The origins of open world games go back almost as far as the genre itself. However, the genre wouldn’t have its watershed moment until the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001. Players love the freedom that comes with exploring a full world, whether that means stealing cars, scaling mountains, fighting dragons, or cooking meals with whatever ingredients you’ve scrounged up from the forest.
In no particular order, here are a few of my fave open world games!
Batman: Arkham Asylum surprised the world. Expectations for licensed superhero games were at an all-time low, and this was far from the usual crap. For many (myself included), Arkham Asylum was a legitimate game of the year contender. Instead of falling into the sophomore jinx, Batman: Arkham City builds upon a solid foundation to create the pinnacle superhero game.
Choosing a game of the year is never easy. Each year, we’re blessed with tons of great games, and to choose just one above the rest is very tough. Case in point: I copped out last year and picked two games as my “games of the year” for different reasons, but never definitively picked one over the other. I’m sure that the process for selecting a game of the year can be even harder for major gaming publications, who have to weight out multiple opinions before coming to a ‘definitive’ conclusion.
Having played many of this year’s biggest releases, I did a lot of soul-searching in order to choose a game I feel is worth of the game of the year distinction. When it was all said and done, I came to a conclusion. Was it Batman: Arkham City? Uncharted 3? Portal 2? Could it be another big release I haven’t listed here? Or maybe I went completely out of left field with my choice?
Without further ado, In Third Person’s 2011 game of the year is…
With high expectations behind it, it wouldn’t be difficult for the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum to fall short. If anything, it would be easier for Rocksteady to fall short with the sequel than it would be to equal or surpass the original. Arkham Asylum was a fantastic (and arguably revolutionary) game for its time. To this day, I’ll still gush over how amazing that game was (and still is).
Now that the groundwork is set, let’s talk about what people really want to know. Riddle me this, riddle me that, is Batman: Arkham City really all that?
In Third Person 