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RPS Time Capsule: the games worth saving from 2011We list our favourite games from 2011, and why they deserve to be preserved above everything else
We list our favourite games from 2011, and why they deserve to be preserved above everything else
It’s been a hot minute since we last gathered round theRPS Time Capsulevault (thanks, Gamescom), but at long last we have returned with another cracking year of PC games to preserve: 2011. In hindsight, it’s a bit of an interesting year for Time Capsuling purposes, as we’re now getting to the point where games from this era are getting their own remakes and remasters, or fancier, super duper director’s cut special editions. We’ve included the original 2011 release of one of these games in this month’s Time Capsule, but there’s another notable exception we’ve decided to save for further down the line. I mean, seriously, wouldyoureally recommend vanillaSkyrimfrom 2011 over 2016’s Special Edition?
Video Game Music Quiz - Can You Guess The Adventure Game From The Tune?Watch on YouTube
Video Game Music Quiz - Can You Guess The Adventure Game From The Tune?
Minecraft
Ollie:There are games I enjoy more these days, but when it comes to saving one game from 2011 in the memory banks, it could only beMinecraft, into which I’ve deposited more hours than probably any other game I’ve played. I still remember the very first time I played the demo version of Minecraft during the summer holidays of 2010, after my school friend had spent hours during our IT sessions convincing me that it’s something special. I remember being interested in a detached sort of way as I pottered around the procedurally generated forest, wondering what I was meant to be doing. I then delved underground on a whim and saw a gigantic cave system unfold before my eyes, and I started to realise that my friend might have been right.
L.A. Noire
Liam:Those faces! Can you remember the first time you sawL.A. Noire’s faces? Watching in awe as they wiggled their eyebrows and grimaced, their skin contorting and their lips flapping as they threatened to break the kneecaps of a (probably innocent) man.
I’m ashamed to admit that L.A. Noire’s face tech left me feral for about six months. I was obsessed with it, scurrying around showing it off to anyone who’d listen as I screeched about the future of video game performance capture. “Look at how subtle those expressions are!” I’d squeal, pointing at an old man pulling the same expression a four-year-old would make if you accused them of shoving slices of ham into an Xbox’s disc tray. “Imagine whatGrand Theft Auto Vwill look like!” I’d howl, oblivious to the countless news stories that documented the atrocious working conditions the staff at Team Bondi endured to ship such an ambitious game.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
CJ:I didn’t build a PC forThe Old Republic, but I might as well have. It was all I played on the first new desktop I’d managed to cobble together in years, like a Jedi constructing their dodgily glowing lightsaber, back at the start of the last decade. I wasn’t expecting a game that could do justice toKnights Of The Old Republicand its sequel, but The Old Republic drew me in anyway. There’s proper nuggets of a third Knights Of The Old Republic in there.
I’m not going to fib and say that I’ve been a regular The Old Republic player this past eleven years. I’ve haven’t touched it in ages. The beauty of a regularly updated, ageing MMO, though, is that there’s still fresh experiences to encounter even after a decade. The Old Republic’s always been something that I’ve meant to go back to, and every time there’s afancy CGI trailerfor the latest expansion I’ve redownloaded it with the intention of diving back in. Maybe 2022 is finally the year?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Image credit:Eidos Interactive
James:Can you imagine the pressure of making a newDeus Exsequel, eight years after the last one, which also happened to sour half a generation on the very concept of Deus Ex sequels? I’d be up every night stress-sobbing into the Nietzsche book I’d borrowed for research. Eidos Montréal must have been made of sterner stuff becauseDeus Ex: Human Revolutionis a corker, paying its respects to the timeless original while confidently making its own moves.
Alice0:It is good. Though Time Capsule rules mean we’re putting in the original release, mandatory violence and annoying DLC decisions and all, rather than the Director’s Cut. But I would happily go back and once again stuff an entire building’s ventilation system full of unconscious men.
Terraria
Image credit:Re-Logic
Ed:I can’t speak toTerraria’s offerings back in 2011, although it’s obviously a lot less than it is now. Still, that’s not the real reason I’m saving this 2Dsurvival gamewhere you mine for resources, build a nice base, and tackle a collection of ever-tougher bosses. No, I’m saving it for a few years later where my mate will introduce it to us in a little house in Devon and we’ll play it for 84 hours straight and my mate’s brother will genuinely forget - or subconsciously shut down - the part of him that needs to piss as it will inconvenience his base-building project.
Seriously, Terraria deserves preservation because it gets the upward curve of survival right. You’re forever chasing something bigger and bolder in a colourful world replete with exciting loot drops and nasty surprises. And it guides you expertly from one boss to another through the gradual drip feed of curious materials and biomes, which keeps you singularly focused on the various tasks at hand. That’s one of its greatest strengths, I reckon. I haven’t played a survival game since that hasn’t deviated in its hold on me, not once inciting frustration or snorts of, “I hate this biome”. It’s tirelessly fun.
And I like to believe that the RPS Time Capsule has a little incubator for Terraria, so when it does end up in the hands of some 3000-year-old Horace, they’ll get to experience the joy of what it eventually becomes: a game swollen with so much stuff that it’ll makes them forget to piss.
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy
Alice0:I think a key part of any time capsule experience is, as you rifle through the treasures of the past, picking up one item and asking, “What on earth is this?” And no one knows what it is. And you try to find out yourself. And think you can figure out one use for it. But you don’t know if you’re using it right. And you certainly still don’t know what it is. That’sE.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, which I think is a FPS-RPG set in a non-copyright-infringing cyberpunk world of Warhammer 40,000 fanfic. I think. I wouldn’t know for certain: I haven’t finished it, and likely never will.
Fable 3
Hayden:Fable 3is a game about baking pies, buying property, making lots of promises to become the ruler of Albion, and then breaking those promises once you’re on the throne. Then, maybe you can bake some more pies. Fable 3 casts a wide net, but whether you want to focus on fantasy questing, business management, or just making some very big moral decisions, it’s got it all. It might not excel at any of those things, but combining them all in one package created some of the best fun I had as a kid.
The Sims Medieval
Rebecca:The SimsMedieval was the spin-off everyone thought they wanted. Medieval decor and clothing options had been so popular with Sims players sinceforeverthat the long-awaited DLC on the theme eventually grew into a stand-alone title. But when a highly-touted Sims game gets only a single expansion pack before fading into oblivion, you know something went wrong.
Whatever the problem was, I can’t believe it was the game itself. The Sims Medieval is seriously lovely. A fantastical RPG-lite total conversion which manages to be both wholly a Sims game and completely its own thing. Everyone I know who’s played it seems to love it. And yet in under a year it had basically disappeared.
Bastion
Rachel:Bastionis particularly special for me as it’s one of the first games I played when I realised that I wanted to start writing about games. It also kickstarted the incredible careers of those at Supergiant Games, who to this day, have not released a game that hasn’t been an absolute banger, so into the 2011 Time Capsule it goes!
I first played Bastion in 2012, a year after it was released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 5 which also includedAmnesia: The Dark Descent, Psychonauts, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Lone Survivor, Braid, and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. I mean, come on, is that not theBESTcollection of games to introduce you to the wonderful world of indie games? And each game totally knocked my socks off, Bastion being my absolute favourite of the bunch.
As well as being the start of my love for indies, it also marked the beginning of Supergiant’s reputation of making bloody great games. Bastion’s punchy combat, painterly fantasy world, and heart-wrenching story of loss still hold up to this day and together with the gritty tones of Logan Cunningham as the Rucks the storyteller and Darren Korb’s evocative soundtrack, it’s a game that, even after all these years, still gives me chills to think about.
Portal 2
Image credit:Valve
Katharine:Yes, we included the originalPortalin our2007 Time Capsule, and I swore at the start of this whole exercise not to put multiple entries from the same series in multiple Time Capsules, because otherwise we’d likely be drowning in sequels and remakes rather than cooler, more interesting games that might otherwise get lost to the depths of time and spaaaaaaaaaace.
Limbo
The impact that each trial-and-error death has in Limbo is part of the point. It’s horrible when you see the little fellow die, alone, in a dark wood. It’s horrible watching the long, creeping legs of the giant spider. It’s horrible when you eventually pull the legsoffthat spider. The sound design and the atmosphere are pretty exemplary, and there are multiple theories about what the game actually represents. Are you dead? Are you travelling through hell or purgatory to escape? Does it matter?
Here’s my secret, though: once you get past the spider, I think the game becomes way less good. But it still deserves to be Time Capsuled, because it inspired a whole raft of platformers. You can see Limbo’s long, spidery legs in the excellentLittle Nightmares, for example, and even this year I playedSilt, an underwater creep fest platformer (floater??) that iswellLimbo. That’s pretty significant reach, if you ask me.
