Still Playing: The Games of 2011

In a 2010 post here I discussed a bunch of games I had not yet finished all of which are now in the can.

From my Still Playing 2009 post I thankfully only have one game lingering, and that is the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R, despite now having Clear Sky as well.

Steam attacked my wallet a lot this year and this is what I am still playing from 2011, almost all of which are PC games with a few console titles as well:

The Man Without: F.E.A.R. 2 360/PC

Stop me if you have heard this one: mute protagonist known as “Point Man” blessed with psychic/physical abilities to perceive time as a higher rate and plagued by nightmarish visions of a deranged and violent little girl shoots his way to the revelation that the bad guy, Fettlel, is in fact his cannibalistic brother. Both characters are children of the the little girl Alma, who is projecting her younger self from cryo-storage in the basement of a facility. Alma is a powerful psychic driven insane by extended experimentation and apparently, raped to pregnancy.

Slap 'em if you got 'em- Duke Nukem Forever (PC)

I made this

After the legendary development hell, and the near legendary last-minute rescue by Gearbox, Duke Nukem Forever had no chance to meet any kind of expectation. Reviews were poor to scathing though the game sold more copies than expected, perhaps at the cost of longtime PR companies' reputation.

They mostly come out at night, mostly - Metro 2033 (PC)

 In a world where the only light is artificial, “day” and “night” become formalized concepts based around sleep. Children might grow and never once see the sky, living a lifetime in a concrete fortress surrounded by decaying vents, tunnels and hallways. Survival becomes the only task at hand as disease, vermin and external threats are ever present. Hope is the only thing more valuable than fire and ammunition.

This is the world of Metro 2033.

In the face: Aliens VS Predator (2010) PC/360

It was late in the last century when I stood over a friend’s shoulder and peered into a world of terror. Pre-fab corridors drifted off into the darkest of shadows, with red emergency lighting pricking at the black. He carried a pulse rifle, with an over/under grenade launcher and some flares. The environment throbbed with ambient noise but his motion tracker was a metronome of peace.

As he picked his way through the empty halls, tossing flares to light the way ahead, the tracker would blip, until, with a not-far-enough-away familiar shriek, movement would explode towards him. They came, black serpentine creatures with razor claws and faces of teeth. The pulse rifle spat at them, the grenades tossed them back but they kept coming, until he had no choice but to run.

The first time I watched Aliens VS Predator (1999) played on a PC I was so immediately riveted and overwhelmed with tension I actually asked him to pause the game.