I return to the year-end Gamer's Confab at the Brainy Gamer, where we discuss our personal faves of 2009 (guess what mine was). Anyway, listen to the podcast, and keep tuned to Michael Abbott's site for the rest of the year-end confabs, always a treat. I was also on TV to yap about Modern Warfare 2, which was funny/odd.
Over the holiday, Gamasutra presented its Best of 2009 -- from companies and developers to games in every category and industry events. We'd like to think this is your definitive year-end compendium. Or, you could just skip directly to our GOTYs and be done with it. We also presented a top 12 games of the decade, as voted by our readers entirely!
Done? Done! Onto 2010. I'm now putting together at Gamasutra a list of some of the biggest major releases of the coming year; here's a list of the bigger Xbox 360/PS3 releases, and here are the portables. Which ones are you most looking forward to?
I've only just gotten back and I've already got all these links to throw at you, sigh. Pray I get on top of things soon -- happy new year!
6 comments:
I listened to the podcast a few days ago. Some interesting points raised, especially about Today I Die. I'm with you in that it fails as a game. Sure, it succeeds in other areas and I take the point that games don't HAVE to be accessible in the same way as movies don't have to be accessible. But in order to review.... d'you know, I'm gonna stop there. I could be here for hours trying to define the nature of games, gaming and gameplay.
Nice podcast. I'm gonna listen to part 3 now.
Hope you had an excellent festive period. Nice to have you back.
Welcome back to the internet Leigh!
I'll agree with Del, some good points were raised about Today I Die. I always love the discussions take emerge from Micheal's Gamer Confab.
And the fact that all three parts so far had some who took Demon's Souls as their favorite game ALMOST made me want to play it. Sadly, with university starting back and my console gaming time greatly reduced, I'll have to play it tight in order to go through all the January/February releases that caught my eye; Mass Effect 2, SC: Conviction, Bioshock 2 and Heavy Rain.
Great post very interesting and great podcast.
Ugh. I strongly disliked Dragon Age. I can't believe people are praising the story-telling and characters as much they are when it consistently sounded like a bad high school play I had to squirm through until I finally gave up on it. I know enough people love it that I would be stupid to not consider that I'm just wrong, but jesus it seems like we're talking about different games here. Or something.
Demon's Souls is absolutely amazing.
without a doubt my most anticipated game is bioshock 2, with mass effect 2 at a close second but bioshock was the most amazing experience out of the past decade in games for me, so a sequel, no matter how illogical, is something i anticipate.
I thought Uncharted 2: Among Thieves or Batman: Arkham Asylum would take My Very Important Game Of The Year award. However, it took a colleague lending me Demon's Souls last month to enjoy what is one of the greatest gaming experiences I've had in the last few years... and I've only beaten two boss demons. From Software, a developer I usually associate with great ideas that sometimes fail to meet their potential, has scooped the essence of great gaming, trimmed the fat and put it in a PS3 Blu-ray disc.
Demon's Souls does not let any player miss the opportunity to feel the strong sense of accomplishment from slowly advancing through each of its dangerous worlds. Unlike most games these days where the developer's goal is to let the player "see everything," From Software demands the player earn the right to play new areas, fight tougher enemies, and thus gain greater rewards. Real rewards, the ones that only come from great games. The reward of completing a tough area after accumulating twenty deaths, and training oneself to improve execution and attempt different methods of attack after every failing, only to gloriously succeed at the twenty-first try. The game forces the player to get better by punishing them for playing poorly, by taking away all the "experience" they've accumulated, and demanding they reach the far-off place of their last death if they want to recover their hours of play. The player will then grow cautious, aware, and more involved when traversing the world. Their skills will improve, and the game rewards them with more, tougher content.
And best of all, it doesn't exclude any gamers by offering different difficulty settings. See, it doesn't exclude players from missing out on the accomplishment of competing these tough challenges. This feeling of accomplishment would be diminished, and outright removed, if the game were to offer easier difficulty settings people could fall back on. Every person willing to commit to the game will be greatly rewarded, and then realize that time playing games is better spent with challenging games (just like life is more fun when you challenge yourself, as opposed to doing just enough to stay in your comfort zone, etc).
Anyway, I really liked the game. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories would be somewhere on this list had it not corrupted my save file late in the game, forcing me to restart and relive the frustrating chase sequences and now-predictable scares.
As far as this year is concerned, I already got the game I've been expecting the most, Bayonetta, and if I wasn't crunching I'd be wired to my HDTV playing every night (and splitting time between it and Demon's Souls). Bayonetta plays like it could be the greatest beat-em-up since Ninja Gaiden, and after playing the God of War III demo, I just don't see any upcoming game being a competition to Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games's action title. I just wish they offered a hard difficulty from the start, instead of forcing me to wade through normal. I'm also looking forward to Mass Effect 2, Read Dead Redemption, Super Street Fighter IV and God of War III (less than before playing the demo, though). I'm also looking forward to playing a bunch of older games I've bought over the holidays (Policenauts, Guardian Heroes, and others...), if time allows.
And no Metal Gear in the Gamasutra Top 12? WoW #1? Bah... I'm just amazed anyone in the US even bothered to give Hideo Kojima the Lifetime Achievement Award at last year's GDC. Fellow developers and "people in the industry" I know tend to dislike MGS...
Sorry for the schizo post. You just happened to hit on a couple of topics I was thinking about, and I have the rare time to rant. I remember you may have posted an entry about Demon's Souls at some point, which surprised me when it turned out to be positive (I think...).
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