A year(ish) ago I made my first ever public New Year's resolution, to play more games (specifically anything scoring 8.5 or higher on GameSpot). Twelve of the best months in gaming for a long time later, and I'm not surprised to report I have fallen woefully short. I started off strong, but it all started to go downhill when Pokemon Diamond got a high enough score to mean I had to play it. I just really couldn't bring myself to play a Pokemon game. Partially because it's Pokemon and, you know, Pokemon, but mostly because I don't ever want to be able to talk with any level of expertise about Pokemon, a man's got to have some standards after all. Pokemon Diamond, of course, was not one of the games of the year so I might be able to let it slide. Not really, let's have a quick run through the GOTY nominees to see how many good games I missed out on this year.
Bioshock - I played the demo when it came out on Xbox Live, but that's it. My excuse? Absolutely none whatsoever. I wanted to play it, had the opportunity and time to play it, but just never played it. Chalk up another game for me to play when it gets a price drop.
Call of Duty 4 - Played through the single player on PC, yet to get into the multiplayer. Very good game, but I felt that the relentless forward motion normally required in Call of Duty games didn't sit so well in a modern setting. Nevertheless the Chernobyl and AC-130 missions are two of the best individual levels I have played for a long time.
Crysis - I have purchased, installed and started playing Crysis. I also spent nigh on $3000 buying a new PC to play it on, including SLI 8800GTs. Just to let you know, that's not enough, you still have to mess around with the settings an awful lot to get the framerate at an acceptable number. Besides that, I haven't played enough of it to form a serious opinion of the game, except to say that the first hour or so is pretty underwhelming.
Forza 2 - Haven't been near it, not interested. I really don't do racing games.
God of War 2 - I've given my thoughts on God of War 2 previously, but here's a summary: Bigger and more impressive than the first, with some truly epic boss fights. The story and atmosphere of the sequel, however, is a long way short of the original. Probably one of the best games to come out on the PS2.
Halo 3 - I've played through the single player campaign in co-op about one and a half times. To be honest, I lost track of the Halo story about halfway through Halo 2, so I have nothing to say about it as a concluding chapter. I also think that changing the primary enemy from elites to brutes changed the dynamic of the game for the worse. Because the brutes do not have recharging shields the player is no longer required to play in a run-and-gun style, which turns Halo 3 into a much more standard shooter in which you sit behind cover taking pot shots at enemies until they die. Multiplayer-wise, Bungie continue to set the mark for online community features with the replay features, improved stat-tracking and so forth. Regardless of whether or not you like Halo's multiplayer, the quality of the features surrounding it is unmatched.
Rock Band - Wouldn't know, it's not out in Australia yet, and in fact it still doesn't even have a solid release date here.
Super Mario Galaxy - I've played a fair amount of Galaxy and I have to say that it hasn't impressed me a whole lot. Rather than repeat someone else's words, check out the Zero Punctuation review of the game. It's worth noting that this was definitely the best Wii game to come out in 2007, but that's really a feat on the order of winning a fist fight against Stephen Hawking.
The Orange Box - From a GOTY perspective, we have to ignore Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, which just leaves Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. For my money, Portal is close to being a GOTY contender by itself. Add in Team Fortress 2, which I haven't played but has caused sleepless nights among quite a few people at my work, and you need a very good reason to not make The Orange Box Game of The Year.
World In Conflict - I have bought this game, but not yet played it, so that's probably all I can say about that.
So of the nine nominees, I've played 3 enough that I feel fully qualified to talk about them, and another 3 a bit. Maybe I'll do better next year. It's probably best not to bother with a resolution though, try and keep the amount of self-inflicted failures for the year to a minium.
On an entirely unrelated note, I spent a few days over the Christmas break coding and putting up a blog at http://stripeshop.metagnome.net mostly as a coding project because that's the kind of totally not-nerdy-at-all thing I do when I'm on holiday. Anyway, it's going to be serving as a place for my musings on more esoteric and technical game design stuff, including board games, card games, any games I can get my hands on really and whatever I get up to with the XNA toolkit. GameSpot is staying as my usual outlet for rants and comments on computer gamery and other random stuff, but if you don't get enough metagnome with my sporadic GameSpot updates, feel free to check out the Stripe Shop.
Comments
GOW on the PS2 is a amazing game, maybe a GOW 3 is lurking around?
COD 4... Honestly, that first level in the ship is FUGLY. I thought it looked like a PS2 game. For a game that everybody raved so much about the graphics, I am seriously underwhelmed. Assassin's Creed looks about a million times better than this, as do Crysis, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Halo 3 and Team Fortress. I don't know... I thought I was sick of WWII and that's why I didn't like COD 2 or 3, but now I'm starting to think that it's just the way these games are structured. It's too rigid for my taste. It's almost like a shooting gallery. The AI is about as complex as a shooting gallery. And I think it's too fast; you never get a sense of your location before guys are jumping out at you. I know this is supposed to keep the tension constantly high. But I don't think that works.
And yeah, Crysis gets really great about 2 hours in, and then gets not so great once you enter the alien ship.
If being able to play it anyway you want is such a big deal, FarCry. And FarCry did it better. It allowed for tactics and tackiling things from diffrent angles and situations. Crysis made me laugh the first time I realized after all the talk of "Open Gameplay" that most of the areas in the game were the old school corridor crawls. They were prettied up with trees and cliffs and what not, but walls they still were. And the play as you like idea kinda bottoms out to "Do I want to sneak up and stealth kill 2 of 8 koreans before its just a firefight, just run in killing 8 koreans, or maybe just turning on the speed and running by these 8 koreans.
And CoD4 looks nice AND runs at a smooth 83 fps on my machine with all the bells and whistles turned on. Crysis runs at a slideshow pace of 31 fps. Unreal? A lovely 76 fps. I have the rig for this damn game. I meet or pass the "requirements". This is an angry bear of an engine that doesn't want you to play it.
Orange box is nice but i'm annoyed that as a pc owner i already own 2 copies of HL2 and a copy of episode 1... i sold my soul to valve. Portal is a fun game though.
World in conflict i have, a bit of the berlin wall was definately one way to get pc people interested.. as for the game. Its ok... i wouldn't rate it better than company of heroes (with addon) or age of empires 3 (with all the addons especially asian empires). Rockband also has no british release date.
Mario... haven't found a reason to buy a Wii yet as i own all the last gen consoles + DS and PSP
Shame apart from Witcher, rpgs on the PC sucked balls last year. NWN2 is appalling. (Bloody camera views)
Halo 3, i played on a mates pc, found it dull. So its got multiplayer, so has doom 1
Call of duty 4 i have been tempted but with no co op and really short single player means I have yet to purchase it (I took the gamespot view to heart).
Overall not bad year but i'm a pc owner first, so have a weird way to look at things.
Still, a great year for games, and like most people I'll be playing catch up well into next year...
World In Conflict: I heard it was a step backwards in strategy games (as they remove all the structures, and equalize monetary gains). But I suppose it is innovation when you mix up the traditional formula.
I plan on getting God of War 2 (that game looks awesome).
wowsa... the best funny I've had thus far in 2008
good luck in yer gaming endeavors this year
Also, Rock Band just turned up on my suppliers radar. I think the date was 15th March for Australia. Here's hoping it comes forward, can't wait to get my hands on it!
On a more serious note though, I do sympathize with your plight. I was only able to play a fraction of the games I wanted to this year.
Why?
I think Super Mario Galaxy was excellent. A great addition to the Mario franchise. One of the best in my opinion. What impressed me about the game was that collecting stars stayed fresh due to the many different challenges and variations throughout each scenario. The ending was also superb IMO.
Your goal was a hard one to accomplish, hence you failing. Gaming is growing more popular by the second. Hopefully you'll have the same troubles in '08. You can never have too many games to play... or can you?
I managed to finish Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, all of the Orange Box (except I guess TF2, it can't really be finished), Bioshock, Halo 3, Skate, and Guitar Hero 3. I also played most of World in Conflict and Call of Duty 4, played some of Phantom Hourglass, Crysis, and Forza 2.
I also managed to do well at college and hold down a job over winter break. But I don't mean to diminish your goals/accomplishments, it's good that you're broadening your horizons and trying to experience more. That's what gaming is all about really, the experience, and it can be hard to take it all in, especially at the pace this year demanded.
And Pokemon... you have to stay above those profane things as coolness and maleness!
From the GoTY nominees I only played Galaxy a bit and thought is was great. I'm not into shooters or racers. Rockband is too expensive and God of Wars seems to be too brutal for my taste. So compared to me you did really really well!
hey you didn't play Mass Effect ??
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