Entries have been written, deadlines have gone, days have passed, and battles have been won. And after all that, a winner has emerged from the mists! Congratulations to Shoop for his writeup on Wizardry 8 which I've been having a blast with lately.
This is not to say that the other entries were bad, and in fact they were all well written and I suggest anyone looking for information on some good RPGs should check them out. Frankly it was a tough decision, but in the end it was Wizardry that simply appealed to me the most.
For his efforts, Shoop will eventually be receiving a copy of Fatal Frame III, as soon as I can get it away from the slimes.
As for the rest of you who entered, the whole point of a contest like this is to bring some more quality entries to the C-blogs, and at that task you've all managed to excel. It's a slight bit beyond my budget to send out expensive prizes to each of you, but if you get in touch with me through PM with an address I can ship something to, I would like to offer each of you a small consolation prize.
Once again, thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to Shoop!
All entries are due by 11:59:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time on Monday March 24th This is a reposting of the original announcement of a little contest I'm running. There is little over a day left, so if you're waiting for the last minute, you don't have much time left! (If you've posted an entry and I've missed it, by all means, let me know. Anyway, I now return you to your regularly scheduled copypasta
I'm sure it's no small surprise to hear that I'm a big fan of RPGs, what with the usual subject matter of my cblog posts, along with the banner and whatnot. However, with all the searching I've done in order to find things I may have missed along the way, along with writing up information on old favorites of mine, it's getting harder for me to find new enjoyable RPGs. Especially since the PS3 is a bit....lacking at the moment.
So here's the deal, after seeing some of the stuff that came back after coonskin's Retro gaming contest, I figured perhaps the same sort of thing would work here. (Yeah, it's a shameless ripoff, but hey, there's a prize!)
Between now and March 24th, 2008 write a blog post going into detail about an RPG you think I would enjoy. Obviously it's more worthwhile to me if it's something I haven't played before, and although it would take too long to list everything I've played, keep in mind that if it was fairly popular at all, I've probably already played it. (ie. Anything from Square, Enix, Atlus, Bethesda, BioWare, Interplay, etc). Obviously if I've already written about it, it's not worth your time to write about it again either. Also, don't bother with MMOs. Old classics I might have missed are definitely fair game though, especially since I didn't start my RPG obsession until around 1994. (Thank you, Secret of Mana!).
Some other tips:
I have access to every console in the Nintendo line sans the virtual boy, PS1-3,PSP and an XBox. Sega consoles not so much, though I did play the Phantasy Star and Shining Force games.
My computer is fairly recent, 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb RAM, and a GeForce 7950. It's also a laptop, so avoid things I'd need to upgrade for in order to play it.
I do enjoy knowing what I'm supposed to be doing most of the time, so for example, I hated Morrowind because I was given little to no direction, and just sort of sat down and told to have fun. Fallout and such are also open ended, but at least you have an idea of what you're supposed to be doing off the bat.
If there are interesting ways to customize your party it's somewhat more interesting to me as well. (Like how Avernum allows you to take different traits and afflictions for different bonuses and such.)
Failing that, I'll play most any JRPG-style game.
After the end of the contest, I'll pick a winner based on which one interests me the most, so it's probably better if you go into some detail about how it plays, anything notable about it, show some pictures, etc. The prize for such a ridiculous quest? 2 Hi-potions and 150g...err... no. Any currently available game of the winner's choice, up to $50 in value, shipped to the continental US. Yeah, I won't ship outside of the US, but I'm not MADE of money.
For ease of recognition, please title your posts with RPG Spotlight Contest: followed by the name of the game.
This is a reposting of the original announcement of a little contest I'm running. There's about a week left and I've only gotten two entries so far that I've seen. (If you've posted an entry and I've missed it, by all means, let me know. Anyway, I now return you to your regularly scheduled copypasta
I'm sure it's no small surprise to hear that I'm a big fan of RPGs, what with the usual subject matter of my cblog posts, along with the banner and whatnot. However, with all the searching I've done in order to find things I may have missed along the way, along with writing up information on old favorites of mine, it's getting harder for me to find new enjoyable RPGs. Especially since the PS3 is a bit....lacking at the moment.
So here's the deal, after seeing some of the stuff that came back after coonskin's Retro gaming contest, I figured perhaps the same sort of thing would work here. (Yeah, it's a shameless ripoff, but hey, there's a prize!)
Between now and March 24th, 2008 write a blog post going into detail about an RPG you think I would enjoy. Obviously it's more worthwhile to me if it's something I haven't played before, and although it would take too long to list everything I've played, keep in mind that if it was fairly popular at all, I've probably already played it. (ie. Anything from Square, Enix, Atlus, Bethesda, BioWare, Interplay, etc). Obviously if I've already written about it, it's not worth your time to write about it again either. Also, don't bother with MMOs. Old classics I might have missed are definitely fair game though, especially since I didn't start my RPG obsession until around 1994. (Thank you, Secret of Mana!).
Some other tips:
I have access to every console in the Nintendo line sans the virtual boy, PS1-3,PSP and an XBox. Sega consoles not so much, though I did play the Phantasy Star and Shining Force games.
My computer is fairly recent, 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb RAM, and a GeForce 7950. It's also a laptop, so avoid things I'd need to upgrade for in order to play it.
I do enjoy knowing what I'm supposed to be doing most of the time, so for example, I hated Morrowind because I was given little to no direction, and just sort of sat down and told to have fun. Fallout and such are also open ended, but at least you have an idea of what you're supposed to be doing off the bat.
If there are interesting ways to customize your party it's somewhat more interesting to me as well. (Like how Avernum allows you to take different traits and afflictions for different bonuses and such.)
Failing that, I'll play most any JRPG-style game.
After the end of the contest, I'll pick a winner based on which one interests me the most, so it's probably better if you go into some detail about how it plays, anything notable about it, show some pictures, etc. The prize for such a ridiculous quest? 2 Hi-potions and 150g...err... no. Any currently available game of the winner's choice, up to $50 in value, shipped to the continental US. Yeah, I won't ship outside of the US, but I'm not MADE of money.
For ease of recognition, please title your posts with RPG Spotlight Contest: followed by the name of the game.
Ahh, the days of my youth, sitting around in front of a computer with a 40 Mb hard drive, running COMit off of a floppy disc and dialing into local BBS systems just to see what new Shareware I could spend the next 3 hours downloading while nobody else could make a phone call. The days of ASCII and ANSI, where we were lucky to have even 16 colors on the screen at once.
One such game I ended up downloading was ZZT by a company you may all recognize, Epic Megagames.
Trust me, in the early 90's this was awesome
ZZT is at its most basic, an action/adventure game with puzzle elements. The player controls a smiley face who can be moved in all four directions. Holding shift and pressing a direction, or pressing space will fire a bullet if the player has any ammo. Along with this, there are also locked doors and keys, blocks that can be pushed, switches, traps and various enemies to flesh out the game.
ZZT got by not on the strength of its graphics, but on the quality of the games and one other important aspect. The community. Certainly Epic has a recent history of both helping out and benefiting from the player community, what with UT3 supporting mods in every version and a fairly large amount of user created content for older versions of Unreal Tournament as well, keeping the products alive long after ship date. However, none of these have yet to live up to the support that ZZT still receives from its community.
And she's got huuuuuuge....pixels.
Of the community sites out there, Z2 is one of the largest, with a myriad of user created games waiting to be downloaded and played by anyone with ZZT. Of course, with anything that allows user created content, you're sure to find 30 duds for each diamond, but the good games are out there and it's often quite amazing to see what people can do with tools that are so old. Z2 also offers downloads of utilities that can be used to make the editing easier if you are not a fan of the built-in editor.
In the future, Mr. Destructoid will be in every game, including those in the past.
The built-in editor allows you to paint floors, enemies, items, and set up level links, but the most useful part of it is placing the special Objects which are then programmed in a language called ZZT-OOP. That's right, ZZT has its own object oriented programming language used to program the special NPCs. Because of this, ZZT has often been used as a stepping stone for getting into more serious programming.
ZZT was originally released as Shareware, however, it was released as Freeware some time ago and is now freely downloadable. If you're at all interested in programming, old games, or feel like re-living the early 90's, make sure to give it a shot. It seems to work just fine under Windows XP with no need for DosBOX or other utilities. I haven't been able to test it under Vista so your mileage may vary.
I'm sure it's no small surprise to hear that I'm a big fan of RPGs, what with the usual subject matter of my cblog posts, along with the banner and whatnot. However, with all the searching I've done in order to find things I may have missed along the way, along with writing up information on old favorites of mine, it's getting harder for me to find new enjoyable RPGs. Especially since the PS3 is a bit....lacking at the moment.
So here's the deal, after seeing some of the stuff that came back after coonskin's Retro gaming contest, I figured perhaps the same sort of thing would work here. (Yeah, it's a shameless ripoff, but hey, there's a prize!)
Between now and March 24th, 2008 write a blog post going into detail about an RPG you think I would enjoy. Obviously it's more worthwhile to me if it's something I haven't played before, and although it would take too long to list everything I've played, keep in mind that if it was fairly popular at all, I've probably already played it. (ie. Anything from Square, Enix, Atlus, Bethesda, BioWare, Interplay, etc). Obviously if I've already written about it, it's not worth your time to write about it again either. Also, don't bother with MMOs. Old classics I might have missed are definitely fair game though, especially since I didn't start my RPG obsession until around 1994. (Thank you, Secret of Mana!).
Some other tips:
I have access to every console in the Nintendo line sans the virtual boy, PS1-3,PSP and an XBox. Sega consoles not so much, though I did play the Phantasy Star and Shining Force games.
My computer is fairly recent, 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb RAM, and a GeForce 7950. It's also a laptop, so avoid things I'd need to upgrade for in order to play it.
After the end of the contest, I'll pick a winner based on which one interests me the most, so it's probably better if you go into some detail about how it plays, anything notable about it, show some pictures, etc. The prize for such a ridiculous quest? 2 Hi-potions and 150g...err... no. Any currently available game of the winner's choice, up to $50 in value, shipped to the continental US. Yeah, I won't ship outside of the US, but I'm not MADE of money.
For ease of recognition, please title your posts with RPG Spotlight Contest: followed by the name of the game.
Now that we have reached the era of High Definition gaming, it seems there is little room for a game as simple as a shoot-em-up to grace any of the modern consoles. Any that do make it are relegated to services such as XBLA or the PSN, and are often budget priced, reflecting the thought that such a game cannot be easily marketed today. However, a game as fun as Wild Guns makes you really appreciate the days gone by.
They later named the nearby canyon Eastwood Ravine.
Wild Guns is a shoot-em-up released in 1994 by Natsume on the SNES. As most shooters go, there isn't really much storyline. Annie is in search of revenge against a gang who killed one of her family members, and she enlists the help of Clint, bounty hunter. Yes, the origins of the character's names and even character designs are painfully obvious, but one does not generally play a shooter for its rich and diverse storyline.
Neon signs were prevalent in the wild west.
If the game looks similar to an earlier game called Cabal, it's because it is. You control the targeting cursor on the screen along with your character at the bottom. If this sounds a little unwieldy, trust me, it works much better than it sounds. While firing, your character is locked in place and you are free to move the cursor around without accidentally walking into enemy fire.
In addition to dodging shots by moving you can also double jump, or roll out of the way. Pressing the X button launches a rather large bomb that clears the screen of minor enemies and does heavy damage to bosses as well. As another added twist, you can shoot the bullets that enemies fire at you which charges up the Vulcan meter underneath your score. When the meter is full, you are given the Vulcan Cannon for a limited amount of time, which is sure to lay waste to anything in your way. If someone is being particularly pesky, you can also toss a lasso and stun them for a moment by tapping the fire button instead of holding it down.
The setting it sort of a technologically enhanced version of the wild west, with robots ending up being many of your enemies. End of Stage Bosses are huge and can be challenging until you learn the patterns they move in, although nothing comes off as completely cheap. On hard mode you'll often find yourself facing a hail of bullets in the later stages, and dodging and keeping on the move are key. In the end it's a somewhat short game, with 6 main stages, though most stages are divided into at least 3 sections. However, even with the short length, it's immensely fun and it has one of the best things about the 16-bit era, two player co-op. It's slightly difficult to find, and goes for a moderate price on eBay. (around $30-40).
Video of the first few stages is below.
(Frankly, I was looking for a reason to do a write up on this game anyway, and I figured coonskin's contest was reason enough.)
I'd make a John Milton joke but really, he's not that funny
I've always been a fan of the Burnout series. Something about fast cars, reckless driving, and ridiculous crashes has always been appealing, most likely because I can't get away with it in real life. Seeing as how I've just recently won the Demon PS3 from BahamutZero, I figured I needed something to play on it other than WarHawk and Ratchet and Clank.
Thus the task fell to Burnout Paradise to amuse me, and though it has its shortcomings it's done an admirable job so far.
The Good:
The open road aspect allows me to do something I've always wanted in a Burnout game, to go anywhere I want. It never made sense to me that since Burnout is supposed to be about street racing, why I couldn't just take a shortcut down this alleyway or make a leap off a bridge to cut off some time. I was always limited by the impenetrable glowing arrows of doom and Paradise does away with them entirely. It really is fun to simply drive around Paradise City finding new jumps or new places to do crazy things and Criterion has done a good job of creating the city so that there aren't too many boring stretches of open road.
That road you're looking at? Yeah, I can drive there. The old Burnout events are still present, this time activated by stopping at any traffic light in the city and spinning your wheels. Certain events known as Burning Routes are only playable in certain cars, but by finishing the event you win yourself an upgraded version of that car. Road Rages are immensely fun this time because they don't take place on any set route. You are given three minutes to take down as many rival cars as you can with a target amount that you have to beat to clear the event. Each takedown adds 5 seconds to your remaining time so there are possibilities for ridiculous streaks as well.
Replacing the puzzle-like Crash Mode from earlier games is something called Showtime mode. After clearing 4 events you gain the ability to throw yourself into a crash at any time by hitting the shoulder buttons. Any cars around you are labeled with a dollar value, and you can press the boost button to bounce your car off the ground to try to steer it towards more untouched traffic. Hitting a bus adds to your score multiplier and when all is said and done it totals up your damage score based on cars hit, distance traveled, and any bus multipliers you may have earned. It doesn't require as much thinking and timing as previous crash modes, but hell if it isn't fun.
Online play is pretty much as seamless as advertised. When trying to join a random online game, the longest wait I've ever had to endure was about 3 seconds. Other times it was nearly instantaneous without even a loading screen coming up before other drivers miraculously appeared in Paradise City. Main events are disabled while playing online, but there are a large amount of challenges that drivers can cooperate or compete in, as well as the ability to set up races of your own. I haven't seen the Crash Cam in use yet, but since most people don't have a PlayStation Eye or XBox Live Vision Cam, I doubt it'll get that much use. Still, nothing is more satisfying than making a huge jump only to land on top of another player, scoring a vertical takedown.
The Bad: Paradise City is huge, and by most accounts this is a good thing. Lots of places to explore, different routes to take, etc. However, this works against it in certain places. For one, failing an event means that you have to drive all the way back to the starting point before you can try it again. This isn't too much of a problem given the speed you're driving at, but if your event started on the complete other side of the city it starts to become aggravating. Why there was no 'RETRY' option is beyond me, even if it would take away from the immersion of being free in a large city.
Secondly, Stunt Mode requires that you travel around the city looking for good places to rack up stunt combos doing jumps, barrel rolls, flat spins, etc. The only problem is that many times these events don't start near anything that would help, so there's a bit of wasted time just getting a combo going. Add to that the fact that it's hard to remember just where everything is in a city this large, and you might have trouble meeting the required score before time runs out. Many times I've been speeding down the road, only to realize I just passed a jump along the side that would have helped.
The TLDR: In the end, Burnout Paradise is a fair amount of fun especially if you get a kick out of making things crash into each other in glorious Hi-Def. Though there are some faults with the ease of retrying events and occasionally the sheer size of Paradise city works against it, there's really nothing there that becomes anything more than a minor annoyance. It's great fun either alone or in multiplayer and fans of the series should be fairly happy with it.
Both PS3 and 360 have downloadable demos if you'd like to give it a try.
If anyone else picks this up for PS3, send your PSN name along and perhaps we'll see each other in the city sometime.
So you're a weakling farmboy or farmgirl, heading out into epic adventure and you come across a group of monsters that you just can't defeat. Not to worry! You just happen to be in an RPG, and if things are too difficult, you can always spend some time picking on the weaker enemies for experience and lunch money.. most of the time. What if while you were off killing enemies and gaining experience, the annoying boss that just killed you was out doing the exact same thing? Level scaling is generally meant to infuse some sort of constant challenge into an RPG, but may end up missing the point of why most people play RPGs to begin with.
The Bad: On the bad side of things, we'll start with Final Fantasy VIII. Now, setting aside the fact that many didn't like FFVIII because it wasn't Final Fantasy VII-2:Electric Boogaloo, it probably didn't gain any points with gamers due to its rather different systems either. Think for a moment if FFVII was your first RPG and you were accustomed to overcoming your challenges by simply getting stronger and taking another whack at it. This same strategy in FFVIII was utterly useless. Stat gains from Level Up were negligible in the long run, and enemies gained ridiculous amounts of HP and other stats as they leveled up along with your party. FFVIII tried to shake things up by making Magic Junctioning the most important part of the game, but you could really end up screwed over if you didn't spend time collecting 100's of spells, or unlocked the right Junction abilities. Granted there were enemies that were still weaker than others, but the gap between enemies and player stat gains only widened as the level went higher. This was frustrating, to say the least.
It's not easy being green, especially in Cyrodil
One of the things I find most enjoyable about RPGs is that if I can't get past a certain enemy right now, or can't defeat a boss with my current power, I know that if I take enough time to train I can come back and swat them down like the fly they are. This is why I had such a problem trying to enjoy the next game I'm going to talk about, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Now, the freedom in Oblivion is great and the game is beautiful, which makes exploration tons of fun. However, because of the open world, there was no way for Bethesda to really know where the player would go next. Rather than make enemies stronger in certain areas and thus creating a soft linear path, they chose to have enemies scale to the level of the player. I fully understand the reasoning for this decision, as when one of your major selling points is an open world, you don't want to create limitations by saying "you shouldn't be here yet". However, that doesn't mean I enjoy it and judging from how quickly it took for someone in the modding community to "fix" the level scaling, I imagine many others didn't either.
It slices! It dices! It makes Julienne fries!
The Good:(Sort of..)
Finally, we come to a game that I feel actually handles level scaling in a decent manner, Silverfall. Now, I wouldn't call Silverfall a great game, or really even a good game. Mediocre is probably the best way to describe it, what with a clunky interface, a camera system that could have been designed by Sonic Team, and a generally lackluster plot. Somehow they managed to put something amazing into the hulking 10 Gb behemoth though, and that is the level scaling system. For those of you who have neither played nor heard of Silverfall, it's your basic hack and slash Diablo clone, which is great for mindless fun. Part of what gets boring in these types of games though, is that if you stay in any one area too long, enemies don't put up a fight anymore, loot gets worse, and you're barely gaining any experience even though you need to keep fighting here to finish quests and move the storyline along. Diablo II avoided this for the most part by having excellent pacing and level design, but if you can't be Blizzard, Silverfall comes up with a workable solution.
Enemies in Silverfall seem to level along with the player at first. Leaving town in the beginning will have you meeting a collection of Level 1 monsters, but as your level raises, those monsters also seem to get stronger, even in places you've already been. What makes this system better than others that I've seen is the fact that areas seem to have an enemy level cap placed on them. Those same level 1 enemies never ended up higher than level 9 or 10, even when I had already reached level 16 myself. In this way, the general challenge of fighting was kept up while I had to complete quests in that area, but at the same time I was able to eventually come back and feel like the flame-sword-wielding badass that my character was. It struck a nice balance between two systems, and was probably my favorite part about the game. Well, that, and the physics engine. Why does a Diablo-like need a physics engine? Flying zombies, that's why.
In the end, with all the things wrong with it, Silverfall at least proves that Level scaling can be used to some effect in an RPG without making the player feel like they are never getting any stronger. Since most RPGs tend to get by on the strength of their story and not always on their gameplay mechanics, it doesn't immediately make sense why as a developer you would put in a system that may very well make it too difficult for some people to actually see the end of your story.
Pocky and Rocky was an excellent shoot 'em up for the SNES, and was followed up by a fairly competent sequel on the same system. There was a quick cash in with "Pocky and Rocky & Becky." on the GBA, but since then there hasn't been any news of anything else in the series.
There was apparently another sequel planned, but it was canceled somewhere along the way. The team involved however, reworked the game into sort of a spiritual sequel, changing the main characters away from the old standbys, while keeping the same sort of shooter gameplay that had made the series fun.
They're not cards, but they'll do.
Heavenly Guardian is the US title. Yes, it's completely 2D, so that will probably throw off a few people who see it on the shelf. It's nowhere near the beautiful 2D artwork that was found in Odin Sphere last year, but it has a certain charm to it. Much of the artwork does remind of the P&R series though, so it's not tough to tell what the game originally was.
Yay for two dimensions!
My only gripe with what I've seen so far is that the score display is absolutely horrendous, and I would have liked to see some effort put into the on screen display instead of just block numbers. They definitely had budget restrictions on it, and it shows in places.
I found a video of the game in motion, and it doesn't look too bad, though all I could find was footage of the Wii version.
Amazon has the game listed for release on Feb 26, 2008 on the PS2 at a price of $19.99.
Given the state of 2D gaming, plus the slightly unpolished look of parts of it, I'd say that's just about the right price.
Now here's hoping that a spiritual sequel manages to do something other than rape my childhood.
WARNING! WALL OF TEXT DRAWS NEAR. TLDR VERSION AT BOTTOM!
I believe the one thing we can agree on at this point is that 2007 was a great year for gaming, regardless of what systems you owned, or what genre you claim allegiance to. However, with 2007 being dead and gone, and this sort of writeup being the thing to do at this time of year, I figured I'd outline my own 10 favorite games of 2007. Just a heads up before I get started though. First, because of the usual bitching that comes along with any sort of Top 10 list, I'm simply going to list them in alphabetical order. Second, this list is going to be limited only to games that I played, so if the list seems swayed toward a particular system, it's because that's what I had access to. (IE, there won't be any PS3 games on my list, and few Xbox 360 games).
Bioshock I was a huge fan of System Shock 2 back in the day, and when I heard that there was a spiritual sequel being created, that was all it took to hype me up for the game. I went in with high expectations, and for the most part, Bioshock managed to deliver. I generally do not play modern first person shooters, so the fairly low difficulty of Bioshock was no problem for me, especially since it took me some time to adjust to aiming and shooting with the XBox 360 controller. The setting and the characterizations were done so well, I actually found myself feeling sorry for Atlas and his family, and then feeling outraged later when I found out the truth. If there was anything that disappointed me about the game it was that the final boss fight didn't really bring anything new to the table, and after the complex and twisting story, it seemed as though the "fight against big huge thing" was thrown in just for sake of consistency. Add to that a two minute ending that explained almost nothing and you get an endgame situation that leaves a bittersweet taste with the gamer, but damn if it wasn't a hell of a ride on the way there.
Command and Conquer 3 Command and Conquer has always seemed to rival the Warcraft series for my affections, with Red Alert 2 being possibly my favorite Command and Conquer game to date. I felt a bit of disappointment with EA after the release of Command and Conquer Generals, as I felt they tried to make the game too close to Warcraft 3, with the construction units, and the helicopters which were basically peasants going back and forth to a gold mine. Add to that the extremely short campaigns and the lack of my beloved cutscenes, and I felt that the C+C series was doomed in EA's hands. However, the release of Command and Conquer 3 made me feel a whole lot better about the series' future, The quick action was back, and the return of the cheesy cutscenes made Command and Conquer 3 a worthy addition to the series. If the Red Alert series can get the same treatment, I'd be ecstatic.
Guild Wars: Eye of the North Granted, this isn't a full game in its own right, you need one of the other Guild Wars campaigns in order to take advantage of it. However, the amount of content added makes it feel like its own campaign, far from the "add a few dungeons, items, and add +10 levels to the level cap" that most MMORPGs seem to stand by when planning out their expansions. The Eye of the North storyline follows the player as they travel through new areas of Tyria, helping three different main factions as they prepare to face off against what is only known as "The Great Destroyer". New class-independent skills allow for even further customization of characters, and limiting them to PvE only means they can make the new skills sufficiently powerful without breaking the careful PvP balance that Guild Wars is known for. The new content gives something fresh for max level characters to do, while bridging the storyline between Guild Wars and the upcoming Guild Wars 2. In my opinion, Eye of the North is what an MMO expansion should strive to be.
Overlord Face it, everyone loves being the bad guy at some point. In Overlord, this is your goal at all times. Basically a demented and deranged version of Pikmin, Overlord has you commanding a troop of hideous minions as you try to rebuild your fallen evil empire and bring the land under the control of your iron-fisted rule. I will say there's nothing quite as enjoyable as commanding your minions to rush out and slaughter a group of innocent peasants, for no other reason than "they were there". The game seems to have been tailor made for the XBox 360 controller as well, as controlling your minions is simple and intuitive. It may not be the deepest gaming experience of 2007, but hell if it wasn't a fun one.
Portal What can I possibly say about Portal that hasn't already been said before? Whether it's the dark humor, the excellent puzzle and level design, or the wonderfully satisfying ending, Portal is one of the best things to happen to gaming in years. If you can find someone who doesn't get a kick out of Portal, then there is no hope for them to ever be happy. Quite frankly, if you haven't played this yet, what are you waiting for?
Super Mario Galaxy I'm probably one of the few people who thought that Super Mario Sunshine wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, although I did agree that the sections without FLUDD were some of the more fun parts. (Aided in part by the awesome rendition of the Mario theme in those areas, no doubt.) However, Super Mario Galaxy managed to remind me why Super Mario Sunshine got such criticism. Sunshine just wasn't pure fun. Sure it had its moments, but nothing that really made you sit back and just grin. Galaxy recaptures that sensation of pure enjoyment, and also serves to show just how lazy most developers have been when it comes to the Wii. Sure it'll never reach the level of graphical achievement that the XBox 360 and PS3 do, but SMG shows that it can still put out a beautiful game if the developers take the time.
Team Fortress 2 As I stated earlier when talking about Bioshock, FPS games are not my normal cup of tea. However, Team Fortress 2 came along with the rest of the Orange Box, so I figured that I would at least give it a try. In retrospect, I'm certainly glad that I did. The art style drew me in initially, as I love seeing things stylized instead of photorealism. However, the solid gameplay kept me around, as even someone who isn't used to playing shooters like me can end up being useful on a Team Fortress 2 team. This is one of those rare games where even when you're losing, you can laugh about it, as there are some ridiculous things you can pull off. The fact that it's got me playing an FPS game without being completely ineffective definitely scores TF2 some major points.
Wild ARMs 5 When you think about underused settings in games, the Wild West is one that is probably near the top of the list. Certainly there have been games like GUN and others that try to work on this theme, but the fact is, there just aren't many Western themed games out there. Wild ARMs 5 manages to blend the Wild West with sci-fi, and adds a great battle system to make a fairly competent JRPG. The HEX battle system allows for some strategy, as attacks and skills affect an entire Hex when launched, so it's important to keep track of positioning. After the horrible changes to the series in Wild ARMs 4, (The loss of most of the western feel, lack of a world map, a localization that made the story unbearable, platforming...) I was a bit apprehensive as to whether Wild ARMs 5 was going to be the tribute to the series that Media.Vision had made it out to be. However, everything bad about Wild ARMs 4 was taken out, with the good improvements left in, to make one of the best Wild ARMs games in recent memory. If you don't like JRPGs, WA5 is not going to change your mind, but for fans of the genre, it's definitely worth checking out.
The Witcher The Witcher is one of those games that had been in development for years, with no indication of a release date for a long time, so it was fairly exciting to finally have it release. Running on a heavily modified Aurora engine, The Witcher crafts a world where good and evil isn't so cut and dried as in most RPGs. Generally, your decisions are more of the "shades of gray" type and are never so black and white. These decisions make up the majority of The Witcher's appeal though, as they all have some sort of effect on the game later down the road. These are woven into the narrative of the game, so it will almost never be immediately apparent what consequences your choices will have, which definitely discourages the "reload and make the better choice" syndrome that plagues many RPGs. Add to that an interesting skill system which forces you to make choices about character development, and a combat system that, although not the breakthrough they make it out to be, is still enjoyable and showy enough to make you feel like a badass, and you've got one of the best RPGs this year. The Witcher has its problems with inventory management, and unless you're patched to the latest version, you're going to have a hell of a time watching loading screens. However, if you find yourself looking for a good RPG to play, you could do a hell of a lot worse than The Witcher.
Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Sadly, as I write about Zack and Wiki, I can't help but think that here we are again, another great game that is tremendously fun, being completely ignored by the gaming public at large. Zack and Wiki truly is this year's Psychonauts. Lauded upon by gamers all over the place, but kicked to the side and abandoned by the consumer public. It's a shame then, that most people won't get to play what is certainly a treasure in the mostly shovelware lineup of 3rd-party Wii games. Bringing to mind the point and click games of yore, Zack and Wiki is a puzzle gamer's dream. Using the tools and the environment around you to solve the puzzles and progress through the game, with some of them really forcing you to think hard about things. It definitely captures the "Aha!" moment of old games, where after seeing how things work, you realize how they go together to reach the solution. Nothing feels better than spending 30 minutes tearing your hair out on a puzzle, only to have it finally click as you walk up and take the treasure as your own. If you own a Wii, you should own this game, no excuses.
Honorable Mention:
Sam and Max: Season One Sam and Max: Season One has done a lot for gaming in a short time. First, it managed to prove that episodic gaming CAN be done correctly AND profitably. None of this nonsense about Half Life 2 episodes coming out months and years apart, or SiN episodes ending after only the first installment. Sam and Max laid out a schedule, and it stuck to it, each episode priced just right and just long enough to keep gamers wanting more. Secondly, it also helped prove that the point and click adventure genre isn't quite as dead as the dodo. The reason for the Honorable Mention then, and not a full spot on this list, is because although terrificly fun and funny, they fail to capture some of the difficulty of earlier point and click games. Most of the interactions are of the "use this on this" sort, and are nowhere near as complicated as the original Sam and Max. Also, although well written, with a storyline that ties together at the end of the season, each episode tends to follow a fairly similar formula, with players doing some of the same things each time. Even with its flaws though, Sam and Max makes a worthy addition to the games of 2007.
TLDR VERSION: (in alphabetical order) Bioshock
Command and Conquer 3
Guild Wars: Eye of the North
Overlord
Portal
Super Mario Galaxy
Team Fortress 2
Wild ARMs 5
The Witcher
Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Honorable Mention: Sam and Max: Season One.
Attached photos:
Well, let's see, I've got a ridiculously sized game collection, spanning from Coleco to Wii, with much of what's in between. The Super Nintendo was the height of awesome for me, and I still break it out once in a while to relive those memories.
I'm also a fairly big RPG nut, but the only MMO I play regularly is Guild Wars.
Currently playing:
Silverfall
Guild Wars: Eye of the North
Team Fortress 2
