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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

2007: Your Game of the Year

semioticrobotic

18:09 / 27.12.07

I'm hoping this isn't premature, but I'm tired of reading Best Of lists written so impersonally.

So, nominate one game that takes the cake -- a game that was important to you -- even if it wasn't industry changing, medium shaping, or paradigm shifting. Tell us why it's your Game of the Year.

I can begin.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
I played no other game as much or as intensely as PQ this year. And all the while I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what makes the game so addicting. The fantasy narratives and themes are trite and unoriginal. The game mechanics aren't novel by any stretch (when taken separately, one-half RPG and one-half puzzler). Multiplayer options are fairly meager. The soundtrack is only ho-hum. But something keeps me coming back to it. This mystique alone propels this little ditty to the top of my personal charts this year.

It must be something in the synergy between genres. In PQ, you play one of three fantasy archetypes who hones her or his battle skills in a local kingdom before traveling the surrounding lands completing quests, defeating and capturing monsters, and everything else that comes with the territory of being a fantasy archetype. But battling consists of solving color-matching puzzles. Players move colored tiles to form lines of three or more of the same color, gaining mana of that color. Mana can be used to cast spells that alter the board, affect the enemy, or enhance the hero's abilities (to, once again, move colored orbs around a board). Players gain experience which adds to a hero's capacity for "holding" more mana and casting more advanced spells. Matching skulls damages an opponent directly.

Armor prevents damage; weapons deliver more damage or affect the enemy in certain ways; monsters are captured, trained as mounts or as sources of new spells.

I haven't ever played a game that blends the puzzle genre with the RPG genre in quite this way, and for this game's uncanny ability to inspire obsession for the better part of my 2007, I award it My Game of the Year.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:39 / 28.12.07

Only one?

Fuck, maybe we can do a no-lists Best Of thread as well (I was gonna start one a month or so ago, but figured I'd wait for Assassin's Creed).

For me? Portal, hands down. It's almost the perfect game- like chess or something, it has a very small number of elements, or "rules", but they've made something so intricate from them. And it gets bonus marks for not descending into a shooting game at any point. The level design is perfect, and the feeling of satisfaction you get conquering the trickier puzzles is genuine.

And that's just the gameplay. For a game which has only two characters, one of whom is you and never speaks, it has the best script EVER. The best AI-gone-mad character since Shodan, only imagine if Shodan was as funny as she was scary. I haven't laughed so much in a game for years, least of all a puzzle game.

And the end credits... well, quite simply the best end credits of anything ever. Not just games. The only trouble is they arrive too soon... but, given that it's Source, and given my original point about it being essentially a very simple game, there's already no shortage of extra maps available.

And the Companion Cube. Anyone who doesn't love the Companion Cube is clearly a monster.

So yeah, if I have to pick one it's Portal by a LONG way. Before that it would probably have been BioShock, but... yeah, Portal gets it. No fucking contest.

12:34 / 29.12.07

I'll second portal. My Brother stayed at mine during christmas and I made him complete it so he could see the ending.

17:42 / 29.12.07

I've been trying to sell my girlfriend on Puzzle Quest - she loves puzzle games (she's addicted to one of these online flash games called Chain Factor), she's recently been really sucked into Zelda on the DS, and I've heard a lot of great things about PQ. She's still on the fence though.

I haven't played Portal yet, though it looks fantastic - I wish it was available as a separate game for download, I don't really have a ton of interest in Half Life or Team Fortress.

It's a tough choice for me but the finalists are Super Mario Galaxy and Bioshock. Mario Galaxy is a delight, endlessly fun to play in either quick bursts or long sessions and wonderfully innovative, breathing new life into the platform genre. But Bioshock is something quite extraordinary, a game in which I was involved in the story as much as any movie or comic I've seen. Incredibly immersive, with an utterly compelling storyline that made me actually think about it even when I wasn't playing it, helped in no small part by the first-rate voice acting. Beautiful design, a unique setting, complex and involving gameplay and atmosphere by the bucketload. I finished it and the very next day started again to play through to get the alternate ending, something I've never done before. My girlfriend would bug me to play it so that she could just sit and watch it like a movie.

So Bioshock it is then, not just for 2007 - I think it's one of my favourite games of the decade.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

21:37 / 29.12.07

So far, I agree with everyone. Puzzle Quest owned my life in the first half of the year. For months, every time I closed my eyes, there'd be a grid of mana gems and I couldn't sleep trying to work out how best to place a fireball... Fantastic game.

Portal, stalker and bioshock were all also fantastic. But Portal is the only one of those I bothered to finish, invisible angry mutants and, uh, visible angry mutants were too much for me.

I think I'm going to have to go with Mario Galaxy. Paper Mario (Wii version) comes close. Every time I play it, something new happens which makes use of the 2d nature of the characters and makes me laugh. It has a really amazing visual style which is varied but also obviously cohesive. And it's quite a lot of fun. I think the move away from rpg-style setpiece battles was probably a good idea, as I really do prefer my mario flowing and uninterrupted. Plus it means you can bop and run, and not have to fight everything to the death if you don't want. And the boss fights are better for it.
But Galaxy is a better game. It's fun just to move Mario around, in Galaxy. Long-jumping off planets and orbiting them three times is awesome. Wall jumping out into space and then spinning to change direction and get enough height to reach a hidden platform is awesome. Riding a red shell around underwater and throwing it in the face of a giant eel is awesome. The music is great, I really appreciate the way they do things like change tempo with the speed you're rolling in the ball levels, or (I could be wrong, they could do this for every file), how the file select music gets a little beat in it, once you open a file in which you've beaten bowser.
I also appreciate that, while big parts of the game are pretty easy, there's some goddamn incredibly hard levels, too. I'm thinking mostly of the purple coin levels, the time trial ones of which really can be a pain in the arse. But you have enough lives to bash at it until you get a pixel-perfect run going on, and finishing one is a pretty good feeling!

Now I have to go run around on the surface of pixel-luigi until I get 100 coins, or die, again, like I spent all yesterday doing.

06:57 / 23.01.08

My game of the year was Wurm Online, a Java MMORPG. Before you stop reading my post in disgust, Wurm puts RuneScape to shame. It's a 3D first-person (thanks to OpenGL) medieval MMORPG (actually, more like a simulation) in which you can do practically anything you want.

The whole world is manipulable - dig holes, mine caves and tunnels, build roads, houses, cities, carve wooden tools, smith weapons, hunt monsters and animals, butcher their meat, cut down trees, plant them, so on and so forth. I've never seen anything so amazing in my life. It's free to play too, although you have to start paying monthly to get your skills to increase past a certain point.

I think it's best described as a 3D Ultima Online or Toadwater. Definitely worth checking out.

22:11 / 31.01.08

For me it's got to be the Warmachine wargame from Privateer Press. Taking the best elements of Warhammer 40k's rules, some great models, and opportunities to play loads of magic, solos and characters it makes many other fantasy wargames seem a tad stale, even prescriptive. They do another called Hordes and a RPG called Iron Kingdoms. The games are all connected to an evolving storyline that dictates the development of new characters. Battles are fought between Warcasters from rival kingdoms, huge steam-powered warjacks that the Warcasters control, and troops consisting of humans and fantasy races. I've ben playing it every 3 or 4 weeks now for 3 years; every game's different and I'm still learning how to play my best. I play Cygnar (the good guys?) and field different armies depending whether I'm playing Cryx (the Undead), Khador (like the Russian Empire) and Menoth (a fanatical theocracy). You can play a good game using the introductory battlebox, but a 2000 points game can mean playing into the early hours.

miss wonderstarr

20:27 / 01.02.08

I've barely played any games for a year apart from Guitar Hero, but gosh thanks so much for bigging up Portal. I've been watching clips from it for the past half hour and I can't get that song out of my head. I think I'd be rubbish at playing it, but the culture and characters seem so groovy. A bit like Iain M Banks' drones, maybe ~ AI, even speechless tech, with really endearing character.

Now you're thinking with portals!

miss wonderstarr

22:32 / 02.02.08

It's been a day and I can't remember any songs from Sweeney Todd, which I saw a few hours before I watched Portal on YouTube, and I can recall just about every lyric from "Still Alive", and every coldly twee intonation of GlaDDos' delivery.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:44 / 02.02.08

I think I'd be rubbish at playing it

No, no you wouldn't. That's the beauty of it. There are some really tricky bits, but there're no "if you're not a hardcore gamer, and twitch at the wrong time, you're FUCKED" parts. It's very forgiving. The autosaves are pretty much spot on, and every puzzle can be cracked. Everything can be retried.

Please, please try it, because I'm interested in your take on it, in that it's a game with little to no actual story, but an incredibly compelling narrative. (Should maybe have thought of this for your thread on movies and games, but...) It really is a game that, as has been said elsewhere, could ONLY work as a game. Because that narrative would be really dull in any other medium, except possibly as a radio play, which would by definition be incapable of actually presenting the mechanics which are its raison d'etre.

The Banks comparison's spot on, btw.

miss wonderstarr

08:14 / 03.02.08

Isn't it only PS3 though? I am waiting for GTAIV before buying one.

10:33 / 03.02.08

No, PC and 360 as well. Do try it, it leaves a fluffy scar.

Definitely my game of 2007. There's something very into the spirit of the final songs lyrics (that ironic snark of overall "this was a triumph! I'm making a note, huge sucess!") that just flows throughout the game. It has constantly in mind that it's not about 'winning', but about the experience of going through it. The puzzle-solving is extremely satisfying in themselves as a challenge, but that's too few of it, solving them is just too fucking fun and a unique experience in themselves.

It's very unique. I've been wanting to play Rez for some sort of a non-representative 'abstract' game for a while now. But I feel Portal would be the most satisfying in that regards (it feels more immediate somehow in that sense), even while functinoning very much as narrative, with normal worlds and characters and other commmon traits of normal representation and game-world immersion (and far greater in it than your usual games. I still laugh to this day at "remember when I pretended to try to kill you and you were all like, 'no way!'...? That. was. funny").

But sharing the podium with it, Mario Galaxy and Mario Paper.

miss wonderstarr

10:42 / 03.02.08

Rez works for me in that way, almost as a trance experience because of the way interacting with the environment and progressing through the levels adds layers to the beat-heavy, dance soundtrack. But it doesn't have "characters".

I promise I will buy Portal on PS3. I don't have a 360 either and I kind of prefer not playing on PC... just don't like the controls as much.

10:56 / 03.02.08

It's not as blatanly abstract as Rez (or not at all really), but for me it had that sense of immediacy, of very little in between for me to bullshit myself for a experience. I always find trouble trying to explain how it felt, but the overall sense of trying to immerse yourself in through the regular tropes weren't needed for me in the experience. Being very aware of the mouse and keyboard was something the game 'allowed'. There was no 'vengeance against Glados!!!" or any faux drama (or any drive to 'win') to make it work.

Again, on this I have a huge amount of trouble explaining it (since it's not really 'abstract' at all, really).

Sebastian Flyte

11:15 / 03.02.08

Sorry to be dull, but mine's Portal too.

It's one of the cleverest, funniest, most original games I've played in a long time--not just this year.

It's also the best game I've played that I really don't want to see a sequel to--and I think that's testament to quite how well-done Portal is.

I have forced several people to play through it, and would recommend it to almost anyone who's not entirely averse to the concept of computer games.

Portal's originality, intelligence and humour are what really make it stand apart from all of 2007's other offerings. Mario Galaxy comes closest in terms of originality of game design, but the overall package doesn't have quite the same verve to it.

08:51 / 04.02.08

I would say Portal, but just to be different, I'm going to go with Half-Life 2: Episode 2. For $20, this continuation of the blindingly amazing gameplay, storytelling, and voice-acting that is the Half-Life 2 universe so far is enough, at least for me, to put it in competition with Portal. I've not had a staged battle in a game make me as tense as that final Strider fight does in a long time.

10:56 / 05.02.08

Much as I loved Portal, the game I enjoyed most n 2007 was Mass Effect. The technical glitches the game suffers have been well documented, but to me they just seemed irrelevant in the face of brilliant story telling, a remarkably well-realised universe and an innovative and engaging dialogue system which made me laugh out loud more than any game I've played. The voice acting is great throughout - although the female Shephard has the edge over the male counterpart, especially when it comes to the 'renegade' dialogue lines. Took me about 30 hours to complete my first run through, and when it was over all I wanted to do was play the game through again. Doing so took me into different missions, different cutscenes, different characters and abilities. It's a big, rewarding experience.