Average Gamer 01.06.12: A Final Look Back at 2011

Posted by Dan Watson on 01.06.2012

From zombies in Call of Duty: Black Ops and the disaster of Duke Nukem Forever to Skyrim taking the gaming world by storm and more, Average Gamer looks back at the memories from 2011!

Welcome back to the Average Gamer. 2011 is gone and 2012 is here. For those that love to be negative, we have eleven months until the end of the world. For all the sane people here, it is another year which means another set of games to be played.

This past week has been really strange honestly. I can't believe the week is over already but at the same time, it has been a very productive week. End of the year in a sales job is terrible. Each report you get tells you that you are ahead of goal, then behind, and so on and so forth until finally, you just wait for a final report.
In the gaming world, I got screwed. My streak is up to one hundred six days of consecutively playing, however, I thought I finally had Saints Row 3 one hundred percent complete last night until I looked at the achievements. Microsoft added ten more achievements which means I have not completed the game one hundred percent. Other than that, I have gone through and started playing NBA 2K12 as well as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 continues to spin its way into the 360. Halo Anniversary and Metal Gear Solid have both gotten a few minutes of play but not a ton.

2011 Final Look

This has been one of the greatest years for gaming in a long time I believe. I know we had the Sony hacking incident and some other nonsense but really think about the games that came out this year and tell me one other year that has had so many top notch titles release one calendar year. With that said, I want to take a look back at my personal favorites from 2011 with just general memories and overall great times.

I knew that in 2011 my gaming habits were going to change. Getting married to a non-gamer was going to deter some of my gaming time to other nonsense. To start the year, I knew I needed to make a big push in Gamerscore early on if I wanted to put up a decent score for year end. So, I started out big. I played video games each night from roughly six pm until ten pm. It was great. I was able to play a variety of games during that time.

One thing that really stands out is Call of Duty: Black Ops. I know it came out in 2010 but the map packs this year were tons of fun, especially since I had a solid group to play with. Having objectives and goals made the game that much better and added many hours of gameplay to beat each area. To top that all off, the Call of Duty franchise has now surpassed the profits of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.



As the year went on the games started to just roll off of shelves and into my consoles. Forza 4 was another game that we spent tons of time just messing around with. Playing soccer with cars was great and then also going through and playing tag on some of the smaller courses. I am still trying to race on each map as well as buy all the Ferraris from disc one.



One of the gaming industry's biggest jokes was released finally. Duke Nukem saw the light of day and then disappeared within weeks. The game had extremely high expectations from fans but many didn't account for the fact that a game ten years old is never as good as new games. This was a disappointment to many, but if you can honestly say you went into it expecting very little, then your expectations were surpassed. The game was a great average game, nothing about it was special.

The Wii died and a successor was named. WiiU will hit shelves sometime soon, or so we assume since the masterminds at Nintendo aren't releasing much information on it. What we know is that chances are it is going to be overpriced and you play with a tablet as a controller. I am not sure how many people are going to trust friends or children using tablets as controllers if they are $100 each. Let's hope Nintendo sees that point and creates a good price point for this.

Gears of War 3 has ended the story. We assume that Microsoft won't bring this trilogy back like it did with Halo. The story ended the way it should. It tied up all the loose ends we had and made sure we lost a main character or two along the way while explaining what the hell was going on.



Finally, to end the year, the much anticipated Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was released. The game has been amazing and the story is very good. Graphics are pretty good as well, but with any Bethesda game, you have to expect some minor issues and glitches with such a huge open world game. I would say that this game isn't quite as bad as Fallout: New Vegas was, but it does have some issues still.

To sum up 2011 in just a few words, I would have to say it was a perfect year in most areas in the gaming world. Sure there were some flops and a few hacks out there but you know what, shit happens. We had some great games, some big announcements, and most important some great memories from the game. I don't think there were any moments that are recognized quite as big as Final Fantasy 7's death cut-scene but all in all it was a great year.

One final note as I leave you all. I am not sure where you are all from but I have to say having forty degree weather in Chicago, in January is quite amazing. Normally, we have minor warm-ups like this after a major freeze but we haven't had a major freeze yet. Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy this great weather before it is gone.