Quarterlies 2007

[TomChick]

It's one hell of a year that doesn’t have great games like Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, Mario Galaxy, or Team Fortress 2 on the list of my ten favorites.

[hong]

Error 403 here....

[AndrewM]

Originally Posted by hong

Error 403 here....

Maybe that's a metaphor.

[TomChick]

They're not quite ready. Please hold... :)

-Tom

[Warning]

FAIL!

[Matthew Gallant]

403

[Rob_Merritt]

[TomChick]

What the heck are you guys doing up at this hour? I have to do this tedious thing where I activate the pages, and then build them, and then proofread (ha ha!) them, but as soon as I activate a page, the software makes a post on the forum.

Anyway, it's live now.

-Tom

[tim edwards]

From my review in Sci Fi magazine: This pocket apocalypse is one of the most evocative and original settings you’ll find in a computer game. It was made in Russia, which partly explains the aesthetic of run-down industrial parks and abandoned military installations.

Nitpick: Stalker was developed in the Ukraine, not Russia.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

So, what's this site launching in January? You seem to have done a few reviews for it.

[Rob_Merritt]

A reasonable list. Of what I played, I agree with.

As for what I'm doing up at this hour.. goofing off at work, like always. :)

[Matthew Gallant]

Originally Posted by TomChick

What the heck are you guys doing up at this hour?

I wanted to be up early because I thought today was the day we were going to do something to evil. But I guess you're all talk.

[Moggraider]

Good list, but ETQW getting the nod over TF2? TF2 is so masterfully done. ETQW is like a modded Battlefield game, though the objective system and leveling up is nice. Good point about the offline play, though.

I wish the Age III expansion was standalone, so I could play it. I think all RTS expansions should be from now on; THQ did a good job this year leading the pack on that. There's no good reason not to make them standalone. Otherwise, a publisher is just limiting its audience. Games are on DVDs now, not floppies, so the game's code will almost always fit along with the new mission pack.

[Rorschach]

I agree wholeheartedly that ETQW is a top 10 game. It does everything you can fit into the team based shooter sub-genre and does it very well. Then on top of it it adds a great missions system that focuses the action and gets all classes to participate and adds an asymmetric objectives system that highlights different classes and moves you across the map. If you dismiss it solely because it's not Team Fortress 2 or a Battlefield game you're doing yourself a disservice.

I didn't play LotRO, so I'd have to add Forza 2 to my top 10 list. It's got something for everyone, arcade, sim, tuners, modders, and artists. Add a force feedback wheel for control and you've got something special.

My most disappointing game is Supreme Commander. Technically it's an amazing game (now that I have a PC that can handle it) but I can't get past the continual econ, building and maintenance time-sinks to enjoy the intel and strategy of big battles on big maps. I'm still trying to reach the appropriate zen-piano-playing state, but it is elusive for me.

[Moggraider]

Oh, ETQW is definitely better than the Battlefields. I wasn't dismissing it.

Supreme Commander is awesome. You CAN get into the right groove where you're pulling off fast games. Watch the Gamespot Supcom tournaments to see some masterful play.

[forgeforsaken]

Woo Crackdown!

[Brian Rucker]

Tom, man, I dunno about Bioshock. Yes, it tells a good story but it doesn't really break any new narrative ground outside of the world of gaming. This kind of story's been told, in similiar narrative ways, in books and film before. Perhaps it's good to pat the kid on the head and be encouraging when it shows any signs of positive development but I don't know that I'd be putting a "My Kid Is An A Student" bumpersticker on the car.

It's still just a railroad shooter when you get down to the gameplay. Everything else is claymation scenario building and cagy cinematic exposition. Games are gameplay first. That's where you either find or lose whatever genuine claim to art they have.

YMMV of course.

[Naeblis]

My personal Top 10 for this year

1 Stalker
2 The Witcher
3 ET: Quake Wars
4 The Orange Box
5 Crysis
6 Bioshock
7 CoD 4
8 MOH: Airborne
9 CoH Oppossing Fronts
10 Timeshift


I wrote it yesterday in another forum, so i only had to paste it :P.

[SpoofyChop]

For me, Bioshock was about 10 hours of medium fun followed by 10 hours of slogging through on easy and hoping it would end. Portal was 3 of my favorite hours of doing any activity for the entire year.

Would you kindly reverse your #1 and #10 spots?

[Rock8man]

Crackdown: I learned two things from the Crackdown entry: I'd never heard of Parkour or Jungle gyms before. Interesting. Now I feel like I missed out on a great activity during my childhood. I didn't grow up in the U.S. though. Were jungle gyms pretty common here?

Quake Wars ET: I was pretty surprised to see this on the list, in a year filled with great games like Half Life 2 Ep 2, Team Fortress 2, Mass Effect, The Witcher, the NWN 2 Expansion, Super Mario Galaxy, and others that didn't make it to the list.

[Hans Lauring]

Good list, but you somehow messed up and posted it in reverse order.

(also: TF2)

[jerri blank]

Originally Posted by Brian Rucker

It's still just a railroad shooter when you get down to the gameplay. Everything else is claymation scenario building and cagy cinematic exposition.

Couldn't disagree more. (Full disclosure: Bioshock fangirl here.)

Bioshock is certainly not a sandbox, but neither is it on rails, assuming that's what you meant by "railroad shooter. You are free to explore all the rooms and hidden nooks and crannies or just get the missions done, as I did on my third playthrough. You are free to kill Big Daddies and rescue/harvest Little Sisters, or leave them alone (but risk not having enough resources/strength to finish the game).

As for "cagy cinematic exposition," if you're talking about the cutscene that contains the Big Reveal, I'm not sure how else they could have done it. To be as story-driven as it is, Bioshock relies refreshingly little on cutscenes. Contrast that with Mass Effect, which seems like about 50 percent cutscene and 50 percent running around looking for stuff.

Even the scripted routines in Bioshock can be interrupted by the player. (Sander Cohen gets PISSED if you shoot him while he's strutting down the stairs).

[Drastic]

Originally Posted by Rock8man

Crackdown: I learned two things from the Crackdown entry: I'd never heard of Parkour or Jungle gyms before. Interesting. Now I feel like I missed out on a great activity during my childhood. I didn't grow up in the U.S. though. Were jungle gyms pretty common here?

I can't imagine any self-respecting grade school playground without one. I think they may actually be mandated by federal law.

Because everyone likes lists:

Most Surprising: Portal. I expected to play the heck out of Episode 2, having really enjoyed HL2 and Ep1; expected to enjoy Team Fortress 2 in semi-random casual dabbling, and expected Portal to be a small little puzzly tech-demo diversion. It's really nice to run into one of your favorite games of the year entirely blind and with no expectations going in.

Most disappointing: Half-Life Episode 2. Just consistently underwhelmed throughout. People raved and raved about how awesome the ending setpiece was, and after I played through it, I give serious thought to perhaps those messages are actually arriving, via quantum tunneling effects, from an internet in another universe. Dull, tedious, stupidly gamey. I thought maybe it was just me, and perhaps I was just totally done with scripted rollercoaster ride shooters.

Most Surprising Runner-up: Call of Duty 4. Because, no, it turns out I wasn't done with them. I just needed to play a really, really good one.

Most Aggravating: STALKER. Mostly because I've never got it to run properly on my system. Sometimes you run into a game that just flatout refuses to work. This was it this year. Aggravating because I keep hearing really good things about it.

EDIT: I retract my Stalker-and-periods mention. With my dander up, I reinstalled, discovered that there had been a couple patches since I last attempted to get it working, and patched up. Some combination of that and whatever driver updates were performed since the last time makes it run fine now. At least long enough to get chewed apart by a pack of mutant dogs, get to another zone, etc., with nary a crash or lockup or bizarre graphical corruption.

Rumors that my retraction was performed because of ad revenue pressure from the publisher are grossly unfounded and untrue. It was performed for purely personal reasons that I can't go into beyond the statement already issued in paragraph above.

[Jon Rowe]

My Top 3 games (In no particular order)

1. Bioshock
2. TF2/Portal/Episode 2
3. CoH; Opposing Fronts

[BDGE]

I wonder if I actually -played- Crackdown instead of just plop it in for a Halo 3 beta weekend, if it would have made my list too...:jots Crackdown onto future bargain purchase:

Not the most popular of the year, but I'd handily place Tomb Raider: Anniversary(secretly better than Uncharted) and Picross DS on my top ten.

Also no mention of Ratchet? Not that I'm surprised given how close to the vest it remains despite the next-gen gloss. But didn't Going Commando win the Quarterlies it's year?

[Mike Cathcart]

There was mention of Ratchet in the Uncharted entry.

[BDGE]

Originally Posted by Mike Cathcart

There was mention of Ratchet in the Uncharted entry.

Ah, and a jab at that!

[Marcin]

Originally Posted by Rock8man

I didn't grow up in the U.S. though. Were jungle gyms pretty common here?

I think it must be you :D I didn't grow up in the US either, but there was far more than ample material to create your own takes on "jungle gyms".

What is this "site to be launched in January"?

[Dean]

I'd like to take issue with your definitions of Story and Narrative. Story is not simply what happened. That's Plot. Plot starts at A (the beginning) proceeds through B (the middle) and eventually gets to C (the end). Story is everything that happened surrounding those events.

So for instance, Oedipus was the King of Thebes. There was a horrible plague, and he vowed to find the person responsible and punish him. He investigated, and found out that the he was responsible for the plague himself, so he stabbed out his own eyes, abdicated, and set off to wander the land moaning about how his life sucked.

That's Plot.

The King of Thebes heard a prophecy that his son would kill him and marry his wife, so when his son was born, he hobble him and left him on a hillside to die. The child was found by a woodsman, who took it to a nearby kingdom where it was raised by the King and Queen there. The child heard a prophecy that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, so, to prevent this, he left his home. While journeying he quarreled with another traveler and killed him, then saved the city of Thebes from a sphinx. As a reward the Queen of Thebes (newly widowed) married him. Years later a plague was visited on the city of Thebes and the King vowed to punish whoever was responsible...

That's Story.

The King of Thebes investigated the plague on his city by interviewing a number of people. First he talked to the soothsayers who gave him a piece of the puzzle, then he talked to a woodsman who gave him another piece of the puzzle, then he talked to some other guys who gave him the final pieces of the puzzle. Then his wife/mother hung herself, and he put out his own eyes, abdicated, and left.

That's Narrative.

So, to sum up-- Plot is what happens during the course of piece, Story is everything that happened, and Narrative is how it happened.

At least that's how I learned it in Fancy Writer's School.

[BDGE]

Originally Posted by Dean

I'd like to take issue with your definitions of Story and Narrative. Story is not simply what happened. That's Plot. Plot starts at A (the beginning) proceeds through B (the middle) and eventually gets to C (the end). Story is everything that happened surrounding those events.

So for instance, Oedipus was the King of Thebes. There was a horrible plague, and he vowed to find the person responsible and punish him. He investigated, and found out that the he was responsible for the plague himself, so he stabbed out his own eyes, abdicated, and set off to wander the land moaning about how his life sucked.

That's Plot.

The King of Thebes heard a prophecy that his son would kill him and marry his wife, so when his son was born, he hobble him and left him on a hillside to die. The child was found by a woodsman, who took it to a nearby kingdom where it was raised by the King and Queen there. The child heard a prophecy that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, so, to prevent this, he left his home. While journeying he quarreled with another traveler and killed him, then saved the city of Thebes from a sphinx. As a reward the Queen of Thebes (newly widowed) married him. Years later a plague was visited on the city of Thebes and the King vowed to punish whoever was responsible...

That's Story.

The King of Thebes investigated the plague on his city by interviewing a number of people. First he talked to the soothsayers who gave him a piece of the puzzle, then he talked to a woodsman who gave him another piece of the puzzle, then he talked to some other guys who gave him the final pieces of the puzzle. Then his wife/mother hung herself, and he put out his own eyes, abdicated, and left.

That's Narrative.

So, to sum up-- Plot is what happens during the course of piece, Story is everything that happened, and Narrative is how it happened.

At least that's how I learned it in Fancy Writer's School.

Interesting. Maybe someone after all can explain to me what exactly I stared at for 3 hours when I watched Pirates of the Carribean 3. How did a summer fluff movie go so far over my head? The rules of narrative, plot, and story seemed to dissipate in front of mine own eyes.