Results tagged “wii” from Softcore Gamer

Happy new year, everyone! I've been on vacation for the past couple weeks, but now I'm back in L.A., trying to overcome this holiday inertia. And you know what that means: obligatory end-of-the-year post! Er, admittedly, a couple weeks late. Nonetheless! With a little prompting from Ethan Kennerly, I'm going to run down the list of favorite moments from gaming in 2007.

10. Super Mario Galaxy - I lent my Wii to a friend for the end of the year, so the only Mario Galaxy I got to play was an extended romp following Thanksgiving dinner at Jamie's. I'm not sure that I'm ready to accept the proposition that it's as much fun as Mario 64 was, but it is fun. Long-jumping off of a platform and into orbit around it is one of the more satisfying things I've ever done in a game. But that isn't why Mario Galaxy gets a favorite-moment mention. I love collective play - when many people connect with each other over the shared experience of a game as it's being played - but I don't get nearly enough opportunities to play games in the environment you need to achieve it. The night I played Mario Galaxy, however, I was playing with a room full of happy, friendly, and turkey-stuffed people sharing the experience. A collective intake of breath accompanied every near-suicide as I attempted to navigate the Sweet Sweet Galaxy, and only by our collective force of will, and Jamie's cat-like reflexes as my P2, did Mario clear that last platform to safety. I think it was one of the few times this year that I got to feel the sublime sensation of shared play; certainly it was one of the most fun.

9. Bioshock - I still haven't played enough of Bioshock to give it a proper review, but I've played more of it than I had when I reviewed it the first time. And I have to admit, there's a lot to like about this game. It deserves a spot on this list just for the absolutely stellar atmosphere and environmental design. As for a favorite moment, well, on several occasions through the game I've experienced a quiet awe as, after clearing an area of zombie-like Splicers, I had a chance to walk around and take it all in. Perhaps my favorite such instance occurs before Splicers even enter the picture when, upon entering the lighthouse at the start of the game, I found a space somehow cavernous and claustrophobic, beautifully and lovingly and richly decorated, yet disquietingly empty. The air was filled by that haunting music, and I felt like I was looking in on something that had once been grand, and was forsaken.

8. Trauma Center: Second Opinion - I don't know why I love Trauma Center the way I do - it's much too hard for me, and that usually turns me off right out of the gate. But there's something entrancing about it, especially at the early levels, when I know that I can succeed as long as I don't screw up, and that knowledge makes me work furiously to finish before the patient flatlines. My favorite moment comes when Derek shouts, in one of the only bits of voice acting in the whole game, "I will save this patient!" It's cheesy, maybe, but the character's frank determination is infectious. And it's refreshing to play a game where success involves saving lives, rather than taking them.

7. Sam & Max: Season One - I was vaguely aware of Sam & Max, as a franchise and as a modern episodic game, before I picked up Season One this summer. I didn't realize that I would get quite such a kick out of it. After too long, this was my return to adventure gaming, and it was easy to remember why I loved the genre. The games are witty and clever but simple; the lack of complex or abstract puzzles puts the focus squarely on the story, which is fun and funny and nicely compact. Playing six 2 to 3 hour games made me realize that, while marathon games like Oblivion have their place, short games can be an incredible joy. My favorite moment was getting thrown into an old-school text adventure in the episode Reality 2.0. I'm just that much of a geek.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - You may remember that I was a little skeptical about Phantom Hourglass in the days leading up to its release. Drawing a path for your boomerang would be cool, no questions asked, but the whole concept of drawing on your map seemed a little gimmicky to me, and I was afraid it would bring down the whole game. Boy, was I mistaken. Phantom Hourglass is fun, although due to the onslaught of games this holiday season I haven't gotten to play as much as I'd have liked, but my favorite part by far was the dawning realization that I had seriously underestimated how developers could use that little gimmick to add innovation and depth to the play mechanics. For as many times as I've talked about data as content and information as currency, I had to play the game to understand how well treating information as a prize could work.

5. Once Upon a Time - I played Once Upon a Time for the first time during the week after Christmas, with my sister, while we were snowed in up in the mountains. I was extremely pleased to see how simple the game is, and how much fun it was to play. It falls into an odd and delightful cooperative-competitive category, where each player is ostensibly trying to win in a zero-sum fashion, but really everybody's goal is just to keep the story going. My favorite moment was when Captain Bart, the king-cum-pirate, instructed his lover to poison the kindly old woman who had cooked them nothing but potatoes every day. That's the kind of plot twist you just don't see in many of your commercial games.

4. Elite Beat Agents - Rhythm games have always held a strange appeal to me. I'm terrible at them, which is what makes it so strange. Also, I tend to get bored relatively quickly. I have a Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix mat gathering dust from the brief period when I was bursting with excitement about that game. Ditto the bongos from Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. In fact, the only rhythm game that has stayed consistently fun since the time I got it is Guitar Hero II, which I guess is what I love so much about Guitar Hero. I got tired of Elite Beat Agents pretty quickly, too, but damn was that game fantastic while I was playing it. I absolutely love the idea of people being able to overcome any problem with a little luck, perseverance, and the support of a team of snazzy male cheerleaders dancing to pop hits. The wonderful, cheery absurdity of the story was like, well, music to me. Favorite moment: Cheering on a parrot in a scuba helmet to the tune of Y.M.C.A. Also, the phrase "Agents are GO!"

3. Mass Effect - Mass Effect was, by far, my most anticipated game of the year. And it lived up to it's promise as a worthy successor to Knights of the Old Republic, which is one of my favorite games of all time. Certainly, the game isn't perfect, but most of its problems boil down to the fact that some of the secondary systems aren't as well designed or polished as the rest of the game. In other words, it's important to continually stress how not-perfect the game is because it's really so damn good. As with KOTOR before it, I'm partial to the romantic subplot in Mass Effect. I guess that my favorite moment of the game was when I ultimately turned down Kaiden's advances in favor of pursuing Liara. I'm used to any romance in a game like this being linear, if optional. Having to make a choice, and follow through with it by explicitly rejecting a character that I had rather gotten to like over the course of the game, was emotionally potent, especially because the characters and situations were so well presented.

2. The Baron - The Baron deserves a proper review, and I'm still planning to give it one eventually. For anyone who isn't familiar with it, this is a work of interactive fiction that I found through the Play This Thing! blog last summer. It's a cyclical game, meant to be played more than once, and on the first play-through it's a good example of what the form brings to the table. The game is structured as a short series of encounters, where the overall organization is almost entirely linear, but there are many ways to navigate each individual encounter. The text interface makes me feel more of a sense of freedom in my interaction with the world, and it's worth playing the game just to remember what we lose by using graphical interface systems. There's a moment of realization at the end of the game, however, that imbues the whole experience with an additional layer of meaning. Maybe because I didn't really see it coming, or maybe because of the subject matter of the game, this was one of the most powerful moments I've ever experienced in gaming.

1. Portal - Come on, what's not to love about Portal? I can't even count all the favorite moments that came out of this game: perfecting the double-fling, discovering the graffito-ridden back rooms, Jonathan Coulton's song, reading the history of Aperture Science on aperturescience.com, the cake... Clearly I'm obsessed, but Portal is in many ways a masterpiece of a game. If I have to pick just one favorite moment, though, it's the line, "There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the companion cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him."

1UP has posted a glowing preview of Super Mario Galaxy, due out this month on the Wii. As 1UP points out, the esteemed Mario saga is credited with inventing the platforming genre with the original Super Mario Bros, and then reinventing it with Super Mario 64. They claim the newest game reinvents the genre yet again. Early buzz has been overwhelmingly positive, but this article makes the first mention I've seen that Galaxy may be Game of the Year material. In a year that includes the breathtaking - albeit over-hyped - Bioshock, the beloved - what else? - Portal, and the mind-blowingly fantastic - oh please oh please - Mass Effect, that's saying a lot, and it's also great news for Mario fans. I've been looking forward to the game for a while, despite the fact that, well, it's a platformer.

Still, as much as I rail against the platforming genre, I absolutely loved Mario 64. How much of that was the novelty of exploring 3D space in a new sort of way? Some of it, certainly - but not all of it, because even today I can play the game and thrill at the experience. It's just a marvelously well-put-together game, and I have fun playing it despite all the jumping around on platforms it asks me to do. So, will Super Mario Galaxy live up to this precedent? I'd hardly dared hope, but with advance reviews as encouraging as this one, it's starting to look like a real possibility.

There are so many games launching now or in the next two months that I literally cannot keep track of them all. Seriously. On the plus side, I probably don't have to worry about being bored between now and March.

Here, take a look:

• Halo 3 (360) - Perhaps the biggest blockbuster of them all, the marketing and buzz for this game have been deafening (albeit pleasantly so). Halo certainly has its share of problems - the level design is frequently terrible, and the narrative is not presented well, for instance - but I cut my cooperative teeth on it back in college, so the latest entry into the franchise gets a token must-play.
• Orange Box (360) - I spent a long time without a gaming rig, so I still haven't played Valve's illustrious Half Life or its sequels. Now that there's a console version, I'm anxious to see what I've been missing. Plus, I've been looking forward to Portal for a good long while. (October 10)
• Phantom Hourglass (DS) - This one is high on my list based on its lineage alone. I'm pleased to see another game in the cell-shaded style. I'm even more excited about a touch-based Zelda adventure. There's a lot of potential there, and I expect Nintendo to have realized some of it with this title. (October 4)
• Rock Band (360) - Guitar Hero II was one of my favorite games of the past several years: a relatively simple concept put together exceedingly well. Add in some cooperative play and, well, I have very high hopes of Rock Band. (November 23)
• Guitar Hero III (360) - See above, although to be honest, I'm expecting more from Harmonix than Neversoft. (October 28)
• Beautiful Katamari (360) - I don't expect the game to add an enormous amount to the series, but I'm excited to have a Katamari game finally come to the 360. (October 15)
• The Simpsons Game (360) - The buzz is all but nonexistant, so my official stance is "cautiously optimistic." Perhaps it's just another lousy movie tie-in, but there are certainly precedents for a great Simpsons game. (October 30)
• Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - Mario has always been fundamentally about platforming - a genre for which I have no great love - but Galaxy takes such a unique approach that I can't help but be intrigued. (November 12)
• Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) - Smash Bros is a fantastic party game - at least if you're throwing a party for gamers. Which is exactly what I'm going to do when this game launches. (December 3)
• Ace Attorney 3 (DS) - The Phoenix Wright series may be simple, but these games sandwich a fantastic sense of humor neatly between interactive fiction and old-school adventure games. (October 23)
• Sam & Max: Season Two (PC) - I recently played Season One, and instantly bought into episodic delivery. To say nothing of a series of honest-to-God old-school adventure games with a wicked sense of humor, the potential of finishing a game within two or three hours is breath-taking. I do not finish 90% of the games I play. The week that I purchased Season One of Sam & Max, I finished six. The emotional significance of that fact should not be underestimated. (November 8)
• Assassin's Creed (360) - Since it was first announced, I've been hoping this would prove to be a spiritual successor to the wonderful Sands of Time. I'm still holding out that hope, and all the coverage I've seen seems to bear it out. The environment and animations look stunning, and I can't wait to explore the large-crowd AI. (November)
• Mass Effect (360) - Absolutely the game I am most looking forward to this season. The dialog system is along lines I've been waiting for the industry to pick up for quite some time. And while it may be drawing criticism from some camps, I've always been an enormous fan of BioWare's real-time/turn-based hybrid action model, so I'm glad to see it intact. Quite honestly, I cannot do my excitement over this game justice. Let me simply say: I am extremely excited about this game. (November 20)