Blog FeedGames of 2007: A Debate by Mail
It’s the time of year for the industry’s Game of the Year awards and all the usual suspects will be coming out with their usual honors and demerits for the best and worst of 2007. But I don’t have the editorial following of a big magazine or website so I thought a “i’m right and you’re wrong tone” wouldn’t be the right one to strike with my game of the year. So I enlisted the aid of my good friend Head881 to discuss the games and trends of 2007 in an email debate inspired by Slate’s Gaming club, which talked about the games of the year, rather than choosing one. What follows is our discussion.
Head881,
I originally composed this with a top ten list, then I realized I was just lowering the bar to fill it up entirely. Make no mistake, there were plenty of really awesome games in 2007 and if we expanded this out to a full feature length Game of the Year type thing (like you’d read on Gamespot or whatever), I’d have a million special commendations to give to games other than these. However I feel that less is more, and I needn’t include all of the games that were fun in 2007, as it just dilutes the recommendations of the games I have included. If there is a common thread through all the best games of the year, it’s that the games’ styles have become a form of substance. The graphics, sound and overall art direction enhance the experience such that it’s more than mere eye-candy. It’s a real improvement on the experience.
#3) The Orange Box: We generally have a pretty good idea what to expect for our 60 dollars when we go to buy a game. Orange box like so totally reset the scales on value for games. For 60 dollars you’re getting some of the best games in the last few years and three amazing new games. Each of the three new games would have been reasonable competitors for Game of the Year on their own but as a threesome they were that much more formidable.
Team Fortress 2 was a game in which the art style really made a huge difference. In a scenario where games had been leading towards more and more realistic graphics it was an incredible breath of fresh air with it’s beautiful Incredibles style visuals. This style though became substantive in a variety of ways. First of all the degree of expressiveness of the characters, even doing mundane things is a highpoint for games. After you die it cuts to a quick shot of the guy who killed you and at first you might think that these shots are in some way stylized but they come straight from regular gameplay.
Portal was the surprise game that got everyone talking. It was an indie game that was seemingly just the cherry on top of the Orange Box’s Sundae but it turned out that maybe the rest of the game could have been seen as the cherry on top of Portal. The writing for Portal was hysterical, containing some of the best dark humor that’s ever been in video games. In addition to that, it’s first person puzzle game mechanic was just utterly brilliant and while a lot of the puzzles weren’t particularity difficult some presented some really entertaining mind fucks trying to plan out what you needed to do. In addition to that Portal gave us some of the year’s great big Internet craze’s the cake is a lie, and some people fell in love with the companion cube—which was oddly enough a crate with a heart drawn on it. This was really quite an accomplishment. However I’d like to say that I never felt guilty about the companion cube as without choice there can be no heroism nor crime.
Episode Two was the middle chapter in the Half-Life 2 episodes saga. And as such, it really has neither a beginning nor a really proper ending but a bunch of actions that hopefully will all make more sense in the course of time. The game doesn’t really mess with the formula of Half-Life but that’s not really a bad thing is Half-Life 2 is one of two games i gave a 10 to and I’m not really tired of that game’s style. One thing I’d like to point out is how much more intellect Half-Life 2 assumes we have compared to it’s competition. There are some great puzzles in Half-Life 2…in one instance you need to use a grenade to jump and they teach you what you need to do not by some NPC beating you over the head with a solution but rather by using the art to clue you in on the solution just enough so that you can think up an answer. The game cements that by after having one of the most enjoyable final battles in recent memory adding one of the most outrageously shocking endings I can remember.
#2) Mass Effect: Mass Effect is the best example I can think of to illustrate the fact that games are more than the sum of their parts. Mass Effect created an awesome sci-fi world that apes a variety of sources Star Trek and \BSG probably most of all. Much to my surprise this game was not much of a Star Wars Imitator, it’s political not mystical, you’re not the chosen one just a experienced officer in the Human navy.
One of the real strengths of Mass Effect is its creation of a universe that’s full of characters who are really unique. It also created a lore that’s worth paying attention to if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading books in Elder Scrolls there will be just as much of that kind of detail in the Codex of Mass Effect for you to dig into. The game’s graphics allow the creation of these really amazing characters who show emotion and are so very animated and sit right outside the beginning of the uncanny valley. It’s a case again of style becoming substance as when you’re standing there next to this huge Krogan Mercenary he doesn’t seem just like a human with bumps on his head but it really does a great job of creating various races. The voice acting is also really remarkable and that leant to creating amazing characters even your character is for the first time defined by the voice actor and they found some fantastic ones. I’d especially like to give credit to Jennifer Hale who has been a standout for Bioware in the past and does a fantastic job giving life to Jade Sheppard much like she did Bastilla in the past.
I’d like to take a minute to talk about the issue of sex in games. Mass Effect got a lot of press for having a sex scene that’s semi-explicit with a choice of two humans (male or female) or a mono-gendered alien race that for all intents and purposes aside from lore are female. These were handled very tastefully and I felt they really created a fantastic love story between my Andrew or Jade Sheppard and Liara T’Soni or Ashley Williams.
#1) Bioshock: I have not used this phrase lightly but Bioshock was one of the greatest games ever made. I don’t want to get into rewriting my review of Bioshock and do a blow for blow recreation of everything I loved about Bioshock and made me play it almost non-stop for two trips through Rapture. The primary where the game succeeded was in creating one of the most amazing game worlds that any game has ever created.
From the moment you step into the Bathysphere, and dropped down int Rapture it was an amazing place to visit. Like even months after my trip through Rapture I can vividly remember the beautiful levels throughout the game. The wharf of Neptune’s Bounty, the foundry of Hephaestus Core, the beautiful gardens of Arcadia, and finally the chaos of the residential districts. These zones were so memorable thanks to the tremendous artistic cohesiveness of the design. The whole game is so incredibly cohesive that it lent to a world. On this same note they also really nailed the 50s art style for the game’s wonderful advertisements and P.A. Announcements which were all so spot on. It is in this way that the game’s style becomes a substance because it’s tremendous graphics help really flesh out the immersion of being in a place that’s real and that’s frankly creepy.
Another part that really hit me with the game was how much thinking and feeling the game made me do. As I played through the game I spent a lot of time wondering….hmmm is Ryan really such a bad guy? Like one of the amusing things is, that like his disdain for altruism and religion is proven to be spot on. I never really had a completely certain picture as just when I thought I had a judgment figured out something a little twist came up. In addition to that the game inspired the feeling of guilt as I killed things. Splicers and Big Daddies I never particularity wanted to blow away as I felt like it was often them or me and I was acting out of necessity. I want to talk about the Little Sisters for a moment because they received so much attention that it’s worth exploring a bit more. I’m normally something of a completionist when it comes to games with branching paths so after playing the game through saving every single little sister I decided to go back and see what it was like harvesting everyone of the little girls. When I chose to save the little girls I really felt like I was doing something that was good, it brought a smile to my face, when I chose to harvest the girls I found it remarkably unpleasant.
Revisionists have recently retconned the debate about Bioshock and made the complaint that the choice about the Little Sisters is in fact the only real high level choice in the game, and that it’s a flaw that the endings represent that one choice in the game is somehow a flaw. I think this is nonsense, the theme of the game is about a lack of choice but yet you are presented with these little small choices along the way and I think that really is a good secondary message in that even when the path is really just someone else pulling the strings and making us dance the way we conduct ourselves on that path matters. One critic Jonathon Blow, even went so far as to say the action the player takes respecting the Companion cube, was superior to the choice presented with little sisters. The problem with this lies in the nature of your behavior. With the companion cube you do what you must to advance—if you feel guilt over it it’s only over a regret of the circumstances, much like I regret not being able to save the splicers or the big daddies. With the Little Sisters because i have made an active choice to sacrifice them to gain more power myself rather than to save them and give them a chance to escape the fate that they were sealed into, causes legitimate guilt because it was a choice made freely knowing that there was an alternative. IT was not a necessity to kill the little sisters if I did so I did so for my own reasons and that makes me worry about why people chose that path.
- Andrew “Vermouth” Martin
