GameTruth

The weather outside is frightful and lot and lots of sites and blogs all over the place are putting out lists for the “Games of the Year”. Funny that 2007 is not over and with an industry that is so winter-holiday-centric with sales you think they could put it off until the year was actually over. Anyway, the cynical “holier than thou” part of me wants to say hype is a pretty good way to be a game of the year contender but it is the season for cheer and all that so I will try to stay positive.

Looking at the 2-10 list from Gamasutra for “Game of the Year” there is a mixed bag. Just like my distaste for game reviews I have a distaste for game ranking as well. I am not sure how you can place BioShock and PuzzleQuest on the same list. First off I FUCKING LOVE PuzzleQuest but if there was ever an apples and oranges metaphor that was better than saying “apples and oranges” then “BioShock and PuzzleQuest” might be it.

PuzzleQuest is a pretty run of the mill RPG story but the combat is a viciously addictive puzzle game like Bejeweled. Its aimed at the casual and the mobile crowd and it is an awesome game, get it, get it now. Its out for like every system but I have the DS version. It had almost no hype and was mostly passed on by word of mouth. Of course it got to the right mouths and the guys at Penny Arcade ranted about it. It can never hurt a game to be featured in a PA strip.

BioShock on the other hand is a pretty hardcore FPS and the successor to SystemShock. It is set in a creepy underwater world and has the player make moral choices about what they do to little girls (yeah creepy). Anyway I have only played the demo of BioShock but I am pretty confident that it is not for the casual or mobile crowd. There was a ton of hype around the game and it got great reviews, so what the reason I don’t own it? Easy, it has no multiplayer and its hard to justify 15 hours of fun and not a ton of replay value for my scant, hard earned cash.

This huge waste of time I just made you read is getting back to my point of that you can’t really have a list that encompasses all the games released in that (almost a whole) year. So to the question at hand: What about a game makes it a game of the year contender? Personally I would like to choose games that are not only fun, but also new and fresh, like BioShock and PuzzleQuest (they do relate in some areas). Also I would not mind seeing games that have an impact on the games industry in some way like The Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy. If I can have one other point, I would like to see the list split into at least 2 divisions: Sequels and Remakes and New Games. The reason for this is that the industry could use a larger emphasis on new IP and games instead of just the next squeal to an already proven franchise.

In conclusion the list I linked from Gamasutra only goes up to number 2, meaning that they will soon release their game of the year. Personally I am going to place my guess that they choose Halo 3 (not my choice for game of the year) simply because while its not a core shaking game it was better than Crackdown, that is for damn sure. Also the multiplayer for Halo 3 is tons of fun and while Zero Punctuation (the only “review” I watch, read, or listen to) does not play multiplayer, I do. It was by far the best part of Halo 3, that and the Spartan Laser.

-Mark

Since we love to ask questions about things currently happening in the news, there is an article today about the 101 dumbest moments in business. Making the list several times is Sony, for the weird God of War pre-party with goat carcasses and again for using Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man.

So do you guys think that Sony was out of line for using a real life location (a church of all things) as a battleground in a game?

I would say no. I like the idea of using real life locations, especially when they are given a slight twist, in games. It helps to further suspend disbelief when you see a well known landmark in the mix. Not to mention how many countless FPS maps have been made of different real life buildings and locations? There is something cool and interesting about exploring and playing in a virtual mock up of a place that you have actually visited. The entire draw of Rainbow Six: Vegas was all the casino locations. The only problem I see is Sony not asking permission and also using a church.

-Seth

This is a loaded question. Graphics does not mean art direction. Art direction is very important to every game and all visual media for that matter. Now graphics themselves can be important as well. Games like Halo 3, Gears of Wars, and Heavenly Sword touted their graphics very highly and made it a selling point. These games look great with photo realistic vistas and enough polygons to choke a horse but that is not really necessary for every game, I think the Wii has proven this. Many touted it as the Gamecube 1.5 because its not a huge leap forward in technology like the PS3 and the XBox360. However, its popularity, while having many factors, leads many to believe that it is a triumph of fun over graphics.

I also wanted to ask this question so I could talk a little about the difference between art direction and graphics. Over at Gamasutra they have a top 5 list of the best freeware games of the year. Gracing this list is several examples of awesome art direction. The number 5 game Gesundheit! has some pretty awesome art direction. The game is made up of what looks like crayon or pencil doodles on some paper, but it works very well for a game where the oblective is to use boogers to lure monsters into traps. Also the number 1 game is called Knytt Stories and also by any standard the graphics are up to date. The art direction is Knytt Stories is simple and supports the exploration and platformer gameplay. Everything is easily identifiable and therefore helps the game be intuitive to first time players.

The last example I want to bring up is World of Warcraft, the art in WoW is gorgeous but it is surely not state of art, even when it first came out. The art direction in WoW is immaculate from the textures to the color choices to the models to the animations. Blizzard did an excellent job is showing the difference between art direction and graphics and also showing that good art direction is more important than good graphics, but good graphics rarely hurt as well.

-Mark

They cut the show up into all the individual worlds and placed them on YouTube. The worlds that I was involved with are Connect It Relay and Pennsylvania Jones. The ending to Penn Jones is my part of the world, the rest was done by another group.

-Seth

This blog was created for the three of us to discuss video game related topics on a daily basis. It is still under construction, but feel free to join in if you somehow managed to find this page. The contact info is available to talk with any of us.

Enjoy

-Seth