What Is Your Game of the Year? 477
It's that time of year again. Last year's response to our Game of the Year post was so enthusiastic that I thought it would be worthwhile to give it another go. So, once again, some of the Slashdot folks have come together to offer up our 'games of the year'. Scuttlemonkey, Scott Collins, Chris Brown, CmdrTaco, and myself have all put together quick blurbs about the games we couldn't get enough of this year. When you're through reading those, it's your turn to speak up. What was the game you couldn't put down? The next-gen consoles really came into their own this year; was it one of those games, or something for the PC? In your opinion, what was the best game of the year?
Slashdot Engineer Chris Brown: If you read game sites at all, by now you've probably had more than your fill of cake and Weighted Companion Cube jokes. But Portal remains one of the best games to come out this year, well worth the price of the entire Orange Box just by itself. It's a darkly funny genre-bender of a game, and every minute of it is enjoyable. The only thing a reasonable person could still wish for is more of it - it's a short game by anyone's standards. And Ellen McLain's brilliant voice acting as GLaDOS makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.
My only regret is not experiencing the game on my PC. The Xbox 360's controls are awkward and the general ambiance of the environments seemed pretty drab and washed out.
Slashdot Engineer Scott Collins:
My favorite game this year (outside of WoW, I'm required to admit) was something of a surprise. It started at a chili-dinner party when a friend pulled a deck of cards out and said "Let's play Fluxx." Everyone else seemed to know what was going on, so I didn't require any convincing. It turns out to be a pretty fast-paced card game where you play: 'Action' cards, such as 'Pick a card at random from another player's hand'; 'Keeper' cards which are assets you collect to win, like 'The Brain', 'The Toaster', 'Dreams', 'The Rocket', et al; 'New Rule' cards that change play, like 'Draw 4' which changes the initial game of "draw 1, play 1" to "draw 4, play 1"; and 'Goals', like 'Milk and Cookies' meaning that while that is the current goal, the player who has played both the Milk and Cookies Keepers immediately wins. It ends up being a very strange and fun mix, something like Nomic combined with Uno. But that's not the end of the story.
The game was so much fun that when I got home I looked up the maker, Looney Labs, to buy a Fluxx deck for myself. There I discovered Zombie Fluxx.Zombie Fluxx adds a new kind of anti-Keeper: the Creeper; while the Keepers are things like 'The Chainsaw', 'The Can of Gasoline', 'The Shotgun'; the Goals are things like 'I alone survived', where if you have a Friend (Keeper), and the Car, and no zombies --- and everyone else has at least one zombie, you win. I managed to play Zombie Fluxx with all of my kids at once. At Thanksgiving, we had a game with three generations playing (just regular Fluxx though; I don't think Grandma and Grampa are ready for Zombies). The decks are designed so you can easily combine regular Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx for an even bigger game (and easily separate them again).
Patrick "Scuttlemonkey" McGarry:
This year saw a rather violent shift in my gaming appetites, as I decided it was time to kick the World of Warcraft habit.Any game that required too much of my time was avoided like the plague.That being said, the Wii's Mario Galaxy turned out to be my perfect game this year. So long have I been engrossed in the massive "pretty factor" of games (Quake, Doom, F.E.A.R., Warcraft, EVE, Empire at War, etc) that try to impress users with graphics, huge storylines, or tons of options that I forgot how great it could be just to find a simple game that offers a little bit of distraction and fun. Mario Galaxy really is the ultimate realization of the Mario franchise so far. It offers all of the glory of a platformer while offering several new twists.The first major expansion beyond the normal Mario world was their use of 3D and gravity. Many surfaces in the game acted as their own planet, complete with gravity well and the ability to traverse all sides of the object. There are also many fun manipulations of gravity throughout the game.Mario Galaxy also takes advantage of many unique controls available on the Wii to really make the gameplay interesting, without being overly hard.
Many games I have played recently really required a great deal of time to hone your skills to that "expert" level, and while that may be fine for a game with the scope of World of Warcraft, I shouldn't need that level of dedication for a simple platformer and Mario Galaxy delivers spectacularly. There were just enough challenges in the game to make it interesting but it was easy enough I could just pick it up and put it down whenever I felt like it without getting frustrated. The other major advancement Mario Galaxy has made was in cooperative gameplay. The new "co-star" mode makes it possible for you to include even the most staunch non-gamers in the Mario Galaxy experience. The co-star is given a cursor on the screen with which they can pick up power-ups, halt incoming enemies or enemy attacks, assist with stronger jumps, and even stun enemies for easy dispatch. Keep in mind that while all of these things are helpful if you happen to have a co-star, the game doesn't require you to have one, so that helpful individual can come and go as they please.
This makes it ideal for friends who drop by or loved ones that don't want to really jump in with both feet. All in all Mario Galaxy is a great casual game that can provide entertainment for just about any gaming appetite, definitely worth a look.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda:
My entry for game of the year is almost more about multiplayer gameplay. From fighters to first person shooters, there are just so many games out where I can invite a friend to join me, and then one of us crushes the other. Don't get me wrong, this is fun, but in many of those games, the person with the superior skill is bored while the less experienced player is defeated over and over again. It can get old.
Enter Rock Band. It might be the perfect party game. Someone drums, another plays bass, another lead guitar. And the most daring of any you takes up the USB microphone and goes nuts karaoke style. Instead of competing, you are a team. When one person fails out, another can bring them back by pulling off an overdrive move. And with the multiple difficulty settings, I can play on hard, while a friend plays on easy, and we can both be challenged and entertained.
It's hours of fun. It has problems: too many cords, not enough songs that everyone agrees on, and finding a spare guitar right now seems to be impossible. But each of those problems is addressable and doesn't take away from the fact that everyone can rock out for a few minutes. Everyone can be equals with a common goal and be challenged (well, maybe not people who have mastered expert mode, but I have no sympathy for you ;) It's got a steep price tag, but if you have 3 friends, it's worth it.
Michael "Zonk" Zenke:
My game of the year 2007 was decided during the 2006 E3 event.Mass Effect, at that point, was nothing more than a trailer about some space marine talking to an alien bartender. Years of patient waiting culminated for me in a 45 minute drive to the K-Mart in Portage, WI. Being able to buy a game a full week and a half before it releases generally is a special treat - moreso for me because of the chance to review the game before it came out. With a review in mind, I spent a full week leisurely exploring the world of Commander Shepherd, trying to stop Saren from carrying out his mad plot.
Over the course of that week, I was deeply, fully in love with the game. Yes, it's got some major flaws. The game's UI ranges from barely passable to amateur hour, and there are some honest frustrations to be voiced about character AI. Just the same, I was hooked, happily using the conversation wheel and Paragoning my way through the game's endless content. In some ways it reminded me a lot of Oblivion, my pick for last year's GOTY, in that the story fully drew me in. I've played Mass Effect quite a bit less than Oblivion; the exploration elements are just not as engaging.
But quality easily makes up for quantity, and my time with Mass Effect has been amazing. The moment that cemented this title in my personal hall of fame was actually the climax. Oblivion's ending is something of a 'whatever' - the joy there is in the journey. With Mass Effect, Shepherd's final confrontation with Saren is easily one of the most memorable gaming moments I've ever experienced. It's an incredibly fitting cap to the game's epic story and (somehow) actually makes me want to play through the whole thing over again.
Blemishes and all, Mass Effect is my game of the year for 2007. It reaffirmed for me the storytelling potential of western-style RPGs, and let me put to rest a burning anticipation I've had for quite some time. And, of course, now I can get ready for the next chapter in the series. When do you think Mass Effect 2 will be out?
Bioshock (Score:5, Interesting)
Call of Duty 4 (Score:3, Interesting)
For differing system types: (Score:3, Interesting)
Console -- Mass Effect. Great looking and sounding game, with a fun real-time combat system and a cool space-opera story.
Portable/handheld -- FFXII: Revenant Wings. They said that RTS could not be done on a portable. Then came the DS and Square.
Puzzle Quest (Score:2, Interesting)
I've spent more hours playing Puzzle Quest for my DS than I care to mention, and I haven't even finished yet.
Re:Super Mario Bros. 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite the fact that it's visually unimpressive now(and was not really that special then), it has a very compelling story, and fantastic dialogue. I actually cared about many of the characters in the story, and hoped for Good Things to happen to them. And there's some dark stuff too, which I like. Shame that more work wasn't done in the Planescape universe, it's a pretty interesting system.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Score:1, Interesting)
Even before I saw the Shire... (Score:2, Interesting)
And my wife and I were happy to leave WOW, after friends from EQ1 begged us to come onboard, then to be told we were not "ready" for the raids they held was a bit of a bummer. What aboring grindfest. I am still having fun taking my 4th alt in LOTRO through the level 30 content.
FreeCiv 2.1.1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, our family just loves FreeCiv [freeciv.org].
-l
Super Mario Bros. 2! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think one of the neat things about it is that pretty much everybody has played Super Mario Bros., so they know how the game works - and some will even remember it well enough that playing it again would hold no surprises - but not so many have played SMB2, so it's like a brand-new experience with the old favorite.
(For the record, I've got nothing against the game that was released as "Super Mario Bros. 2" in the US - I love that game, I have lots of great memories of playing it as a kid, and feel it's very worthy of being turned into a Mario title... And I don't believe players in the US would have been thrilled by the real SMB2 back in 1988, when SMB3 was coming out, because NES games had progressed so far beyond the original SMB by then...)
My top 10 - and a few other picks (Score:5, Interesting)
10) Odin Sphere (PS2) - wonderfully quirky little RPG/brawler combo, with 2d graphics that put some next-gen titles to shame and probably the best game soundtrack of the year.
9) God of War 2 (PS2) - epic in scale, utterly exhilerating to play, the perfect demonstration that you don't need a fancy gimmick controller to make a game's controls immersive. Probably the best looking game that will ever hit the PS2.
8) Call of Duty 4 (PC) - I hated the previous installments in the series, but this one is much, much better. Unlike most other "military" shooters around, this one has a pretty good plot. The combat is probably the most satisfying we've seen from an fps this year. It's too short, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts.
7) Bioshock (PC) - yeah, I know, it wasn't quite the Second Coming of Gaming that some of the early reviews made it out to be. The atmosphere, concept and sheer flexibility of the combat system, however, still mean it was a great game.
6) Command & Conquer 3 (PC) - I went into this prepared to hate it (I loathed C&C2 and Red Alert 2), but this was he game that, for me at least, put the fun back into the RTS genre. Stupidly fast-paced, it delivered the kind of adrenelin rush that you don't expect from an RTS. Moreover, with the gratuitous use of FMV cutscenes, it left most other offerings this year in the dust in terms of production values.
5) Crysis (PC) - The combat doesn't quite match up to Call of Duty 4's, but the sheer scope of Crysis is incredible. Even compared to Farcry, the sheer number of ways you can tackle each mission is staggering. If it weren't for the incredibly irritating floaty mission in the alien base, this would have been a contender for number 1.
4) Forza Motorsport 2 (Xbox 360) - Still no release date in sight for Gran Turismo 5, but I don't care any more. This is the best "realistic" racing sim I've seen on any platform, ever. A few more tracks would have been nice, but I guess we can hope to see that in the sequel.
3) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - With a hideously dated game-engine and a repetative combat system, this might seem an odd pick for so high up on the list. However, with the superb production values, the great writing and the innovative "everyday life" dynamic, this was my favourite Japanese RPG of the year.
2) Portal (PC) - Let's be clear, this game was too short. But there's no point crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.
1) Mass Effect (Xbox 360) - My game of the year, by some distance. Bioshock show just what they can do when they step out of the shackles of other people's content. It took me a while to get into this game, as the sheer size of it was a bit intimidating. However, there's no denying this is the deepest, best written, best produced and just-plain-all-around-jaw-dropping game of the year. The combat rocks, the characters are memorable and the game mechanics are intuitive.
Now, a few games not quite in my top 10, but which also impressed me a lot this year (in no particular order):
Ar Tonelico (PS2) - The ultimate guilty pleasure. I really shouldn't like this, but I couldn't help it.
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - Too short and unoriginal to make the top 10, but still engrossing.
Resident Evil 4 (Wii) - One of the few Wii ports to be genuinely enhanced by the control system.
Final Fantasy 3 (DS) - This is how you do a remake.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP) - Another excellent remake.
Heavenly Sword (PS3) - Thoroughly overshadowed by God of War 2, but still decent.
And now, the disappointments...
Supreme Commander (PC) - It pains me to write this, because I had a lot of hopes invested in this game, but it just reminded me how much things had moved on since Total Annihilation. A good effort, but it felt slow and (dare I say it) a bit boring compare
Stalker (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just so sick of Fantasy. I'm sick of elves, magic and special potions. I'm sick of WW2. Bioshock, while good, was not real to me, it just seemed over the top; to far fetched, sensational and psedu-scientific. A little make believe is ok, but spouting fire and lightning bolts from your hands because of a genetic enhancement potion stopped being intriguing to me. It just seems ridicules as I approach 30.
Playing something that really challenged me, based on a real area, with very realistic weapons and a gritty post-apocalyptic atmosphere was refreshing. I also enjoyed the depth and detail. The translations for all that is said in Russian reveal some very interesting dialog. The almost endless buildings to hunt around in and the 7 different endings to try gave the game more replayability than most. The amount of different equipment to use led to lots of debate and online discussion of strategy.
It was buggy, but in terms of breaking new ground, I think it gets overlooked when compared to the more sensational BioShock.
Munchkin! (Score:5, Interesting)
For anyone who hasn't played, think D&D. Now throw everything else out the window. Get a bunch of people, and try to get to level 10. Everyone will be real helpful to each other until someone reaches level 5 or so, and then it gets ugly. Redirect attacks, curse people, change their gender, take their pants, completely screw them over to the point of no return.
Best game for me this year, hands down.
AC (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got a little TIP for you! Get the POINT? (Score:5, Interesting)
GH II (Score:2, Interesting)
ChipWits II (Score:2, Interesting)
Program bots with graphic chips. A revival of a 1980's classic.
Yeah, I wrote it. But it's still my favorite game this year. So sue me.
Re:Porta! (Score:2, Interesting)
Would you really want to play much more of those puzzles in a single-player campaign? Personally, I thought Portal was of an excellent length -- and the writing, sound design, etc. probably benefited a great deal from the lack of pressure to produce a 50-hour epic in this case. Between the advanced maps and the challenge maps you can certainly get quite a few more sessions out of it, too.
Most of the companion cube plushes are gone, sadly -- but the site says there are a few left if you want to make a donation to Child's Play.
Footyman (Score:3, Interesting)
Sauerbraten (Score:2, Interesting)
I haven't noticed a single open source game listed yet (but I haven't exhaustively searched either), so I thought I'd offer the one that's been dominating my time lately:
http://sauerbraten.org/ [sauerbraten.org]
Sauerbraten is a fast-paced FPS with a number of game modes, maps, and a fun community of players. They typically put out a new release once every quarter, with the "Winter" release scheduled to arrive sometime this weekend. The best part for me is that I can hop online for a 15min game and I actually feel like I've played, whereas 15min spent on many commercial titles feels like not enough time spent to do anything meaningful.
I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, you spend the whole game learning to think a little bit differently about spacial orientation, how can you accept just being dropped into the fire without a fight?
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
Seth
Yeah, and Snow Crash is book of the year 2007 (Score:2, Interesting)
Once you learn the features and interactions, and layouts and regular encounters, NetHack loses a lot of its appeal. Most seasoned players won't even bother to play standard NetHack. It's too easy and boring. The exception might be version releases, but there hasn't been a new NetHack version in 4 years now.
I think the only sort of person who could consider a 4-year-old NetHack version as game of this year is someone who is still a newbie to the game.
DWARF FORTRESS .. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And there will be... cake... (Score:3, Interesting)
I still sing the "Still Alive" song to myself at work.
"Now these points of data/make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta/and releasing on time!"
We do what we must because we can!
Re:Call of Duty 4 (Score:3, Interesting)