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The Games of 2006 Awarded
It's almost the end of the year, and various organizations are handing out awards for what has been a very busy year in gaming. The Associated Press handed the top honor to Oblivion, while Gamasutra's Quantum Leap awards gave Wii Sports the nod for bringing the whole family together. Gamespy and Gamespot are still in the midst of handing out the prizes, but you can already check out genre winners at Gamespy, and Gamespot's list of dubious honors for games that only deserve the faintest of praise.
I know I'm a bit off-topic but why on Earth has Nintendo chosen such blank and unpersonal characters for Wii Sports as they, in my humble opinion, should have used their Nintendo characters just like in Mario Tennis? I mean, really, why? I just cannot think of a single reason.
You just got troll'd!
I have it on the XBox360 and I agree with basically everything you said, as much as I can given the console difference. Good game, yes, I've spent about 40 hours on it and can easilly play it for a while longer. Great... eh, graphically, yes, maybe in the non-graphical departments if you get the numerous bugs on it fixed.
That said, the only thing about the game that has really pissed me off is the need to play it power gamer style to "correctly" level up if you want your character to be even remotely usable by the time you get around level 13 or 14. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I was always under the impression that your 7 major skills should be things that help you and that you use almost exclusively, not that hinder you because they're all you use and now you're suddenly hosed when the game's enemies level up with you, but because you leveled "poorly" a wolf is now a problem for you, and imps and other humans are almost able to kill you in two hits.
I tried the whole power gamer thing for a few hours and realized how retarded it is, since then it just feels like work, but then I discovered the magic of the difficulty slider. Sure, you kind of feel like a bitch for a few minutes after turning it down to 1/4th of the maximum, but then the game is fun again and you get over it.
All told, I'd gladly buy it for $45 used again, but I certainly wouldn't pay the full $60 for it. Though, out of principal, I refuse to buy any game over $50.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
I played the demo of that game, and I could not finish it. Not because it was hard, or boring, but because I'm a little weirded out by a game where you nuke real cities. Yeah, yeah, I know, "it's just a game". But when you call a strike on Shanghai and it says "17.7 M DEAD", it's a bit unsettling. Of course, that might be the point, and if so, they did a damn good job there.
I think Gears of War is a great game and deserves recognition but since when is it a first person shooter?
You know, I just finished playing the demo and one thing I noticed was how dramatic it felt when I blasted many cities at the same time: people crying, the mood of the music and a lot of those messages telling the millions of deaths. I think it actually points out how bad wars are, specially when nukes are involved. I can't remember any war/strategy game that made me think or feel this way when smashing enemies and getting ready for world domination... I agree that it might be one of the objectives of the game.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
I like my non-linearity like I like my women... short, and sucking my cock.
Let me clarify: Fuck non-linearity. I'm sick of the pedistal that many in the gaming community have made for it; it seems to be some people's be-all-and-end-all of gaming. It reminds me of when I used to play trumpet back in high school; the only thing anyone ever cared about is being able to play as high as possible; that was our benchmark for a "good" player. Our dream was to be able to hit double Cs, while at the same time, our low Cs sounded like shit. What I'm trying to say is that there's nothing wrong with non-linearity, a healthy dose is great, but without some linearity or structure, a game has no purpose. It's like a trumpet playing playing nothing but double-Cs throughout a solo, just to show his balls. That's what I feel when I hear people talk about non-linearity: "you're some kinda pussy if you're taste doesn't revolve around being as non-linear as possible." Just the day, I saw someone flaming someone else's post because they dared to bring up the importance of dramatic elements in video games. Are we, as gamers, becoming a culture so afraid of experiencing another person's creative vision, that we're willing to turn our backs on artistic intent?
THIS is why video games aren't embraced as Art, and will never be, until we stop creating these intrinsic benchmarks.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
The first 10 hours of Oblivion were some of the best 10 hours of game I've ever played. If I'd played those 10 hours and then stopped, I'd have absolutly no problem calling it the best game of the year (if I wasn't opposed to saying that sort of thing about games I'd only played for 10 hours). Thanks to mods and such, I'd say I easily got 50-60 hours of great gameplay out of Oblivion. The problem is that 50 hours is nowhere close to enough time to "beat" Oblivion. It was when I started gaining significant levels that I realized how broken the leveling system is, when I started clearing the dungeons scattered across the map that I realized that there were only two dungeons, with a bunch of copies (sometimes filled with different monsters, often not) spread around, when I started trying to level Merchantile that I stopped being able to tolerate the UI... and so on. None of these happened in the time frame that a reviewer would actually spend on Oblivion before writing about it, which makes the awards and reviews perfectly understandable.