Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 didn't wow me as much in 2011 as Gears of War did in 2006. Part of that is just the time difference - I've played a lot of shooters in that period, and most games don't benefit from waiting until a couple years after release to check them out. I do think it's still a slightly less impressive game than the original though. It's a sequel that doesn't do a whole lot new - its cover mechanics are still among the best in the business, but they're not exactly fresh; its mantra of being bigger and more badass doesn't result in combat situations that are necessarily more interesting; and in a world where plenty of games combine third person shooting with other fun elements, games that are nothing but third person shooting the entire time don't stand out as much. It's still a really solid shooter - the graphics still look great two and a half years later, the fundamentals of the gameplay are as good as anybody's, and there are a few surprising ideas sprinkled around. It just didn't strike me as a great game the same way the first Gears did - the first game set the tone for action games for the whole generation, while the second is... just the second one.

I've had people tell me Gears is really meant to be played co-op, and perhaps I am doing the game a small disservice by only playing it by myself. But that's how I play most games, and I believe that if one actually needs to be played with a friend to be awesome, then it's not really awesome - almost everything is better if you're doing it with friends, so it's not actually to a game's credit that it has working co-op. I played Gears 1 by myself too, so it's not like that was the factor that caused me to find the game slightly disappointing. Nothing was really missing at all, it's just that the things they added weren't enough to maintain the same thrill throughout the length of the campaign. Large set pieces like riding a huge platform on wheels through a forest look neat but don't quite result in especially memorable action, and too much of the game is spent in environments I found fairly dull - underground caverns that have a lot of technically impressive art in them, but are a bit boring stylistically and end in formulaic boss fights. I enjoyed the game more when I was battling through a war-torn city near the end, and wish there was more of that - I know some people are bored of shooters that use too many flashy scripted events to shake up the action, but it usually at least distracts you from fighting through a lot of similar battles over and over.

Few of the new weapons made a real impact, and I mostly ended up using what I was familiar with. In some ways, the Lancer is actually too good of a weapon. It's reasonably accurate, it holds a lot of ammo, and it has the best melee ability in the game - there's no reason to ever not have one, so you're limited to fewer slots for experimentation. It's the gun I used for a significant majority of both games, and I don't expect that to change in the third - if they made it wilder or took away the chainsaw to compensate, fans would throw a fit. Additions to the things you can do in combat didn't quite pay off. For example, the idea of being able to pick up a wounded enemy and use him as a shield sounds neat, but it rarely comes up in actual gameplay, because you spend most of your time ducking behind a wall across that battlefield from most of your enemies, and I suspect opportunities for that kind of up-close scuffle are even more rare on harder difficulty levels, where a couple seconds out of cover are likely to get you torn to shreds. This even has an additional negative effect on the game - downed enemies can now crawl around looking for help like your buddies can, which results in them either being revived and dragging out fights, or being hidden out of sight when everyone else is dead, preventing the game from playing the sound that indicates you've cleared the room of enemies, making you unsure of what's happening for a little while. The fact that you yourself can now be revived as long as your friends are still walking mitigates it somewhat, but it's still an annoyance.

Another example of a somewhat superfluous feature is the addition of certain areas where the cover can be raised or lowered out of the ground by switches, and you have to make sure you're protected and your enemies aren't during fights. It's kind of a cool idea, but it doesn't result in many actual battles of much strategic significance, and it sort of just makes you wonder why the Locust thought it would be cool to fill their city with switches that raise and lower chest-high metal walls with no real purpose. That's not even the only new cover gimmick - for some reason Epic seemed to feel the need to experiment with that stuff, but just give me a few sandbags or crumbled columns to lean against and I won't complain. On the positive side, I did enjoy the increased variety in the "vehicle" sections, and the game gets stronger as it goes on. I was kind of surprised by how late some of the stuff they showed before the game's release ended up being in the final campaign, but luckily that didn't cause it to lose too much impact. I enjoyed it when the tone departed a bit from the dude bro action somewhere in the middle, and again, it's hard to overstate how nice the game looks.

Story-wise, it's... well, it's Gears. John DiMaggio plays a gruff-voiced badass in charge of a group of badasses who don't take no shit and refuse to wear helmets, because they obscure your vision more than they expose your brain to getting bullets shot into it. It's a mostly cheesy conglomeration of action, war, and science fiction tropes that works well enough to keep things going without ever being especially memorable or profound. Dom's still kind of a wiener, although now he has a shoehorned in subplot where he's searching for his wife that makes his wienerness stand out more. Cole's still over the top, and Baird is still the secretly likable one. There are a couple new guys, although they don't end up getting much to do. The queen of the Locust Horde still seems out of place in this setting, and while the climax and conclusion of the story seemed better formed this time, it also ended kind of abruptly in the game itself. They clearly put more effort into the back story with some tangents that seem like they could come up again and hidden notes scattered everywhere, though honestly I didn't feel compelled to track that stuff down or even read it when I found it. Being that this is the era of trilogies, the third game is supposed to bring this grand arc to a close later this year, and while I don't really care what happens to any of these people, I imagine I'll end up playing it at some point. The Gears of War series is not exactly one I have a real affection for, but it's hard to say they're not competent, well-made games.

Best Games of 2010

2010 was almost a lost year when it comes to these lists, because for about two thirds of it I didn't have much spending money to actually check out new stuff. I ended up with some lists I'm happy with though, even if I would have liked to have some more candidates available to get on. This list of games is pretty heavy on the first part of the year when I was actually getting paid, but it was a strong enough period that I'm comfortable saying these are all definitely worth playing.

Best of 2010

8. Shantae: Risky's Revenge (DSi)


The download-only sequel to the Game Boy Color cult hit seemed to get into a lot more hands, if only because it was on a system people were actually still using. The game's not perfect - I wish it had been just a tad meatier in terms of truly compelling stuff to do, but the dungeons that are there are fun, the platforming is solid, and the art and dialogue are completely charming. A fun, quick adventure.

7. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Multi)


I don't know if Call of Duty purists will ever allow Treyarch to think they made a game better than what Infinity Ward could do, but they managed their strongest effort to date with Black Ops. The campaign managed to avoid most of the series' traditional pitfalls and had an enjoyable if completely over the top story leading you from gun fight to gun fight. And judging by the fact that my brother is still playing the online almost nightly, I'd say they did a good job with that part as well.

6. Costume Quest (Multi)


Much like Shantae, Costume Quest is a game that could have probably used more content but was still pretty delightful while it lasted. The combat was simple but rewarding, and the adventure elements were clever without being obtuse. Add Double Fine's continuing excellence in the field of funny dialogue that actually amuses, and it's certainly worth a download.

5. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Multi)


If this year was any indication, DICE is going to have a hard time ever making a game that really surpasses Call of Duty's stranglehold on the hardcore modern shooter market. But those who played it liked it a lot, both for the multiplayer which nicely translates the grand experience from the PC to a slightly smaller scale, and the campaign, which while a bit sloppy, is also in some ways a lot more interesting than the chain of scripted events that has come to define the genre.

4. Heavy Rain (PS3)


Heavy Rain is a very polarizing game, and for good reasons. If you don't like quick time events you'll never get into it, and the plot really goes off the rails by the end. But it's also amazingly well presented, the kind of thing that designers with respect for actual story structure could do a lot with. Heavy Rain provided some of the most tense and thrilling sequences I played through all year, and I didn't have to kill hundreds of people to do it. If nothing else, it's a very interesting game.

3. Darksiders (Multi)


Darksiders is a game I wish we saw more of, something that came out of a true place of creative inspiration (even if it was a silly one) rather than a board room meeting trying to figure out what the kids are into these days, while still having the look and polish of a large budget title. The combat was imperfect but enjoyable, and the puzzle-filled dungeons were some of my favorites in a game in years. There, you see? You can write about Darksiders without mentioning Zelda.

2. God of War III (PS3)


I was surprised to see a number of people recently express disappointment at how this game turned out. God of War has always been about pairing bloody, over-the-top hack and slash action with light puzzle solving and platforming in a pretty game engine, and this game's PS3-backed visuals and new twists on the old ideas meant that it did them better than ever before. What were they expecting? God of War III is awesome.

1. Red Dead Redemption (Multi)


Grand Theft Auto IV was acclaimed upon its release but then seemed to leave a lot of bad will behind afterward, which is why it was impressive seeing how many people said that Red Dead made up for it. It has the best shooting in a Rockstar game to date, and the setting is one of their best realized as well. Add a truly likable protagonist at the center of maybe their best story, and Redemption has a real case as the company's best game ever. Add the best ending all year, and it's a heck of a product.

Notable Exception

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Multi)

I started playing this last week, and while it sort of feels like just more of the second game, that game was also sort of awesome, so I'm having a pretty good time. I haven't played nearly enough of it to put it on the list, but the campaign's potential along with how interesting the multiplayer looks makes me pretty sure it would have made it if I had. I just hope they don't keep pumping these out and make it tiring.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Black Ops is Treyarch's fourth Call of Duty game, and it seems like they've finally gotten the hang of the series. They've long been seen as a very secondary developer in comparison with Infinity Ward, the team that created the series in the first place, but with that studio obviously having issues following the departure of many key employees, Treyarch has the opportunity to establish themselves as top dogs. Black Ops has already surpassed Modern Warfare 2 in early sales, and I certainly had a good time playing it.

If there's one thing the Black Ops campaign does right, it's that it's consistent. I've played all of the main entries in the series except for Call of Duty 3, and every single one of them, while fun and impressively presented, has had moments of pure frustration that lasted way too long. When the series was primarily set in World War II, they occasionally liked to throw in missions where you had to defend a lightly fortified position for several minutes, and these always ended up being frustrating trial-and-error sections as you repeatedly got killed and tried something slightly different the next time until you miraculously made it to the end. As the series went on, they started using this type of mission less, but there still always seemed to be at least one level that asked too much of you, just overwhelming you with enemies without stopping to ask if what they were throwing at you was realistically playable. Thankfully, Black Ops has no sections like that. There were a few moments that irritated me a bit, but they were never as bad as the series can be.

I hesitate to call it the best game in the series though, because while the campaign is consistently pretty good, it doesn't often reach its previous high points. It's possibly just series fatigue after playing seven of these in the last five years, so I'm pretty familiar with what the games do well at this point, but it's just not as impressive as it's seemed in the past. There are some interesting scenarios that play out for you and a few really cool set pieces. It was nice seeing the vehicle sections return with so much vigor, and I appreciate that this is the first time the series has really focused on a single character for the play, besides three missions where you play as Ed Harris and Gary Oldman (which is cool too). But the most tightly designed and scripted moments are rarely as shocking and compelling as the Modern Warfare games at their best, as their focus seems to be less on what's cool and more on just being brutal as hell. There are some very violent things happening, including several that you do yourself, and the way the game lingers on it feels sort of gross and seems like it's trying too hard to please frat boys who would otherwise stay away from the story in favor of the online.

The multiplayer is cool, but it's just not why I like these games. I know that at this point, the majority of Call of Duty players must spend the majority of their time with the games shooting friends rather than computer enemies, but the amount of effort put into single player shows me at least the developers still care. It's an impressive game visually, especially the work by the effects team, and while the gun sounds still aren't as dynamic as in Battlefield, it sounds pretty good too. The use of licensed music worked for me even if the choices were obvious, and the celebrity voice cast did a nice job, even if Sam Worthington sounds way too Australian a lot of the time. I liked the story for the most part, as it got the most attention of any game in the franchise, and the writers seemed to enjoy working in as many historical figures, conspiracy theories, and real-life locations and operations as possible.

It's odd that they dropped campaign co-op play after having it last time, but you can understand with the focus on the storyline this time. Obviously zombie mode can fill that gap a little bit, but it's pretty much the same as it was before, and really doesn't measure up to Spec Ops in terms of variety and replayability. They actually do a lot of little things to surprise you with the amount of stuff they crammed onto the disc, although in the end, it's another Call of Duty game and that formula can really only take you so far the more you use it every year. Still, it's worth a try.

Best Games of 2009

I don't see why so many major publications give out their awards before the year is even over. I mean, yeah, pretty much everything that belongs there is already released by that point, it just seems a bit hasty. Anyway, this is definitely one of my best years for gaming in a long time. It's not that there were definitely more awesome games to come out, it's that, at least in the last few months, I actually managed to play more of them then I usually ever do. You know it's a strong fall season when I can't even be bothered to finish a Tim Schafer game because there's too much else I'm interested in. All right, let's begin.

Best of 2009

9. Halo 3: ODST (360)


Most years that a Halo game comes out, seeing it this low would be weird, but it seems like I liked this one about as much as anyone. It's an interesting experiment that does some new things with the formula, but either people were turned off by the expansion pack nature or are just getting tired of the franchise. I guess we'll find out next year when the slightly more hyped already Halo: Reach comes out.

8. Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)


I didn't play this nearly as much as I would have liked, but that's what happens when you experience significant lag issues and have a handful of single player games you'd like to get through. Still, I could tell with the time I've already spent that this quick sequel manages to add a lot of new things to the series without taking away any of the sense of fun playing it through with a group of friends provides. And with some DLC already on the way, we know Valve's going to continue supporting the franchise. I just hope they show a third installment of a different one of their series instead this year.

7. inFamous (PS3)


This is probably the most flawed game on the list, but it's so much damn fun to run around and explore the environment that I had to put it here anyway. Few games make you feel as powerful as you do in inFamous, and it still managed to be challenging without ever getting too frustrating. I'd like to give it a go as a bad guy some time, just to see how the other half lives. If only Sucker Punch didn't feel the need to get all gritty and dark and nonsensical with the jump to new hardware.

6. Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)


It's getting harder for this series to really blow me away anymore, but A Crack in Time was probably the series' most complete installment to date. I'll probably never love a game in the series again like I did the proper PS2 sequels, but as I've said before, I could play games of this quality for a long time without ever getting sick of them.

5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Multi)

It's still a bit amazing how Rocksteady came out of nowhere and made one of the most complete single player games in a while with a superhero that almost everyone has to at least like, though I do think it's in that rare position of being a great game but maybe a bit overrated by the world at large at the same time. I mean, how can a game really be that good when the bosses suck so universally? Still, that's mostly a quibble when the unique combat and stealth are both so well executed.

4. Flower (PS3)


Despite all the huge budget, lavishly produced games I played in 2009, this small, two hour piece of art probably hit me the hardest of anything. I know not everyone is going to be affected by something the same way, but at least for me, it was an experience that was at different times relaxing, distressing, and profoundly moving. And probably my favorite use of sound in any game last year as well.

3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Multi)


I didn't expect to be swept up again, but if nothing else, Infinity Ward is a group of professionals who know how to make a tight, engrossing single player experience, and can throw some good online play on top of it. I've had a chance to check out the two player Spec Ops missions as well, and they help extend the life of a game that's campaign can be finished in only 5 or 6 hours, but has plenty of moments worth revisiting and enough other content to keep shooter fans happy for a while.

2. Assassin's Creed II (Multi)


I already really, really liked the first game despite its faults in some areas, so a sequel that fixes pretty much all of those was a shoe-in to appear high on this list. With a much more varied and thoughtful progression through the game, improved storytelling, more incentive to explore, and movement and combat systems that stand out from the rest of the world's open world action adventures, it's an extremely rewarding and fun game that does everything a sequel should.

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)


This is the king of good sequels though, and I suppose my favorite game of this generation of consoles. I have a bit of an "I liked Uncharted before it was cool" thing going on, but it's nice to see the second attempt take it from being an interesting, genre-spanning gamer's game to a genuinely successful and nigh-universally praised technological marvel. It's not flawless, but the single player campaign is a stunning, immensely fun, beautifully paced near-masterpiece and the online multiplayer ain't half bad either. Anybody who owns a PS3 or has easy access to one and hasn't given it a shot is only robbing themselves of something pretty special.

Halo 3: ODST

ODST has caught some flack from various sources for charging full price for less than a full product. I can't totally justify speaking either way because I paid twenty dollars less, but I don't see how the game is worth less than others in the series. It might just come from the fact that there's a 3 in the title and the words "expansion pack" were tossed around early on. The game does feel like a side story, developing events that take place at the same time as the second half of Halo 2, and the main multiplayer component is just carried over (along with all the paid downloadable extras) from the previous game. The campaign also is a tad short, but I rarely see that as a negative these days as long as it's a well developed, interesting experience. Plus, the new Firefight mode adds to the game's life quite a bit. I haven't played online because the system I'm using doesn't have a Gold account, but I've played Halo that way before, and I see no reason why one of the most consistently popular games would be any worse now.

So my focus as usual was on the single player. Master Chief isn't around this time, replaced by a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, elite soldiers on the same side who enter war zones through individual pods that precariously fall to the planet's surface. You spend the most time as the Rookie, a blank slate of a character who wakes up several hours after the mission begins and explores the city by night, either engaging or sneaking past enemy patrols. You can wander around if you like, but the goal is to track down pieces of equipment left behind by your other squad mates, which trigger more traditional Halo levels starring the other characters. I have to say, one of the biggest reasons why I liked the squad idea is that it made it basically a video game version of Firefly, if Mal and company were armored space marines instead of smugglers. The game doesn't even pretend otherwise; Nathan Fillion is the leader, Alan Tudyk is the pilot, and Adam Baldwin is the tough guy. They're joined by video gaming's ubiquitous Nolan North as the sniper and Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer as the erstwhile captain in charge of the mission. Early on they're all separated but they eventually meet up and work together, killings aliens and cracking wise at the same time. The camaraderie of the squad is an enjoyable element, and it make the Rookie's quietness all the more strange. It seems like the radio on his helmet has failed, but when he just ignores direct questions in person it doesn't fit with the game's tone at all.

Despite lacking the scope of other games in the series, taking place entirely within the confines of a single (admittedly huge) city, it doesn't feel lacking in variety. There's the usual mix of vehicle sections, sneaking through corridors, ambushing small groups, and taking on larger scale battles in open areas. Occasionally a section will kick your ass for a few tries, but it's pretty simple and fun to keep moving through the game, especially if you're familiar with the series. They made a big deal about the Troopers not being as tough or strong as Master Chief, but they seem to jump about as high and take the same punishment before dying, and have no trouble flipping over a crashed vehicle if needed. The health system is changed but essentially the same as the first game and for all intents and purposes, this is Halo through and through. The only thing missing is the Flood, which I'm totally fine with. I admire the attempt to mix up the game a bit, but they were never that fun to fight and the nighttime segments take their place rather neatly.

The game looks and sounds about how you'd expect. People complain that the Halo games don't look much better on the 360 than the original Xbox, but I wonder if they're looking at the same thing I am. It's pretty much the same aesthetic, but everything looks nicer, especially with the lighting. There's a new vision mode in the Troopers' helmets that indicate important features in the darkness. I think I ended up using it for about half the game, and it's usually pretty useful without being distracting. A few things in the game will interfere with the signal, and it adds a cool element of making sure you're using it in the right situation. The story is fairly standard for Halo, as in the world seems more interesting than the execution generally allows. There's not a ton going on in the plot, but it does tie the last two games together nicely in the end, and thanks partly to the cast has the most entertaining cut scenes in the series. If you like Halo, and especially if you haven't already played the online to death, it's definitely worth checking out.

Game Update 10: E309 Game Impressions

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has come and gone and once again, I spent way too much time watching video of unreleased games being played. Here are my shallow opinions in blurb-form.

Alan Wake - Much more of a shooter than I expected to see, but it's nice that the game actually exists and I'm sure there will still be some interesting story elements during the daytime.

Assassin's Creed 2 - They seem to have addressed all of the complaints with the original, leaving behind only an awesome open world historical assassination game. Expanded combat looks nice.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - This looked really interesting at first until he kept fighting a gigantic mob over and over. Something about the combat just drained my enthusiasm completely.

Battlefield 1943 - I'm a fan of the series, and some online play for my PS3 for cheap sounds like a nice proposition.

Brutal Legend - Hooray for Activision living up to the mantle of gigantic douche bag publisher in every way possible by suing to prevent this game's release. Assuming it comes out, it looks like a fun mix of metal, hack and slash, adventure stuff, Jack Black - well, a fun mix of everything.

Dark Void - A long time coming, but looks potentially very nice. Jetpacking around and jacking UFOs is pretty sweet.

Fat Princess - This is a really fun looking RTS/deathmatch/hack and slash multiplayer game. I want to play it just to screw around with the different classes.

God of War III - Really looking forward to some more evisceration of classical monsters and gigantic puzzle-filled temples. They keep upping the ante with the gore, and it seems almost too crazy this time, but I kind of like that.

Halo 3: ODST - A slightly different take on the standard Halo shooting gameplay, different enough to look worth checking out. Also, Nathan Fillion as your commander is cool.

Heavy Rain - It seems to expand upon the interesting aspects of its spiritual predecessor, which people forget was really good for the first two thirds, and the dynamic story stuff sounds great.

Left 4 Dead 2 - Surprising move by Valve coming out with a sequel so soon, but it looks pretty different and it sounds like they're including enough new content to make it worth a separate release.

Lost Planet 2 - I'm playing the first right now, and I haven't seen anything as remotely cool as the boss fight they showed off with four players against a giant monster. As long as they focus on that and not fighting snow pirates, it could be good.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Based on the insipid Civil War storyline, it basically looks like what you'd expect from a sequel. I'd play it with a group again.

Mass Effect 2 - I still haven't played the original, but this looks to continue what it did while improving a lot of aspects. I need to make a computer I can trust to play this series.

Modern Warfare 2 - Really nice looking sequel. The original was great, and this looks to have more of the unique and interesting missions that make the irritating slogs against giant respawning hordes tolerable.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Four player fun for the whole family!

PixelJunk Shooter - I haven't played any previous games in the series, but this one looks really interesting. I like the lava/water interaction.

Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time - It's another Ratchet game. That's all I really need to know.

Red Steel 2 - Lots of 2's this year. The new style is neat, but either the guy playing the demo was really bad or the controls still aren't near where they need to be to make a good game.

The Saboteur - The black and white/color stuff is neat, and it could be a fun take on the open world action thing.

Singularity - Possibly a unique shooter with a fun time mechanic, possibly another one for the pile that had a gimmick that just didn't try hard enough.

Splinter Cell: Conviction - I haven't played much of the series, but this looked surprisingly awesome. The increased speed and brutality of Sam's actions make it look like a Bourne game, if licensed stuff wasn't crap.

Tales of Monkey Island - Yet another interesting project from Telltale Games, in their quest to take all of my money. I want to play some earlier games in the series before jumping on these ones, though.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Possibly the game of the show. They really stepped up the cinematic quality of the larger gun fights, and it's supposed to keep the more exploratory elements that really rounded out the experience in the first for me.

Wet - The red bonus levels or whatever hurt my eyes.

Best Games of 2008

I guess I'm making it a tradition to start these lists on the second Monday of the new year. I thought it was a good year for games, a lot of people were disappointed by some of the bigger games but I didn't have much of a problem with any of them. A couple big ones I didn't get around to included Gears of War 2, Resistance 2 (still gotta play the first!), and Mirror's Edge. Sam and Max had the second straight year of funny, enjoyable episodic adventures, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was fun but sadly unpolished, and Price of Persia was an interesting reboot that didn't quite live up to its heritage.

Best of 2008

7. Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty (PS3)


Many faulted it for its brevity, but that's really the point - I'd love to see more of my favorite series have more manageable and economic installments now and again, especially when they're so affordable and allow newcomers to get a taste without a huge investment. Not as good as a full, "real" Ratchet game, but not many things are.

6. Bionic Commando: Rearmed (Multi)


I don't even have nostalgia for the original NES game, but I didn't need it - the arm makes the combat and platforming some of the most fun I've ever had with a side-scrolling game, it looks and sounds awesome, and it's pretty funny too.

5. Fallout 3 (Multi)


Did we ever get official word from Fallout's insane fanbase on whether Bethesda's take on their favorite series really was the abomination they assumed it was from the beginning? Whatever the case, even though it may just have been The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with a coat of post-apocalyptic paint, that's enough to keep me interested for a long time.

4. Braid (360)


Lots of download only games were great this year, but this one definitely takes the cake. The combination of wonderful production values, unique and mind-bending gameplay, and at times brilliant storytelling make it definitely worth playing however you find a way to.

3. Left 4 Dead (PC)


I haven't played it as much as I would have liked, although that always seems to happen with me and primarily multiplayer games. But when you are playing it, it can be one of the most thrilling shooter experiences imaginable, and the presence of your friends backing you up just makes it better.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV (Multi)


These last two games both got a lot of backlash, but screw that, they helped make for one of the best non-Fall gaming seasons ever. A lot of people prefer GTA's freedom and wackiness over their attempts at something more, and for them there are games like Saints Row 2 and Crackdown. But the direction they took with the first current gen entry in the popular series was probably the one they needed to take to keep it ahead of the curve. It's still a lot of fun to screw around, but it's nice to see someone trying to do more with the medium.

1. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3)


Yeah, Kojima went a little overboard trying to explain every loose end, turning nanomachines from an interesting plot device into a joke. But for the most part it's the most fun to play that MGS has ever been, it's nice to see a famous game character's story actually come to a real end, and it really doesn't hurt that the game looks amazing. I'd be lying to myself if I said it wasn't my favorite game of 2008.

Notable Exception

LittleBigPlanet (PS3)

I was enjoying this game quite a lot and it most likely would have made the list, but under absurd circumstances I accidentally broke the disc and couldn't get a new one in time, and I don't like speaking definitively on a game when I haven't seen all it has to offer.

Braid

Braid is a time-bending puzzle game disguised as a simple platformer like Super Mario Bros., and has enough self awareness to make several references to that fact. Beneath the basic gameplay controls and pleasant, hand-drawn appearance though, there is an incredible amount of depth and inventiveness to every aspect of the game's design, from the time manipulation mechanics to the devious puzzles to the great story. Basically, there are five normal worlds you can run through. The goal is to get all the jigsaw puzzle pieces inside each one, and put them together to finish the ambiguous pictures and move forward towards the ending. The pieces become more and more difficult to get to, and finding them requires you to make use of that world's unique brain-twisting trick.

The first level just introduces rewinding time, which you can use through the whole game. The idea is nothing new to games, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Blinx: The Time Sweeper were doing it years ago. But no other game has taken it to such an extreme like Braid. You can rewind all the way to the beginning of the area, and as soon as they begin throwing in objects that are immune to the power, things start to become crazy. Further levels add things like the world's timeline being controlled by which direction you're moving and a shadow clone of you that repeats the actions you did in between the last two rewinds. Learning how all these different tricks work and ultimately using them successfully to do something that looked impossible is one of the most satisfying feelings I've had playing a game this year. Even when something's confounding you at the moment, you still feel like the solution's right there because it usually is. I'm not going to pretend I did every puzzle by myself, but even when getting help you can appreciate the genius behind some of the ideas. There are a couple little things that prevent the gameplay from being perfect though, like a single puzzle that you can't solve the first time you see it when this would have been easy to avoid, and a moment here or there where something you didn't expect undoes all the work you just did.

Besides all that though, a big part of Braid's appeal is the presentation. The music and graphics merge to create the perfect environment for the story, slightly whimsical but with a certain dark edge that doesn't become clear until later on. Everything in the game works for the story, in fact. A lot of it is revealed in vague bits of text before each level, but that's mostly flavor for the real plot, which can be interpreted in a number of ways. What's especially great is when the quirks of the time manipulation work in the story's favor. Little moments like the end of the world where time progresses with your movements are great touches, and the final level is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen in a game. A scene plays out that you see from multiple perspectives, and the way it all fits together is remarkable. After that there's an epilogue that reveals a little more about what could possibly be happening, but that last level is amazing enough to end it right there. The combination of intelligent puzzles and storytelling make Braid the best download-only game I've experienced. I played it on a friend's 360, but when it gets released on PC in a few months I'll pay for it myself because it's totally worth it.

Game Update 7: E308 Game Impressions

Again, I watched a lot of stage demos on Gamespot. No conference impressions this year because they just weren't worth writing about.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway - Second year in a row. Looked nice, especially the increased focus on story. Never played many tactical shooters, though.

Crysis Warhead - If it can do what the original couldn't and run at a decent level on my computer, I definitely want to check it out.

Dead Space - Creepy looking survival horror in space. Could be pretty cool.

Fallout 3 - I'm pumped for this. Bethesda's basically making Oblivion in a post-apocalyptic setting, which is all they really need to say for me to want it.

Fable 2 - I thought it looked pretty good. The amount of depth to the world is much more impressive than the combat system.

Far Cry 2 - I'm playing the original right now, but I want to get my hands on this soon - really open and dynamic shooter, could be quite interesting.

Gears of War 2 - The new level they showed looked like a fun, and they showed new features like shields, capturing enemies, and hinted at riding a Brumak, which would be great. The first Gears was a really good shooter and there's no reason the sequel won't be as entertaining.

inFAMOUS - That's the official syntax? Whatever. The idea is cool and I like Sucker Punch as a studio, but they didn't show anything in the demo that would actually compel me to try the game.

Mercenaries 2 - Another return to last year. Blowing the hell out of things in South America still looks highly entertaining.

Prince of Persia - Looks like it will be too easy, but the interesting graphics and fact that it's a new Prince of Persia game makes me still want it.

Project Origin - The sequel to FEAR has potential, although the city streets they've shown don't seem very interesting.

Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty - It being downloadable for 15 bucks and a direct sequel to Tools of Destruction makes it appealing to Ratchet fans, and being short and not requiring that game to play should make it appealing to people who haven't tried the series before.

Resident Evil 5 - Might be too similar to RE4, but the producer said they'll show some changes soon that might surprise us. I'd still be pleased with a nicer looking game that played like 4.

Resistance 2 - I still haven't played the original, but the level they showed look sweet if unpolished, fighting against a gigantic boss, and the trailer set the mood quite well.

Resistance: Retribution - A PSP game that fills in the gap between the two console games. I'm not into Resistance really, but I guess it didn't look bad for an early handheld shooter.

Rock Band 2 - It looks like Rock Band, and it adds a bunch more songs and will include the ability to import most of the songs from the first game (which may cost a fee). So it will be good.

Too Human - Eh. The mix of repetitive hack-and-slash RPG combat and clumsily implemented action elements make it look like a jack of all trades that will really please no one.

Rock Band

Last year, when the Rock Band/Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock battle was warming up, I was in the Guitar Hero camp. Despite the original developer making Rock band, I already liked Guitar Hero, I liked some of the announced songs more, and I didn't like the idea of paying that huge amount for the whole instrument set. Issues like that tend to go away though when the new Guitar Hero developer makes some bad decisions, you have a ton of downloadable songs to improve the library, and someone else in the house is paying for all of it, as was the case with my roommate. Nailing a hard song in Guitar Hero is a great feeling, but it doesn't compare to a group of people working together to put a whole song together. Harmonix went after the group experience with Rock Band, and nailed it perfectly. I don't play it solo much at all, it's best played with four, although it's also fun with three (the computer taking over the singing, of course).

People don't often volunteer to sing around here, it can make you feel pretty self-conscious, especially when you screw up. But it doesn't matter too much if everyone's having fun, and nobody cares if you suck, as long as it doesn't cause your group to lose fans. Drums are also a lot of fun. It's easy to accidentally hit the rim instead of a pad and miss a note you feel you should have gotten, and I still haven't tried hard because it's a scary proposition, but keeping a beat is a hell of a lot of fun. Guitar and bass play like they do in Guitar Hero, although I feel like I miss repeated notes more often like I should sometimes and I'm not a huge fan of the silent strum bar. But the nice part about that is you can use the Guitar Hero guitar in Rock Band if you want, although Activision won't allow the opposite. Career mode has a lot of seemingly pointless quirks, like requiring your band leader to be there and not allowing created characters to switch instruments, but it's still fun touring around, gaining fame and fortune. Sets can get repetitive when you keep playing the same songs, but usually there's enough freedom that you can basically play what you want. I don't intend to put much of my own money into the rhythm game market in the future, but if I had to pick a game to play, at least for a while, it'd be Rock Band.

Halo 3

Halo: still pretty good. The third installment continues the series tradition of good shooting, incremental gameplay improvements, and an interesting story for a shooter. Unfortunately, it also keeps alive some of its faults, like some repetitive tasks and environments, minor steps backward in some areas and the continued inclusion of the highly uninteresting Flood. I get the desire to mix things up so you're not fighting Covenant the whole time, but seriously, the Flood is boring. I like the story aspect of the Elites changing sides, but unfortunately that takes away the most interesting opponent in the series. Brutes are tough but not as smart, making combat a little less strategic in some cases. Having the Arbiter around most of the time is cool though, it's nice to have an ally who's actually worth something. I didn't like how you're arbitrarily limited to two grenades of each type now. Yeah, now there are four types so you still have a max of eight, but when you don't find the last kind until late in the game, you're left holding six most of the time and wondering why you can't fit a couple more normal ones in the same suit.

In general though, Halo is still a really good time. They expanded the vehicle sections, adding multiple new types to play around with. Some of the best fun in the series comes from cruising around, pursuing enemies on large battlefields with explosions happening everywhere. There are new and returning weapons also, and I think they struck a pretty good balance. The game's a little short, but that's okay, I prefer that to pointlessly padding out levels with infinitely copy-pasted corridors. I mentioned repetition, but that's mostly held in check except for the aforementioned Flood and the gigantic walking fortresses known as Scarabs - you encounter them a little too often, although taking one down is pretty cool. Graphically, it's not as flashy as some other current generation games, but it looks nice. There are some really great looking lighting effects, at least. The music is as interesting as ever, and voice acting is decent, although I never like changing voice actors between sequels (is Julie Benz too famous now thanks to Dexter?) and some of the dialogue tries to be cool but is just a little silly. The story is suitably epic and really pretty detailed if you get down into it, and they do a nice job of concluding the trilogy, although I wish there was a real end instead of an obvious sequel hint. Guys, you can make a new story without leaving ends untied. Multiplayer is pretty cool, although I don't really care about online play that much. I don't love Halo, but it's a very solid, entertaining series.

Best Games of 2007

It was a banner year for video games, and I didn't even get to play some of the biggest ones, like Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Super Mario Galaxy. I liked The Darkness, but it doesn't quite stand up with the year's other great shooters, and had fun with Ninja Gaiden Sigma, but haven't got around to finishing it since I don't find challenge for its own sake particularly compelling. Sam and Max's first season of episodic adventures was also a pretty good time. I decided to only list a game as multi-platform if I played it on console and it's available on more than one. Don't ask me why. Luckily, that's consistent with last year's list.

Best of 2007

7. Assassin's Creed (Multi)


It got a lot of flack for not reaching its potential, but its potential was so absurdly high that I can't fault it that much for it. I expect a lot more from the obvious sequel, but I thought Assassin's Creed was a great start for a potentially tremendous series, with excellent core mechanics, a wonderful feel, and a very intriguing storyline, even if the normal missions were as repetitive as hell. It seems a little rushed and empty at times, but I still had quite a good time running through the cities and eviscerating unwitting guards like a parkour ninja.

6. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)


Another first installment of a series with a possibly great future. It dips its toe in the pool of frustration once in a while, but never dives in like the Jak franchise did. It doesn't particularly excel in any one area, but it's a good jack-of-all-trades kind of game; fun shooting, fun traversal (although it can't match Creed's smoothness), great graphics and sound, excellently presented and fairly interesting storyline. If they can just add some depth to the puzzle elements and keep the environments fresh, Uncharted 2 should be fantastic.

5. God of War II (PS2)


Perhaps the last great game of its generation, God of War II helped it go out with a bang. Based on the fact that the PS2 is still selling, we're going to be seeing things like Persona 3 and enjoyable ports once in a while, but I still see this as the last stand. It looks pretty terrific for a PS2 game, hitting you right in the beginning with the absurdly epic battle against the Colossus of Rhodes. It gets bigger from there, as they keep what was great about the first game, mixing easy-to-use but entertaining combat with functional puzzles and platforming, while evening out the pacing a bit to keep it fun throughout. Of course, they set up the sequel at the end, leaving fans to wonder how incredible the next game will be on PS3.

4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Multi)


I don't have as much perspective on this as the other games since it was the last thing I finished, but I can still see it was a step forward for first-person shooters, maybe not reinventing the wheel but making it a damn smooth ride. I played the first couple games on PC, but as the series has transitioned to be more console focused, it's still just as gripping and entertaining. Probably the best pure shooting-things game of the year.

3. Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)


This is a pretty personal choice, as Tools of Destruction didn't do much to push gaming forward, it's merely another great entry in one of my favorite series. It had been some time since the last true game was released, but I settled right into the Ratchet groove as soon as the game started, running around, blowing up everything in sight, enjoying the various diversions, collecting experience, and just having a fun time. The ending left you hanging, but you don't mind too much when you can jump into challenge mode and keep going after all the hidden extras.

2. Bioshock (360)


The best game story of the year, and not just because of the content, but because of how well they use the medium itself to tell it, defying expectations and keeping you immersed in a pretty incredibly designed experience. Big Daddies are still awesome, mixing tonics and plasmids is still good experimental fun, and the encounter with Andrew Ryan is still one of gaming's best moments ever. The gameplay is still stuck somewhere between real shooting and a rich first person RPG experience, but gameplay was the least important aspect as far as I was concerned.

1. The Orange Box (PC)


I wasn't sure at first whether to count this, as it sort of seems like cheating. I didn't review it as a single package. After all, it's not one game, it's five, two of which I've already played before. But even without the old content, I still got more fun out of it than anything else this year. Episode Two is an excellent continuation of my favorite FPS series, Portal is a brilliant, hilarious, brain-twisting experience, and Team Fortress 2 is the most fun I've had playing online since Battlefield 2. It's kind of a cop out, but The Orange Box is the best gaming value you can get for normal retail price this year.

Halo 2

Halo 2 is basically a repeat of the first game; a fun, solid, but probably a little overrated shooter, which fixes some of the original's problems but has some of its own. It seems like there's a step backward for every step forward. You now have the ability to dual wield certain weapons, but doing so prevents you from using melee attacks without dropping the second gun or grenades or grenades at all, limiting your diversity in combat. Dual wielding allows for some interesting new strategies and combinations, but overall most of the weapons are less effective that they were before. I liked messing up dudes with the energy sword, but I'm a little annoyed by the Covenant's insistence on their own technological superiority when all of their gear manages to both have finite ammo AND overheat rather quickly. The only thing that seems advanced about it is its impressive curvy and purple design. You can also play around with more vehicles, which are usually pretty fun, although those sections tend to be a little easy.

My biggest complaint about the first game was the tedious, repetitive level design, and they made good strides forward correcting that, with some interesting structures and well-put together set pieces. It tended to limit the scope of some levels, and especially later on it feels a bit like a boring old corridor shooter instead of having the interesting depth of a large, wide-open war zone, and they couldn't seem to help repeating the same level pieces over and over once you get deeper into the new Halo installation, but I thought they did a decent job overall. They elaborate much more on the story, showing things from the Covenant's point of view, and you actually spend a significant amount of time playing as one of them instead of the Chief, though there isn't much difference in gameplay besides the interesting cloaking ability and increased difficulty in discerning friend from foe. Most people hated the cliffhanger ending, and I can definitely see why, as it seems like they're setting up the last mission instead of the sequel, but I knew that was coming so I wasn't bothered. A huge part of Halo's love comes from the multiplayer. I've spent some time with it in the past, and it's enjoyable, I just never like playing deathmatches as much as other people do. Halo's not as fresh as its prequel was for the genre but it's still a good entry in it.

Halo

Yeah, the first game. In the past I've played and enjoyed bits of the campaign and some multi-player, but I'd never sat down and played it through. I worked through it on a friend's Xbox, and I'm glad I did. I think the series' fans are a little overboard, it's really not that much better than a lot of console shooters. But it's really quite revolutionary and commendable for what it does right. Before Halo, every FPS had a large, unruly inventory of weaponry and a health bar. After Halo, almost all of them limit you to a couple weapons at a time and feature a regenerating health system. Some games are better with the old ways, but it's definitely a good system that changes the way things are played. Instead of getting attached to the best weapon, good players will constantly switch out their armament for whatever's appropriate to the situation and make good use of cover and thinking tactically instead of just rushing into battle, knowing that's not how you're supposed to play. It's facilitated strategy in its players more than any other shooter. The Combat Evolved tagline isn't just a catchy phrase, it's really what the game's about. And you can tell, as the shooting itself is greatly balanced while a lot of the rest of the design is flawed.

I've heard stories before about Halo's level design being really repetitive and boring, and that's mostly true. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, even the infamous library didn't take too long to slog through. But if the best I can say about the environment is it's not as bad as I expected, that's still a problem. I realize that carbon-copy architecture and revisiting the same areas are well justified by the background and plot of the story, but that doesn't excuse those flaws. Maybe they should have written it a bit differently. The story itself is actually pretty good, at least for a shooter. The atmosphere doesn't approach Bioshock's or Half-Life's, but the actual machinations and characters are pretty interesting. Master Chief's a good protagonist (although I don't see why anyone cares what's under that helmet) and 343 Guilty Spark's a good take on the HAL 9000-type of villain. I always appreciate it when a game or something manages to have foes who aren't all allied with each other, and they actually manage to balance three different factions who fight each other and only have a hit out for the Chief in common. I'll be tackling Halo 2 next, and I look forward to seeing the next leg of the adventure.

Bioshock

As a pure first-person shooter, Bioshock isn't that great. The variety of weapons isn't bad, and the plasmid and tonic super-powers that give you an edge are fun to play with. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had from sending swarms of bees after your enemies or launching them into the air with a small whirlwind. But the shooting controls are a little off compared to more dedicated games, and it can get tiring fighting the same stupid enemies over and over again. Even Big Daddies, one of the most interesting foes to be introduced to games in a long time, lose their edge after you've spent enough time around them. But while other shooters are good because of the gunplay, Bioshock is good because of everything else.

Rapture, the underwater capitalistic utopia that has fallen into chaos, is one of the best realized and most intriguing game settings I've ever seen. Because of something about the design, the game can be a bit mentally taxing to play, but I kept coming back partly because the world is so interesting. It's a hip 1950's society gone wrong, and just surveying all the horrible things that have happened is quite an experience. Scattered everywhere are audio diaries that fill in the ample backstory, while at the same time revealing gameplay hints. A lot of them are cryptic, but if you pay attention you get plenty of information to make the experience more fulfilling. Part of me wishes it was a bit more like Half-Life, introducing you to the world in a normal, peaceful state, and then having it all hit the fan in front of you. But they chose to go a different way and it works well enough. There's a sort of horror vibe with the game, although not much of it is legitimately frightening. It's not like there are failed attempts at scares though, it's just a slightly different tone, being pervasively creepy without going for visceral shocks. There are a few gameplay climaxes with larger scale combat, but in general the pace is a bit stately, with a constant state of semi-tension instead of a repeated rise and fall. This is also reflected in general design, with lots of exploration and encouraged scouring of the environment, with some added RPG elements such as a commerce system and the ability to construct your own supplies. You can also hack the various security systems and supply machines using a minigame that isn't that interesting and doesn't make much sense, but it can provide some fun if you liked Pipe Dream.

You can't really talk about Bioshock without talking about the actual story that takes place while you're playing. There's a bit of mystery about who you really are and who's on whose side. There are some stunning twists and revelations that take a while to come about, but add a great deal of satisfaction to the experience. It's very rare for me to really be genuinely surprised by a game story, but they pulled it off. There's one line that will be forever engraved in my memory. The ending depends on a choice you make near the beginning of the game, and the two options are perhaps a bit too simply cut-and-dry for the otherwise very intelligent tale. Still, the plot, both in the content and presentation, is pretty terrific, and a huge reason why Bioshock is one of the best games of the year.

Game Update 4: E3 Game Impressions

I watched a ton of Stage Demos on Gamespot, so here are some specific impressions.

Assassin's Creed - The free-running still looks really cool, but the game has some sticky points. The transitional animations look really janky, and the combat could be bad. The enemies don't seem too smart and the fighting looks a bit canned and less of an actual combat system. I still want to play it just for the chase and escape parts though.

BioShock - It's just awesome how many ways you can deal with your enemies in this game, mixing and matching your different weapons and special abilities, like using a little cyclone to throw them into proximity mines, hacking health stations to injure them, it just looks like a lot of fun and really replayable. I also like the idea of the Big Daddies, tough enemies who leave you alone unless you try to kill the Little Sisters for energy to upgrade your abilities.

Blacksite: Area 51 - I guess this is sort of a sequel to Area 51 from a couple years ago, although I didn't play it. Blacksite looks pretty cool actually, it seems like it might just capture the idea of an alien attack very well. The concept of an invasion from another planet was always interesting to me, and it looks like a solid shooter.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway - Ever since Halo, there's been a trend in shooters of using a regenerating health system instead of a health bar. There's nothing wrong with it gameplay wise, but it doesn't actually make sense. It's fine in Halo, because it's an energy shield that recharges. But usually, you're just some guy who can shot a dozen times and be fine just by hiding behind a wall for a while. The new Brothers In Arms fixes that with just the context of how it works. When you're out in the open, you're not getting shot, your risk is just increasing, and when it maxes out you get hit and killed. It's not a big change but it just works better to me. The game itself looks pretty good, although I don't know how much patience I have for tactics-heavy shooters.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - It's a bit weird to me that they'd just dump the real war thing in the middle of a series. I can see moving away from World War II, but why not explore other true conflicts before making something up? It still seems like Call of Duty though, and Battlefield 2 made the same jump successfully, so I guess it works. There's something awesome about turning on your night vision and seeing all the laser sights criss-crossing and tracking all over the environment, and the quieter, stealthy stuff they showed at Microsoft's conference looked great too.

Conan - It looks like a less polished God of War. Also, these quick-time button things to do stuff are getting out of hand. They showed him jamming on the B button to climb a wall. What's wrong with just pressing up on the analog stick?

Dark Sector - The game itself looked pretty unimpressive, although the blade weapon that can be used in melee and as a boomerang type thing, and can be imbued with properties like fire and electricity from the environment, looked pretty cool.

Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire - Hey, a third-party Wii action game! And it doesn't look very good! The powers were kind of cool, but the Wii controls don't seem to work for a quickly-paced game like it should be, and I kind of wondered why they would say they're avoiding adventure and puzzle elements to focus on the combat. Does the Wii really need all these one-note games out there?

Fracture - The terrain deformation weaponry looks really cool, but otherwise it's a pretty standard looking shooter. That's the thing this generation, shooters are everywhere so they all have to have some sort of gimmick to get your attention. That's the problem with Haze by Free Radical - it's not bad looking, but it's a completely generic shooter from what I've seen. Not what I expect from the creative people behind Timesplitters.

Heavenly Sword - I'm not sure about it yet, the combat looks like it could be fun, but I don't know if there's enough to the game besides just fighting. The cutscenes look really great though, the facial animation is incredible and it could be acted well.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men - Another third person shooter, it looks interesting more because of the premise (Crime action like Heat or something) than the gameplay too much. Although I like the idea of your squadmates helping you more or less depending on how much they like you.

Mass Effect - The conversation system looks incredible, and it's basically Knights of the Old Republic minus Star Wars and plus squad-based shooting. I'm worried too many of the planets you can explore won't be that interesting, but the main game could be pretty awesome.

Medal of Honor: Airborne - I think the gaming world has passed Medal of Honor by, although the idea of controlling your parachute and starting the level wherever you want sounds genuinely interesting. I'm not sure if I'll play it though, the shooting action itself isn't overly exciting.

Mercenaries 2: World In Flames - The demo was full of ridiculous destruction and looked awesome, although they were using health and ammo cheats so the real game won't be as crazy. Still, there's something just cool about picking up a tanker truck with a magnet on a helicopter, lifting it in the air, and throwing it to the ground as you launch rockets at it, causing a ridiculous firestorm explosion.

Orange Box - What I've seen of Half-Life 2: Episode Two has me a bit worried, because they've only really shown little abandoned villages out in the woods that you drive between and shoot robots. I'm not that concerned really though, I have too much faith in Valve's level design ability. The other games coming with it looks nice too.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction - The second and third Ratchet games were the peak of the series, and honestly some of the most genuine fun I've ever had with the medium. This looks like a return to that same form, and I can't help but be extremely excited for what it turns out to be, especially since they're focusing on the single-player in lieu of the less-than-compelling multiplayer.

Stranglehold - Everyone says it looks like Max Payne, I say it looks like Max Payne on speed. It's a lot faster and crazier than that game, but still in the same vein with stylistic third-person shooting. Also, the PS3 special edition has Hard Boiled on the disc, which is awesome.

Timeshift - The old sequel from a year ago looked pretty lame, but this appears much different and much better. The shooting itself seems pretty good, and the use of time to keep going (rewinding to get past an area before rubble collapses the way, stopping time to walk across water) looks cool.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty - Nazis invading an unprepared America is an interesting, although somewhat flimsy idea (Would we really have not built up and entered WWII if Churchill wasn't around?) and it could be executed well, although what I saw of the gameplay seemed unpolished and I'm not sure if they have enough time to really fix it.

Turok - It actually looks pretty cool, and it's interesting to see three factions interacting (you and your guys, an opposing group of humans, and the dinosaurs) and how you can work them against each other. Also, knifing velociraptors to death is neat.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - It does the same fix of the recharging health system as Brothers In Arms, except it's your luck running out instead of your risk increasing. The game itself also looks like a really cool mix of Prince of Persia/new Tomb Raider style platforming and shooting, and it's nice to see Naughty Dog finally put targeting in one of their games.

A lot of cool looking stuff at E3 despite a lack of new announcements, and I'm genuinely excited about the future of gaming.

Game Update 3: E3 Conference Impressions

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has ended, and it was much different than it's been in previous years. It was much more low key and companies mostly played it safe. Very few new games were announced, especially on the exclusive side. Microsoft and Nintendo's press conferences seemed to focus more on patting themselves on the back than showing new stuff, and Sony also didn't reveal much, but seemed more humble after having troubles in the last year. They still managed to screw up the one big good thing they did, though.

Microsoft Press Conference - Peter Moore spent a long time going over the numbers and sales and talking about how the Xbox 360 was "driving the industry". Really? You've sold the most systems and games when you've been out for a year longer? Impressive. They showed some good looking games, but aside from a nice teaser for Resident Evil 5 they were all coming out this year and already announced. There were a couple new things, but they weren't anything interesting for real gamers; a party game based on Viva Pinata (the cartoon clips look like the most soulless, corporate attempts at grabbing children I've ever seen) and a version of Scene it? with special controllers. Also, Moore revealing the Halo 3 special edition of the 360 and giving a long pause waiting for applause that never came was the funniest moment at E3. Did they really expect a big reaction? It's just a green 360! It doesn't even come with the game! Who gives a shit? Gears of War for PC looked pretty cool though.

Nintendo Press Conference - It may be impossible to disappoint Nintendo fans if many of them were satisfied with this conference. They played at least five videos throughout the conference that were spliced together clips of internet videos and news stories talking about how great the Wii is and how much fun everyone has with it. We get it, Nintendo. People like the Wii. They must, if it's still sold out throughout the world. If Sony can make this many PS3s that no one is buying, a much more complicated machine, how is Nintendo still having trouble making lots of Wiis? It seems strange. The big announcements were a piece of plastic to hold the two controllers together for light gun games (the Wii Zapper!), Mario Kart coming to the Wii with online play (surprising!), and Wii Fit, a new game thing with a balance board controller you stand on that senses your weight shifting, with a bunch of random mini-games. Awesome. Iwata actually mentioned hardcore gamers being concerned Nintendo is ignoring them without actually saying how they aren't. The Metroid Prime 3 demo was all right, but it was seriously a bad conference.

Sony Press Conference - They also didn't show much new. There was some new stuff about added functionality to Home and a redesigned PSP. Few games were announced, but the new stuff was kind of exciting. Echochrome looked like a cool, crazy little download puzzle game, I'm not a fan of racing games but Gran Turismo 5 looked amazing, and Sucker Punch is making a potentially very cool sandbox superhero game called Infamous. Hideo Kojima came out to personally show a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4 which looked incredible. He also reiterated that this is the end of the story and his last MGS game, but he's said that before so I'm not sure. Killzone 2 has a lot of potential, though I wasn't a huge fan of the first game (I'm still somewhere in the middle). They showed a bunch of trailers of games that are coming, a lot also for the 360. During the conference, the price drop for the 60GB model of the PS3 was already announced and it looked like Sony might be getting back in the fight and building momentum. But afterwards, there was a bunch of mixed messages coming from the company until it was revealed that they're actually ceasing production of that model, and focusing on the new 80GB SKU that's packaged with Motorstorm, so the cheaper system will only be available until they sell out (which could take a while). It's disappointing to see them self-destruct again, but we'll see how this all plays out.

Game Archive 1

Ok, I'm going to post old stuff I've written about games and music here so I have all my crap in one place.

Beyond Good and Evil (PS2)


It's truly sad that nobody played this game, because it is a gem and available for all 3 current-gen systems. It's a mix of Zelda-style puzzle-focused dungeons and exploration with sci-fi themes and a heavy emphasis on stealth. I think the design succeeds more than the actual execution in some parts. Jade isn't the best-controlling main character ever, but the design IS great, and she's the star of one of the better game stories I've ever experienced... I'm not talking about your crazy RPG plots, I'm saying I actually gave a damn about the characters and felt for them. Truly a game that everyone should play. My only real problem was that completing the story required you to collect a bunch of pearls to repair your vehicle, and that can get tedious.

Bully (PS2)


It's cool to see one of these sandboxy, open world games that has a tighter approach and doesn't have a gangster theme to it. It's actually not that open, it would have been cool to play the different factions against each other, but all you really do is proceed through the storyline missions, gaining the respect of all the groups before the final showdown. Having to go to class and stuff like that could have gotten in the way, but it's fairly easy to skip class if you want to, and once you've passed them all, not only do you not have to go anymore, but you get a lot of new moves and upgrades that help you out with the rest of the game.

It's slightly awkward at times, but the story is entertaining, and this is probably the funniest video game I've ever played. It's stuffed to the brim with funny moments and dialogue from the various school kids. The combat system is fun too, you have plenty of moves to make fist fights enjoyable and there are a lot of clever non-lethal weapons to play with. It's a bit glitchy in spots, but it's definitely a fun experience.

Call of Duty (PC)

Call of Duty's creators, who split off from the original Medal of Honor team, manage to do something that seemed to be missing from that other World War II series - make it intense. You're never too far from dying and the extremely loud, chaotic battles are broken up once in a while with an uneasy silence.

The game has many great set pieces that make you really feel like a war hero, fighting alongside your allies and comrades... parachuting into D-Day, holding a bridge from a large siege, storming into Stalingrad with nothing but a few bullets in your hand. It does get a little silly sometimes, especially in the British campaign, when you clear out and take down a heavily fortified dam singlehandedly, race to an air base, and hold off several bomber planes with a single turret.

It's a very fun, exciting shooter, enhanced by the presentation which is strong even now, although I wish more time was spent fighting alongisde large groups rather than by yourself or with a few others.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (PC)


It's a little hard to rate Dreamfall, but what it hinges on is whether you think a game that clearly ignores gameplay in favor of story is worthy of a good score if that story is good. If you don't you will hate Dreamfall. But I choose to view it as more of an interactive story than a normal game, which is what it was designed to be, and it succeeds well at that.

The gameplay is pretty bad... the normal adventure gameplay is okay, but fairly simple. The main problems come from the stealth elements, which are poorly realized, and the combat, which is completely putrid. It's comically bad. It also makes one of the three characters you play seem completely worthless, as his story is much less fleshed out than that of the other two and all he does is fight a few people.

But what the game focuses on, the writing and story, are excellent. The characters are generally very well developed and sympathetic, and especially in the magical world of Arcadia, often quite funny. Some awkward animations slightly reduce the effectiveness of the dialogue and voice acting which is much more believable than most games. Despite a couple bits like the increasingly cliche creepy little girl and evil mega corporation, the story is a unique and deeply engrossing tale that grabbed me and kept me playing late into the night to find out how it will all end, which unfortunately it really didn't. The game ends on a cliffhanger with many threads left unresolved, and I hope the final game is released somewhat soon so I can see the end. I do know I will definitely be checking out the first game to see what happens there in the meantime.

Gears of War (360)


I still say Okami has the best graphics artistically of any game I've seen, but Gears of War easily takes the cake from a technical perspective. Seriously, it looks amazing. I have the good fortune to have a roommate this quarter who has a widescreen HDTV around 40 inches in size, and the game is really a sight to behold. It sounds pretty good too, with solid voices and sound effects.

It wouldn't be a good game without gameplay of course, and Gears succeeds there as well. I'm really not that big of a shooter fan, but I still had a great time moving tactically through the war-torn environs and ravaging Locust with my trusty assault rifle, with the enjoyable chainsaw at the end. The cover system takes a little getting used to, but it works very well, by the end it was rare for me to end up in a spot I didn't want to be in. My problem is that I wasn't huge on the pacing, there wasn't much of a rise and fall in action. There were quieter moments and slightly bigger scenes, but it seemed to have an intensity level a little too consistent. I might have preferred a few more extended moments of calm to coincide with huge, desperate setpieces. Still, I felt like I could just play the game straight through if I wanted to because it kept pulling me forward with the solid shooting and great graphics.

God of War (PS2)


I can't tell if my opinion was affected by the tons of praise this got. It's definitely a good game. But I really can't see how it deserves PS2 Game of the Year over Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4 and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Or in the case of awards givers who cut off holiday games until the next year, how it's better than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. Anyway, God of War is a fun game. The combat is very fluid and rewarding, as you progress and become more powerful as the game goes on. There's fairly good enemy variety, although I wish we could have seen a few more centaurs and sirens instead of an overdose of undead soldiers and harpies, and that the Cerberus were just there instead of starting as annoying little shits that spawn like popcorn.

The combat isn't why I like it though, what I really like are the adventure elements and the story. Although it seemed a bit long, the Temple of Pandora was a brilliantly designed area, and really pulled off the feel of an epic, hazardous dungeon. And the cutscenes were more interesting than I expected, by the end I understood Kratos a bit more and wanted to help him kill Ares. The animation on Kratos' double jump is pathetic, but the platforming is fairly enjoyable for a non-platforming game. What really hurt the game was the design on the whole end of it, starting in Hades. They were just lazy (or short on time) here, instead of making what could have been a really cool area, they just threw a bunch of enemies on steroids and idiotic spinning spike hazards at you, and it really isn't fun or interesting. We're nearing the climax, I'm not supposed to be getting bored. After that you fight Ares, and the whole sequence with him is no good either. After the creativity of the first two boss fights, Ares is just a cheap bastard who blocks all of your attacks and winning the final conflict is more about luck than skill. The only redeeming part about the end is how they tied off the end with the gravedigger. So, overall, a fun game, but it's lacking in ways that make it hard to call truly great.

Guitar Hero (PS2)


I don't usually play games that I perceive as having no point, sports games, racing games, and music games. But I tried Guitar Hero and decided to pick it up, because unlike DDR and its ilk, I find it fun as hell. In most rhythm games, you're just timing button presses (or footsteps) to some music and getting points. I don't find it very compelling. But in Guitar Hero, you're not playing along, you're actually creating the music yourself. If you mess up a part, you don't just lose points and get closer to failing, the guitar part drops out. When you get it right, it's like you're actually playing these famous riffs yourself, and that makes all the difference. The controls take a bit of getting used to, but before long you'll be rocking out harder than you thought you could. In just a week I've gone from bad to capable of doing well on the hard difficulty. The more complex the tune, the more satisfying it is when you execute it perfectly. It's also a ton of fun with friends. Check it out if you like fun.

Guitar Hero II (PS2)


Guitar Hero is still just as addicting as ever, as you find yourself continually saying "just one more song". It's still great fun to rock out and play some good tunes, although the setlist isn't nearly as good as the first game's. I hardly recognized any of the song names when I first read the list, although I still heard the majority of them before and just didn't know the name. The songs are all still fun to play and usually catchy, but it's just harder to get into a song and really feel cool if you don't actually know it well.

A couple definite improvements are the hammer-ons/pull-offs, which actually work this time and are necessary on the harder difficulties, and practice mode, which lets you work on and experience any part of any song without having to actually be good. Other improvements are minor, GHII is probably a better gameplay experience but it's just not as amazing when you've done basically the same thing before.

Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC)


Episode One is the continuation of, in my opinion, the best first person shooter of all time. The gameplay engine remains simply the most enjoyable to just run around and shoot things in, and Valve's level design is impeccable. Everything here is created with the intention of making a good video game combined with a strong narrative experience. I love the way Half-Life presents its story, it's just a much more immersive world than almost anything else.

I miss exploring the wide open countryside around City 17, and the game is a bit short even for only being 1/3 of a game, so it might not have been as good if it weren't for one thing - Alyx, thanks to a combination of great voice acting and the best facial animation I've ever seen in a game, is one of the most endearing and likable game characters ever. I really care what happens to her, and it wouldn't be the same if she wasn't around, watching my back. This is one of the times where graphics actually matter in pushing a game over the edge. I can't wait to battle Hunters out in the wilderness in Episode Two.

Best Games of 2006

It's a little late for yearly picks, but it took me this long to finish some of the games I wanted to play. No arbitrary number of selections, just my personal list of notable, great games. It came out to a round number anyway, but that's not a guarantee.

Best of 2006

5. Bully (PS2)


This is partly a feel-good choice, but I just really liked that Rockstar was able to put out a game this enjoyable, and you can't even kill anyone. Sure, you can beat the crap out of people and threaten them and hit them with bottle rockets, but no dying. Seriously, it's funny as hell, charming, and honestly a lot of fun to play.

4. Gears of War (360)


A lot of things about Gears are imperfect besides the graphics, making it really hard for a shooter, already limited by its genre, to do much better than this, so it's quite a rousing success. I wanted to play Gears for a long time, and then I got the chance, enjoyed it while it lasted, and then moved on. I marveled at the presentation. I laughed at a lot of things, like the probably-too-frequent glitching, the throwaway taunting dialogue ("Eat shit and die!"), the bizarre moment where Marcus and his pal turn from grizzled war vets into Vaudeville characters slipping down a wet incline, and the ridiculous carnage of a chainsaw to the face. I wondered about the lack of good weapon selection - there are two assault rifles, one of which blows; a shotgun I never saw as valuable since being in close combat was so dangerous; and a few situation-specific weapons that didn't have enough available ammunition to really spend time playing with. I also wondered why they tried so hard to make a completely harmless enemy like the Grub seem scary. I did have a lot of fun running for cover and shooting ugly dudes in the face, though.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)


Twilight Princess is a great game that still manages to be overrated. When I hear Jeremy Parish say things like (slightly paraphrasing) "It's like Ocarina of Time, but much better," I literally cringe. Yeah, TP improves on OoT in a number of ways, most notably in graphics and difficulty of block pushing puzzles. But Ocarina of Time was freaking revolutionary. You can easily bring up how much A Link to the Past influenced that one, and I won't argue with you because I didn't play it, but OoT still set the formula for what three-dimensional Zelda games are, and more importantly, how three-dimensional action adventures in general are basically supposed to work. TP doesn't surpass that just because it managed to set the franchise record for most elements and mechanics directly lifted from previous games in the series.

I don't completely agree with Jeff Gerstmann's score, but he's totally right in his points that it's a well-designed, well-executed game that doesn't stray from a formula that's worked in the past but is maybe a little dated. And just because they haven't done voices in the past doesn't mean that's a defining Zelda characteristic. People said the same thing about Metal Gear Solid's camera until they realized the one in Subsistence was much better. I'm probably bashing my number three game too much, so I'll stop. Excellently crafted game, not the best.

2. Okami (PS2)


I kind of wanted this to be my game of the year, though I must admit it isn't. It is a tremendous game though. Amazing art, excellent use of traditional Japanese music sty le and storytelling, great level and gameplay design. Like Zelda, it was too easy, but at least it seemed to be challenging in spots. The faster pace of combat and more clever use of brush techniques instead of a large inventory made it more satisfying, and the final boss at least seemed daunting, even if it really wasn't. It really is a shame games like this don't get played, but at least the will of its developers lives on in SEEDS.

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)


No game from 2006 gave me more entertainment than Oblivion did. It's not just a quantity thing though, I didn't calculate this by hours of enjoyment. When it came out, I played the crap out of it, and I played the crap out of it again on two other occasions during the year. I still intend to go back and play the crap out of it some more, since there's plenty of quests I haven't finished. I haven't been a vampire, or even got that far in the main storyline. There's just so much to do and it's all so well realized. The melee combat is spotty in places but quite good for an RPG, the stealth is as good as you'd want, and the depth of the magic system is great. So much of the crap that you don't need is thrown out, but there if you want it. A lot of Morrowind fans preferred that game, and I won't argue against them because I didn't play it, but I can't imagine myself doing so, since Oblivion does so much in terms of the technology that it would probably feel ancient. It's not a big choice for favorite, but it's definitely mine.

Notable Exception

Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC)

I had a great time with it, but as much as I liked it, I can't bring myself to include something that only lasted four hours in a real "game of the year" discussion.

Delayed Entries

These are games that were released before 2006 but I didn't get around to playing until then and warrant mentioning.

Beyond Good and Evil (PS2)

The fact that not enough people played it caused people who did to overcompensate by talking it up too much, which I contributed to. The same thing happened with ICO. Both very good games, both not quite deserving of their adulation.

Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (PS2)

I actually played the Special Edition, which came out in 2006, but I don't count rereleases. It rightly brought respect back to the franchise, as it's quite the slick, fun, challenging action game. The thing is, it has to reinvent itself a little more fully and seperate from the whole survival horror thing/vibe completely. That was cool when Resident Evil still sucked, but times have changed.

God of War (PS2)

Another good game I think is overrated by most. Yeah, the combat looks cool, but any joker off the street can pull off a sweet looking combo. Just because the animations look nicer doesn't make your combat deeper than a normal button masher.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)

Again, I actually played Subsistence, but I don't count rereleases. Great story, really good gameplay, I'm really glad I didn't have to play with the other camera (except for the final battle for some reason).

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)

The Colossus battles were totally, completely awesome, and the story was interesting, reserved, and well-presented. The rest of the game could have been better.

I actually played a ton of great games in 2006. A landmark year, really. I'll also do posts like this for music and movies, but not baseball moments of games or anything like that, for two reasons.

1) I don't watch enough non-Yankee games for it not to turn out horribly biased.
2) Even with just Yankee games, there weren't that many amazing moments last year. They left early in the playoffs, and it's kind of hard to have strong, memorable moments during the regular season, in fact, I can only think of one that really stands out, and it's not the five games in four days massacre of the Red Sox in August, which was horribly painful to watch. I've never seen so much mediocre pitching in such a short time.

No, I'm thinking of a game against Texas back in May, when they Yankees were behind 9 to 0 in the second and game back to win on their final at bat. It was amazing in several ways.

1) Obviously, the huge come-from-behind win.
2) I actually predicted this would happen when they were losing 9-0. Proof.
3) They won the game despite three of their starters being out with injuries (still leaving them with 6 all-stars, huge payroll, I know, shut up).
4) They actually had to come back twice. They took an 11-10 lead, but lost that and were down 12-11 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
5) Jorge Posada was absolutely ridiculous. He blocked the plate and got absolutely plowed by Mark Teixera, but he held on and saved the run. This isn't a huge deal, but he stayed in the game, and drove in five runs, including two on a walkoff home run that won it. It was the only time all season I actually shouted in joy when the Yankees won.

Anyway, yeah, that was the Yankees season.