TouchArcade staff has listed their own favorite games of the past year. I wanted to list my own and encourage other community members to list their own. Furthermore, if anyone has similar taste to me, perhaps they could suggest some other games for me to try. Sword & Sworcery: EP: Just watching the trailer for this game gives me chills. The aesthetic style seems to strangely captivate me, although it must not be that strange since it has also captivated the hearts of the TouchArcade audience, making it the game of the year. It might seem redundant that I'm mentioning this game as my own favorite, but at the same time, I am showing that I fully support its nomination and win, and I'm also setting the tone for the other kinds of games that I like. I honestly didn't find the actual battle mechanics of s&s:EP to be all that exciting, but the mood that the game set was absolutely fantastic, detailed in the carefully crafted atmosphere, the script, and most of all the music. Once you beat a boss, your excitement is propelled to a new height with the immense release of the music, as it follows your own progress through the game. The music was so good that I had to be among the first to purchase the vinyl. Battleheart: First up is Battleheart. When I first opened this game, I got so excited about it that I thought it might be the best game I had ever played. I had previously enjoyed rpgs where you control multiple characters, like Inotia 2, but those kinds of games were not as well paced, were more restrictive in your choices, and did not promote the same creativity of gameplay as Battleheart. Although Battleheart lacked a game world and progressed in a linear fashion through various instanced battles, in made up for this deficiency with a mix of enemies and interesting bosses. However, I do wish that Battleheart 2 tries to incorporate more of a world to progress through, and though unlikely, it would be amazing if Battleheart 2 incorporated multiplayer, wherein two players could each control two characters in a battle against a difficult boss. The incorporation of live pvp would also be amazing. Tactical Warrior: While waiting for the release of Final Fantasy Tactics, I scanned the app store for SRPGs and TBSs to ease my wait. At first I dismissed Tactical Warrior because of the low budget graphics. However, I was getting pretty desperate in my wait for FFT, that I decided to try out the free version of Tactical Warrior. To my surprise, the game was absolutely fantastic! The low budget, ugly graphics are misleading to what is otherwise a fantastic game. I do however wish that healing characters were more effective and easier to come by. Nevertheless, Tactical Warrior presents an engrossing TBS experience that is both addictive and thought provoking. Dofus: Battles: If you thought Plants vs. Zombies was good, imagine how good it would be if you merged the rpg elements of Final Fantasy Tactics with the strategic tower defense gameplay of Plants vs. Zombies. Dofus: Battles does just that, and if you are hesitant about how it might work, check out the free version! This game is absolutely fantastic! At first, however, the game almost too rapidly introduces you to each of the characters that you have at your disposal. You quickly have to catch on to how each character works so that you put them on the battlefield when appropriate. Once you get over the learning curve, what you receive is a fantastic tower defense rpg where you arm your characters with weapons geared toward a particular playstyle and battle waves of enemies in defense of your dragon who sits in the back summoning your characters. Although this game is one of my favorite games as it is, I can only wonder however how much better it would have been if they abandoned the tower defense gameplay and went purely for an SRPG gameplay like FFT. BeatMaker 2: You probably wouldn't consider BeatMaker a game at first, but considering that for many of us it is a source of countless hours of creative enjoyment, I don't see why you couldn't rank it among your favorite games if you use it just like one. BeatMaker for me is a creative release, where you can play with various instruments and effects to create pieces of music you can share with others. Among all my apps, this is the one that I keep returning to, and I never get tired of, as a continued source of entertainment and intellectual stimulation. Considering I would put such an atmospheric, mood setting game as first on my list (s&s:EP), it should thus not be a surprise that this musical app would be included among my favorite five of 2011. Happy new year!
