Requiem for a Generation: the Greatest Games of the Last Console Generation

With the emergence of the PS4 and Xbox One last year the games of yesterday are now the games of yester-year.  Last week, we gave props to the greatest game series of the last console generation: Batman: Arkham Etc.  Today we tip our caps to the greatest individual games of the PS3/Xbox generation, the five greatest to be exact.

5. Call of Duty: Black Ops - Treyarch/Activision

This would not be much of a list if the FPS (first person shooter) to end all FPS's was not acknowledged in some way.  The Call of Duty series is arguably the most recognizable game series of the last 10 years, right up there with Halo and Madden.  The trouble is singling one out from the crowd.  The games make their money on a formula and they are so faithful to it things all start to look the same.  In the end it came down to which game in the series offered the most "perfected" incarnation of this formula.  That game is Black Ops.

The campaign is among the best in the series - being the first game in the series to utilize quick time events - and it boasts an impressive cast of voice actors including Gary Oldman, Sam Worthington, and Ed Harris.  The highly popular "Nazi Zombies" games from World at War are back (although with diminishing returns).  It's all pretty fun, but that's not why anyone plays CoD.

Every new game in the CoD series features a slightly different multiplayer experience.  Players never seem to struggle to find things to complain about with each new version.  None are perfect, but the Black Ops multiplayer is the closest the series gets.  The game is slowed down compared to other versions letting players move away from a strictly "reactionary" style of play in favor of a more strategic one, in which map lay-outs, coordinated attacks, and vantage points all hold double the importance of any other game.  Sadly, as with all formulaic game series, Black Ops has been history for a few years already having been set aside for sharper, faster, sleeker games.  The new versions may be fun, but everything after Black Ops is just an imitation.

4. Dark Souls  - From Software/Bandai

"Prepare to Die".  That is the tagline for the #4 game on the list, Dark Souls, and believe me when I say it tells no lies.  The game that takes fan favorite Skyrim to the mat, Dark Souls is an open world, role playing, dungeon crawler that fans love for its replayability, highly original multiplay dynamics, and incredible difficulty.  

A game with a rich mythology that you have to search to discover, Dark Souls goes far out of its way to reward players willing to put the time in to, not only win, but explore.  The lore of this game is so rich that you can log 100 hours and not even home close to unearthing it all (trust me, I speak from experience).  The difficulty of the game will have you turning off your system a few times in blind rage, but give it an hour, and you'll come back for more.  You will curse, you will groan, you will say "C'mon!", you will die, and you will have fun.

3. Portal 2 - Valve

Sorry, Tetris, but Portal 2 is the greatest puzzle game of all time.  Innovative, beautifully designed and challenging, Portal 2 would be a great game if it was just room after room of puzzles.  But it is so much more.

You'd never expect it when you first start to play it's seemingly innocuous predecessor, Portal: Still Alive, but the Portal universe is one of the most fascinating and lush of any game series.  That is what makes this game so great.  It isn't just the story, but the way it is revealed to the player.  Everything builds from darkness to enlightenment, like a light bulb slowly turning on to reveal the wold around you (which, in the case of Portal, is quite a terrifying place).

Portal 2 plays out like a black comedy noir.  Fantastic voice acting turns by Stephen Merchant and J.K. Simmons bring the perfect balance of terror (what they say) and hilarity (how they say it) to the game.  The ambient/electronic soundtrack along with the haunting imagery of the game gives everything a properly eerie feel.  Then, of course, there is GlaDOS.

GlaDOS, the passive-aggressive and darkly sinister super-computer that is a lot like HAL9000, if HAL9000 had the personality of a psychotic girlfriend that decided she was going to methodically ruin your life because you forgot to take out the trash one too many times.  Chosen by IGN and GameInformer as the greatest video game villain OF ALL TIME, GlaDOS returns from the dead in Portal 2 to take vengeance and dole out some serious psychological warfare (in the form of scathing sarcasm) on her nemesis Chell, the heroine of the series.

Portal 2 challenges you, not just to solve puzzles, but to solve a mystery.  The results are a hell of a good time.

The Last of Us - Naughty Dog/Sony

I already went deeply in depth into what makes this game so fantastic during last year's Year In Review series when I rated in the Game of The Year, but it was so good it deems repeating.  Gorgeously rendered, expertly told, and a joy to play, The Last of Us was a single console release (PS3) and the last great game its generation.

The game mechanics and style of play are fantastic, allowing for players to have a varied number of game play experiences.  Want to play a stealth/hunter game?  You can.  Want to just run around unloading a shotgun on bad guys? you can do that too.

The game play is enough to make it memorable, but the story of The Last of Us is what makes it special (notice a theme?).  In any serious game with voice actors there comes a moment of groan inducing hoaky-ness that gives birth to the phrase "Great story, for a video game".  Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed they all have their moments of weakness (Final Fantasy is full of them).  The Last of Us is one of those truly few games that has the story and script that will draw you in as effectively as any movie or television show.  It is simply excellent story telling.

1. Bioshock - Irrational Games/2K

Dark, exciting, nerve wracking, beautiful, I could go on for days with adjectives that make Bioshock the greatest game of the last console generation.  Also mentioned in last year's Year in Review, this is a game that I will never tire of playing.

A fast paced FPS, Bioshock, takes familiar game mechanics gives them a tweak here and there and throws it into a wholly original world and lets you have at it.

Inspired by the musings of novelist, champion of objectivism, and tea party patron saint, Ayn Rand, Bioshock takes Rand's paradise city of Galt's Gulch from Atlas Shrugged and dives deep to see what life may have been like in such a paradise had it existed.

Man alone is responsible for the world of Rapture, and Man alone suffers in it.

Of course, by the time the events of the game transpire, the underwater city of Rapture is no paradise.  It is a bombed out hellscape where drug addicts fight viciously under the banner of warring megalomaniacs, Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine.  The Orwellian world that Bioshock brings the player to is rich with fascinating characters and dark history, all in front of a majestically designed 1940s style art deco backdrop in a city under the sea.

Sander Cohen, Rapture's Phantom of the Opera.

When it isn't turning your knuckles white, this game is delighting you some fantastically original characters and sending shivers down your spine with disturbing imagery.  GlaDOS might be the biggest and baddest, but Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine (also known as Atlas) are two of the most complex villains ever to be pixelated.  Part noir, part science fiction, Bioshock is a gripping game experience that not only makes you think but might even get you to read something.

2013 Year in Review: The Infinite Dilemma of Bioshock III

Few titles were more anticipated this year in the realm of gaming than the third installment of the Bioshock series, Bioshock Infinite.  Partly because the original Bioshock is widely considered one of the greatest achievements in modern gaming.  Partly because the trailers looked incredible.  Partly because its release date was pushed back multiple times because it just wasn’t awesome enough yet.  It finally came out early this year and, I just now got around to finishing it (twice).  So, was it any good?  Mostly.

The game play is injected with a faster pace and enough new gadgets to make it feel fresh while still being familiar to fans of the series.   The graphics and visuals of the world created by Bioshock Infinite don’t quite reach the level of imagination and creativity that made the first Bioshock so mesmerizing but the sky city of Columbia is breathtaking on any other scale.

 Yeah, it looks good. (actual screenshot)

While the game play itself can be intense and challenging at times (good thing) and one of the first things I noticed after the game got going was the increase in gore (decapitations galore!) the decision was clearly made to move the game away from the survival-horror genre that helped to make the first game so memorable.  One of the most impressive things about the original Bioshock was the atmospheric sound editing and voice acting.  The nerve racking sensation of being trapped in a dark room with five bad guys and only four bullets in your gun; you know they’re in there, you can hear them, you just can’t see them.  Haunting images like the Fort Frolic bathroom and Dr. Steinman's Operating Room stick in the player’s head long after they turn off the game.

 Take a moment to digest this, then understand this is one of the mild images from the twisted world of Rapture.

The story is…

Well, the story is compelling enough to keep you playing and maybe even want to play it again when you’re done.  The voice acting is fantastic, just as in the rest of the series.  The ending is probably the most talked about ending to a videogame in years and while it is woefully convoluted, it will certainly leave you thinking (more on this later).  The place where the game falls tragically short of it’s two predecessors is in the department of characters and atmosphere.

Bioshock Infinite has two, interesting, complex, well written characters.  Booker DeWitt is easily the most fleshed out protagonist of any game in the series.  Every other character, however, is completely one dimensional and exists only to further the plot and the story as it relates to those two aforementioned characters.

 We learn a lot about Booker and Elizabeth, but what about everyone else?

One of the best parts of the game experience with the Original Bioshock (and to a lesser extent, Bioshock II) are the many side stories and characters that the player learns of while exploring the city-under-the-sea Rapture.  Just from listening to a few clips of dialogue from audio diaries - left behind for the player to discover – so much is learned of characters.  Their daily lives, what motivates them, their goals, their fears, their dreams.  It creates a world for the player that feels like a real place, that has a history, rather than just one room after another filled with bag guys.

The original Bioshock also had the advantage of being connected to a famous piece of existing literature.  The entire world of Rapture in the game is built up to be a scathing critique of Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy, “Atlas Shrugged.”  It is fascinating to see the creators of the game bring Ayn Rand’s dream society to life only to have it devolve into a ruin of drugs and corruption filled with megalomaniacs and psychopaths.  There are even two characters named after Rand (One, Andrew Ryan, a primary villain of the game.  Another, Anya Andersotter, a minor character – who bears a strong resemblance to Rand herself - that exchanges sexual favors with lowlifes in order to try and gain information for killing Ryan).

The Ending:  We've been here before and we'll be here again.

Bioshock Infinite perhaps was trying to make up for this lack of source material with its highly ambitious ending.  An ending that borrowed themes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and John Gardner's Grendel just to name a few. An ending that was nearly terrible, but ultimately just missed out on being truly great.  I could talk a long time talking about the ending, but in the interest of keeping this spoiler free (and under 50,000 words) I'll control myself.  It was saved from being terrible thanks to a post credits scene that brought the theme of the game full circle (pun intended).  But fell short of great, because even with the post credit scene soooo many questions were left unanswered.

The Coin Flip. It's a exercise in trying to change the inevitable and probably the most important scene in the game for understanding the ending. Only problem is that it happens in the first half hour of the game and is never referenced again. 

Ultimately, Bioshock Infinite is a fun game and one that I will return to play again, and probably more than once.  But, I’ll never be able to disconnect it from the first two games of the series enough not to think of it as a heartbreaking missed opportunity.  I really wish I could’ve learned more about the world and the characters that made Columbia what it was.  And what’s worse, the parts were there to make these things happen.  There had to have been more to Comstock than the player discovers.  It was plain to see that character like the Lutece twins and Preston E. Downs had fascinating back-stories that the game only would have benefited from sharing.  Much of this ironically was probably held back because the creators were worried it would take away from the impact of the ending when, in all likelihood, it would have made it that much more satisfying.  The original Bioshock games were great jigsaw puzzles of mystery with pieces strewn about for the player meticulously put together to create a beautiful story.  Bioshock Infinite tried to do the same thing, but the final product was missing just a few key pieces.

The more a world opens up to you, the more invested in it you will become.  So much of Columbia remains a mystery for the player, when it could have been an exciting and fascinating place.

At least we’ll always have this totally badass trailer.  *AND* This beautiful version of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".