My Year in Games

December 31, 2008 on 2:22 pm | In News, Ramblings | No Comments

As is the custom around this time of year, I feel compelled to write some sort of year-ending, bases-rounding kind of summary. Should I do a list? But everybody does lists, they’re so cliche and uninspired and lazy and…oh, OK, fine, I’ll do a list. Below I have generated a sequence of bold-type fonts that represent several of the biggest moments that 2008 brought to me as a gamer.

Most Surprising: I’ve been wondering for a while now what exactly Blizzard was doing with the 10 million times 15 dollars they’ve been hauling in every month. Building giant money forts maybe? Buying lots of coke (-a-cola) and strippers perhaps? While it’s no surprise that this cash surplus has gone to the development of other games, I am surprised that they are simultaneously developing and promoting both “Starcraft II” and “Diablo III.” If you look at the record, Blizzard has traditionally released one game at a time in a pretty linear fashion. Game, then expansion, then a different game, then expansion, etc. Either of these games is a big enough announcement in and of itself to occupy most gamers’ minds, two just speaks of raw ambition.

So, I have a theory. Over the past couple of years, Blizzard has developed a habit that I think they went to keep. For the last two, they’ve had produce a duo of major events each fall; Blizzcon and then an expansion release for “World of Warcraft.” Blizzcon allows them to heavily push and promote the product they plan to release while also setting the stage for their future developments. Good PR. With “Starcraft II” being broken into three parts and “Diablo III” doubtlessly getting an expansion, I think it’s a good chance that Blizzard will continue to release one game every fall for the next five or six years, alternating between “Starcraft” and “Diablo.”

Most Depressing: Let’s be honest, and as a PS3 owner it hurts me to say, Sony has not had a good year. They got beat on basically every good idea that’s come to the next-gen console market. From motion-sensing to online play, their competitors have already done it and (mostly) perfected it. As 2008 began, there was still good reason to believe that Sony could come roaring back. Home would be unveiled and demolish Xbox Live, someone would finally make a good SIX-AXIS game, “Metal Gear Solid 4″ would be so awesome Jesus Christ himself would descend from on high to play it. Sadly for Playstation fanboys, nothing Sony did, said, made or sold changed the facts on the ground. The trend line from 2007 maintained itself in 2008, with the Wii clearly dominating, the Xbox 360 posting a respectable second and the Playstation 3 coming in a distant third.

And, just in case I didn’t already feel “babo” (Korean for stupid) for buying a PS3, Square announced that “Final Fantasy XIII” would have a multi-platform release. For me, this essentially destroys Sony’s next-gen hopes as FFXIII was the last trick in their bag. With Home revealing itself as a silly diversion to actually playing games and SIX-AXIS effectively abandoned by developers, there’s nothing left for them to promise. Even Blu-Ray’s victory in the format war did little to shift consumers. There’s nothing left but price cuts.

Most Enjoyable: Some of the most fun I’ve had gaming this year doesn’t come from a video game per say, although there is an excellent java version and a release an Xbox Arcade. Instead, I left the electronics behind and discovered the venerable board game classic, Settlers of Catan. A couple of Brits introduced me to it here in Korea and I haven’t been able to get enough of it since. I’ve recommended it to friend after friend and asked for the complete set for Christmas. While I won’t get into the mechanics in detail, it’s a game best played around a big table with good friends and a few beers. Even better, it combines familiar strategy game elements like resource gathering and spending with the casual appeal of dice rolling and “Sorry!”-style revenge to become a game the whole family can enjoy. Seriously, I’ve played it with my mother and she’s actually quite good.

Most Looking Forward to Their Eventual Demise: Stop it with “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” already. I’ll admit it, I was like everyone else when “Guitar Hero II” came out, seduced by the bright, flashing colors and tiny plastic equipment. But that was almost two years ago and the well has gone dry. The whole appeal of the idea was to play fun, popular songs, kind of like karoake with music instead of words. But, just like karoke, the amount of fun you have depends on the selection of tunes available. With each downloadable pack that appears, it just seems there’s less and less good stuff to be had.

Maybe I’m just too jaded of a gamer, but after wailing away on enough songs, they all just started to feel the same and my enthusiasm died. Activision and Harmonix keep releasing new tracks, but none of it is new content, just another pattern of colored dots to memorize and master. Perhaps a music metaphor is best here. It’s like a band you really like keeps rehashing the same material record after record. It’s not like you don’t enjoy listening to the music, but it’s hard to get excited about another album when you know it’s just going to be the same as the last.

Most Humbling: I recently acquired a multitude of emulators on my laptop that allow me to immerse myself in old-school gaming enjoyment at any moment. The veneer of nostalgia I felt concerning most Nintendo games, however, completely glossed over the sheer difficulty some of those games had. I mean, Christ, did I always suck at “Megan Man” this bad? It’s quite a shock to the system when one is use to checkpoints and regenerating health to face the excruciating frustration of a mis-judged jump or the underwhelming power of the Blue Bomber’s peashooter. Rather than own up to my lack of skill, I just say it’s a hold-over from the arcade era when developers didn’t want you to actually beat the game. Oh, that conniving Dr. Wily….