The Finest Moments in 2007 Gaming

Stephen Totilo, as he did last year and the year before, has put together a piece looking at the finest gaming moments to be had in 2007. From the high-jumps of Portal to the Colossus battle in God of War 2, he's got a lot of gaming goodness packed into this one article. My favorite moment (the end of Mass Effect) isn't on there, but this is a close second: "Late in the much-praised first-person shooter BioShock, the player is required to don the outfit of another character in the game. Saying much more about this moment would ruin the effect. But rest assured, this transformative sequence changes the way every character in the world reacts to the player's presence. Plus, it might just give a BioShock player some pause about what they had been doing for the dozen hours that preceded the moment. Saying anything more would be a spoiler."

Some of mine

[steveo777]

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption... Every fight. Going through the portal from the 'Norfair' planet, Bryyo, into the icy caverns. The first time you get to the Elysia, and every time after that when you're traveling outside. Incedentally, this is my 'Game of the Year' choice.

Portal: Not the end, but the first time you find one of the rooms where "others" had dwelled before you. Insanity.

Assassin's Creed: When the main character acquires the 'eagle vision' near the end.

Bioshock: Any time you're walking around and you hear a Big Daddy, was a truly great moment. Sadly, this game was ruined for my by the last boss battle, which seemed to take everything the game stood for, and threw it away in the name of a Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter final boss battle. (loved Turok, for the record)

Mass Effect: I really cannot pinpoint any spot that was a 'finest moment'. Great game, one of the best this year. Maybe it's 'finest moment' can be the fight with Matriarch Benezia. The only battle I had any actual trouble with.

"This was a triumph...

[7Prime]

I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS"

Seriously, end of Portal (which I finished last night, actually) is deffinitely up there, in my book. And the credits song is in the running for best video game song of all time, up there with Homeworld.

MARIO GALAXY had a couple of dousies too:

- Intro with the Airships and Mario 3 theme, I shit myself.
- *spoiler* Point in the storybook where the "girl" suddenly comes to terms with the death of her mother. The cute music stops, the somber strings swell, and it's one of the most poignient moments I've ever seen in a game.

Also, am I the only one who found the end of Bioshock increadibly beautiful and well-done. Sure it was probably the shortest ending since Donkey Kong, but it was more powerful than most 30 minute endings.

Re:Crappy year.

[Osty]

This is the point where someone points out how awesome Halo (or any other FPS was) and that I come back with 'I've done FPS a billion times.' There were only a few games this year that were just new levels for old ones. -yawn-

So you rule out games simply because they're presented from a first-person perspective? If so, you missed possibly the best game of the year, Portal. You also missed Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3, as well as Halo 3 (I wasn't going to mention this, but I couldn't help myself :).

Aside from that, there were some great non-FPS games out this year. Assassin's Creed was fun, if a little repetitive. Mass Effect was great in the Bioware RPG tradition, perhaps even better than the prior KOTOR games because it was not restricted to the existing Star Wars mythos. Forza 2 is perhaps the best console racing simulator to date, and although GT5 will look prettier Forza 2 still has a much better physics simulation (it updates 360 times per second, modelling all four wheels across three separate points on the contact patch). Ratchet and Clank almost made me buy a PS3 (still holding off on that), and I'm really considering dusting off my WiiMote and picking up Super Mario Galaxy.

What exactly are you looking for from games?

Re:Crappy year.

[Osty]

So I ask again, what exactly are you looking for from games? From a broad perspective, there's nothing new in games. Even something novel like Guitar Hero (itself suffering from sequelitis) was nothing really new. DDR with a guitar, yawn. But wait, not even DDR was unique! NES Track and Field but with dancing, yawn.

There's value in doing things well even if you're not ground-breaking. For example, Halo 3 is a very solid shooter with fun online play and a conclusion to a story that many of us have been following for 6 years. It may not add anything to the FPS genre directly, but that doesn't mean it's not worth playing. As another example, compare Oblivion [gamerankings.com] (valid because the Game of the Year edition released this year) and Two Worlds [gamerankings.com]. On the surface, they're pretty much identical -- medievel-ish PC-style RPGs with wide open worlds. Oblivion, despite being a sequel (4th of the Elder Scrolls RPGs), was great. It ran well, felt solid, had a great story, and truly benefited from the Elder Scrolls mythos. Two Worlds, on the other hand, was essentially a piece of crap (didn't stop me from enjoying it, though :). It had massive performance issues, quest-breaking bugs, horrible voice acting, and flawed controls. If you're just looking superficially, you'll dismiss both because they're just "Ultima with a modern graphical veneer, yawn," and in the process you'd miss out on the excellent game that was Oblivion. Of course you'd also miss out on the crapfest of Two Worlds, so that's not too bad :).

Forza, GT5? Racing again. -yawn- Last racing games I truly enjoyed were F-Zero and JetMoto. Guess why? They were -different- and new. The sequels sucked.

Obviously you're not the target audience for Forza or Gran Turismo, and that's fine. I take it you enjoy more arcade-style racers, in which case it'd be a shame for you to write of game series like Wipeout just because F-Zero did it first.