Hey everybody,

Here at DH, we love that you all have your own voices and we want to continue to nurture that. However, there are certain elements of our style guide that, as an editor, I can’t help but notice are going unheeded. Therefore, I thought it wouldn’t hurt for us to all have a little refresher in the DH style guide. I think it’ll make all of our lives just a bit easier.

Obviously not all of these points are going to apply to each and every one of you. So just go through and try to take notice of the things that do apply to you.

Spacing: AP vs. MLA

At DH we use a slightly modified version of AP style, which means we put one space between sentences, not two. I know, I know — school drilled this MLA thing into all our heads as kids even though nobody in the real world uses it outside of academia. But it’s time to leave behind the trivialities of schoolhouse fantasies and embrace the brave new world of single-space stops!

Numerals
One through nine are spelled out; 10 and up are written as numerals.

Dates
For dates, we only use numerals — no -st, -nd, -rd, or -th. In other words: January 24, 2011 as opposed to January 24th, 2011.

Commas
This is a tricky one because serial commas do have their place in avoiding confusion. In our style, there are no commas before conjunctions. So you’d say, “First, Second, Third and Fourth” instead of, “First, Second, Third, and Fourth.”

However, “My parents, Ayn Rand, and God” sounds like it has a much different (and correct) meaning than, “My parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

Use your best judgment to avoid confusion, but most of the time go by the style guide, which again would be, “First, Second, Third and Fourth.”

Hyphen (-)
Use hyphens to connect compound adjectives before a noun. For example, a “full-time job” is different from a “full time job.” A “full-time job” means you have a job that’s full time, but a “full time job” means you have a “time job” that is “full.”

A hyphen is not used for a compound adjective that comes after a noun.

Dash (–)
A dash is used, basically, when you’re interrupting yourself. If you add information to the middle of a sentence, for example,

“I walked to the house — which was red, by the way — and knocked on the door.”

Or to indicate an abrupt change in a sentence,

“Don’t just knock on the door if you expect anyone to answer — use the doorbell instead.”

Basically, it’s a way to break up two separate but related ideas within the same sentence.

Quotation Marks
Periods and commas go inside quotation marks.

Titles
Games, movies, shows and albums are italicized, always. Song titles go in quotation marks.

Ellipses
Ellipses are three dots (…) used to indicate a pause or to indicate an omission, especially in a quote.

If you’re using an ellipsis for a pause, remember that it’s three dots and then a space (… ) or four dots if it comes at the end of a sentence (…. ) — the period does not merely become a part of the ellipsis!

If you’re using an ellipsis to show an omission, then do a space before and after to show where the omission is ( … ).

If an omission comes after sentence, then it’s a period, a space and the ellipsis (. … )

(Remember: we use a modified version of AP style. In actual AP style, an ellipses is a space, three dots, and another space [ ... ].)

Meta Keywords
Remember: list your meta keywords with a comma, but NO SPACES. For example, if you wrote about a new Mario game for the Wii, the tags would be:

“Mario,Nintendo,Wii,…”

NOT

“Mario, Nintendo, Wii, ….”

Meta Description
Your meta description is just that — a description of what your article says. Basically, it should be a one or two-line summary of your point/your thesis so the reader has an idea what to expect going in. It should grab the reader’s attention while also setting a tone.

Image Description/Title
All images need a description, but the Title is the actual caption that shows when you hover over the image. So if you want a title/caption, be sure to write one yourself. But you don’t have to write one at all. (You do need to write a description, though.)

“OK” or “Okay”?
In AP, OK is correct. Actually, it’s correct all-around; OK is an abbreviation of an old Germanic (I think?) word, and “okay” is the mutant deviation.

Semicolons
Semicolons are basically a cheat. They allow you to make run-on sentences without actually being run-on sentences by allowing you to connect two separate (but ideally related) main clauses without a full stop. For example,

“I can’t play video games today; I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

You could go a few ways with that sentence:

“I can’t play video games today. I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

Or

“I can’t play video games today because I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

They are also used to separate items in a long, complex list, where commas wouldn’t get the job done.

OK, now on to some more general writing tips.

Long Paragraphs

Generally a no-no in AP and web writing. Again, something we learned from that damn MLA was that paragraphs had to be a minimum of four sentences long.

Lies!

A paragraph only needs to last for as long as you stay on a given subject. It could be as little as one sentence long, but ideally no more than five or six sentences.

If a new sentence touches on even a slightly new subject, you should just make it a new paragraph. I can use myself as an example here, after looking over my Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom article. I wrote:

… That’s why Teotle needs Tepeu to distract enemies, to traverse small or narrow areas, even to find him food. A typical combat scenario goes something like this: Tepeu commands Teotl to push a crumbling wall down on some unsuspecting baddies, alerting their nearby friends. While Teotl wrestles with the behemoth shadow monster, you swat the smaller foes away from him so he can focus on the main threat. When your enemies are at their breaking point, you deliver a devastating team attack to fell the horde. When it’s all over, Teotl sucks up and purifies their dark souls so they can’t respawn. Like The Lost Vikings or, to a lesser extent, Trine, Majin is a full co-op experience boiled down into a single-player adventure.

When I could have broken it up better. For example,

… That’s why Teotle needs Tepeu to distract enemies, to traverse small or narrow areas, even to find him food.

A typical combat scenario goes something like this: Tepeu commands Teotl to push a crumbling wall down on some unsuspecting baddies, alerting their nearby friends. While Teotl wrestles with the behemoth shadow monster, you swat the smaller foes away from him so he can focus on the main threat. When your enemies are at their breaking point, you deliver a devastating team attack to fell the horde.When it’s all over, Teotl sucks up and purifies their dark souls so they can’t respawn.

Like The Lost Vikings or, to a lesser extent, Trine, Majin is a full co-op experience boiled down into a single-player adventure.

Repeating Words
This happens a lot in this kind of writing that we do. We overuse the words “The game…” or “The movie…” or “The album…” at the start of each sentence or bit of criticism. But there are a lot of other words to use: “title,” “series,” “franchise,” “feature,” “film,” “record,” “medium,” “pastime,” “hobby,” “experience….”

But this happens a lot all over. It’s easy for any of us to fall into. Our brains are pretty simple tools, really, and they like patterns so much they tend to not even notice them. So just keep an eye out for it.

Self-Editing
Never doubt the value of reading your own work and writing a second draft. I find that coming back to a piece just the next day, with fresh eyes, makes a huge difference. Of course, this is why we have editors — fresh eyes can better catch the typos and style/grammar quirks that are bound to pop up in any article.

But an editor can only do so much, as we don’t like to go mucking about too much with your sentence structure and what you’re actually trying to say.

Unfortunately, there are times when a sentence or a thought is just too muddled and we kind of just have to do our best to fix it. The tragedy is that a second look and a small re-write could have made the sentence better and maintained your personal voice.

So remember: 90% of writing is re-writing.

Remember: Reviews are Inherently Subjective
If all a reader wants is information about a product, they can read ads, check out clips or play demos. You aren’t campaigning for anything or writing ad copy — you’re only selling your point of view. Express your thoughts and defend your opinions, but any information that doesn’t support your point of view or provide basic context for the reader doesn’t belong in your article.

That means the list-like rundown of a game’s each and every feature, the beat-by-beat summary of a movie’s plot, the music… well… this isn’t as much of an issue for music. But it’s a HUGE issue for games writing, where we all tend to get mired in exposition before we get to actually supporting our arguments. That’s because games are big, unwieldy, complex beasts that need to be wrangled for the un-informed reader.

Just try to be selective about what information to include and how much to trim.

P.S. Breaking Rules is Fun!
But ignoring the rules isn’t the same as breaking them, and you can’t break the rules unless you know and understand them. That’s just something I always try to keep in mind for myself.

Thanks for all your hard work, everybody! With your help, DH continues to grow and grow and grow and there’s a bright light on the horizon for us all. So keep up the good work and happy writing!

Digital Hippos is a menu for all all the fun things that distract you from the crushing existential singularity that is real life, written by a super-sexy guerilla think-tank of unpaid scribes/misunderstood geniuses/actual humans who are in no way cyborgs. That means film, television, video games and music; that means news, previews, reviews, critical discourse, podcasts, videos, blogs. Most importantly, that means you. Yes, you! Love it? Live it? Just got something to say? Then share it! We want to know, so make your voice heard in our comments, blogs and forums.

What Digital Hippos is not, and will never be, is an aggressive hive-mind of super-powered cyborgs conspiring to conquer the Earth-world using human slaves whose minds we control through their computer screens. No, sir-or-madame, that’s not at all what we are.

So, what are you waiting for? Be assimilated—I mean—why don’t you join us?

GSC dead. Yes? No? Maybe. Probably.

As reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun via UkraNews, the developer of the much-loved to play (by some… what we call a “niche” or “cult” or, dare I say, “PC gamer”) but much-loathed to type (by everyone) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has been shut down by owner Sergei Grigorovich. (Whom I’m pretty sure is a Metal Gear Solid villain. Or maybe it’s just the ethnocentrism of the ‘80s and early ‘90s American movies and video games that raised me that make me think that… yeah, that’s probably more likely.)

The developing story has been bananas and full of speculation, but it all comes down to a very dispiriting “No comment” statement made by GSC to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. A blog post from 1C Ukraine’s Sergey Galenkin also confirms the closure. There’s still no official word from GSC, but things are looking altogether not unlike S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — grim, troubled and full of mutants.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (the series’ first proper sequel after two pseudo-sequels) was set to release next year.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun are following the story as it develops.

I’m sad. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a sub-genre unto itself that took first-person shooters to the next logical step in a post-Deus Ex world; a game about exploration and immersion as much as it was about shooting things (or running away, as was sometimes the smarter choice). While most FPS developers this generation just try to re-make Call of Duty, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a tranquil and contemplative (if dark and oppressive) oasis in a sea of blustery Blackhawk crashes and Hyena-shooting.

If you have a decent PC and haven’t yet played S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then do yourself a favor and check it out. You can find the series on Steam, Impulse — all the usual platforms of note. I recommend Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat. Clear Sky is — eh — not-so-great.

It may be Thursday to the rest of the world, but at Digital Hippos World Headquarters, it’s WEEKLY GIVEAWAY DAY!

This time, we’re giving away something for all the aspiring Shigeru Miyamotos and Will Wrights out there.

But first, it’s time to announce our winner of last week’s giveaway: bramb600 from Ontario, Canada! We’ll be in touch shortly to get your shipping info, and then your Junk Food X-Men tee will be off, like the Blackbird in the night!

As for this week’s contest, we have something for all of you next-big-thing game designers out there: Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design. Penned by game designer Scott Rogers (Pac Man World, God of War, Darksiders), Level Up! is a comprehensive guide to the making of video games, from conception to creation, covering such topics as how to come up with a marketable idea, creating a world, the fundamentals of mechanics, level design, and oh-so-much more.

The rules, as always, are simple:

1. Register for a Digital Hippos account (if you don’t already have one). It’s free!
2. ‘Like’ us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. (Not a member of one of these two bustling social networks? That’s fine, just stick with the one you use. But we do need it to be at least one of these two.)
3. Share this link on Facebook and/or Twitter along with: Digital Hippos is giving away a free copy of Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers!
4. Copy your shared link from Facebook/Twitter and paste it into the comments section below.
5. Bam! Done. Just that easy.

It’s so simple! A winner will be chosen and announced in next Thursday’s contest article, and quicker than David Jaffe tweets something inflammatory, your copy of Level Up! will be cast away into your arms. And just like that, you could be on your way to becoming the next Peter Molyneux!

The news-cycle may have moved on to more immediate concerns, but Japan is still reeling from the effects of the recent earthquakes and tsunami. The good news is that the game industry is still standing behind the land that made us.

Paradox Interactive today announced Cities in Motion: Tokyo and Magicka: Nippon.

Cities in Motion: Tokyo is a new expansion to the public-transportation sim that introduces Tokyo as a new setting for wanna-be public transit administrators to oversee, building Tokyo’s public transportation system over the course of four decades, beginning in the 1970s.

Magicka: Nippon is a new Japan-themed DLC pack for the innovative co-op action game, featuring a new kimono robe, katana sword and bamboo staff for Eastern-themed wizards to enjoy.

Best of all, between May 31 and June 3, 50% of revenue for each product goes straight to Japan’s tsunami/earthquake relief. Buy a game and donate to a good cause at the same time — what more could you want?

Majesty 2 Collection, the (as the name states rather plainly) retail collection of Majesty 2 and its numerous expansion packs, is available today for a mere 20 moolahs.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, Majesty casts you as the monarch of the fantasy kingdom, Ardania. Basically, you’re the quest giver; you build the town and recruit the heroes who do all the work. Heroes think for themselves, but you can offer rewards for certain tasks, such as exploring an area or killing a monster. They then use their spoils to upgrade their equipment for bigger, better quests.

Why am I plugging the game so shamelessly? Because it deserves an audience. The first game went by years ago, largely unnoticed, and against all logic we fans got our long-awaited sequel. It’s a unique concept and there’s really nothing like it, and the Collection is a lot of game for just 20 shekels. Check it out on Steam! Expand your gaming horizons!

I opened my inbox this morning to find some screenshots for AMY, a new survival-horror game coming to PSN in June. Why am I reporting this? Why should you care? Fans of niche survival-horror titles that revel in creating fear through disempowering the player might want to read on….

AMY is being developed by veteran designer Paul Cuisett and team (Flashback) at VectorCell Studios and published by French indie developer Lexis Numerique. It puts the player in control of a pair of characters — a young woman named Lana and the titular Amy, a young autistic girl with “curious powers” — and sets them to running from either zombies or zombie-like creatures. Similar to developer Frictional Games’ Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Lana and Amy are easily overpowered by their monstrous antagonists, and the best strategy is often to run and/or hide and quietly pray to whatever power you might deify.

I gotta say, I’m interested. I have a love/hate relationship with scary games, but I love games that put me in a position where I don’t have an arsenal of weapons and superpowers at my fingertips. AMY seems to want to come in somewhere just above the pants-wetting disempowerment of Penumbra with the titular character’s “curious powers.”

The following screenshots don’t say a whole lot, but maybe — just maybe — we’ll have a little something special to look forward to with AMY. Scary is hard to master, but disempowerment is an all-too-often ignored concept in games.

And if I’m drinking brandy with my dog and butler/chauffeur/housekeeper/dog-walker/tailor/cobbler in front of a roaring fire, then that can only mean one thing: it’s time for another For the Love of the Games, the monthly column in which I BEG you ON MY HANDS AND KNEES to play a certain obscure, mediocre-but-full-of-great-ideas, or just plain bad game.

Why?

Literacy, my dear Skeffingtonson!

This week we’re not talking bad games. We’re not even talking kinda, sorta bad games. We’re not even talking old games — in fact, you may remember hearing of this game in the last couple years. This week we’re talking a game that I love, a game that didn’t get much play, a game that was marked down from $60 to $40 on the day it released, a game that was sent to die amid the bigger, beefier Q4 releases of 2010. This week we’re talkin’…

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom!

Released in 2010 to mixed reviews, Majin is a delightful action-adventure, almost Zelda-esque in its way, that drew many comparisons to Team ICO’s beloved catalogue.

The premise sounds familiar: Majin is a single-player adventure centered around a boy and his lovable companion as they work together to solve the mysteries of a magical fantasy land. The symbiotic relationship between the two defines the core of the game’s three main mechanics: exploration, puzzle-solving and combat.

So what makes Majin so special?

No Friends? No Problem!

Ico and Yorda, Wander and Aggro — two sets of companions whose relationships were central to their respective games. Ico was Yorda’s brave protector; without the player to aid her, she was doomed to be dragged back to the evil Queen by the forces of shadow. There wasn’t really much to the relationship in terms of play mechanics — you were Yorda’s guardian.

Chris and Sheva? No? Anyone? Yeah… didn’t think so.

Aggro was Wander’s mighty steed. Without Aggro, Wander wouldn’t have been able to traverse the expansive landscape of the Forbidden Lands. And without Aggro’s noble sacrifice, Wander wouldn’t have been able to slay the final Colossus (though as we find out, that might have been a good thing). In terms of mechanics, though, Aggro only really served one purpose: getting around.

Tepeu, the protagonist of Majin, and Teotl, the Majin himself, have a much more mutually dependent relationship. Tepeu can’t move the heavy obstacles that block his path; he can’t extinguish flames or charge generators with electricity; he can’t really even hold his own in a fight against the black-gloop monsters that infest the ruined kingdom. Even if he could defeat them all single-handedly, their souls would return to their bodies and they’d just pop right back up again.

But Teotl can do all of those things. The catch is that he still needs Tepeu as much as Tepeu needs him. If Teotl is Tepeu’s protector, then Tepeu is Teotl’s guardian. Teotl is slow, lumbering, clumsy and not terribly bright; he has a fist the size of a Smart Car, but he can’t do much if he’s overwhelmed by a horde of faster foes. Despite his size and strength, he’s actually quite childlike.

That’s why Teotle needs Tepeu to distract enemies, to traverse small or narrow areas and even to find him food. A typical combat scenario goes something like this: Tepeu commands Teotl to push a crumbling wall down on some unsuspecting baddies, alerting their nearby friends. While Teotl wrestles with the behemoth shadow monster, you swat the smaller foes away from him so he can focus on the main threat. When your enemies are at their breaking point, you deliver a devastating team attack to fell the horde.When it’s all over, Teotl sucks up and purifies their dark souls so they can’t respawn.

Like The Lost Vikings or, to a lesser extent, Trine, Majin is a full co-op experience boiled down into a single-player adventure.

Look at all the Pretties!

Games like Metroid, Castlevania or the Legend of Zelda, games that emphasize exploration, do so in a somewhat materialistic way. Back before the Metroidvania and Zelda models were a staple, they rewarded curious-minded exploration with items and secrets. Now in such games, reward for exploration is not only expected, but sometimes our only motivator. How long has it been since a Metroid, Castlevania or Zelda environment really invited exploration simply through its aesthetic appeal, through capturing your imagination?

The Forsaken Kingdom begs to be explored, not because of its treasures, but because of its beauty and mysterious and certainly tragic history. Strictly speaking, Majin’s graphics aren’t going to blow you away; geometry is basic and textures range from OK to muddy. But like just about any Blizzard game or any number of indie hits, Majin knows how to lean on its artistic advantages.

Incredibly competent level design is backed by evocative use of light and color. The game is full of stunning environments; the Spartan design of the old engineering district, the dull earth tones of the castle ruins, the vibrant foliage that’s overtaken the ruined kingdom… often I found myself just stopping to admire the twilit glow of a Tree of Life at dusk. Despite being ruined and infested with dark spirits, the Forsaken Kingdom manages to be altogether warm, inviting and full of wonder waiting to be discovered.

And did I mention that the whole thing is one, big, continuous environment? ‘Cause it’s kind of awesome that way, too.

It’s a Freaking Delight!

The final reason why you should play Majin?

Why wouldn’t you, is why!

Have you seen the screenshots littered throughout this article? Go watch some clips on YouTube. It’s OK, I’ll wait.

…

As you can see, the game is a freaking delight. For starters, developer Game Republic animated the bejesus out of the thing, especially Teotl, whose clumsy stumbles, puzzled head scratching, and big, dopey grins make him increasingly more endearing over the course of the adventure.

There’s also a ton of stuff packed into a relatively small package. The game is maybe 10-15 hours long, which means it never overstays its welcome. In film, literature, television, theater — take your pick of any entertainment delivery system –  it’s generally a good rule-of-thumb to leave your audience wanting more.

Most games try for the exact opposite, to stretch an experience well beyond it logical conclusion, to fill it with grinding, sewer levels, Triforce-hunting and a lackluster Mexican civil war that sends you riding back and forth across an entire county about a dozen times over.

I can’t blame all those developers. One of the many ways in which gamers suck is that we’re all obsessed with an imaginary hours-to-cost ratio that we’ve invented. If a game isn’t 30 hours long, the vocal minority of message board jerk-asses throw a tantrum.

But Majin knows exactly when to bow out gracefully. Like that brilliant, life-changing record you force yourself to put away after just one or two listens, it never loses its magic. Once the credits roll, you miss being in that world. And if you’re smart, you’ll take that as a part of the fun, a part of the magic, and stay away for a long, long time, if not forever.

Originally written for Digital Hippos

There’s no denying that 2011 was a big year in games. Every year’s holiday season seems to be better than the last, and 2011 was no exception. Unfortunately, that also means there were a ton of games I couldn’t get to. Bastion, The Witcher 2, Anno 2070, Uncharted 3, Too the Moon — these and so many others are games that would have probably been strong contenders for this list. Alas, I either never got to them or I’m just getting to them now (as is the case with Bastion, which is a fucking delight).

So with that small caveat out of the way, here are my Top Five Games of 2011.

FIVE: Dead Island

I love so much about this game and what it chooses to be. On the surface, I love that it’s a Diablo-like, with characters classes, skill trees, loot, and a new game plus. But more than that, it was a breath of fresh air in this zombie-crazed new world of media.

Dead Island made zombies scary again. If you were unprepared or caught off guard, even a single walker was still a threat. The penalties for succumbing to an undead horde we mild, but the satisfaction of survival was so, so sweet. I haven’t felt that since STALKER.

It’s also one of the best co-op experiences I’ve had and made me realized that, bashing zombies with friends… yeah… a real-world zombie apocalypse probably would be kinda like Shaun of the Dead. We spent an hour teaching our one friend to use the analog controls by crippling thugs for him to practice on.

Good times…

FOUR: Saints Row: The Third

Saints Row: The Third is a lot of things, most of them subversive to all the laurels we rest on in game design. It is the anti-Grand Theft Auto and the anti-Duke Nukem Forever.

For starters, Saints Row: The Third begins were most games end. The entire city is open to you, rad vehicles abound, you get a predator drone from the third mission. The game never forces to pass through arbitrary barriers in order to enjoy all it has to offer; similar barriers exist, but they’re relevant to the plot. You can get a VTOL as soon as the STAG paramilitary force enters the scene, for example.

Expectations are consistently lit on fire and thrown out the window. The natural Big Bad is disposed of only a few beats into the plot, the game not only refuses to impose any morality, but makes a world of such amorality, that you can revel in the sandbox in ways that always felt counter-intuitive in GTA. Ludo-narrative dissonance? Not a problem when your narrative allows for literally anything you could imagine.

Sure it’s an easy solution, but one so many developers are scared of, for some reason. Valve has the courage to let you hop around and spin on desks during cutscenes; Volition has the courage you let you murder random civilians with tactical air strikes while shouting in a zombie voice, wearing a steampunk costume over your chrome body, and calling in retro spacemen and ninjas as your backup.

THREE: Batman: Arkham City

Rocksteady’s Batman games should be a stark lesson to any developer who rests on narrative to flesh out their characters instead of game mechanics. You could take away the story, the cutscenes, the lighting, the textures — you could make Batman a stick figure in a city of blocks and it would still feel like the best Batman game ever made.

Sure, all of that other stuff matters and makes Arkham City that much better, that much more authentic, but my point is that Arkham City and its predecessor communicate what it is to be Batman through core mechanics. Terrorizing criminals from the shadows, fighting 50 men in hand-to-hand combat and emerging unscathed, sowing discord and paranoia by using gadgets to prey on your foes’ superstitions, gliding across the Gotham skyline — these are the things that scream, “Batman!”

This is how you do not just superhero games, not just licensed games, but any character-centric game.

For a similar, but older example, see Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

TWO: Portal 2

True, including one of the greatest games of all time seems like a cop-out, but really it’s just bad luck for any other contender for this spot that Portal 2 came out this year.

Before Portal 2 released, imagining it seemed impossible. Portal was lightning in a bottle. How could Valve release a full retail sequel to that little surprise that was packaged into the Orange Box? There was no accounting for the Portal jokes that became mass nerd memes — that can’t be designed — how could they do that again? And then we heard about the co-op. Surely, Valve had taken to wearing a top hat on its ass and walking through life on its hands.

And then we were all proven delightfully wrong. Because Valve didn’t try to re-capture lighting in a bottle, they didn’t try to make new memes; the put on cultural blinders and made the game exactly as they would have regardless of memes and expectations. They just did what they do: make great games.

And for that we got Wheatley, ever as strong an antagonist as GLaDOS while also being her total opposite. We got Cave Johnson, the tragic tale of Caroline, a fully fleshed-out narrative and world that we never had to relinquish control of Chell to understand….

And we got co-op. That delightful, brain-bending co-op that, on its own, became one of my all-time favorite games.

Thank you for being you, Valve.

Now… let’s talk about Half-Life 3….

ONE: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I was hugely disappointed in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Don’t get me wrong, I still played it to death, but after The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind I found it to be kind of dull. The different races all looked smoothed into sameness, the world was just a giant forest, the story was one of basic good versus evil… and the weirdness was gone.

Anyone who played Morrowind probably remembers, first and foremost, what a weird and alien world it let us explore. Oblivion just felt like Middle Earth. Specifically, one small part of Middle Earth — the woods. The mushroom forests, the ashlands, the Lovecraftian Daedric ruins, the dueling politics of the Great Houses, the tree towers, the buildings made of giant, hollowed crab shells, the moral grey area that was the legally-sanctioned assassin guild called the Morag Tong (as opposed to the decidedly evil, sneaky Dark Brotherhood), the fact that your character was the reincarnation of a dead god….

Skyrim may not be as alien and weird as Morrowind, but it certainly has its moments. And its way more interesting than Oblivion. Go exploring and you can find some truly wondrous sights. I mean, let’s face it — we don’t really need real life anymore now that we have Skyrim.

It’s better.

Honorable Mention: Dead Space 2

I think of the Dead Space series as the anti-Assassin’s Creed. Another new IP that came out of nowhere, but instead of slowly choking it to death with annual sequels, EA is giving it time and space to grow, such that Dead Space 3 could set a trend for every new core Dead Space game being as special, as important, as much a landmark as any core Nintendo game. That’s rare company in this industry.

Meanwhile with Revelations, Assassin’s Creed has been sent to the same table with Madden and Call of Duty. You know where it goes from there?

Here

Biggest Disappointment: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

I know, I know — your shocked.

Ubisoft is going to destroy what was a very promising series with these hastily-cobbled, annual releases. Patrice Desilet is gone, and with him, seemingly, any direction, passion, or artistic commitment that existed behind the Assassin’s Creed name.

Brotherhood suffered from a few glaring technical issues having been cobbled together by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisofts abroad (read: southeast Asian software grind-houses Ubisoft devoured to outsource and speed up development at a budget price), but it was still a great game that made some solid additions to the AC formula.

Revelations, on the other hand, just reeks of compromise. Byzantium isn’t nearly as well thought-out as Rome (but manages to look identical), glitches and snags abound, grenades feel cheap and out of place, the tower defense game (dear God why?!) is a pale imitation of much better ones you can play for free in your browser, and nothing about it — even the multiplayer, which is fantastic — feels like it couldn’t have been added through DLC.

Originally written for Digital Hippos