Back at the end of 2010, a glance at 2011′s calendar either sent gamers into a fit of excited trembling or utter despair. How were we going to play all of these games? What surprises were in store for us? Which ones were going to be worth the money? Could the long-awaited sequels live up to the years of promise? At the beginning of 2012, we now have all of those answers and then some. And thus, the GamerSushi Top 10 Games of 2011 list is born.

It sounds like we’re using hyperbole, but we truly feel like 2011 was one of the greatest years of gaming we’ve seen in quite some time. That much is evidenced by each staff member’s ballot – the submissions we used to determine our final top 10 (and yes, your votes for Game of the Year counted as one of our submissions, as well) were wildly different and full of an astounding variety of games. One thing was certain – gamers had a wealth of choices last year, and everyone benefited from it.

So, without further ado, here is our list of the top 10 games of 2011. Enjoy, dudes.

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One of the biggest pieces of news to come out in the last few months has been that of the inclusion of a multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3. Specifically, a co-op horde mode of sorts that has an actual bearing on the single player game. As is typically the case with the Internet, this news was met with all kinds of hyperbolic reactions – from those complaining that it was going to ruin the main game to others celebrating it without even seeing anything.

Well, now we can expect even more outrageous reactions: Bioware’s released a trailer for Special Forces mode in all its glory, teasing the game’s final release in March and the demo that’s scheduled to drop next month. I have to say, the footage looks a bit more fun than I anticipated – I definitely think the different races/classes are going to mix up the gameplay.

Thoughts, Sushians?

In a move that’s sure to incense Jay Mohr fans the world over, PC gaming giant Blizzard announced today that it will not be holding its annual celebration of its franchises down in Anaheim, California. The convention, which has not missed a year since 2006, is usually the platform Blizzard uses to announce its upcoming projects. With a next-gen MMO rumored to be waiting in the wings, many people had hoped that 2012 would be the year that we would first see “Titan”, but it appears that this isn’t going to be the case.

With a game from each of the company’s major properties hitting this year, Blizzard has said that they’re a little too busy to make BlizzCon 2012 a reality. While this certainly is disappointing, the prospect of seeing not only Diablo 3, but also StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm this year is more than enough to make up for it (there’s some Kung Fu Panda based WoW expansion too, I guess).

Blizzard will still be putting on the Battle.Net World Championship for StarCraft 2, which will take place in Asia closer to the end of the year, so we’re not even going to miss watching StarCraft pros beat the stuffing out of each other.

So what do you guys think of BlizzCon’s 2012 absence? Do you just want to see the games finally be released? Should Blizzard have held their convention, schedule be damned?

Source – Battle.Net

I think we’re going to spoil you guys. Yes, that is now 3 podcasts in a row. And this one is more meme-tastic than most, if you can believe it.

That’s right, much of the beginning of this podcast is about the release of our game of games here at GamerSushi, Resident Evil 6. This is the celebration of all things good and proper, and the end of our time of mourning now that Resident Evil 5 has passed into the annals of gaming yesteryear. So yes, there is much rejoicing. And hopefully you’ll join us as we pave the way for the Game of Our Time.

Besides us going fanboy-tastic on RE6, we also talk about RPGs and choices, Bioshock Infinite and Modern Warfare 3. After all of that, we play a game of Over/Under, where project review scores for the next few months of releases, including Mass Effect 3, Twisted Metal and Final Fantasy XIII-2. As always, I’m right again and win at everything. This should be no surprise by now.

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The final chapter in BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect will be releasing on March 6, but fans will have an opportunity to try out the various features of the game on February 14 when the demo launches.

In a post on BioWare’s social site, Chris Priestly laid out the details of the newly announced Mass Effect 3 demo and what we can expect from it come release day. The demo will feature both single and multiplayer content and will be launched simultaneously on all three platforms.

The single-player portion of the demo will contain a couple snippets from Mass Effect 3, one taking place early in the game during the initial Reaper assault on Earth and the second will occur on an unspecified alien homeworld where Shepard travels to gain the support of the populace. All three of Mass Effect’s different single-player modifiers, Story, Action and Role-Playing, will be available and Xbox 360 users will be able to take advantage of the Kinect integration. The demo will have all classes available and you can customize and level up Shepard. Progress in the demo does not carry over to the main game, however.

The multiplayer component of the demo will be available to all on February 17, but owners of Battlefield 3 (with an activated Online Pass) will put their boots on the ground day one. A microsite will be up on February 7 where you can check and see if your EA account is eligible for early access, but as long as your account contains an active Battlefield 3 Online Pass, you’ll be good to go. There will also be an early access program for people who have not purchased BF3 or activated a Pass, so no worries there.

The multiplayer demo will contain two levels, Slum and Noveria, but beyond that BioWare isn’t saying. I’m happy for an opportunity to try out the multiplayer, even if I’ve already pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition (although it should be Reaper’s Edition in my opinion).

Are you guys excited for the Mass Effect 3 demo? What are your thoughts on the early access for multiplayer? Oh, one more thing: PC players will need to get the demo through Origin, EA’s much-maligned digital store.

Source – BioWare Social Network

After the long-awaited arrival of last week’s video podcast, many of you expressed your wishes that we not wait so long before the release of the next one. Well, for the first time in my life, I’m afraid I won’t be disappointing all of you – here’s a brand new podcast, fully of shiny gaming stories, GamerSushi memes and all kinds of other wonders.

This podcast brought us the monumental task of trying to recap an entire season’s worth of games, ranging from Bastion all the way to Skyrim. We used this as an excuse to try out a new game, Lightning Round, and I think all of you are going to be happy with the results. It was a nice way to run down a staggering list of games in a way that didn’t take 87 podcasts and two years of our blabbering to cover.

In addition, we played a game of Buy or Sell with a number of industry topics. Like we do. Listen up and enjoy, friends.

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It might just be me, but 2012 seems a little light on big tent-pole titles. 2011 would be a tough year to beat, true, but this far out the only notable games I can think of are Mass Effect 3 and Halo 4. I’m sure I’m missing some, but beyond that I’m not too sure if there’s anything to look forward to.

Demos dropped today for a couple relatively unknown games hitting early this year, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and The Darkness 2. Kingdoms of Amalur is a new one for me, but it’s got some well known names behind it like Big Huge Games, Todd McFarlane, Curt Schilling and R.A. Salvatore. Big Huge Games made one of my favorite RTS games of all time, Rise of Nations, then kind of dropped off the map for a while.

Reckoning, which I’m going to be calling it for brevity’s sake, is a Western-style RPG that’s very reminiscent of Fable and Dragon Age 2. It controls more like a brawler, but you have all the RPG trappings you’ve come to expect from games of this flavor. You can pick one of three archetypes (warrior, rogue or mage) and min-max from there, but thankfully the game doesn’t lock you into one specific class. I actually really enjoyed my time with Reckoning, which has fun combat, a beautiful world, and an engaging story (despite all the obtuse fantasy terms). I can already tell it’s one of those games that sucks you in very quickly and doesn’t let go. I just love the art style in this game, which is stylized and helps differentiate it from similar games in the genre. Even the most basic weapons and armor look bulky and bad-ass and the spell effects are flashy and powerful looking.

I have a couple of minor nitpicks, mostly concerning the inventory and the conversation systems. Reckoning straight up lifts Mass Effect’s dialogue wheel, but doesn’t give your character a voice. Maybe I’m too used to that, but if you’re going to copy someone’s ideas, at least go all the way with it. That’s a minor annoyance compared to the inventory, however. Like most RPGs, you get a huge stash of loot to manage, and the screens to do so are big and clunky and move kind of slow. You can put consumables like potions on a wheel to use in combat, but you can’t put various types of weapons on there, meaning that during the tutorial I had to constantly hop in and out of the menu to use the various gadgets the game was trying to show me. Once you nail down your class I expect that this smooths out, but it was kind of annoying.

That said I’m really looking forward to Reckoning after playing this demo. Like I mentioned above, it’s a game that just grabs you and pulls you in without any difficulty, something that only BioWare and Bethesda games have managed to do. Hit the jump for the other demo I tried.

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Whenever people talk about JRPGs being obsolete in relation to the success of the modern Western RPG, the one thing I can never escape is that the Western RPG’s freedom tends to work against its story. As great a game as Skyrim happens to be, its narrative takes a backseat to whatever impulse it is that drives us to pick locks or hunt foxes outside of Whiterun. I think this is one of the reasons that the Mass Effect series appeals to me – it still manages to have a tight, exciting narrative while allowing the player a certain amount of freedom. Somehow, the series has straddled a pretty nice sweet spot that brings the best of both of those worlds.

In the latest release of Bioware Pulse, the company’s video series highlighting its projects, lead writer Marc Walters discusses their desire for Shepard to be a much deeper character this time around than ever before:

“One of the things we wanted to do in Mass Effect 3 was deepen Shepard as a character, so you really get to express what your Shepard is feeling and going through, throughout the war… We wanted to take that next step with the story telling. Yeah, it’s a war, yeah it’s got giant robots we get to shoot in the face, but there is a human side to the story. You are role-playing, and you are role-playing as a human. Why shouldn’t that human have an emotional component throughout the game?”

Here’s my question, and one I think the Western RPG is going to keep running into as long as it does business this way: can a lead character in a game based on player choice ever really have depth? Sure, Bioware has come up with some memorable, incredibly well-written characters in the past – but all of these completely outshine the main characters, who are just conduits for your own one-dimensional choices. I’m not sure if those things can ever co-exist, and I think developers could be kidding themselves if they think they can.

How do you guys feel about this issue? Can lead characters in games based on player choice actually have depth? Is it OK for them not to?

Source – VG247

This post was actually written by Eddy, posted by Nick. Just to clear up any confusion.

Wow. Uh, hi dudes. I know it hasn’t been a long time since we’ve chatted, but it’s certainly been a long time since we’ve chatted in this format – you know, the format where I’m bringing you a brand new podcast. So that’s pretty cool, right? Especially considering the fact that this isn’t a normal podcast, but a special video podcast!

Yes, this is the long-rumored video podcast from GamerSushi Weekend, AKA PAX South, where the GamerSushi dudes convened for a weekend of hanging out, video gaming, drinking and yes, podcasting. I know it’s pretty ridiculous that it’s just now coming out almost six months later, but sometimes life happens and bearded dudes have to go to California to work. And yeah, that gets in the way every now and then.

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Of all the things to mod into Skyrim, I’m not sure that Randy Savage was at the top of the list, but here we are in 2012 and someone has found a way to put the Macho Man into the game. The video detailing the mod is three minutes of pure terror and hilarity.

Originally I thought the mod would just replace the voices of the dragons with soundbites of Randy Savage, but when I saw what had become of their appearance, well, that’s a whole other story. I just couldn’t stop laughing when the guards heard the cry of at the beginning of the video and started acting scared. Good stuff! Here’s the link if you want to try out the Skyrim Macho Man mod for yourself.

We’re at the end of the road for the inaugural edition of GamerSushi Votes and I think it’s gone rather well. We’ve talked the highs and the lows, but now it’s time to put all of our chips on the table and declare once and for all what our favorite game of 2011 is.

There’s no cheating here by saying 2011 didn’t have a Game of the Year, no sir. Each individual vote shall be inscribed upon the great Tablet of GamerSushi with chisel and hammer by Anthony, borne up the Mountain of Souls by Eddy, passed through the Cauldron of the Blaze by myself, given to Jeff and his eagle mount to soar high into the clouds to the Sky Palace of the Beard for Nick’s final approval. Yeah. It’s that important.

Now that you know what fate rests upon your mortal souls, vote! What was your Game of the Year for 2011?

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Alright folks, here’s part two of GamerSushi Votes 2011, and this time we’re tackling the solo aspect of gaming. While this might have a bigger overlap with the typical “Game of the Year” criteria, you can have an awesome single-player experience with pretty crappy multiplayer, like Dead Space 2, for example.

I’m going to put what I think are the most popular and well-recieved single-player games of 2011 in the poll below, but if you have any other suggestions, please tell us in the comments! While the GamerSushi crew (and me in particular) do try to give every game a fair shake, sometimes we miss stuff, so if there’s a game that your want to represent, go ahead. I know we have a few supporters of The Witcher 2, but what other games caught your fancy?

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One of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comics has to do with the idea that every man has a price. Calvin says that his price is two bucks cold cash up front, to which Hobbes muses aloud that he’s not sure what’s worse: that everyone has his price, or that the price is sometimes so low. What’s funny is that the more I think about it, the more this is actually true in gaming, too. Everyone’s got a price in terms of what they want from a game. And while the Bill Watterson comic touched on this in a more sinister way with morality, I think it’s what actually helps us enjoy games overall.

These thoughts started brewing in my head after an excellent piece over on Unwinnable, titled, Bullshit Vs. The Thing You’re After. In it, the author touches on every gamer’s price and what it is that makes gamers tick. And I think I totally agree.

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It goes without saying that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is tremendous. And I don’t even mean that in terms of quality. I’m talking about sheer size. The game is enormous in every sense of the word. From the amount of quests to the cities to the NPCs and the depths of dungeons, it could take one years to mine all of the game’s secrets on their own.

That’s one of the reasons I love the Internet: we don’t have to do this kind of stuff all by ourselves. The kind folks over at the Official Playstation Magazine have put together a list of 9 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do in Skyrim. While I’ve made good use of a few of the items on the list, such as free archery training and the re-fillable soul gem, a few things certainly surprised me. Lists like this are usually a bad thing for me, as now I want to go get the dog that never dies, the staff that turns enemies into bunnies and the legendary horse as well.

As it stands, I’ve had some strange occurrences in Skyrim myself. Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I had to square off against an invisible dragon. On another night of exploring, I came across a lying character that tells you meta secrets about Bethesda and its development of the game.

So what about you guys? Have you stumbled across any of these undiscovered secrets? What are some of the strangest things you’ve seen for yourself in the game? Go!

Source – Official Playstation Magazine

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We’re finally here, friends, at the end of four years of waiting and watching and over-sized lightsabers. BioWare’s first foray into MMO territory, Star Wars: The Old Republic, begins its pre-order roll out today in advance of its actual release on the 20 of December. If you pre-ordered the game and entered the code on the TOR website you can get in early between now and the 20 depending on how far in advance you completed the process (confusing, I know).

I pre-ordered the game, but I didn’t do it until November, so I probably won’t be playing until the weekend or even the 19, but I’ve had a few opportunities to try out the Beta, so that’s OK (pretty sure the NDA on those things have expired). My guild and I are deploying as heartless Imperials and I’m taking on the Bounty Hunter class for my first outing. I avoided this build during the Beta, so I’m ready for a fresh experience when I jump in. My guild will be on the Lord Praven server, if anybody wants to play with the only GS staff member who will be giving TOR a shot on release.

The Old Republic hasn’t exactly been a hot topic around here, but I still thought I’d put up a Roll Call as this is the last big release of 2012 (except for the Back to Karkand DLC which also comes out today). Anybody else playing TOR? Which class are you playing as? Any interest on trying the game in the future? Also, what are you thoughts on me keeping a journal of sorts for the first month of the game as a kind of review?

Every year there are many standout moments in gaming that redefine my hobby and help me appreciate it in new ways. Last year it was riding into Mexico to the tune of “Far Away” in Red Dead Redemption, managing my own guild of assassins in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood or riding down a river in a patrol boat with the Rolling Stones in the background in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

2011, being the landmark year that it was, was not deficient in great gaming moments and I’ve pared my memories down to six selections of moments that have helped shape this year for me. Come along as I try to sift through all the great games this year had to offer and try to nail down which small selections changed my perception of gaming in 2011.

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I’ve got a problem. It’s been well documented on this site and in our podcasts, but I should reiterate: I’m an RPG completionist. I’m OCD in a way that is truly tough to convey to people who can’t open up my head and take a peek inside. From the largest weapon to the smallest task, I’m trying to do everything, see every nook and cranny of even the hugest open RPG world until its boundaries feel like shackles and I’ve got nowhere left to go.

Such is the case with Skyrim. You see, I’ve put about 50 hours into the game so far, and I’m sitting pretty at about Level 43. And I’ve only recently just gone to High Hrothgar for the first time. If you’ve been playing the game, you know that most people go do this just south of Level 10, but not me. I’m an overpowered badass that’s been running all over the place doing the bidding of every peasant and lowlife that needed ferrying or dungeoneering.

It’s really hard to pinpoint the root cause of this obsession, and even harder to curtail it once it sets in. Something about the way my personality works just causes me to get lost in side quests.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to ask how you guys handle side quests versus main quests. While side quests are really meant to help you level between the main or perhaps give you something to do once you’ve beaten the game, I tend to use them to make the main ludicrously easy for myself. How do you guys approach them? Go!

If there’s anything we can say about 2011 – in addition to the fact that it’s been one of the best years for gaming that we can remember – it’s that it has been the year of the HD remake. In the fall season alone, we’ve seen Halo CE: Anniversary, Ico/Shadow of the Colossus and Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection all release to rave reviews from fanboys that have longed to see their old favorites restored with loving detail. Naturally, this opens up the conversation to other classics, and there are none more sought after than the dreaded Final Fantasy VII remake.

In a recent interview with Official XBox Magazine, Final Fantasy XIII-2 producer Yoshinori Kitase gave some of his thoughts about how he’d tackle a remake of one of the most famed entries in the beloved series:

“If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of VII, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it’d be like a repeat… But if we did that, the fans might be disappointed or ‘this is not what I was expecting’ so in that sense maybe some might say that it’s better to let memory be memory.”

I have to say that I understand the impulse to want to approach the remake creatively. I mean, where would the appeal be to just slap a new coat of paint on something if you’re part of the team involved? But on the other hand, a part of me would also want the game that I loved exactly as it was. It would be interesting if developers could find a way to include both things in the final product, although I understand it’s not entirely feasible.

So what do you guys think? What kind of remakes do you prefer? Fresh new takes on old favorites, or a new coat of paint on the classics? What would you change in HD remakes of your favorite games? Go!

Source – OXM

Skyrim has been out for just over two weeks, even though it might feel like you’ve already put a lifetime into that game. For those of us playing on the PC, we have the added benefit of modding our expereience and the kind folks over at PC Gamer put together a list of the 20 best Skyrim mods as of right now. If you’re playing on consoles you had best look away, lest you get all jealous like.

Modding is nothing new to Bethesda games as Oblivion and the two Fallout titles have seen a slew of great user-created enhancements, and Skyrim is shaping up to top all of them. Included in PC Gamer’s list are things like a fully 3D map, a crafting enhancement where you can melt down pots and pans into usable ore and several custom tweaks that improve the faces of NPCs right down to their lips (seriously). There’s even a couple goofy ones in here like the one that replaces the spiders with other creatures like bears but keeps the animation model so you have a giant bear scuttling towards you like a spider.

This is just the beginning, though, as I’m sure that there are plenty more of these in the works. You may think that my image for this post is a joke, but oh no, someone is actually working on a dragon riding mod. So, Skyrim PC gamers, what do you think? Any of these mods catch your fancy? Anything that blew your mind? I didn’t think that the water in this game could get any nicer looking, but I learned a thing or two from these mods.

Source – PC Gamer

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Oh man. As cliche as it is to make a post on Thanksgiving about how much food you’ve eaten, I can’t help but do just that. I feel like I’m at least partially absolved of this crime because I ran a 10K this morning, but even then, I know I’ll still have to beg your forgiveness just a little bit.

All that to say: Happy Thanksgiving, dudes. I know not all of you are from our fat states, but I want to wish you all a good one either way. Maybe it’s because I’m food drunk, but I do want to say that I’m thankful for this community and for all of you. Shucks and stuff.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to the good stuff. Naturally, holidays means video games for many of us. As for me, I’ve been playing lots of Skyrim (of course), but now that the holidays are underway, I’ve been struck by the nostalgia bug, as I knew I would be. This means I’ve got a sudden and intense hankering to play not only Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD, but also Halo: CE Anniversary and the MGS HD Collection. Christmas really can’t come soon enough.

So what about you guys? What are you playing this fine holiday weekend? Go!