The 2007 Gaming Club

Slate has put together a great feature looking back at the entire year in gaming; Slate's Chris Suellentrop chatted with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, the New York Times' Seth Schiesel, and MTV's Stephen Totilo (all MVPs of game discussion) about the best games of the year, big and small: "Some people have agreed with me that Desktop Tower Defense is wonderful, intoxicating, and addictive in its gameplay. But many have been flummoxed because I did not pick as my GOTY a truly grand, big-budget game. Lots of people seem to think that year-end lists should be reserved for epics like Halo or Grand Theft Auto. But that's not what 'Game of the Year' means to me."

Comments

Updates to existing games

[KingSkippus]

I think it's a shame that updates to existing subscription games always get left out of these lists.

I play City of Heroes/Villains myself, and this year saw three HUGE updates to the game. In Issue 9, we had a new villain zone released, as well as a new invention system that provides a ton of end-game stuff to do, and an in-game auction house. In Issue 10, we got a major world event and a new hero/villain cooperative zone. In Issue 11 (just released a couple of weeks ago), we have another zone, Ouroboros, that allows heros and villains to complete "flashback" mission for even more end-game action, two new power sets, and a ton of new costume options. And those are just the main features, there have been lots of other little tweaks and new surprises.

The game is a LOT better today than it was when it was released around three and half years ago, and it was really a lot of fun back then. The best part of it is that unlike most other games, all of those expansions were released for no addition cost to the regular subscription fee, and the developers under the new NCsoft banner are busy working as I write this on the next expansion, Issue 12, probably to be released around the end of March or so.

Sorry if I sound like an ad, but they've really done a bang-up job on the game. Don't get me wrong, I love Halo 3 and playing with the Wii, but those tend to be merely diversions from the game I've been going back to for years now. It may not be the uber-hyped behemoth that other "Games of the Year" are, but personally, I'd rather stick with one that's been consistently interesting and good year after year.

Maybe it will make the list of "Games of the Decade."

Re:Updates to existing games

[KingSkippus]

Well, I will admit that CoH/V tends to not appeal to two types of players.

First, those who are all about min/maxxing their characters and power-leveling through to the end. There's really not much point, since the game isn't focused so much on end-game content and pwning other people, though as mentioned, we did get a nice invention system for those level 50's out there to participate in.

Second, the griefers. There are exceptions of course, but most of the folks in CoH/V are generally nice, helpful folks who are thrilled to be part of the community. Griefers generally have a hard time, because the developers have designed it so that there's just not much they can do to disrupt the game for other people, and the community is pretty quick to react and report the people who do.

So yeah, I guess it might be a pointless waste of time to some people, but the general absence of those people in the game and the tendency of those people to quickly leave the game is one of the things that I really like about it. You have your opinion, but from the tone of your post, I think I'm pretty safe in saying that we're pretty happy that you don't like it.