Edge Magazine has stirred up some controversy with their recent ruling on their award for "Most Innovative" this year. Bungie's Halo 3 took the award beating out Portal, Wii Fit, and Grand Theft Auto IV. A quote from the official edge page:
This year’s Edge Award For Interactive Innovation was a closely fought affair, Bungie proving victorious in a shortlist that also included Grand Theft Auto IV, Portal, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit.
Ultimately it is the integration and coherence of Halo 3’s online content that makes the game stand apart. From its Theater mode to Forge, and the way a party playing through Live can seamlessly manoeuvre between them, here is an experience that demonstrates an unparalleled understanding of the potential for console online play. Outside of the game, Bungie.net has been engineered to become a remarkable resource for Halo 3 stats and communities, providing life for the game even when your Xbox 360 is switched off. Halo 3, just as Halo 2 did before it, presents a roadmap for the way online will be integrated in videogames in the coming years.
Source here.
But for some, like the readers of Edge magazine and another videogame blog site that starts with a K, they feel the award is unjust and that the award belongs to Portal.
Now let us think about this for a second. Halo 3 does have a fairly robust online mode, and Theater mode and Forge are cool editions for games. Theater Mode removes the old way of sharing videos with friends over a shitty quality youtube video, and Forge lets you mess around with levels in real time while people play. But the stat-tracking is nothing new, Counter Strike: Source servers (with the proper mod installed) have had detailed stat tracking for years. But Forge is limited to pre-built levels and unlike the PC community (I know, blah blah blah I'm not trying to start a PC vs Console war, here) cannot have truly custom content. Video sharing is nice too, and Theater mode streamlines the process, but Youtube has been around for quite some time and videos of games have been showing up there for a while too. So in the end, is it really award winningly innovative?
But what about the other games? Portal took puzzle solving and put it into a first person view. While you could argue it is original, the game is a spiritual sequel to a game made by basically the same people,
Narbacular Drop. It was still a hell of a lot of fun, with a devilishly funny antagonist and the overplayed end theme song.
GTA IV was a huge upgrade to the formula established by GTA III, but that was about it. Online play in the large multi-island world is fun and with the sandbox online mode you and your friends can make up your own original game ideas, and that is the one thing it did innovate on. And who can hate on BEEG AMERICAN TEETEES?
Wii Fit... Well, at least it isn't a Richard Simmons licensed product.
All in all, It does feel kind of like a close shave when it comes to the Innovation factor for these games. But who, in your opinion, takes the award? More importantly, what do you define as gaming innovation?
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Nothing innovative about Halo 3, but it was fun as hell. That, and it tied up the loose ends that were driving us crazy from H2.
GTA 4 shouldn't have even been included, nor Wii Fit, both of them are nothing new. GTA4 was basically the same thing over but with "next-gen" graphics etc and Wii Fit is simply an advance on from dance arcade games. Portal is probably the best title between it and Halo, but I can see why they chose Halo due to it's endless number of options online. Because let's face it, online is the future and any game that changes the way we percieve and experience multiplayer is always going to help push the edge, (no pun intended), but portal introduced a new standard of gaming I hope will be followed in future.
Also cocks.
I don't think GTAIV even qualifies, as well as Halo3. While wiifit is debatable, it's still a pretty fresh way to get weighed. Portal should be a shoe-in here, but I guess it didn't sell as many copies as Halo3, so what are you going to do?
No.
The only thing innovative about Halo 3 was the method that was used when it saved replays of entire matches. Other than that, the entire Halo series is the most overrated series in video game history.
They did it to make people angry, Edge are the masters of trolling the internet.
well Portal and GTA IV are barely innovative but Wii Fit is just as ridiculous. Halo 3 is the most fun anyway.
I like how none of those games listed are innovative.
halo3 is the best, and how is direct video dl's while playing a slayer game not better than some crappy youtube one?
The Theater mode does not get the recognition it deserves, so I'm happy to see it awarded here. It is an immense game, what with the Forge features and Custom Match tweaking (nothing like it seen before on consoles), but I still don't think it should beat out Portal.
GTA4 is innovative? Go suck a fat one Edge, it has less innovations in it than San Andreas.
Galaxy was pretty innovative. At least, I'd never played a platformer with a sense of wonder at all the weird new shit Nintendo put in that game, not since the Mario 64.
GTAIV and Halo 3 shouldn't be on the list. They're sequels with shiny new graphics and a few new features. Halo 3 should probably win an innovative award for console games, but compared to the PC online console gaming is still in the dark ages. (cue the people whinging that XBLA offers a single cohesive service that makes everything easier because they can't operate X-Fire, Ventrilo and WoW all at the same time, bless their little inept souls).
Portal might have been derivitive of Narbuncular Drop, but taking the same team's indie university development project and polishing it with a little help from Valve isn't exactly NOT being innovative, it's just polishing. It's still their game.
Wii Fit IS innovative. It's not very good, but who can say they've ever played a game like Wii Fit before?
I'd say Wii Fit is the most deserving of the reward. Alot of people despise it, but most people also fear change from their normal button pressing routines. Unless it goes the way of the SuperScope, I think the board will bring some pretty awesome games. Innovation is about risk, and the Wii Fit is pretty fuckin' risky.
With that said, I like Halo multiplayer, and the theater mode. Theater mode is ingenious. And it so happens that its pretty much the only game I play on Live.
Also, I didn't like Portal, at all.
@Norm. I fully agree with you until that last sentence. May thy burn in hell. :]
Edge are right. Halo 3 is more innovative than Portal and it's not hard to see why.
This is just in: EDGE are 360 fanboys.
Halo 3 is innovative as a console game, but certainly not to the degree of getting an award for it.
Portal is innovative if you ignore it being a polished student project.
WiiFit is pretty innovative is a concept, though a lot of people disagree with it being a game.
But in the end even awards are subjective in nature, so if they decide Halo 3 is the most innovative, they can give it the prize anyway.
Halo 3 has set the bar for what console games can do online. Yes it has been done on the PC for years but this isn't about the PC. This is the first time you have all these features on a console and I'm guessing this is the reason Edge gave it the award.
I don't really see why people think Portal is so innovative. It's a fantastic game but did people think that Tetris was so innovative when it first came out?