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Best of 2011: Eurogamer's Pick

Boulders! Dolls! Rhinos! Aslan!

Feature by Eurogamer staff Contributor
Published on
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  • Subject: Christian Donlan
  • Position: Wherever is most convenient
  • Special skills: Tea

What is your pick for 2011? 4Fourths

What is it? It's a four-player co-op game in which teams manoeuvre dinky little spaceships up and down the playing area in order to take out vast bosses. With a ship on each side of the screen, two players get to steer their vessels and two players get to shoot, so it's all about gleeful confusion. Or maybe teamwork. I don't know. It's made by Mikengreg, anyway, who created the luminous Flash and iOS masterpiece Solipskier, and it's currently in polished demo form and looking for a publisher. Or maybe Mikengreg hasn't updated the website.

Why do you care? Besides the delightful potential for friendly fire, it's one of those games that takes an ingenious idea – designers talk about teamwork a lot, but if you're not working together in 4Fourths, you're genuinely screwed – and wraps it up in a dazzling day-glo geometrical art style. Solipskier's astonishing use of colour alone practically propelled it into my top two for last year, and this looks equally startling. Plus, I can't stop watching the trailer over and over.

What makes you think it will come out in 2011? The fact that I'm 100 per cent pure sunshine optimist. If it doesn't, I'll just keep playing Leave Home, which is brilliant, looks a bit like it, and only cost me 80MP on Xbox Live Indie Games.

Witness Houston.
  • Subject: Wesley Yin-Poole
  • Position: News Editor
  • Special skills: Trolling, sensationalising, tabloiding

What is your pick for 2011? The Witness

What is it? First-person puzzle game from Jonathan Blow, the brains behind enchanting Xbox Live Arcade game Braid.

Why do you care? In some ways The Witness (which Portal 2 might have been if it was an indie game instead of the EA Partners-published blockbuster it's guaranteed to be) smacks of being Blow's difficult second album. But having seen it in the flesh at the GameCity festival in Nottingham last year, I'm convinced it'll be a mind-bending winner. Also, there are no guns, and you can't die. Wrap that around your FPS head.

What makes you think it will come out in 2011? Jonathan Blow, who told me he's shooting for a 2011 release in a Eurogamer interview. There's a 50-50 chance it'll be 2012, though.

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