Games of the Generation – Part 2: The Intense

As a tactile, multi-sensory media, videogames are very good at getting under your skin. Whether it’s the sensory assault of Bayonetta, the twitch reflexes of shooters like Battlefield 3 or just the fact that the universe is about to be annihilated by Reapers, the most bombastic games grip you with a vice like intensity. And as graphical clout improved, triple-A videogames have come to rely on pyrotechnics more and more, with one session of gameplay often containing more explosions than the summer quota of Hollywood action movies. What more evidence do you need than the continued ubiquity of explosive barrels in any combat arena? Here are a few games that blew us away last generation.

Zoey Hughes
Bayonetta

What can I say about Bayonetta? I love her, end of story. Strong, sexy and ever so naughty I just felt connected to her the first time I saw her in action. The hair may have helped… and the lollipops. The music was so fun and upbeat I couldn’t help but smile as I wreaked havoc all around me. It just made the action flow in such an enjoyable way. The beauty of the game, however, was definitely more than skin deep. Playing through on each difficulty the curve was superb – always just the right level of challenging. It gave me several epiphany moments as I increased my skills and yet it never got dull. The sheer variety of moves meant I always had a new favourite, but the ease at which I pulled them off made me feel like a god.

It was just a unique game in how much personality it exuded. I’m not a huge fan of the genre and was never that into Devil May Cry, but I just adored Bayonetta from start to finish (best closing credits ever incidentally, who doesn’t like awesome music and pole dancing?!).

My only issue with the game was how sad I was when I finished it. It felt like saying goodbye to a close friend. If only the sequel was on Xbox One or PlayStation 4 and she still had the hair… oh well, a girl can dream.

Ryan Esler
Dead Rising

I love zombies. The number of times I’ve daydreamed my own zombie survival tactics is unreal. Normally these dreams are passively acted through watching Day of the Dead or Evil Dead to tide me over with the hope that man can and will win. So naturally I would fall instantly in love with Capcom’s revolutionary IP. It’s just how I dreamed, crafting my own weapons, saving helpless souls and sneaking in a few selfies with the brain dead I hadn’t mashed to a pulp with a baseball bat. It’s one of the few games I still get giddy about and it’s for a good reason.

Michael Slevin
Halo: Reach

There were numerous outstanding multiplayer shooters in the seventh generation – Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 spring to mind – but Halo: Reach by far towers over them all.

Building on the solid foundations of Halo 3, Reach brought back the already exceptional multiplayer mechanics and honed them to a tee. The competitive combat was as fun and frantic as ever, complemented by tightened controls, balanced weaponry and a multitude of loadouts that changed the dynamics of combat on a dime. The addition of co-operative Firefights and Campaign modes added to the variety of game types on offer, with daily challenges further switching things up, meaning you were never bored blasting your way through enemy hordes with friends.

What truly made Reach stand out, however, was its Credits system. Every single thing you did added to your pile of space cash, which could then be spent on customising your Spartan or Elite utilising the hundreds of different permutations on offer. These helmets, chestplates and visors cost thousands of credits, so you were constantly playing to acquire that one piece of armour that would truly make your Spartan your own.

A shining gem in the Xbox pantheon, Reach stands as the pinnacle of online multiplayer gaming in the seventh generation. Untouched by the execrable travesty that Halo 4 turned out to be, Bungie’s swansong is not only the best Halo title to date, but also one of the greatest games of the generation.

John Brown
Mass Effect 2

It’s pretty well documented here on Ready Up that I’m a huge fan of Mass Effect, I love them all. Episode 1 introduced me to a universe full of possibility and weird vehicles, Episode 3 provided some of the most emotional gameplay I’ve ever encountered, but Episode 2 was where my love of Mass Effect became profound.

My Shepard had been faced with difficult decisions in the past, but it was only in Episode 2 that the conflict she was in became something which I cared about too. The shock at her initial awakening at the hands of Cerberus, the frustrations she felt while gaining a mental foothold on her situation, doing the right things for the wrong reasons, knowing deep inside that The Illusive Man was a bit of a twat, but also knowing that what she was doing mattered. All of these things became important to me.

The loss of Liara, even temporarily, was a deep sorrow, one from which there was no solace and my Shepard remained loyal and true to that blue-skinned beauty throughout. As indeed she remained fiercely loyal to her crew protecting them to the end and keeping them all alive and well throughout the final ‘suicide’ mission.

Mass Effect 2 has cemented itself into my psyche as no other title has for the simple reason that it made me care.

Anthony Pounds-Cornish
Battlefield 3

My first experience of online team based shooters was SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs on the PlayStation 2 and back in 2002, the experience of getting into an online game was galling. An evening’s effort would reward only one or two complete games, however those games were incredible experiences. SOCOM was the first title to use the USB headset on the console and the co-operative aspect of the gameplay became my holy grail.

Fast forward to 2011 and I’d missed the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 furore, however the level of excitement for Battlefield 3 was unprecedented.

I bought the game at launch and in the preceding 9 years, few games had come close to reminding me of SOCOM’s pure joy of team based tactics. Battlefield 3 bridged that gap and is my game of the generation because its design not only rewarded co-operation but actively punished lone wolves – you couldn’t run across a map shooting wildly and expect to survive. The fact was, if you were in a squad filled with communicative team players, you could only be beaten by a similarly filled squad. Consequently DICE had a vocal community who they listened to; the DLC was well thought out and tweaks and bug fixes were regular. The combination of developer, community and mature reliable hardware meant the game remained a staple go-to for our community nights for years. The fact that it is still being played by people on my friends list, even past Battlefield 4’s release, is fitting testament.