberry jam than a fat person, and when you're not doing that, you're admiring the architectural skills used to create a brick wall. And I'm talking about the online as well here.

Ah the online, in my eyes practically the same as that of Modern Warfare 3 apart from a few maps. All it involves is running around before being shot in the arse by somebody probably just playing a practical joke. The worst for these is Operation Metro, where the middle of the map has more men in it than a gay brothel. And you can't appreciate how good (because god it does look good) it looks when it's raining or extremely light in almost every map, all that does is blur your vision, like watching porn while having a man's arse shoved in your face. There are exceptions however, and they are Caspian Border, Tehran Highway and Back to Karkand maps. The first two because they are extremely fun to play on, especially flying around in a helicopter on Caspian Border with the finesse of a one winged Ostrich (however I usually ride shotgun in vehicles as an engineer, or some guy from the Washington DC ghettos) and for Back to Karkand it was obvious that they would be good maps, as they were in the Battlefield 2. So all in all, other than in the few good maps online, I didn't find this game enjoyable so just went back to Team Fortress 2,
Daniel did like it though so here's his opinion, not that I care, as its shit.

Dan: Battlefield 3 is probably the best (realistic) shooter of the year, which really depresses me. This is because of how painful the campaign was to play. A mesh of ridiculously unforgiving Quick Time Events (shudder), a very silly plot surgically taken from Tom Clancy and Modern Warfare and almost on rails gameplay throughout poison this game. This game is not only the best realistic shooter this year; it also has the very worst campaign of any shooter I’ve played in a while. There is a 3 minute section before you do a rail shooter section where you aren’t allowed to fucking move your character up to the jet, you can’t look around, you can’t take your helmet, and you can’t have a look around the ship. It’s ridiculous. From start to end the campaign (however nice it looks, and oh fucking hell does it look nice) feels terrible, and the only remotely alright bit is the tank section, but even then a lot of control is stolen from you. Moving on from the FRIGHTFUL single player, the Multiplayer (in my opinion) continues Battlefield’s trend of excellence. The beautiful environments make me literally duck whenever something explodes near me, and there are some fantastic moments that are genuinely fun, one such moment is when you parachute down to the next part of the map in Damavand Peak, that feels brilliant. Doing a HALO (sort of) jump like that brings back bad memories of the campaign, but other than that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer feels excellent, just like it’s predecessors.

9. Terraria

John: Now this is the game that I wanted Minecraft to be, except in a 2D setting. It takes all the building parts of Minecraft and adds in more RPG elements than a Dungeons and Dragons party. You have the item progression and the bosses.

This game is unfairly described as a Minecraft rip off, but that would be like saying that all FPS' are rip offs of each other, or that snowmen are rip off's of real men. This game adds so much more depth to Minecraft, which can leave you feeling bored, while this game does not, with its challenging bosses and different enemies. It's not a game that I can talk about that much though, as it all depends on how you play it.

The name also sounds like your being orally raped by a dentist, but we will just skip over that.

However, even though I've said this is what I wanted Minecraft to be like, you may be wondering why Minecraft is one place higher, well just read about it next.

8. Minecraft

Dan: I am a newcomer to Minecraft, as I had other less nerdy things to do like read comics and play Warhammer, but recently launched a game and having been force fed random trivia from people and videos I knew exactly what to do to start. It peaked my interest, but I wasn’t totally sold on the “best game ever” stamp being stuck on it absolutely everywhere. In PC Gamer I saw a massive amusement park built in Minecraft, I read about fully functioning computers with rudimentary games playing on them. My jaw literally dropped. Minecraft is totally overwhelming to a newcomer, and it almost turned me off. But I persisted and mined and crafted and fought my way through giant cocks until I built a huge sprawling mine. Then I thought: I want a lava waterfall! So I made that. Then I thought: how about a train system. So I built that. I was lost. Minecraft had consumed me. I have absolutely no idea how to review Minecraft, it’s fucking huge. I still have no bloody idea how to get to the nether, I have no idea how to make cakes, but I can tell you I have had a great time for the little I’ve done SO FAR. This is one of the most interesting games I’ve ever played and it may have even turned me onto Terraria, so you owe to yourself as a gamer to check this out, because it seems like this will be the start of a golden age. To sum up as best I can: the graphics are cute and look like someone spilt tea on the scribbling of a 4 year old, coming up with a project (making large lava falls and a train system) then seeing it come to fruition is endlessly satisfying, because there are endless fucking possibilities. Phew. Have I finished the review now? Yay now I can play Minecraft again…

John: Easily this year's success story (I know, I know, it was released in alpha last year), this is the game which proved that having more blocks than a building supply shop can create a good game. I can think of no other game which will let me create a huge squirrel next to a diamond model of a arse (I didn't do either of those) before going out to kill some exploding, green phalluses. The possibilities in this game seem almost limitless, well other than the limit of creating a lesbian sex scene with Angelina Jolie, but it comes damn close to anything being possible.

The fact that people have made full functioning computers in this game shows the scale of things possible. I myself usually play this in creative mode, getting bored of survival (however I did just "finish" the game by killing the Ender Dragon), so have built some huge structures. It is a game that I will fire up every so often if
I'm bored and get lost in for hours and hours seeing new things to do. It will get updated regularly by Mojang, and even though Notch has moved on to working on a new game for them, the team still works hard on it. I applaud Markus Persson for this amazing game, and starting off (yes I know about Infiminer) this new genre, and I for one hail our blocky overlords.

7. Bastion

John: Easily one of the funniest games I have played this year, the Narrator is funnier than watching a fat person slip on a banana skin. The way he makes observations in his voice which sounds as if he's swallowed a ton of nails adds to the enjoyment of the game and helps create a story which feels like one of your own, even if you couldn't create your own character. After playing this game I feel that even Diablo 3 couldn't beat it.

And I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack yet, which sounds amazing, and is probably the best I have heard in any game, but I'm not a music reviewer, as reviewing music is like trying to get a turtle to drive a car so my opinion is worth fuck all anyway.

It is one of the games this year which shows that the higher the selling price, the better the game, is a statement which is certainly not true.

6. Serious Sam 3: BFE

John: Probably the best and most fun, first person shooter, I have played in a very, very long time. Serious Sam scoffs at all your fascination for your own strawberry jam and love of brick walls. That sort of thing is for people who get scared of kittens. Instead Serious Sam is armed with more weaponry than Sarah Palin when she sees a communist. And no you don't need to keep slamming your finger down on a button when it pops up on the screen as if your trying to perform some lewd sexual act with it either, because this is a man's game, not some pussy film.

Yes the first few levels of this game are pretty terrible especially the museum level, and are more on rails than a very good train, they also involve you journeying through more corridors than if you're working in fucking real estate. However after this, god is it a good game, enemy blood splatters over your eyes, not your own, and paints the map, like a psychopaths dream in the jam. The weapons all feel amazing to use, from the sledgehammer to the laser rifle, and leave you laughing in a manic fashion as you kick a clone to the ground before sending his body flying with the shotgun. However unlike the other violent, fun game, Space Marine, this isn't really a game you can chill out to.

I'm surprised I managed to go this long without mentioning the co-op, which is amazing if you have a friend to play with... Which I don't so Dan had to do. We could waste on end playing it online it was that fun, with infinite respawning and friendly fire on, it makes the game extremely hectic and enjoyable. There is nothing better than going on rampages with a friend (no we are not condoning mass murder) killing monsters. Overall, this game makes me happy after the crap we suffered with Duke Nukem Forever, and Serious Sam takes back the old school shooter crown... By killing the Duke with a shotgun blast to the face, while he stands around disgustingly slapping wall boobs like the weird necrophiliac (as opposed to those normal necrophiliacs) that he is.

Dan: Serious Sam 3 is incredibly fun, and I took no notice of it until I realised it was an old school shooter and therefore infinitely more fun than obese blokes wearing enough armour to wallpaper the entire fucking world lurching from cover to cover ala Gears of War. And it is. I am currently about a quarter of the way through the game I have more weapons than I have teeth and I can run faster than a uranium fuelled Usain Bolt. Not to mention fights are tense and exciting with the omission of regenerating health meaning I don’t have to crouch behind a wall rubbing my temples and willing my legs to reattach. No, I rub a health kit on my balls and return to life. Basically it’s a shooter like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, the golden age of shooters, and as such it’s fucking awesome. I’m a quarter of the way through without even a hint of a plot more than: aliens are here, blow them up. But what more do you want from Serious Sam? It’s so fucking fast paced I nearly had an epileptic fit, while playing Modern Warfare 3 causes me to have a NARCOLEPTIC FIT (OH SNAP). Not to mention this is an insanely fun co-op game; John and I could play for hours on end, running at close to the speed of sound while blasting Kamikaze’s with shotguns never ever loses its charm and fun. Basically, if you long for a return to the great days of shooters, play this now, and if you DON’T have a longing to return to the golden age of shooters, play this anyway, and you’ll see how fucking stupid you are.

5.Shogun 2

Dan: Total War is for the most part, a good game series. The strategy is almost unmatched, and the mix of RTS and TBS feels perfect. Unfortunately a lot of the recent titles have been a pile of shite marinated in piss. Empire and Napoleon were set in the most boring period to set games in ever. You watch squads of musketmen slowly walk up to the enemy, fire then take 15 seconds to reload then YERARRH. Watching this is normally more boring than watching paint dry and at least paint serves some purpose, Empire’s only purpose was to fuck up as many aspects of the series as possible But Shogun 2 takes the series back to its much better roots. Large (yet samey) units of racist Japanese people (the angry eye ones) charge at each other ferociously, and the new graphics make it more satisfying as ever. Shogun 2 is a very good strategy game; while still not as good as the exceptional Medieval 2 it still has the same style of great battles. The AI is also no longer pathetic. ANECDOTE TIME: One time a few years ago while play arguably the shittest expansion pack in Total War History, Rome Total War: Alexander, Alexander was trapped in a city under attack by Persians who vastly outnumbered him. I thought I’d try to get him an honourable death so I could be defeated in style. But after one wave of enemies the Persians just stopped attacking and started repositioning their army again and again, meaning I could just sit there peppering them with arrows and win the battle. There’s none of that anymore, I’ve lost count of the amount of times the great AI has taken all of my provinces within the first 4 turns. Unfortunately this game still has hints of the monumentally awful Napoleon before it laced throughout, such as attrition. It just goes to show you should never stop fucking that one awesome prostitute (Romeo Med-two) by moving onto another (Napolempire) to see if the experience is good. Most probably it will be shit and even if you go back that first prostitute won’t feel the same and you’ll still have chlamydia from the second dirty prostitute, hence Shogun 2. Very good, but poisoned by its shit predecessors.

John: God that analogy was strange and long winded, just like how long it takes to lead this game. Seriously, it would be quicker to paint the Sistine chapel in semen than to load this game. Still good though.

4. Portal 2

John: Well we have another game in the Half-Life universe, it's just a shame it isn't Half Life 2 Episode 3... In fact, no it's not just a shame, it almost made me slam an ice pick into my brain. But that's enough of that, and let's get back onto Portal 2. I know already I was one of the 0.01% of creatures who didn't think the original game was this revolutionary masterpiece, and the only other thing that thought that was probably a brain dead slug who is addicted to crack. It was a good game, but I was too busy playing the much better game of Half Life 2 Episode 2 like any sane person should have done.

However Portal 2 was an extremely good game, like all Valve game are. The story was excellent, and the puzzles where more puzzling than something which is very puzzling. They kept you thinking for hours (well about 10 minutes) until you finally felt success when you managed to complete it. The game had an extremely good (but cliché) story, which is like a marijuana cake having money inside of it, and the humour was amazing, well other than Glados, who's humour seemed to be that of a depressed undertaker, and Wheatley, played by Stephen Merchant doing his best impressions of somebody who's mother drunk a few too many pints when he was a foetus, he started getting annoying eventually.

The game has the re-playability of dying, even in its excellent co-op mode, which is extremely fun to play with an acquaintance (because, as I have stated repeatedly, I'm less likable than a Robot Hitler spreading leukaemia, so have no friends) and can lead to many laughs while you are trying to figure out the solutions to problems, or just pissing about.

Dan: So then: Portal 2, very much the sequel to Portal 1, and a very good game. Portal 1 was good, but it is not totally flawless and DOES NOT deserve all of the praise it got as “the best game ever”. So anyway, one of the redeeming qualities of Portal was its humour, and it’s very much back here. A lot of (particularly Wheatley’s) lines made me laugh a lot, but it’s GLaDoS that disappointed me the most. She is NOT funny at ALL any MORE. All her jokes are basically “you killed me, that was mean”, with different spins on that. The game seriously overstays its welcome too; it’s like a tramp you gave a pound to following you around the shops all day desperately seeking more. Near the beginning I was having a lot of fun with some of the new features so the game said “Oh! Then I guess you won’t mind if I drag everything out for 20 chambers?” The amount of repetition is startling, but it’s forgiven by me because the puzzles are genuinely challenging this bloody time. The first 16 puzzles in Portal (there were only 19 for fucks’ sake) were pathetic, and wouldn’t challenge a foetus whose head had been squashed by super compressed stupid. Portal 2 in comparison is very hard particularly near the end and the humour from Wheatley and Cave Johnson is great. This combined with the aforementioned new gameplay tweaks makes Portal 2 a fantastic sequel to a good, overrated game.

3. Orcs must Die

Dan: Orcs Must Die is the best Indie game I’ve played in a while (if not the best ever), but that’s partly because I naively stay clear from Indie titles until people say they’re excellent, because most are worse than a snake with rusty nails for fangs. Orcs Must Die continued this trend, after it received critical acclaim. It was on the Steam sale and I bought it and instantly it jumped up and down on any scepticism I had, and devoured any remains when I unlocked the extraordinarily satisfying wall trap that minced Orcs up into bloody pieces. This game sealed the number 3 spot when I got a catapult trap that launched Orcs into lava and acid pits. There are a few reasons this game didn’t get higher, one being it isn’t as substantial as the top 2, and it’s less substantial than Modern Warfare 3 (just) and it’s higher because MW3 sucked rat fur while this kicks so much arse that a shoe imprint is now a genetic disorder. You play some smug wanker, basically the equivalent of Merlin as a frat boy, but this is entirely forgotten around the time 20 Orcs are mashed into chunks while I scream with laughter. This basically is what games are at their core: fun. It doesn’t need a great story like Half Life, or gameplay overwhelmingly varied like Deus Ex, it just needs the genocide of the entire Orc race. The Orcs are all bafflingly cute, and never seem like much of a threat. They all sound like the clever gangster’s sidekick called Chug or Mugsy or something, who sounded like they learning to talk while voice acting. All in all Orcs Must Die is ridiculously fun, and the perfect thing to wind down to after a stressful day at work. Plus it’s cheap.

John: This was easily my surprise game of the year. I don't usually like arrow traps as they get more boring as you go along until the only way you can alleviate yourself from boredom is to watch dying grass grow. Orcs must Die however, is an exception to this. It is probably one of the most enjoyable games you will ever play ever and rightfully received acclaim and blow jobs off almost every reviewer.

If you want an indication of how fun this game is, just think, it managed to get higher than Serious Sam 3 on this list for that fact alone. The only main point of the game is for you to set up cunningly violent trap combinations to see how you can commit fantasy genocide on more Orcs than a Lord of the Rings convention. You can crush them, shoot at them, set them on fire, and then just catapult them back into the traps to see if they can get through the toughest obstacle course ever again. Your choice in traps is almost limitless, short of just nuking all the orcs.

The only real problems are the lack of multiplayer, as playing this game in multiplayer would be possibly one of the most enjoyable experiences I could think of, and the other problem is thatsome of the enemies are ridiculously overpowered. But that doesn't matter as it is hilariously fun and cheap anyway.

2. Deus Ex Human Revolution

John: You know what, when I first played this game, I thought, this will easily be the game of the year, nothing could compete with how great this is. I was later proved long as you can see in a minute if you read on, but that is a testament to rival those in the bible to show how good this game is.

I myself didn't think this would be a good game, the original is one of my favourite games of all time, and after Invisible War my hopes weren't high, however I was proved wrong and enjoyed this game. The ability to go into any mission in whatever way you want is great, you could just go in all guns blazing like a Bi-polar bank robber, or you can sneak in and take out the enemy non violently like a pacifist rapist to name just a few.

The story itself is amazing, and the bet I have seen from any game in a long time, introducing Adam Jensen, the man who seems to drink a glass of gravel every morning, as he tries to fight through a conspiracy bigger than what the secret ingredient for McDonalds is (hint, it's probably Chicken penis.) This is because it turns out he is a less competent security than Kermit the Frog, so allows every scientist in the facility to get massacred with the ease of slicing butter.

Then you have the large open world hub zones, with more to explore than a Temple of Treasures, and a lot of different side quests to take part in. These zones are extremely detailed and help flesh out the game world and make it seem more real. You even get experience for exploring these like Jensen is training to become a mouse. The world is also extremely complex with its politics, as you would expect from a Deus Ex game, with fighting between the Anti-Augs and the people for it.

Some of the Augmentations are amazing (for example the typhoon which allows you to fire grenades from out of your arse) and add a lot to the way you want to play the game in its early parts. Many can be very fun to use, however some give an extremely annoying cut scene every time you perform them , such as the Icarus landing system, but this doesn't stop them from being enjoyable to use. They also make you feel like you are actually superhuman, which is how augments should make you feel in a Deus Ex game.

Also the game brings back inventory Tetris, which is a great addition for the game if your nostalgic, like me.

I assume though, that I will have to talk about the criticisms of the game , for example the fact that you can get every augmentation possible by the end of the game, not varying the combat at all, and turning it just a little stale. Another is the inclusion of the boss battles, which in the original you could perform in any which way you want, from shooting them, to sneaking past them, to offering them sexual favours to advance to the next point. In this game however you just have to fight some a few guys who pop up like there the Spanish Inquisition which nobody expected and proceed to beat the crap out of Jensen even if he has become superhuman. The options for these guys are shoot or die (which happens a lot), which becomes very boring, very quickly. And the last boss isn't even a boss, more a target to shoot at.

I won't even talk about the fact that Adam Jensen has lost the ability to punch somebody, so instead you get a jarringly placed animation which could be replaced with a Glenn Beck sex scene for how well they are placed in. However all these reasons shouldn't put you off this amazing game, which you should all play unless you want me to take you around the back and shoot you through the back of the head.

Dan: Having only THIS YEAR played Deus Ex 1 and liked it a lot, I was looking forward to this being released. Then I realised that it’d already been out for about a month, so I found it cheap and bought it. I did a pretty in-depth review (put a link over the word “review” with the review from a few months ago) of all the pillars of gameplay, and what I like most about it is it mixes some of the good parts of modern action games (nice graphics, a particularly vibrant colour palette, good stealth) and mixed it perfectly with the element of choice from the first game, which let you play anyway you wanted. You could be a stealthy sniper who uses his silenced rifle to eliminate resistance then pick his way through, or you could just go balls to the wall and use a flame thrower to turn the NSF into a tasty snack. Human Revolution emulates this perfectly, and the story is almost as engaging and brilliant as the first. It definitely has the best story in any shooter this year, it’s also the best Shooter this year. That is, if you count it as a shooter. Personally I count it as an Action-RPG, but IGN class it as a shooter so there you fucking go, bitch. So then: criticisms. The boss fights is a nice juicy one, but that’s been ripped to pieces by every single critic ever, so I’ll just say that it surgically removes the element of choice in favour of chucking in some fuckwit we’ve never heard anything about. Fortunately I’ve heard the boss fight in the Missing Link DlC is much improved, so you can get that and shut the fuck up. Another one is the omission of melee weapons and instead just has stupid half-baked animation that blow you out of the experience like a hosepipe on overload, but you need never use this. All these critiques are nit-picks, so just ignore them and play the bloody game, because it’s great.

John: And now for the number 1 game, which should be obvious, as your all cheating scum who read what it was before reading this sentence, and so are all going to hell.

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Dan: To repeat myself YET AGAIN, Skyrim is the best RPG I’ve ever played. Oh for fucks’ sake, I can’t think of anything to say that I haven’t said before, so see the review we did for Christmas if you want the full opinion. To show you why this is the best game of the year I’ll quickly tell a little story: Buttbeard, my Bosmer assassin, had just got a quest to assassinate a bandit leader in a fort, so I rode there on my horse. After entering the fort I went into sneak mode and got behind my target, after backstabbing a lot of his mates. Unfortunately, he was surrounded by more enemies than he would be if he was at a mass bandit reunion. So I equipped the Dragon Shout “throw voice”, which would make enemies think they heard the shout from the other side of the room. They immediately began to walk over that way, giving my time to sneak behind my target and slash his throat. No one noticed, and I escaped into the daylight. And then I heard it. The Dragon. One of the best pieces on the Skyrim soundtrack kicked in and I thought “let’s go motherfucker”. The bandits in the fort I hadn’t cleared out began to attack the dragon, firing arrows at it and being incinerated. Then the Dragon turned to me. I smiled, activated my power and became a werewolf. Grinning to myself, I charged out of reach of the dragon’s fire breath, and devoured the dead bandits’ corpses, giving me longer as a werewolf. I turned, and charged the dragon. My mighty claws quickly ripped the dragon apart, and its soul went directly into me, unlocking second stage fire breath, while I laugh. You see, none of that is scripted. It only happened in my play through, and will not happen to you (John: Correction, that basically happened to me, except I didn't turn into a werewolf, because it is pointless). But that’s fine, because something equally as thrilling will happen in your playthrough, and I can never get that. And that, people, is why Skyrim is the best game of the year. It’s fucking awesome.

John: Nothing much to say about it other than what he just said really, it is an extremely amazing game where you can all go and create your own adventures. It is not as good as Morrowind, but better than Oblivion by a large gap.

John: So there we go, an end to another year which has gone faster than a man with premature ejaculation. There were quite a lot of disagreements while working on this, the main one being if Team Fortress 2 should count, as even though it wasn't released this year, it was made Free to play, so just to say, if we did count it, it would have blow everything else away. Now go enjoy your New Year you bastards and we'll be back then.

Edit 28th January 2012- John- I have now decided that Skyrim is certainly not the best game of last year and is probably 2nd with Deus Ex 1st. Yes Skyrim in an amazing sandbox with an amazing world to explore HOWEVER, the combat as I have mentioned, is bloody well terrible, and in all honesty, none of the stories they try to tell you are done very well, and are actually boring and awful stories. As I said it's a great sandbox to create your own adventure but game wise, it is not.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Christmas Rant

John: Oh Skyrim. Oh Skyrim, Oh Skyrim, Oh Skyrim. Finally an Elder Scrolls game which can stand tall and proud alongside the great game of Morrowind. There are no words to describe how much I enjoy this game, other than imagining a truck load of naked woman and money. It feels like an almost real world, which you can explore while other people go on along with their daily lives. However as this is such an extensive RPG we have run into many problems on how to review it, so instead we will write many subsections on different parts of the game and give our views on them.

Dan: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the best RPG I’ve ever played. The amount of choices in character levelling alone is astounding; it allows me to build an assassin who can silently roll behind his mark, cut their throat and dissipate into nothingness before the unfortunate fellow’s mates can do anything more than stare at his body. I can sprint and jump off a cliff, land in a river and blast a dragon flying over head with lightning. I can use my Unrelenting Force shout to use a massive force of wind to make Imperial soldiers sail over entire forts. I can listen to guards tell me about how they took arrows in the knee. I could literally go on for pages and pages, describing the quests and situations the almost immaculate Skyrim allows you to do and get into.

John: Anybody who says this game is best RPG ever is an idiot and deserves to be immolated after having his balls doused in petrol. It is not as good as Morrowind, no matter how close it comes and retarded people believe it is. However that doesn't mean it's not the best RPG I've played in the past 5 or 6 years, the only other one which can even come close in The Witcher 2 (I am not classing Deus Ex: HR as an RPG for this comparison ok... Got that), but Skyrim easily outshines that. Now on with the review.

Main Story

John: So Skyrim is the 5th game in the Elder Scrolls series, and not Oblivion 2 as some idiots believe. If anybody thinks that, I want them shot in the head with a laser rifle controlled by a rabid dog. The story revolves around a giant Dragon named Alduin coming back during the time of a huge civil war in Skyrim and subsequently reviving a load of other Dragons. So as Dovakhiin you have to go stop them by shouting at them like you're a character from any British soap.
I still haven't finished the main story because I kept getting distracted, however from nearly finishing it, it seemed extremely short and boring, which is why I was distracted, and also very strange for any game which includes dragons. However who plays an Elder Scrolls game for the story in all honesty. Also has some pretty good looking parts in it, just not as good as everything else.

Dan: The Main Quest of Skyrim is, unfortunately, a let-down. That’s not to say it’s not good: in some cases it feels spectacular, the first dragon fight near Whiterun is great. The way the dragon swoops and breathes flame on you as you desperately take cover in the tower, and how you charge forward and start hacking at its head looks and feels amazing. The problem was this: the next dragon fight had me running away from a flying lizard that was breathing fire on me as it swooped over then I charged and starting hacking at its head. And the same thing for the next one. And the next. The dragon fights do get very repetitive, but they ALWAYS stay rewarding. I can sit through Generic Dragon Fight #37 if it means I can use its soul to turn enemies to ice. The story (I haven’t actually finished it yet) is… well it’s good, I guess. The Main Quest has some great moments, as I say, but also some really irritating ones, mainly the one in the Thalmor embassy where they seem to either spot you from 200 yards away or block every door you need to get through, meaning stealth is almost impossible (so I was buggered).

The Civil War

John: The Civil war is possibly my favourite part of the game, fighting off many of those Imperial bastards to free Skyrim for the Nords (Yes I'm a Stormcloak.) Some of my favourite moments have been attacking forts and the cities of [redacted] with my Stormcloak allies to get Ulfric Stormcloak on the throne. (No I don't care if they are more racist than an angry Nick Griffin)

Dan: The Civil War that ties sort of into the backstory and a bit of the Main Quest feels a lot more rewarding and satisfying. In Oblivion the great battle for Tamriel was fought with about 12 soldiers in a small clearing. This is the gaming equivalent of going to watch the Lord of the Rings to find out it’s the pacifist version. In Skyrim the battles even stretch across cities, with catapults that do fuck all firing flaming rocks that do fuck all. I can Fus Ro Dah people off the walls while I decapitate an Empire prick in front of me. Anyway, I’ve gone on too long about that, so I’ll summarise the Main Quest/Story. The Main Quest is good, if underwhelming and repetitive, and the quests about the Civil War are, although not the main quest, excellent and tie in to the Main Story nicely.

Dragons

John: The Dragons themselves are pretty damned cool for the first few times you see them, however later in the game with good armour they just become a nuisance, as if you were being attacked by a very angry dust mite. And the fact that the game seems to throw them at you every 5 seconds just leaves you feeling disappointed. However no matter how many times you fight them, they are always, always more interesting than the fucking Oblivion Gates, however even if they had been replaced with some guy poking a needle in your eye they would have been less irritating.

The World
(Caution, this is me basically wanking over the world design)

John: My god the world is beautiful. It appears to have been forged by God himself. This is one thing I believe it does better than Morrowind. The amazing looking rivers, the awe inspiring mountains which form the skyline of the province, the wonderfully built cities. It's all amazing. It's not the most graphically advanced game I've played, but the detail, the detail must have been created by Vincent Van Gogh while high. Each city has its own style, its own personality, where the people go about their daily lives as if this was real.

It is easily the best part of the game, just exploring the word to see what you can find is endlessly enjoyable to take part in.

Dan: The world of Skyrim is vast, and you can literally keep playing forever, apparently. The Radiant Story system keeps generating quests for you, even though these are utterly generic and dull as fuck. It’s like being promised cocaine for the rest of your life then about a year in it’s switched to Coca Cola (ATTENTION: The Rofling Officer and John Smith definitely do NOT advocate the use of Cocaine, if you use such drugs please snort them so hard they enter your brain and you turn to mush you loser, thank you). Skyrim’s world is magnificent, glorious, incredible, unimaginable, and now I’m starting to run out of synonyms, but the point stands. Skyrim is so dense, so rich, so detailed, that everything like a Dungeon has its own backstory. I enter one and a ghost tells me to leave, but then I discover it’s not a ghost at all, but some wanker pretending to be one. I enter another, and another, real, ghost helps me proceed so he can take revenge on a Draugr called Olaf One-Eye. The cities are generally brilliant; Solitude sits atop a cliff looking gracefully down at the frozen sea, Whiterun lies in the middle of the tundra where giants herd their mammoths, and Windhelm is in the frozen, snowy north and has Jack the Ripper. Saying that, one city (Markarth) is SHIT, it looks awful, all the NPCs are hollow and have the same character trait and the design of the city is fucked up.
John: He is right, Markath is shit. Staying there is like applying to have a nail through the foot.

Dungeons

John: The dungeons are, for a start much better than Oblivions, which made me want to endlessly slam a hammer down onto my head due to how boring they were. However they are also nowhere near as huge as the ones in Daggerfall, which is actually a relief. The ones in Skyrim are extremely linear, and also some seem very similar, however they are varied enough to not get boring, and the stories in some of them are very intriguing. They do feel like they have been designed by a man with a fetish for long corridors though, and I hate that.

The Dark Brotherhood

Dan: The Dark Brotherhood quests of Oblivion were my favourite part of the game, as being an assassin is a route I always take in games like this. But now in Skyrim my choices were so open and great that I could stealthily roll behind my target, slash him with my daggers, doing 30x normal damage then disappear into the shadows as the targets bodyguards turn around. This is around 13 times as fun as Oblivion. Saying that the actual quests themselves are a little disappointing; they all feel like just one LOOOONG quest leading up to the target that I stopped caring about 3 quests ago. And even that isn’t that hard as you can just hack your way through everyone as they’re sailors and have no armour and are stupid. I was expecting this to be an ultra-hard test of my sneak skills, to help me appreciate all I’d learned like the last quest for the Thieves Guild in Oblivion. Don’t take this to mean that I didn’t LIKE the Dark Brotherhood quests, overall they all feel great and have some very satisfying moments that I could (and will) do again and again, but it just doesn’t feel that climactic.

The Companions
[Kind of/not really spoilers here for the Companions quests, you should be safe]

John: As the character I usually play as is some sort of stealthy warrior who is also a duel wielding badass, I felt that the guilds which seemed to fit me the most where the Dark Brotherhood (the only good part of Oblivion) and the Companions. At first the companions quests seemed extremely boring, involving the same collect an item shit that spreads through RPGS like the plague... or an STD. However half way through the quests, when you become a werewolf, it suddenly becomes a whole lot more fun. Your attacking strongholds of wolf hunters, hunting down the remaining organisation in revenge missions. It even becomes a little sad near the end after the Silver Hand assault Jorrvaskr. This all lead up to one of my favourite final quests of any organisation as you journey through Ysgramor's tomb.
Put it this way, I liked the companions so much I married Aela... Also that leaves me thinking, does marrying an NPC who just happens to be a werewolf, BUT you only see them as a wolf once, mean your into bestiality. What about if your also a wolf?

Bards College

John: Fucking, fucking terrible. I would rather have my balls pierced by a boiling hot spike than have to sit through this crap again.

Thieves Guild and Mages College

John: Haven't done much of these really and neither has Dan.

Marriage

The marriage in the game does at first seem pretty pointless as all it means is that you can have a meal cooked for you. However if you think about it, this is a role playing game, and add a lot to the immersion in the game. But then again if you enjoy immersion in a game "you're probably less popular than Hitler dancing on the graves of puppy's who have died from leukaemia" - Some retarded person.

Other Bad Points

John: The game was almost certainly not ready for it's release date, it was filled to the brim with bugs. It was and still is more buggy than a termite mound, with countless crashes to desktop for me, like a blind person driving a Ferrari. And (as I play on the PC as i'm part of some master race) the UI was, and still is dreadful, it was as if they had a 3 year old without a brain to create it. Somehow it was even worse than Oblivion's. Yes there are mods to fix it, but it is dissapointing nonetheless, no matter how much I love this game.

Conclusion

John: Even if you do somehow get bored of this game, just remember, mod tools will be released in January, so people will be creating new stories for this game for years. (And if you're not on PC, always remember Bethesda's own DLC, no don't shudder, it's not horse armour, and they have vowed to be releasing huge content in these, my bet, something about the Thalmor.)

Dan: In conclusion, YES SKYRIM IS THE BEST RPG I’VE EVER PLAYED SHUT UP, and it takes my game of the year slot. I can tell I’m going to be playing this excellent game for years and years, just like I did with Oblivion, the difference being this one is far better. There are a few let downs (which include a LOT of hilarious and game breaking bugs which we haven’t really touched on), but overall The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a wonderful RPG, and the only one I’ve played that lets me customise my character’s play style to the point of absurdity. A massive step up from Oblivion, and also a massive one from Fallout 3, but that was shit anyway.

John: In conclusion, it is not the best RPG ever, but it is certainly the game of the year and is amazing, so if you don't play it you deserve to be raped by a pig, or due to Darwin's theory, killed in the name of natural selection.

Both: So have a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season from us guys, and just remember FUS RO DAH!

Orcs Must Die Rant

John: A game genre which seem to be popping up more than a cock with viagra, this year, are the 3rd and 1st person tower defence games, such as Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum. They all involve setting up a long path for the enemies to walk down, with many corners in it for rapists to jump out and molest them. Along these paths you set up different weapons to slaughter whatever mindless AI you happen to be fighting, hoping they don't get to the core full of puppys/chocolate/ hookers which you want all for yourself. However now theirs Orcs Must Die, which removes all the unnecessary crap like forcing enemies down certain paths, and replaces it with more killing and gore than Friday the 13th as made by a Sweeney Todd. But god is it good killing.

Dan: Oh yeah, I’m so smart… and handsome,” says the smug wanker I’m having to play as he sets up what will surely be the greatest trap ever, a floor plate that catapults Orcs into wall blades that tear them into teeny tiny pieces. At which point I have a little squirt. This is what gaming is all about. Orcs Must Die is the funnest thing I’ve done since that time I accidently inserted my cock into a washing machine. Every level is fulfilling, the traps unlock in a tantalising order. At first I thought “Wow wall blades! They sound awesome!” which they were (oh fucking hell they’re AMAZING), then I unlock the floor plate that catapults enemies into fucking lava. Right now I’ve just got a masher plate that crushes enemies from the ceiling… simply saying those words makes me want to go and play this game. There’s only one possible criticism I can think of; the cunt you play is so arrogant and smug and stupid that I don’t really want him to win. I want him to fall in lava, or acid, or get catapulted out of a window like the 4,500 Orcs that have already gone down that path. Another little nit-pick is that ogres seem a little over powered. I could have designed an elaborate set of traps that massacres any Orc within a 10 mile radius into little hilarious pieces like in an insane asylum crossed with a butchers, then an ogre will run in and sprint at me, ignoring the arrow traps and smack me like the wanker that I am. But this is very minor; this is just a great game, hands down one of my favourite games of 2011, certainly the best Indie game I’ve ever played. Buy it. Now. Please.

John: This game reminds me of the Saw films designed some frat boys. The main character sounds like he looks at himself in the mirror more than he kills orcs by the sound of what he says, and he has the intelligence of a monkey dropped as a child, but in all honesty he doesn't bother me that much, and if it was a serious character, this games tone would have dropped more than a heavy black and white camera. One thing I have noticed however is that some of the traps are more useless than a tampon for men, and by half way through the 2nd act of the game, you basically have every trap and spell worthwhile, in comparison some are extremely overpowered, such as the fire floor thing (can't remember the name) which annihilates almost all orcs faster than if I just nuked them with ponies.

Another complaint which many people have with game is the lack of bloody co-op. This is a game which would suit co-op more than chloroform and anybody from Weight Watchers when chatting up women. However I myself don't believe that co-op is necessary, as I think the joy is seeing that one of your friends has beaten you on the leader boards for a level, and thus spending the next few hours trying to beat it, and adding re-playability. This is certainly my Indie game of the year as well (yes even better than Bastion and Minecraft), so commend Robot Entertainment for their effort here. I look forward to their next game, but before that, buy this now or suffer the wrath of a lead pipe to the crotch... While on fire.

Dan: Overall, Orcs Must Die is a great game, the traps are the most satisfying thing in a game since Hitler Blaster 3, the third game in a series where you blast Hitler in the face (with Stalin joining him in a final boss fight). Speaking of Hitler and Stalin, Orcs Must Die is really just a fantasy genocide simulator, except floor traps that catapult Orcs back into walls with blades on them wins out against firing squads. The guy you play is a wanker, but whatever. It doesn’t bother me that much, and it shouldn’t bother you that much. Now as I’m about half way through Orcs Must Die, I’m going to go and play it some more. For those that are unsure of buying this game, please just do it. Support the developers who made this great, great game. Slaughter some Orcs, set up traps, and level up abilities.

John:.... And wipe out a race of humanoid creatures, Now buy it for £11, it's cheaper than an ugly hooker.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Rant

Dan: Another year, another map pack. Except a bit bigger this time. Modern Warfare 3 is fucking fucking fucking awful, the worst game I have played this year. It took everything that Black Ops changed about the CoD formula (admittedly not much) and destroyed it, instead releasing Modern Warfare 2 again. The Multiplayer is identical, the campaign is barely interactive, too short, has a ridiculous and retarded story and is as boring as ever.

Without further ado:


Campaign!

Dan: I thought arcade rail-shooters were a thing of the past, but they make a full return here in Modern Warfare 3. Every move you make (every breath you take) is scrutinised by the game before you can do it, and 9/10 they'll refuse to let it happen. Say I want to scout ahead of my squad to check the enemy positions, if I go too far ahead of them, I'll fail the mission. I can't open doors, so I can't flank enemies and so on. Not to mention how the game falls ill to the Black Ops problem of being designed by a 5 year old playing with his toy soldiers. Everything on screen explodes at some point, and whenever something isn't exploding it's building up to something exploding. Every section I played (controlling a drone, manning a minigun) all started with an actor half-heartedly saying: "Yuri! Get on tha' minigun!", and ended with it exploding and blood splashing onto my eyes like I've got sunglasses on. The shooting hasn't changed at all, there are no good changes to note really, except maybe Strike Packages, but that's for the multiplayer segment.

The story is 69 kinds of oral sex, that is to say shit. It feels like they interviewed an 8 year old with what his perfect story would be with loads of explosions and deaths and things falling over (it'd be alright if people cared, but when the Eiffel Tower falls over no one gives a shit), then animated the notes. It's both ludicrous and incredibly basic. There are no plot twists at all, it'd be like building up to a titanic boss fight and then he just slips on a stone and dies (which is almost what happened in Fable 2). I could forgive almost all of this, all of it, IF THE GAME HADN'T RECYCLED SET PIECES FROM PAST GAMES. That's the unforgivable part. The favela level is copy and pasted here twice, and then theres Gulag 2: A Castle This Time.

I think Modern Warfare 3 is the unholy offspring of arrogance and laziness. Infinity Ward have become cocky... cocks. They think just releasing the identical game again and again, year in year out, is acceptable. Well it fucking isn't. Yet another thing that annoys me about this game is that it's selling millions upon millions of copies, encouraging Infinity Ward and Treyarch to just rinse and repeat with Call of Duty. Imagine if that spreads to Valve like an STD in a brothel, soon Team Fortress 3 will be released but is a cover shooter with realistic graphics and you have to pay £12 for a handful of maps ARRRGGGHGGHAG{ O@GAUEGUKGEFILYGAYG!YILG!O@!GHGAFO!

Now then, rage from me over, John's turn:

John: The story of Modern Warfare 3 appears to have been written by George Bush if he had ADD, it jumps around more than a frog with a stick up its arse, and there are more explosions than a firework factory run by Bomberman. The story starts in India before inexplicably jumping to America, and then back to India, and then to Russia and then to Sierra Leone and then to London and then to Germany and then to Somalia and then to Paris and then to Russia and then to Dubai... God that list is less tedious to read than playing the damn game and probably more interactive as well. The story is Russia invade the world (and by world I mean America), you stop them, then some Russian guy you hate because he refused to share sweets when you where kids tries to blow up the world... Explosion. That's the background of the whole story. Then you and Phileas Fogg go on a trip to kill him, who at this point is probably twirling his moustache and laughing manically

It's obvious their trying to give a "realistic" impression of war, but this is only realistic if war was a rollercoaster designed by Michael Bay. At one bit, the Eiffel Tower collapses, the characters are so nonchalant about it, I think if the world had blown up, they wouldn't bat an eyelid. It is at that point I decided the game had gone from shit to being a huge sign saying "FREE CHOCOLATE FROM LOOKING AT THESE EXPLOSIONS!!! BOOM, EXPLOSIONS ARE COOL!!" The game appears to have been created from levels trying to outdo the last for explosions and Magnostruction (a combination of Magnitude and destruction... Making up words is fun.) In all honesty, these explosions look shit anyway, especially considering that the engine was probably created from sticking a paperclip in some bluetack.

Then you have the points where it becomes a movie, and by those points I mean the whole game. The amount of times it takes control away from you is astonishing; I'm playing a game not watching Team America. But even if you do get control of your character, it doesn't stop the lack of control. I can't even open doors on my own for Christ sake. I only have 4 explanations for this, 1. My characters actually been lobotomised and forgotten how to use a door handle, 2. My character is so low in rank if he dares open a door he's be court-martialled and even probably shot due to treason and reasons of national security, 3.The developers are worried I would walk through a door and step into Narnia or the land of strippers and 4. The developers think we're retarded so want to hold our hands in case we get lost in their grey corridor of "fun" (and by fun I mean utter boredom.) If I was them I'd put signs over every door saying that through them are the "Chocolate Lands" or the "Unicorn and Puppy Sanctuary."

And on the subject of doors, why are they indestructible other than with the plot convenience explosive devices, which also seem to turn you into an X-Man for 10 seconds. Why aren't we making Tanks or Jets out of doors if they're so indestructible. Get on that US Military.

Now I think we should talk about "that level", you know the one where the kid dies. I don't know what the developers where trying to show at this point, but it seems more pointlessly added in than if they had a level where Captain Price is molested by a Silverback Gorilla. My reaction on that level was just to search it for anything generically British, just so Americans could actually recognise it was in London. Also this and the previous level also show how retarded the terrorists are, and how they only succeed in these attacks due to how even more Brain Dead the Special Forces are. Seriously who believes that a truck with the words "Charity International" on it are actual Charity Truck.

Now to round off my views on it. It's a boring round the world trip, with generic, guessable moments which were supposedly shocking, but failed at that due to my lack of caring about the characters, and how cliché and forced out the subsequent dialogue was.


Special Ops!

Dan: Special Ops, or Spops for short, was without doubt, the best part of Modern Warfare 2. And it was the part people took the least notice of. The missions were short and satisfying, especially playing them with a friend (which is unfortunate as I don't have any). Admittedly some missions were shit, an example being the ones with Ghillie snipers whose scopes flashed like the Paparazzi had just seen Lady Gaga's cock. But what are they like this time around?

Well, they're exactly the same. The difference between this and the situation with the Multiplayer and Campaign, is that they're still fresh enough to enjoy. The survival mode is also a step up from the incredibly monotonous Zombies mode when it takes about 15 rounds to get going and then you find out it's shit anyway. The Spops missions are pretty fun, with a nice variety of styles and objectives to complete. There are some I wanted to go stealth on but since the game is so scripted I wasn't allowed to, and every enemy in the current solar system homed in on me if I so much as blinked. So yeah, other than a few scripting issues (AGAIN!) the missions in Spec Ops are very good. Moving on...

Spec Ops survival. A better, more frantic Zombies mode to be honest. It is a good step, using Predator drones and stuff like that instead of listen to vaguely racist Russian stereotypes drink vodka while you barricade a window for the squillionth time. It still takes ages to get going, with the first five rounds basically sending about 5 men at you and patronising me to the level I wanted to play Multiplayer and get called a "n00b" by 12 year olds.

But this is all irrelevant. Even though this is the best part of the game, people don't give two yellow shits about it. It's all Multiplayer. Speaking of that...


Multiplayer!

John: The Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer is boring. All it involves is you running around, before being shot by some hacker from underneath the map while he shoves his metaphorical cock down your mouth.... Wait this is Modern Warfare 3, oh sorry, well easy mistake to make.

So other than a few changes, and by changes I mean the equivalent of somebody untying their shoelace to seem different, this is more similar to the online in (Insert any Call of Duty game here.) And as this is a Call of Duty multiplayer, it requires so little skill to play, a tree stump could do well... while blindfolded. Which to be honest is a good thing in a way, because requiring skill from the Call of Duty community would be like trying to have them explain to you what puberty is.

As this game is made using 7 year old technology, the game creaks like a lose floorboard in a haunted house, at times you feel like a lone hamster is just holding the graphics together. And then as most people will have bought this on console, you also have an aim assist helping you to kill somebody because 1. You're multiplayer character is probably augmented so can have his robot arms move the gun around, and 2. Playing shooters with a gamepad is like trying to play a racing game with your nob.

Modern Hackfest 3 has the 12 year olds that we all love, (groan) telling us that they fucked our mother last night. This seems to represent skill now a days, in the same way that Skill is also probably measured in how many times you can walk into a wall, or how many times you can stab yourself with a glass bottle.

These "highly skilled" players seem to believe that getting a high amount of kills, with a good kill to death is the ubër way of playing the game... Because you know, in team based games I always love the feeling of not being able to win due to a retarded team, it would be like having John Prescott on your football team for Christ sake. On a game mode like domination I would much rather have somebody who goes 5/10 but caps the control points often, rather than somebody who goes 20/1 but is sat at home shitting himself and crying to his mum while he does nothing for the team because he hasn't got the brain to comprehend anything other than himself.

It doesn't help that less is done to help this than is done to give Dust Mites the vote, and the support packages only helped a little, (Dan will talk about them) but the quickest way to level is to play these games in completely the wrong fashion, which is awful, it would be like the quickest way to cure an STI is to infect yourself with AIDS.

No matter what, this is still better than the Multiplayer of Black Ops, which was the equivalent of having my balls attacked by a rabid hamster. It was awful.

My rant is over now, Now Daniel can explain strike packages and other crap.


Dan: Let's get one thing clear from the start: this is NOT a new multiplayer. This is a patch for Modern Warfare 2 that gives some more maps. It's a £45 map pack. There are minimal gameplay improvements, literally identical interface to Modern Warfare 2. Death streaks are back. Fucking death streaks. The feature that rewards people for being dreadful at the game. The idea behind it is to "get someone who is shit back into the action", but 1) That is an awful idea, it gives no one the incentive to stop being 12 and awful and 2) The death streaks were things like "Run faster for 10 seconds... IT TAKES 10 SECONDS TO GET INTO THE FIGHT. Most are literally useless, and not to blow my own trumpet but I haven't used one yet. There is no need for them, they are awful.

The "new" game modes are either re-hashes of previous game modes crossed with another, and "Kill Confirmed", which would be a good idea if every FPS since the original Counter-Strike hadn't used it. You shoot someone and grab their dog tags to confirm the kill, at which point your announcer... announces "KILL CONFIRMED". Since he announces it with every single tag collected you'll be playing on mute within 2 minutes just to avoid the constant "Kil- kill con- kill confir- kill" like your listening to an awful remix in a montage, you wanker.

As you can tell, I hate montages. Why would you want to look up how other people play their game and record it because they're smug idiots, JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME YOURSELF. You'll (probably) have more fun, and if you get a decent kill (I say you, but if your on console it'll be your auto-aim) you'll feel much more superior than those montage wankers like Zzirgrizz.

The Strike Packages seemed like a good idea to me, but they're awful in real life. The Assault package just let's you unlock overpowered rewards you can pelt at people to kill them, because skill is overrated, so just as shit as ever. The Support package's gimmick is that when you die, your killstreak doesn't reset. So it isn't a streak then. To balance this out, the rewards are dreadful. The Juggernaught springs to mind, which makes you nigh-on indestructable while you unfairly rack up kills. Specialist package is yet another way for the game to be imbalanced. People get more and more perks for getting kills, so you can have a guy charging around at double speed with double health and extra bullet damage. There's not even anything to balance this out, say taking their radar off. No, if you're up against this guy, your only viable tactic is camp or quit.


CONCLUSION, YAY!!!! (I wanted it to sound important)

John: So their finishes our rant on the annual Call of Duty game, which is more of a definite than me being Cynical. So next year, when they release more than likely Black Ops 2, (and make me pray that the end of the world in 2012 was real) you will more than likely watch a movie instead of a singleplayer, with the most interactive experience you will perform is having to press a button every 5 minutes asking if you're sure you don't want to play online. Also zombies will be back, which is pointless, I think they should have a mode where we fight wves of snowmen who just want to be friends. I'm also going to call on a Call of Duty MMO now, it's almost a definite, the charge could be you getting violently sodomised twice a month and millions would still play it. Goodbye for now, and expect a Skyrim review (As it would be more like a love letter than a rant) sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Welcome to-Indie Royale Bundle 1

Today, dear invisible people who I wish read this Ranting Page. This is me bringing back my Rant "series" named Welcome to... About different Indie Games, which I started longer ago than it took for a Kardashian Marriage to finish, about World of Tanks.

I support indie Games, I don't know why most are crapper than a man who raps about the letter C, but I believe, as a gamer, it is my duty to help out Indie Developers and hope that some of them become a success story. This is why regularly I buy them on Steam with as much greed as an overweight Koala. And occasionally I do come across a gem of a game that I believe a lot more people should play, especially as most cost less than a blowjob from a vacuum cleaner.

And I'm not just talking about games like Minecraft, which became a success in a more amazing story than an erotic fiction book written by J.R.R Tolkien. No I'm talking about the ones which haven't been as much of a success, for example Dwarfs!? (Starring Simon from the Yogscast) which is more about Dwarfs than a program about Warwick Davis. It is for this reason I believe people should buy these games more, instead of just the big releases which cause more inflation of Hype than a Hot Air Balloon being blown up by an American Blow Job Dispenser.

So step in first the Humble Indie Bundle, and now the Indie Royale Bundle. These are bundles of Indie games which you can pay your own price for, from the cheapskate cunts who are a bigger disgrace to gaming than the person who made Muslim Masscare, until you get to the people who pay a hundred or Thousands of pounds to support the companies more than Viagra. In the Indie Royale Bundle all the money also goes to the developers. Now lets beging with the first game A.R.E.S. (By the way, I paid £10 for the bundle.)

A.R.E.S

Oh god it's a weird form of anime... Like all anime then but without the tentacle sex. So welcome to, what at the moment, appears to be the worst game in this bundle, and if I was caught saying that in Japan I would probably be lynched, more than likely from being strangles by school girls' underwear (oh family racist stereotypes.) It involves Robots kidnapping some woman you care less about than you care about than a fallen banana. So it's up to you, a cunt in a generically bad ass suit to go and save her.

It's a sidescrolling game, with guns which feel worse to shoot than a water pistol filled with bricks, and it causes more boredom than a dead squirrel, so I will probably never play this game again. And neither should you, unless you want to give yourself serious brain damage.

Sanctum

I know less about this game than I do about quantum physics, because to get the most fun out of it you need to play co-op, and I have no friends because I consider them more infuriating than a back rub from a jellyfish.

If you want to know about the game though, it is a co-op, first person, Tower defence shooter, in which you have to defeat waves of enemies before they get to your core, which seems to attract more people than a brothel. That is all I know about this game.

Gemini Rue

This was supposedly the best game of the bundle, and from what I've read on Rockpapershotgun, is widely acclaimed. But I hate Point and Clicks, I may as well have been asked to animate the sex life of Glenn Beck for how much I hate these games, but I played it anyway.

First thing I noticed was the art style, which fit the game extremely well, and from what I saw of the storyline, it was extremely interesting, but then we got to the point and click parts.

Playing a point and click game is like seeing a PowerPoint presentation designed by Stephen Hawking just to piss people off. They involve you clicking on random things on the screen until you break your mouse and have a stroke. There is absolutely no immersion, and you eventually resort to having to interact stupid stuff with other stupid stuff, for example Can this Condom kill a rat holding a grenade while wearing a top hat.

I left this game feeling bored, annoyed and angry, why the hell do people like Point and Clicks, do you also like getting a back massage from Freddy Krueger?

Nimbus

And now we get to the best game of the Bundle by a long way. It is a strange Race/puzzle game, in which you have to get to the end of the level by just bouncing yourself off of the different objects. It is extremely fiddly to control, and can be infuriating at times, but that all adds to the appeal of the game,

The game has a great art style, which is extremely shiny and glossy, like a mirror covered in varnish, and is an easy game just to go into and play, so go get it, or don't, because to be honest even after all this i'd rather spend £5 on other better games.

Blizzcon 1

So over this last weekend another Blizzcon has been and gone like a snowman in Mordor and as always.... I didn’t go, because I have no money like at every other Blizzcon. However I did watch the stream live, as well has have some sort of internet party with a group of mates who also did by talking on our IRC channel, so because of these (what some may consider sad, but those people are larger idiots than a fat person with no brain, so there opinions don’t count) qualifications, I believe I can talk about it anyway, like a fat person could talk about Mcdonalds.

So Blizzcon, Blizzards annual conference thing, which has more things to do with Blizzards than a presentation on safety in the arctic, where they announce all their games or show coverage of ones that already have been, and this year was no different, which many major games in production by them. However all in all it’s really just an excuse for everyone to get drunker than the city of Essex, which I have no idea how that is possible, but still. Anyway this year at Blizzcon there were four major announces, along with a load of little crap I care less about than I care about the financial situation of Activision, or the Death of Gadaffi, pick one of those which least offends you and then follow me on a magical tour of these.

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Now we’ll start this off with the game I know the least about because.... well I just never got that into Starcraft 2, I played a lot of the first game but I was less into Starcraft 2 than a Tortoise is in a Marathon.
So basically all I know is that you guys get a new campaign to play where you get to play as the Zerg, so has more bugs in it than a fat frog’s stomach. There are also a few new additions and tweaks to the multiplayer game which will either piss off or excite the pros, I’m not sure which yet, because I’m not a pro.

To be honest if you want accurate news on Starcraft 2 your better asking somebody who has more knowledge of the game, instead of forcing me to spout more bullcrap than a cow on laxatives. Try Husky Starcraft, Day 9 or even Total Biscuit, they all know more about this game than me, and it also allows me to shamelessly plug youtube channels for people who care less about my existence than North Korea does for democracy.

One piece kind of piece of Starcraft news which I was interested is the next game I’m going to talk about, as it is really a complete game in its own right like that analogy I could use at this point but choose not to...

DOTA (The Blizzard version)

There are more MOBA games hanging around the interwebs now than there is porn and eventually we’ll all be wanking to towers in lanes... God that's a terrifying future.

The popular version of DOTA which we know today started with a Mod for Warcraft 3 (yes there where similar concepts before that), and is a slight cross between a Real Time Strategy and RPG, and is strange in the way that you go through the whole RPG cycle in about a 40 minute game. The game is split into 3 lanes with towers in them and the goal is to push the enemy back to their base and destroy their nexus (yes I play too much LOL.)

The good thing about this version of DOTA is that for a start it is free, which makes everything seem better than a money covered icecream... surrounded by naked woman. It also differentiates itself from Valves version (which is so similar to the first game it may as well be called Dolly the fucking sheep) by adding many new gameplay mechanics, to make it more aggressive than a rabid dog with a stick up its arse. Any creeps you now kill will join your lanes to help you attack the enemies towers giving you more reasons to go and kill them. Your inventory will also be more aggressive, as boots have been removed, so you can use more damage boosting items. The boots have been replaced by different mounts you can use.

The final reason this game seems extremely good is the fact that the champions are all Blizzards original characters, which I like, even though they may as well put Buzz Lightyear fighting Terminator in it for all the good it does.

So all in all, I’m really going to look forward to this game, and the fact that I can play it without having to buy Starcraft 2 makes it better.

Look forward to part 2

Battlefield 3: Beta Preview

(Oh look at me i'm every cock who works at Machinima Respawn and i'm talking about a popular First Person Shooter)

The end of last week saw the launch of the Battlefield 3 beta, the main competitor to Call of Duty in a sub genre of First Person shooters which have been milked more than a cow which lactates an overly average amount of milk, and as a person who has been extremely annoyed due to a certain company fucking up my Red Orchestra 2 like a Mouse in a bar for cats. So for that reason, I will start my collection of previews with this beta.

*Warning, review may contain a large amount of generic and cliché reviewers use to make themselves sound smart. Don’t have a brain haemorrhage, most are actually idiots*

The first thing I noticed about the game was the complete lack of menus, and this is a great addit..... wait no, WHAT THE FUCK, who decided that this would be a good idea, it’s like taking the Statue of Liberty and deciding wow what a beautiful statue before tearing it down and replacing it with a 200ft cock made out of lead. This just makes it almost impossible to change any of your options, and also makes it more hassle than a program about David Hasslehoff to switch between servers you wish to play on. This was, in many years of gaming, the most retarded decision (non game play wise) to put place in a game, and they may as well have an angry midget fly out of your computer screen trying to kill you whenever you start a game. Just fuck you EA and Dice.

So after 30 tedious minutes of trying to start a game, which would have been put to better you smashing a lamp over my head, I finally managed to get into a game, and wow how blue is this fucking thing, we may as well have entered the Kingdom of the bloody smurfs. The whole beta has a blue tinge over anything, but at least its better, and more colourful than your average FPS, which is browner than a cows arse.

The whole game is also extremely smooth and slick, with the movement feeling extremely good and not clunky at all. The guns feel a lot better to use than a lot of games that I have played, except the shotgun which is more useful than a pea shooter loaded with cotton wool. The game play is also a lot more tactical than your generic FPS, such as Call of Duty, which require as much skill as going to the toilet, so it feels a lot more satisfying with each kill.

There are many bugs which will more than likely not be fixed by the time the game comes out, as it is only about 2 weeks till the release date, which puts me off like being offered the opportunity to be crushed by a piano, however as much as I hate the practice of releasing an unfinished game until way after launch, hopefully they will be fixed within a few weeks (which is better than Call of Duty which will probably charge you to fix it like a particularly bad mechanic). And this ends my preview as I will probably do a proper review of the game when I buy it.

Mini Rant:Torchwood Miracle Day

So Torchwood has ended again, with a series that introduced more conspiracy theories than a conference full of retards, has come to an amazing ending. At first I was sceptical, considering the last series was shitter than a man rolling in a field full of cows, and even this season started off slower than a tortoise racing a Formula 1 car. However this series eventually got the ball rolling around the episode where you saw people getting burnt by sinister companies, and it genuinely made you feel something, so much so that it became better than the latest Doctor Who series (but that's harder than beating a one legged man in the egg and spoon race.)

So this season has had its highs and its lows, the lows mainly being the fact that there are more gay sex scenes than there where in Freddie Mercury’s private life. This didn’t stop the series ending on a fitting, epic ending, which ties up all the plot lines more neatly than the house of a person with OCD. I felt like I wanted to see what would happen next all the way through it, and when it did end it was quite moving.

Well Torchwood was easily one of the best things I’ve seen on TV all year, or even for a long time, and I can’t wait for a next series... Well that is unless it’s a shit as the previous season, please don’t let that happen.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

If you know me well enough, and by well enough I mean read this blog by casually skimming over it like a fat person looking at the amount of calories in a burger, you will know there are not much games that I love, and I hate most more than Japanese tentacle porn, it doesn’t help that almost all major releases are Call of Duty or other FPS’ without story and the only explanation to do what your doing is that the CIA are have a charity swear box and the main characters want you to encourage them to have to donate, with the word fuck being said constantly.

However there are a few games that are exceptions to this, the Metal Gear Solid series for example, Team Fortress 2 for my online shooting, or definitely the Half Life series, my favourite gaming series of all time. (See the top 10 Games Collab I did with The Rofling Officer) Oh and the original Deus Ex was there as well, and now if you hadn’t realised because you were too busy playing the new Call of Duty zombie maps, which are as original as the concept of America stealing credit for winning WW2 singlehandedly, a new one’s come out.

So Deus Ex, widely considered one of greatest games of all time by people who are more qualified to do that than you idiots, who just read gaming reviews instead of giving yourself the imaginary title of Games Reviewer. It involved J.C Denton, a man with less charisma in his voice than a toaster, getting to the bottom of conspiracy theories, and was rightly praised for its levels being more open than a prostitute’s cunt... Oh and the fact that you could enter the women’s toilets like a bigger pervert than that person looking through your window.

So Deus Ex 2 Human Revolution (And anybody who even dares mention Invisible War can have a Squirrel shoved up there arse with a shoe. That game made me and any sane gamer want to lay our heads on an airport runway) is the newest game in one of my all time favourite gaming series, and it doesn’t disappoint.

The story is more compelling than being told you’ll get a blow job at the end of a tunnel, immersing you into the game with choices that make you think more than being allowed to pick one of 1 billion pounds or having a magic fucking talking eggplant growing in the corner of your room.

So the story introduces Adam Jensen, a man who’s voice still has less emotion than a lawnmower having a particularly hard divorce, but hey at least it’s better than having to drink gravel before you speak. He is also the security manager of the main company in the game, but as you can see by the first level, he’s pretty shit at his job, considering he can’t stop the massacre of almost every scientist in the factory. He also gets shot in the head, but this is still not explained why it leads to his arms falling off.

So after becoming a robot and finding it hard to get through airport security, Jensen comes back to work, and starts shooting, tranquilising and stealthing his way through a bigger conspiracy than why Gordon Brown doesn’t appeal to girls.

In many ways it captures the flavour of the old game brilliantly, rewarding exploration as if it’s training to become a stalker, allowing you to move every vending machine like an OCD deliveryman and also being able to hack most computers in the game to flesh out the story/read spam from Nigerian business men. Also you can explore WOMENS TOILETS, possibly the most important part of any game ever.
The hacking itself is good now, bringing a good cross of luck and strategy, and the dialogue puzzles and options are nice, giving you more options on how you play the level, and also opening many moral choices to consider.

Due to not having the RPG elements though, the guns also feel funner to shoot, especially the non lethal one, as they become a pain if your aim shakes like you’ve just drunk 300 cups of coffee after being raped. At first I thought this would be an awful change, but after playing the game I can actually see that it is for the better.

There are a few ways in which this game fails though, mainly the augs. You get upgrades faster than Usain Bolt while high, so by the end of the game you’re just an unstoppable killing machine who can fire grenades from out his arse.... Oh yeah and did I mention YOU CAN FIRE GRENADES FROM OUT YOUR ARSE. This means that after half way through the game it’s pointless examining what upgrade to get next, as you’ll be able get all the ones which benefit you more than being able to fly if you’re aeroplane is crashing.

Because of this, most people’s notion of non lethal goes out the window as soon as you get the typhoon, which again LETS YOU FIRE GRENADES FROM YOUR ARSE, IS THEIR ANYTHING MORE BAD ASS.

And this lets me segway onto melee combat somehow, and by melee combat I mean that Adam Jensen can punch less than a man with no hands. I don’t see why they took melee combat out the game, it makes less sense than a man removing half his brain. Are First person shooters getting to the point where they are trying to get rid of everything except shooting in gaming? What’s next, we can’t even run, we just get taken on a conveyer belt to shoot enemies?

Your augmentations also seem more advanced than those of J.C and Paul Denton, which doesn’t make much sense, as you’re an early version of what became Gunther Hermann, who looked as if he’d just come back from a year long beating with a lead pipe. In this game though, you look as if you’ve been made by Apple, all shiny and sleek (and also some useless Augmentation features.)

And this brings me onto the main, cancerous criticism of the game, the boss fights, so if you’ve gone non-lethal you’re going to be punished more than a sex slave in the Spanish Inquisition, as these bosses are more linear in your choices than a very long corridor. A good boss fight would allow me choice how to kill it, maybe non-lethally knocking him out, or having a huge army of robots to help you if you’ve augmented your hacking. This became a huge problem because by the time that I got to the first boss, I only had a stun gun and a tranquiliser rifle, he had a gun that fired exploding puppy’s and the strength of an elephant driving a tank.

The bosses are also the only people in the game who have no back story, at least in the original I knew why these guys were trying to splatter by brains on their living room fireplace. The personality of these guys can just be summed up with the statement “bunch of cocks.” When you can FIRE GRENADES OUT YOU’RE ARSE, these guys get killed within 2 seconds anyway.

So now we get to the ending, which I both liked and didn’t like at the same time. The main problem being that it is possibly the most unchallenging level on the game, because hey, a game always gets more challenging when you have to fight off lobotomised retards with no guns. Then you have the final boss fight, which is the only good one on the game, requiring you to think about what you have to do. Then comes the actual ending.

You are given a choice between 4 different endings, and just because of how much I felt about the different characters it took me a long time to choose which one, even though I knew non of them would have changed what happens much, and it didn’t, but that doesn’t matter much. I would like to see what happens to all the characters after it, but at the moment that doesn’t bother me, hopefully they’ll add something else at the end in DLC (and by DLC I mean free content patch, unlike the other stuff their releasing for it.)

So compared to every other game that has come out since the last Half life game in 2007, you can’t go wrong with this one, it’s the best I’ve played in a long time, beating Portal 2 more than a cheetah beats a baby in a 100m race, and will probably by my game of the year. Please can everyone play this game right now, to prove a smart game is better than nuking the Middle East constantly.

The Top 10 Greatest Games of the Decade

John: Finally putting this on my blog about 6 months after it went on the other, because i'm slower than a snail on anti deppressants. Enjoy, or don't, i absolutely don't gove a shit.

Well one decade is over, the years 2000-2010 saw a massive amount of great games, but an even greater amount of god-awful games. Today, me and John Smith will do yet another collaborated effort (I'm getting sick of that bastard) to discuss the 10 greatest games of the past decade, so at number 10...!

10. Resident Evil 4 (2005)!

Dan: Right well, my favourite and the ONLY good game in the Resident Evil franchise. This series made me think, wow and I thought that Saw was bad for sequels (you know, like it wasn't shit enough the first fucking time), look at this Resident Evil list! Then roughly 2 years ago, I bought Resident Evil 5, and I liked it. What initially pissed me off about it was the accused racism (which wasn't as bad as Left 4 Dead 2, some guy called it racist because you kill one black zombie among the few million white ones you just blasted apart). Eventually I realised how shit it was, and bought Resident Evil 4. Unfortunately I bought it on the Wii, but that is a different story. Immediately I thought "fuck me, this is great!" when the Spanish (shush! Don't tell anyone I said that) village I was in suddenly went all cannibal on me, and I desperately ran around blasting zombies in the face, then kicking them away with all the force that puffy haired, must-have-legs-made-of-titanium (because he can take a bear trap to the leg and just walk it off, in real life he'd have no leg to walk it off with), unlucky fool Leon Kennedy. Yes, Ashley's cries of help are so annoying I often let her die with the sound turned down to satisfy my anger, but this is one hell of a game.

9. Morrowind (2002)!

John: Now you may be thinking Morrorwind, why Morrowind and not, say Oblivion. Well my first response would be to slap you steal your mastercard, shag your wife and shout at you "I'M THE GAMES REVIEWER. FUUUUUUCK OFFFF!" but then, while buying some aeroplane tickets with your mastercard to get out of the country I would think about your question and wonder why myself (can't wonder much, I got bored of Oblivion within 5 minutes, but lets gloss over that for this). Well first things first, Oblivion dosn't seem as rich in lore as Morrorwind and feels like there just barking orders at you to do stuff like an angry army general who got raped as a kid so is taking this out on you. You have no reason to do anything, and you don't even save the frigging world, it's the dead emperors son..... freeloading bastard, no wonder i went all texas chainsaw on a nearby church as soon as i got into the world. However the main reason is that Oblivion itself just feels like what it is.... A game, while Morrowind, it feels more like a world to explore, and that is why I am still doing. (Also it's where I got my internet name from.)

8. Rome: Total War (2004)!

John: Rome Total War, the moment the Total War series hit superiority before it collapsed like a flower being squashed an elephant holding a brick (no matter what Dan says about how he thinks Medieval 2 was better, it was a good game, but no better than this.) Now to people like me Shogun and the first Medieval game where good, but not like this. Then you have Empire and Napoleon, but you can't really blame Rome Total War for those, thats like blaming a Cambridge Professor for his great great grandson being a drug taking, alcoholic who shoves his head up camesls arses for no reason. The Game itself also allowed me to try new things such as, Who would win in a fight, Snoopy, Dumbo or Crispy Bacon (it was the Pigs) or could Britain conquor the world centuries to early. I regularly go back to playing this game, and now over to Dan to tell us more. STOP DROOLING OVER THE BACON!

Dan: Yes, as John says this is not my favourite game in the Total War series, but that doesn't stop it being better than rolling around on a pile of women and money. Yes the AI is dreadful, but that makes it hilarious at times. Like when an enemy army outnumbers me so many times over that it was the equivilent to a right wing person in a History lesson (all my History lessons are so left-wing they might as well teach us: "Fuck Hitler, go Stalin!") and instead of attacking me they just continually reposition their men, giving me time to grind them down with archers. Anyway it has a solid campaigns, involving battles and started off how the Total War series should always be forever. Now, then to revise History. Hmmm, conservatism is shit, go liberalism! There, done.

7. Beyond Good and Evil (2003)!

John: Beyond Good and Evil, one of the most painfully underrated games of all time, the fact people haven’t heard of it makes me want to bang my head against a wall constantly until I’m bleeding and I can’t remember my own name (it’s even worse when they haven’t heard of Half Life, but that's the console lot for you), it had everything you could ever wish for in a game. Diverse game play which is so diverse it feels the opposite of Saudi Arabia or the Call of Duty series, great visuals and soundtrack and extremely good characters, like a giant pig called Pey’j who would probably make great bacon. However it could hold an award for its actual achievement. It was released on all major consoles to great reviews but somehow managed to fall faster than a guys with an anvil on his back rather than a parachute, on top of a whale. Why was this, maybe the lack of advertisement, or that it was released by an unknown company? However if you did play it, it takes all the good parts out of Zelda, and murders all the awful parts by putting it into a blender and allowing it to be squashed by a truck. It was hugely accessible, and allowed you to play the game in any way you wished, except the way in which you shout the world is going to end, and place the console on your head to stop the aliens from reading your mind after you’ve exploded the TV with a nuclear missile. Play this game now or I’ll personally come round to your house and blow it up with my army of exploding topiary bushes shaped like penises off of Minecraft.

6. Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004)!

The Metal Gear Solid series, the gaming series which sounds as a whole, along with most of the characters, like one huge Sexual Metaphor. SOLID Snake hahaha. (Then again, have you ever played Call of Duty 2: Big Red One? Badly chosen title there, it makes it sound like you’re playing as a swollen bell end where you go around slapping people to death with it.) And that’s just the title, but no, it still didn’t put people off, so to try even harder to put people off playing this series, Hideo Kojima decided to put cut scenes into the game which you would only be able to watch if you have no job so instead spend all day masturbating over men crawling around in mud, while thinking about ways you can blow puppies up with nukes, kinda like George Bush. However, this still didn’t make the game awful and instead, underneath all these long cut scenes, they made one of my favourite game series of all time, the best being Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Yes it has a name that seems even more of a sexual metaphor than the rest of this series... Hahaha Snake Eater, that could mean blowjob hahaha... are jokes that mainly are thrown around like stones in Iran at a lesbian woman without a veil, however a name doesn’t make a game does it (unless it has the words Call of Duty in it) so let’s ignore that and concentrate on the game, and boy it is good with its survival game play. You need to change your Camouflage to fit in with the nearby surroundings (unlike MGS’ 4, which game me Octo Camo, a suit which makes you look like a Porn star with leather fetishes.) You also had to kill animals to eat and restore stamina (even snakes *snigger*), while you need to treat his injuries to be able to get to full health. Plus it doesn’t have Raiden, that wimpy girly cunt who looks like he’s just stepped out of ballet. In MGS 4 he even makes Cyborg Ninjas look like they would enjoy a Justin Bieber concert in Brighton. I can’t remember a game where I wish to play as somebody who would rather wave a rainbow flag instead of his enemies now red, surrender flag.

5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)!

Dan: Well 3 words sum up how great this game is: nuke, ghillie and multiplayer. Since John is taking the last one, I'll start with the first two. The campaign of this game is so compelling, even though it sounds like the most generic plot ever, so generic is could rival "hello" when you see someone. The plot revolves around Arab Terrorists, Russian communists and nuclear weapons. That sentence alone would nowadays put me off these games, like Call of Duty Black Ops where you can fight the dream American enemies all in one game: Communists, Vietnamese, British and Nazis. The only thing that's missing is a starting level in Afghanistan. Anyway this was the game that revolutionised Call of Duty and made it what it is today. Call of Duty 3 was awful but no one had ever heard of it, so that's alright. When CoD 4 came along it was beyond awesome, (particularly the nuke scene, I mean it could only have been more awesome if some naked lesbians were having sex and you got to crawl towards THEM in your dying breath) but then CoD went downhill again, as Treyarch developed the next game. Fuck, Treyarch's development must include: buy a copy of Call of Duty 4 (or rent, we're on a tight budget! You know, because we're FUCKING SHIT!), change the graphics a little to change it to a WW2 Pacific setting, then release it brand new. But I'm getting off topic. The reason the word Ghillie is on their is because of the brilliant sniping mission where stealth is your only chance of survival (unless you're on Recruit, in which case it's a bit like playing the Heavy on Team Fortress 2 against a load of idiots who don't know the controls). So to sum up, Call of Duty 4 is incredible. Over to John.

John: Call of Duty 4, or Call of Duty Before they got Shit, is obviously great and, unlike most FPS with the words Call of Duty or Medal of Honor (it’s Honour cunts) shoehorned on the front like a stripper in a physics video to get the men’s attention half way through, this has a story, not a corridor to walk down while a load of Americans wank themselves over guns before a finale were Sergeant Awesome Mcapplepie Washington Bush sticks a large American flag into the British, Nazi, Communist, Muslim’s body while Star Spangled Banner plays over the top. This, however, has all the Americans die off in the middle after they all spunk over how awesome they are causing the largest explosion in the history of awesomeness (created circa 1776 with the declaration of independence), actually no, they all die because there all retards and there trying to be heroic when instead there just stupid, and shagging a nuke, unlike the British. And now I’ve realised I’ve taken up way to much of this talking about random things instead of the multiplayer, so I’ll say, it was ok, better than the rest of the Call of Duty’s, however this still feels like a run down a long, dark tunnel with a bright light at the other end. In Layman’s terms, You Walk in, you walk out 10 days later no better off. Anyway, to wrap this up, at least the online is balanced, unlike the kill streaks on Modern Warfare 2 onwards, which punishes noobs for being noobs until they quit as it is less balanced than a man with one leg, on a Half Life see saw holding Jabba the Hutt.

4. Armed and Dangerous (2003)!

Dan: OK, this was never going to win any awards but this is an incredible game. Just like John's Beyond Good and Evil review, this game is criminally underrated. Wait a minute, you may say with your stupid hat on and your jeans half way down your arse (I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!), if Armed and Dangerous wouldn't win any awards then why is it on this list? The reason is simple: it's hilarious. It's the funniest game I've ever played in my life, by far. It makes Portal look like a Friedberg and Seltzer film. OK the gameplay is average and there isn't a huge variety of enemies but the story takes the piss out of itself in a way that makes me think "wow I love this game". I mean come on the Land-Shark gun? A gun that fires sharks that eat enemies from under the ground? And the World's Smallest Black Hole that is sort of self explanatory? These two things alone are so funny and awesome that Armed and Dangerous is an incredible game.

3. World Of Warcraft (2004)!

John: World of Warcraft, the soul sucking game which has probably ravaged the world more than a nuclear holocaust started by cats. It’s more addictive than a blended mix of heroin and cocaine seasoned with tobacco and being smoked by two naked lesbians who want a threesome, however, at one time this game would probably have been my favourite of all time. Yes it grinds more than a rock crusher with a chainsaw up its exhaust because for some reason it feels you haven’t had enough fun killing 9 of these fucking creatures already so you have to kill 1 more. It makes you feel like a serial killer working at a butchers. The whole game leaves your life about as beneficial as a polar bear in Afghanistan without a bomb. However, even though there are all these minor complaints, the game itself is actually more fun than a bath filled with money and laser weapons. They constantly add more content, and have made there more to do than in my actual life, which involves sitting on a chair writing these reviews for fuck knows who. They have steadily made it easier and the content more varied as updates are released. Especially now with Cataclysm, where they also introduce two new races, including Goblins which are basically just gnomes spray painted green and genetically modified to have big ears. They get to start off driving about in a theme park created by some engineer on crack, while the other new race are the Worgen, which seem to be populated by chimney sweeps who love Twilight, so I’m surprised they haven’t got names such as Edward, Starshine or Winky Dick. All in all, I love this game, particularly now when I don’t need to collect 10 of everything and could probably blow up the sun instead. I don’t play it anymore though, so this makes me kind of hypocritical.

Dan: The biggest problem I have with WoW is the stereotypes everyone associates with it. This guy plays WoW? WOW WHAT A LOSER HAHA! Isn't WoW that game that's killed LOADS of people? etc. etc. The actual game is spectacular, but the stereotypes have been forced into my skull so often by everyone (except the people who play WoW funnily enough) I always feel guilty when playing. Since John has pretty much said exactly what I feel about this game, the bastard, I'll just have a laugh at the controversies attached to it. WoW is a diamond for all the stupid fucking video game hating twats as it can be so addictive it has killed quite a few people. Now while they pretend to be outraged by this, I try to stop myself pissing with laughter, I mean come on, anyone who plays WoW that much must have a daily routine of: Play WoW, change adult nappy, grope to the side for peanuts, play Wow, pass out from exhaustion, come around, play WoW. Anyone who lives like that deserves to die. As you can probably tell by now, I'm struggling for things to say, so I'll rap it up here and move on to my favourite game of all time (but not the game of the decade).

2. Halo: Combat Evolved! (2001)

John: Oh god, why is this game here, if it deserves to be on this list at all, it should only be about 10th, but if Dan wants it here, then we'll just have to leave it.

Dan: Words cannot describe how I feel about this game. To come even close I'd need to be mid-orgasm at the time, and since that can't happen right now, I'll just talk about different parts. The game's story is extremely original and compelling, but you will probably never hear this from anyone else except me, because... well because its the same storyline that was in Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach used it. Halo: Combat Evolved was the first and best Halo game, breathtaking gameplay for its time, wah wah the graphics were shit WELL GRAPHICS DON'T FUCKING MATTER DO THEY!?! A few minor complaints include the sometimes crap weapons, like the needler, that looks so badass at first its ass must have been sent to jail fifty times and had an ass the size of Jupiter, the needler turns out to sound like a anxious nerd trying to ask a giant wrestler where the Warhammer models are and does about as much damage as flicking peas at the enemy. To finish off, everything in the game blends together perfectly, the vehicle sections, the story, the enemies, the different environments, they all combine together to create something that became my favourite game ever. However, even though it is my favourite game, that does NOT mean it is the best game of the decade, as that is what follows:

1. Half-Life 2!

John: Half Life 2, ah Half life 2, one of the true loves in my life, like an American and Cheeseburgers. It is easily the greatest game of the last decade and perhaps all time. So Half Life 2 and just talking about it turns me into a gibbering husk bla blue de dah. YOU MONSTERS, YOU’VE JUST MADE ME BRAIN DEA... oh I’m fine. So, the graphics have aged extremely well, like an old woman addicted to Botox and still feel like they could stand up with most modern games artistically. The game is extremely fun to play through still, with its variation of enemies and puzzles, which aren’t too hard but also don’t treat you like a retard that is using his dunce cap instead of his gun. The storyline also still feels as new as a dog which can breathe fire from his mouth, and as crisp to. It is easily the best I’ve ever played in any game, especially compared to the “realistic” shooters of modern times, which consist of Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot NOW LOOK AT OUR MULTIPLAYER. It really dragged me into the story, except Gordon Freeman’s muteness, they could have offered to wax his chest as he flew into the sun and they would still have seen it as him agreeing. Perhaps he has a large palette of facial expressions. Even the best game has some faults though, such as the endless use of Headcrabs, yes we get it guys there the most popular alien WE DON’T NEED THEM CONSTANTLY. It’s like the design meeting of some level consisted of “How could we improve this level, oh I know, put another headcrab round this corner because that's never been done before.” They also use Seesaw puzzles every few seconds as well; I’ve completed more see saws than a playground planner. However it still comes through these faults and is the best game of the decade. Plus Antlions, antlions are cool. It makes me feel like Napoleon.... if he had access to aliens. Napoleon would have won with Antlions.

Dan: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG MUM GET ME A TOWEL...! I love this game. I love it. The pacing is incredible, I think it has the best pacing I've ever seen in a game, the opening levels bring you into the story and gradually build up, leaving you wanting more even after that fucking Ravenholm level. Anyway the climax of the game is breathtakingly brilliant, thanks to the pacing that leaves it easily the best part of the game. In a lot of ways, Half Life 2 is like sexual intercourse. It starts off slow and feels good, but then gets faster and faster and better and better until it climaxes, and seminal fluid sprays everywhere. Well the analogy broke down there but you get the general gist of it. As for bad points, I guess you could say the Ravenholm level, but deep down I actually see how that is pretty good level, it mixes up the normal gameplay considerably. Sure it's unbelievably annoying when a zombie pushes you off a ledge you spent half an hour getting to but... well I'm not sure where I'm going with this. The major annoyance in the game are the FUCKING loading screens. They come everytime there's a lull in the game where nothing is really going on and make it so everything stops suddenly, not very good in immersion terms. What's worse is they last for about 15 seconds, which isn't as bad as some PS3 games but is bad enough to make me cry out with frustration by the end of it. These however are tolerable compared to the epicness of the majesty of the brilliance of the... you know what who cares what I think GET THIS GAME RIGHT NOW! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW N...

A little note from John at the end

This list is almost sure to send any Deus ex fan into a huge rage over why their favourite game ever is not on this list. I feel your pain, I loved that game (not as good as Half Life 2, but loved it)and honestly I don't know why it is not on the list, so we'll say that it just didn't come under the specified time frame (even though it just did.)