A Decade of Gaming: 2007
By Chris Cesarano2007 was perhaps the first truly big year of the next generation. A few highly-anticipated titles were landing onto store shelves while a few other clever ones were sneaking into gamer consciousness.
Of course, this was also the year development studios stopped announcing projects so soon. Many gamers were getting sick of waiting several years for a hyped title only for it to disappoint. Publishers and developers were learning just how expensive it was to make a game. Projects were starting to be canceled and executives were taking fewer risks. While innovation was encouraged, games still needed to emulate enough successful ideas.
Not to mention the hype. It was more important than ever to show off trailers and gameplay videos in order to intrigue gamers into buying games. The end result was never really a necessity, as long as the game sold well on day one.
EA Swallows Pandemic Studios and Bioware
No one trusted EA yet. They had yet to prove themselves in the new generation and were still suspected of being the giant money swallowing greed machine of previous generations. Yet the new head of the publishing giant was determined to push forward and change the company’s reputation step by step.
The absorption of Bioware and Pandemic were such a move, yet at the time gamers expected nothing but disaster. Now Bioware would be forced to pump out mediocre titles annually while Pandemic would…um…go from mediocre to suck?
While Pandemic’s doors have been closed, Bioware has proven to release excellent titles even after the acquisition. If anything the coffers of EA can only help the studio further. In the end, the acquisition was not so bad after all. It was just one step to EA redeeming itself for past sins (though they still have quite a ways to go).
Expo Explosion
There was a plethora of new gaming expos in 2007, as well as the first year E3 would try and be a downsized, press only event. While most gamers only cared about E3 at the time, the remaining events had sought to fill the now existing vacuum generated by the smaller Electronic Entertainment Expo.
In particular was E4All, wanting to open the doors to E3 to everyone instead of just the press. However, the ambitious project was unable to garner the attention of the industry or gamers, resulting in huge, spacious rooms with few visitors and even fewer exhibitors. VGXPO had also arisen in Philadelphia, seeking to get the eyes of the games industry onto the East Coast. Unfortunately, a few unwise decisions would put a permanent and unfair stain on the event for a while.
After the success of Child’s Play, Penny Arcade finally took the next step to create PAX. After being guests to a few anime conventions the dynamically-challenged duo stepped forth to create such a Mos Eisley for gamers. Not about the press or the hype, but about the community. A place where gamers could meet, get to know each other and socialize. Due to the comic’s success already embedded into the gaming community, it was a hit. Unfortunately, the founder of VGXPO had a few too many drinks and made some poor PR moves. Now many won’t even give the man’s event a chance. Ouch.
Finally, E3 itself. All I have to say is Capcom had a two hour panel of people discussing the Lost Planet movie, but admitting they would have nothing to show for it for a few more years. That basically captures the essence of E3 2007.
It’s no wonder the event went right back to the glitzed and glamored up show we all love it for the very next year.
Bioshock
I never got the chance to play System Shock, but from what I heard such exposure is irrelevant to what makes Bioshock so notable. Constantly I find myself having to defend the intellectual value of games to relatives and family that assume it will do nothing but force children to sit and become fat. That there is no intrinsic value to be found in them.
“Have you ever read Atlus Shrugged by Ayn Rand?” I then ask. Most of my relatives are College educated so they nod, informing me they had. They may even scoff at it depending. At this point I bring about Bioshock, a game that takes the objectivist ideas presented in the story and combines them with other philosophies of humanity. I explain the depth of the setting and story, but most importantly the city itself.
Yes, the gameplay is fun. It certainly is great to go back to and play, feeling different from most other shooters I’ve dived into. However, what makes this game so special is the very heart of it. No, not the journey of the hero himself, but of the people of the city. They had gone in there with dreams and visions of success, but in the end there was nothing to be found but the same misery on the surface. Scientific discovery led to dehumanization. The journey to become more than human led to violence, greed and death.
Like a good novel, Bioshock is a game you can dip into repeatedly and get something new out of each time. That marks its significance among games, and also marks it as the first truly great and memorable title of this generation.
Halo 3
The trilogy was finally coming to an end. Bungie was putting their all into making the best of the series, capturing elements from the first two and putting them into this. The story would be epic, would blow the minds of players away and entertain for endless hours online.
I can’t wrap my head around how anyone was pleased with this game. Almost every room was linear combat, with the Covenant on one end and you on the other, shooting straight ahead. All the infantry work was in narrow corridors while open environments required a vehicle to survive. In fact, half of the game was nothing but vehicles. Mysteries from the first two titles went unanswered as the plot ended generically. There were no new twists except for a few major characters dying. Dual-wielding was now worthless.
About the only real improvement was four-player co-op, but it would have been better just to rerelease the first two titles with improved online instead.
Of course, no matter what failures Bungie had run into with the main campaign, no one noticed or cared. It had been all about the online at this point, and as usual that was why the game had sold.
Halo had started as a franchise with so much potential, but it seemed that its long-awaited end would be in, well, just average. Fortunately ODST corrected some of those mistakes, with a campaign that felt more like what Halo 2 ought to have been and recapturing much of what made the original great. It gives hope that Reach itself may be a worthwhile title after all. As for when the franchise is going to die, who knows. This was also the year Bungie had terminated their relationship with Microsoft, and once Reach is over they will be moving onto new IP.
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
It may only be a port, but it’s a port of one of the greatest games of all time. To this day no other tactical JRPG has captured the complexity of Final Fantasy Tactics, not to mention the excellent story. Just like Bioshock, Tactics is one of my primary games to cite as titles that exercise the brain, not kill it.
The world of Ivalice is an incredibly political one, plagued by kingdoms that had just ended a war. Soldiers and heroes returned home to peasantry and poor conditions while the nobles continued to sit in comfort and ease. Uprisings began, and soon were used as tools to fuel a new war between princes vying for the throne. Within it all was the Church, manipulating the events to unlock ancient demonic powers and rule as Gods on Earth.
Events that had taken place in the game accurately reflected the mentality and conflict that plagued Western Europe during the middle ages. Despite a rating of “Teen”, it continues to be one of the few games that actually feels adult. There is little teen angst or anguish over girlfriends, but the fury of a people tormented by plague and harsh rulers. At the end of the day, there are few fantasy novels on the market that are capable of competing with a story as complex and full of intrigue as Final Fantasy Tactics.
Of course, the game wouldn’t continue to be such a footnote if it wasn’t for the combat. Despite a questionable use of level adjustment, the game was loaded with character classes and abilities that allowed for in-depth customization and discovery. One person’s ideal party could easily look different from another, and strategies were easily shared across lunch tables and chat rooms. Combat speed, zodiac signs, bravery and faith stats as well as many other small abilities helped determine battlefield strategy. Options were endless and there was so much for a player to dig into.
So rereleasing on the Playstation Portable, I have no choice but to make note of the game. While plenty of Tactical RPG’s have released since the original Playstation title hit shelves, none of them have hit the complexity or customization of Tactics. This is nothing to say of the regular poor plots and bland writing. Or how horrifically bad Square had raped the series with its handheld sequels.
Anyone that has not yet exposed themselves to the original Final Fantasy Tactics should do so as soon as possible. The Playstation Network also has the game for download, and anyone that would skip on the chance to play it is a simpleton.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Multiplayer yatta yatta perks blah blah.
Look, the first thing that made Modern Warfare special was the simple fact that it wasn’t taking place during World War II. No one played Call of Duty online much compared to other titles, so they weren’t expecting much more than what they had already gotten. Similarly, the story had never been much of a reason to play a CoD game before either. It was simply about the combat.
Yet Infinity Ward used their new game as a chance to push game narrative to the next level. Similarly to how Half-Life presented a story without cut-scenes, Modern Warfare put you within the body of several key characters throughout the story. The idea was to show and not tell. From the very beginning you are in the seat of a Middle Eastern Prime Minister, kidnapped and forced into the back seat of a car that would take you to your execution. Out the windows you witness the chaos of the city, terrorists casting innocents into the sidewalks and against walls only to mercilessly execute them. Finally comes your end.
Immersion was the name of the game, and Infinity Ward had it in spades. One level you were running to a helicopter, grasping to keep hold and alive. The next you were rushing into heavy fire to save a fellow marine from a crashed helicopter, only for a nuke to go off and take you all out. Stepping from the wreckage as a dying soldier, last vision of a mushroom cloud over a now dead city. The car chase that ended abruptly, leaving you to end it all with one tense and well-placed shot. Even after the credits the game finished with one final climax on an airplane.
It wasn’t just a game, it was an experience. Infinity Ward stepped forward to show gamers and the industry even more that it’s not just about the guns, controls or A.I. It’s also about the atmosphere, the story and the suspense. To make a truly great game the player must remember key moments, and to embed it further there must be an emotional tie. As such, the first Modern Warfare was perhaps one of the most memorable games to be released, and was by far one of the best that year.
Super Mario Galaxy
Nintendo has a habit of setting expectations high in terms of platformers. The original Mario Bros. became the template of which all others were based, only to release Mario 64 and spawn another endless series of clones. Now they were releasing Super Mario Galaxy, which would completely disorient players in wonderfully imaginative worlds.
There is no doubt about the quality of the title. It is fun, plain and simple. While its immersive level will vary based on which kind of gamer you are, there are few out there that wouldn’t be able to have fun exploring the world of Mario Galaxy. Each world has a few goals that can be obtained upon it, and each goal only takes around ten or fifteen minutes to obtain, if that. It’s easy to spend hours on this game without realizing it due to how quick it is to do one level after another. It’s like a bag of potato chips. You just keep grabbing one after another, and before you know it you’ve snacked on half the bag.
Unfortunately, despite the hours of play available and numerous challenges, the game is counted as “casual” among many. I guess the mark of a “hardcore” title is the presence of guns.
Assassin’s Creed
Ubisoft’s big experiment proved to be pretty flawed to a lot of gamers. You could get through combat using only one attack, the slightest movement would cause guards to strike you down later in the game, and the missions were generally the same in each city.
Yet what the game did right, it did with the greatest of excellence. Any environment could be climbed, leapt upon or shimmied across. Traveling through the city streets felt so…pedestrian compared to leaping from roof top to roof top, tossing knives into any guards that happened to question your presence. Opportunities for assassinations were everywhere, and when the blade finally sunk into your foe a feeling of sick satisfaction cleansed the body.
Even further was an excellent story within. Sure, it seemed to be confusing and made no sense at first, but by the end it built into one of the biggest “oh shit!” moments. After years of disappointing final boss conflicts in games Assassin’s Creed felt like a real climax.
While the game was met with a mixture of positive and negative reactions, it sold well enough commercially to garner an excellent sequel. Hopefully the series doesn’t go to Hell in a hand basket for its third iteration.
Mass Effect
I was uncertain about Bioware’s latest RPG due to my feelings on KotOR. Sure, it looked cool, but I wasn’t certain if the combat would play well. At first it felt very poor, but after getting into it I discovered that the key isn’t to play like a shooter. Constant use and activation of abilities was the key to defeating the enemy, and after realizing that combat became a snap.
Yet the real gem came in the story. Off to a slow start, the game was full of many interesting choices and a rather intuitive dialogue interface. Once you surpassed the halfway point, however, the story opened into a whole new world of hurt and intrigue. Moral choices were suddenly beginning to truly test one’s outlook on right and wrong, falling between neither generic “good” or “evil”.
Most of all, due to the hype surrounding the game all of this writing and moral choices were brought into the mainstream. Mass Effect help make deeper plot lines and story-telling a financial success, a move that will hopefully have an effect on publishers from here on.
Super Paper Mario
Overshadowed by its fully three-dimensional brother, Super Paper Mario entered the scene only to be forgotten rather quickly. Pushing past the more traditional RPG elements and into the familiar side-scrolling platforming action Mario got his start on, Super Paper Mario created environments that were comletely two-dimensional from one angle but could then be flipped into a three-dimensional world. This changed how to interact with certain enemies and environments, revealed secrets and even helped avoid death at the last minute.
In addition were small little gameplay modifications made by the Wiimote and Pixl characters. After stomping on a foe Mario would perform a trick mid-air after a flick of the controller, multiplying a boost in experience gained. The Pixl characters allowed Mario to interact with the various foes differently and also solve puzzles throughout. The end result was the typical charm and quality that could be expected from a Nintendo title, entertaining and charming for hours.
Oddly enough, one of the truly charming aspects of the game is its story. While it isn’t full of heart-wrenching scenes or mind-blowing plot twists, it’s got the warmth of a Pixar film. Players of all ages can find some level of entertainment within the narrative in addition to the excellent gameplay.
Too bad it is overlooked so easily even by Nintendo’s greatest fans.
Sam & Max: Season One
While I’ve never played the original adventure game, I have the comic and have seen episodes of the old cartoon. Sam & Max is a pairing of creative and clever comedy, though it’s possible not everyone will “get it”. The world that our protagonist detectives inhabit is a dark one, but they always tackle it with a smile and bright attitude. Even if the words coming out of their mouth paint a bloody or violent image, it’s a bloody and violent image using pretty colors.
So the revival of the team in video game form was great news for fans of the series. Telltale Games, formed by veterans of LucasArts, sought to bring back the old style of adventure games with clever puzzles and quick wit. Not only did they revive it successfully, but they also managed to release an episodic series relatively on time. After seeing such long delays between episodes one and two of Half-Life 2 and most other episodic titles not even generating interest past the first release, it marked one of the first true successes of the system.
Telltale has expanded their interests into a continuation of the Monkey Island franchise as well, and will undoubtedly continue to release more and more fan pleasing titles as time progresses.
Portal
Was it a new sort of puzzle game? Or was it a change of pace for first-person shooters? Either way, this game was addicting enough that the two or three hours required to beat it sped by in a single sitting. It was a hot contender for Game of the Year on a number of publications, and even won out for a few.
Yet in the end, was it really that big of a deal?
The true magic of the title wasn’t just in the gameplay, it was in the personality of the GLaDOS construct. Basically a female version of HAL 9000, only much more sneaky. Despite being a complete bitch she was easily lovable due to how frequently she made you laugh. A plot twist toward the end revealed additional gameplay that forced players to solve puzzles with no hints at all. A relatively morbid story was told, and in the end the heroine made it out of the facility successfully. Though she never did get any of that blasted cake.
Whether Portal was as amazing as many claimed it to be (including myself) or not, it was certainly different, completely well designed and a blast to play over and over.
Shadowrun
While the rest of the gaming masses were making a big deal out of Team Fortress 2 I and a few friends were enamored with Shadowrun. No, it’s not a remake of the old SNES/PC game. No it doesn’t play like the actual tabletop RPG does. That doesn’t make it any less of a game.
While Team Fortress 2 certainly has an artistic style to it, each combat unit is stuck as its own class. There is no customization and each player has to know how to play their class best to in any way be effective. Shadowrun has four races that also have their own special differences, but players can focus on whatever weaponry and abilities that best suits them. This allows for a lot of customization as well as different play styles to work together.
This is nothing to say of how well the massive maps were designed. Despite a handful of levels and few game modes the maps took into account all the abilities presented in the game. Gliders, invisibility, teleportation, all of these could be used effectively by any player. Use a cyber-enhancement to scan the environment, teleport to the floor beneath you, slice open an enemy from behind and teleport back up before anyone knew what happened. The tactical possibilities were endless and each match had the potential to feel different from the last.
Unfortunately, the price point hurt the game. No one wanted to drop $50 on a multiplayer-only game with a handful of maps, especially when a competitor was being bundled with so much more for the same price. The small yet social community only continued to dwindle more and more as time passed, until present day where no one communicates and matches can’t even reach maximum capacity.
Naturally players that never even touched the disc litter the Internet exclaiming how it “sucks” while singing the praises of greatly overrated Team Fortress 2. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good game, but it was also less of a game.
Other noteworthy titles of 2007:
Blue Dragon, Battlestations: Midway, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Rogue Galaxy, Wii Play, Supreme Commander, Crackdown, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Virtua Fighter 5, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Armored Core 4, Cooking Mama: Cook Off, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Guitar Hero 2, Forza Motorsport 2, The Darkness, Overlord, Mario Strikers Charged, Mega Man Star Force, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Warhawk, Wild Arms 5, Lair, Stranglehold, Eternal Sonata, Heavenly Sword, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Beautiful Katamari, The Orange Box, Zack & Wiki, Painkiller: Overdose, MegaMan: ZX Advent, Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, Guitar Hero 3, Battalion Wars 2, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Hellgate: London, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Dragon Quest Monster: Joker, Contra 4, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Crysis, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Unreal Tournament 3, Rock Band, Time Crisis 4, Nights: Journey of Dreams
2007 in video gaming on Wikipedia
What do you remember from 2007?
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