Choosing My Game of the Year; Ghost Trick
Every year so many people attempt to categorize and rank every video game title that came out that year. While I’m sure we all enjoy our Skyrims, Assassin’s Creeds, Zeldas, and Modern Warfare 3s, the glut of November games simply drowns out so many other good choices. Tim made an excellent choice with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one I might’ve picked myself. But mainly: forgotten are all the excellent games that came out at the beginning of the year. My example? Ghost Trick.
This Nintendo DS game sprung from the mind of Phoenix Wright creator Shu Takumi arrived in January of 2011 and was given only a small amount of coverage at its release. Some sites are recognizing it now as one of the better DS games as the year comes to a close. When compared to the big-budget triple A titles that flood the market year after year, portable games, especially on the DS, now that the 3DS is out, often appear too “simple” or “boring” to many. I argue the opposite – to me, portable games can often be more intimate, more personable. Few games were as quirky and endearing as the Phoenix Wright series, which I feel exemplifies this idea. Ghost Trick also accomplishes this feat, with characters you quickly come to love and fantastic writing, too.
The idea of becoming a ghost and possessing inanimate objects has been done once or twice before in games, but none brought the concept full-circle and enveloped it in a bright, colorful world the way Ghost Trick did. While puzzles are the name of the game here and are pretty solid, my first love is the art style: from the very first piece of promotional art that released I adored the art. The artists at Capcom did an excellent job with the character design as well as the animation, which is some of the most fluid work I’ve seen in any game, ever.
While re-playability is low due to the nature of the game (once you know how to solve the puzzles, it’s a breeze to replay them), the creative story and lovable characters will stick with you long after the game is done. The twist at the end of the game, while silly, is still quite clever and fits perfectly into the story. Like Tim said, perhaps the title of “Game of the Year” is a bit pretentious, but if there’s one game I want people to check out, one game you might have missed that you shouldn’t have – it’d be Ghost Trick.
