2007 - A Year in Gaming

December 30, 2007

2007 was, indeed, a monumental year in gaming. So many triple A titles, ninety-nine percent of which were released in the holiday season making it very expensive for those who wanted to stay on top. Today I'm going to take a look back at gaming in 2007 (the games I have played, at least).

Wii
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
This was my first foray into the world that is Wario Ware and, as such, cannot compare it to previous entries in the series. For the uninformed, Wario Ware is a collection of micro games, meaning each little game has one goal and you have about five (or less) seconds to complete said goal. The folks at Nintendo got incredibly inventive and this game shows off the abilities of the Wiimote excellently. As far as looks go there isn't anything jaw dropping, but the art direction can be hilarious at times and it certainly fits in with the zany, face paced style of the game. I only wish there were some better multiplayer options especially since this is a great party game (especially when over zealous players put their hand through a ceiling fan).
8/10 Stars

Super Paper Mario
Previous entries in the Paper Mario series have been more RPGish in that battles were turn based and you traversed the world in three dimensions. Super Paper Mario takes a more unique approach, cleverly blending old school platforming with RPG elements. There is, of course, the flip element to the game which makes you look at everything in a whole new perspective (forgive the pun). About the only caveat to this game would be the mansion level, but the clever puzzles mixed with awesome writing make this a must have game for the Wii.
8/10 Stars

Super Mario Galaxy
I will admit, I do not own this nor have I played it much. However, in my time with it I can see how it has gotten such high praise. The visuals alone are simply beautiful, I'd say the best looking of any game made this year. The music is a joy to listen to with many motifs going back to the days of Mario 3 and some Mario 64 selections as well. Most of it is orchestrated which makes it all the better. The best thing is, these are only the icing on an extremely delicious cake. The game play is simply fantastic. Gravity plays a huge role in the mechanics of this game and you had best be keeping that in mind whilst traversing the spherical levels. There's really not much to say about this game aside from that it's everything a Mario game should be.
10/10 Stars

Xbox 360
Crackdown
This is probably the must underrated game of the year. If you bought this game just for the Halo 3 beta, raise your hand. (raises hand) If that's the only reason you bought this game and never even played it, then you should be ashamed of yourself. I was originally going to pass on Crackdown and the Halo 3 beta, but after playing the demo I realized that it (Crackdown) was a really cool game. I've never played a sandbox game before and just the ability to go wherever and do whatever I wanted was awesome enough. Throw in being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and run faster than your mom and you've got one sweet game. The ending does suck, but story isn't the most prominent aspect so I'll let it slide. I spent many a good hour with this game.
7/10 Stars

Eternal Sonata
Eternal Sonata was supposed to be the Final Fantasy for Xbox 360, at least in my eyes. It was simply gorgeous and it had an awesome battle system, however it is missing the one crucial element that a good RPG needs: story. I haven't played very far into this game because, quite frankly, I don't care about the characters. In games such as Final Fantasy VI or X there was enough story to keep me going to find out what happened. The problem with ES is that no real story has been setup after a few hours of play. There's been a little bit of character exposition, but not much compelling me to play through.
6/10 Stars

Halo 3
By far the most hyped game of the year, luckily it delivers. There really isn't much of a difference from the previous games, but enough of an evolution for me to say that it is the best looking, best playing Halo out there. Multiplayer still rocks, they brought back the assault rifle, and the addition of multiplayer match replays is very sweet. If you are a 360 owner and haven't bought this yet, you need to do some deep soul searching and then go and buy it.
8/10 Stars

Rock Band
Rock Band, aka Drum Hero or the Real Guitar Hero III, is by far the best rhythm game ever. Guitar Hero was awesome, but there's not much room left for innovation in that game outside of new songs. I don't know if this is what Harmonix was thinking or not, but they definitely upped the ante with Rock Band. Guitar is more or less the same, same for vocals if you've played Sing Star or Karaoke Revolution, but the drums is an entirely different beast. Getting all your limbs to work separately from each other can be a challenge, albeit a very satisfying one once you get the hang of it. In terms of song selection, there should be something for everyone especially with new downloadable tracks coming every week. The only thing about Rock Band is that, as the name suggests, you really have to play it with other people. Playing the solo tour is fun and all, but the multiplayer is where it's at. Paying attention to our band mates and saving them (or vice versa) adds an extra element to the game. The most awesome part, though, is when your singer can't sing. It can be hilarious and horrible... all at the same time.
10/10 Stars

Nintendo DS
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All
The Phoenix Wright series was already fairly well established by the time I got to it. I originally a half ass purchase as a game to play on my flight to Orlando in May. It turned out to be one of the best things I bought this year. Phoenix Wright was like an interactive Encyclopedia Brown story, only with killing and stuff. The stories are so intriguing that it is hard to put them down, and when you do finish you are saddened because the awesome ride you were just on ended. Graphically there's not much to see, though the artwork is nice. If you're into thinking type games you should definitely pick this one up.
9/10 Stars

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass
Zelda's first foray onto the Nintendo DS brought some radical changes to gameplay; namely, a game controlled entirely by the stylus. As bad as that may seem it works amazingly well. The game's visuals and sound are near identical to its predecessor, the Wind Waker. Despite all this, I felt the game was somewhat lacking and felt very scaled down. Granted, this is a protable release and the target audience was newcomers, but it still took away some of that Zelda feel. However, they still could've made some better music for the dungeons.
7/10 Stars

Portal
Just yesterday I picked up a copy of the Orange Box. Five games for fifty dollars is simply too good of a deal to pass up. At this point in time I have only installed/played/completed Portal. Portal is, by far, one of the most awesome games I've played in some time. The concept is insanely clever and forces you to think in a vastly different way. The writing is top notch and there were several things that I laughed out loud at. My only problem is that the game was far too short. I completed it in a few hours. Luckily there are advanced maps to complete yet and hopefully some stuff made by the community that I can get later.
9/10 Stars

If I had to pick one of these as my number one game of 2007 I would have to go with Rock Band. The drums are simply awesome and having a whole bunch of people doing co-op play makes for an awesome time. I would have to say Mario Galaxy would come in at a close second. It's awesome on too many fronts not to give honorable mention.

Well, there you have it. 2008 alredy looks to be promising with Brawl coming up right off the bat. Hopefully we'll see the same amount o quality games, but maybe released over a longer period of time. Happy New Year and keep gaming.

Tags: games xbox 360 wii ds review

1 Comments

Safari how you piss me off!

August 19, 2007

I've been booting over to OS X lately seeing as I'll have to get used to it when I go to school. Safari, however, is pissing me off. The colors on here don't render properly. It's the same problem that plagued IE4-5. So the gradient at the top doesn't properly blend into the background. Instead it's a disgusting blocky chunk. At that the gradient isn't smooth like it's doing some sort of weird compression thing a la AOL. Apple, if you're software "just works" why does it have problems that were fixed over ten years ago? Bastards.

Anyways... I now have less than one month in my current place of residence. On September 18th I set sail (heh) for Florida and my future. It's about the only thing I think about and it's making time go incredibly slow. To say I'm looking forward to the move would be like saying Jesus is a good man. But, I do not wish to dwell on the topic and more.

Yesterday I rented Mario Strikers Charged (Wii). It's okay. Online play is always a plus, but they really dropped the ball on the music. Every piece of music is a two to five second loop. It really, really, really blows chunks. But the game itself is pretty fun and it controls well. So if you just mute the TV and turn on some tunes its not so bad. Too bad the Wii doesn't support this instrisnicly like a certain other console...

Tags: aaple. os x wii mario

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Stuff and Nonsense

May 18, 2007

The list of things I have to do to prepare for college is getting shorter. Currently I'm working on picking out a roommate and after that we'll work on finding an apartment. Then I'll need to secure funds and come September 20th[ish] I'll be moving my stuff out there. So nothing new on that front, I'll move on to other things. Actually, I lied. I got a call from them the other day making sure I wanted to take the Digital Arts and Design degree because they think I'd be happier in Animation (I promptly said I'd be happy anywhere in that school). But I had actually been thinking of double majoring in either DAD and film or animation and the more I think about it animation and art as a whole has always been a big love of mine so I'm giving that some serious thought.

I'm currently getting ready to do another film project this time spoofing Elite Beat Agents. I'd give off more but I don't want to ruin anything. I'll be trying out greenscreen stuff for this. It seems Blender now has the ability to do professional green screen removal (with a little finagling) so I'm going to try that out. In particular I'll be filiming seperate elements against the screen and combining them into one shot. But I have yet to actually build the thing, something I was going to do on days off (Tuesday and Wednesday) but I felt too lazy to drive out to Lowes to buy the stuff. I suppose I'll do it next week and in the meantime I can flesh out a script. This is something I don't do often because I have the vision in my head pretty clearly and I don't want to go through the trouble of writing or storyboarding it out. I'm lazy that way and it's something I'll have to get over before I go to Full Sail.

I completed two games this week (the world must be ending). The first one was Super Paper Mario (Wii). It was, as I thought it would be, a comepletely enjoyable experience. The dialoge was top notch, as always, packed with plenty of laughs. The flip mechanism never got old and was always used cleverly. The story line was fairly predictable (I had the ending figured out about half way through). However, next to Zelda it's the best single player game out there for the Wii so if you own on I'd suggest picking this up.

The second game I completed was Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS) which, I admit, I probably enjoyed more than SPM. It's definitely not a game you buy for the graphics or sound because they're meh at best (the art's not bad, I will admit). What is crucial to this game is story and it delivers 110%. The first case, being the introductory one, wasn't the greatest but it gets you into the swing of things well enough. The second case was awesome, and probably one of my favorites. The third case had me stumped (to the point of cheating, I'm ashamed). The last case was simply amazing. Just when you think you had it figured out everything was turned on end. They also introduced some things that made things harder and raised moral questions. To say that this game on a whole was absolutely phenomenal is an understatement. If you like story type games (RPGs, text-adventures) you absolutely have to buy this game. If you're more an action type gamer you probably wouldn't enjoy it much, but rent it at least. It'll do you some good. On that note I'll be buying the first game and third when it comes out.

Now that all that's out, I'll leave you with this piece of art I finished this afternoon. Cheerio!

Tags: full sail college art phoenix wright ds super paper mario wii games

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Updates and whatnot

December 9, 2006

So, I haven't really done any updates on my personal life in a while. Let's see, since I last blogged I've gotten married, had three kids, won a Nobel Peace prize and purchased a Wii. Only one of these things is important, but I'll leave it to you to figure out.

Seriously, though, I did buy a Wii and it is a very nice piece of machinery indeed. Wii Sports is just plain fun and Zelda has me pretty muched hooked. I've also played Excite Truck which I'm not overly thrilled with (touchy controls), but this is the beginning and things will get better. Suffice to say it's one of the coolest machines I've purchased since the SNES.

I haven't really said much about work lately (save, it pretty much sucks up my entire life). Over the last few months I've expanded my horizons beyond that of normal cashiering. I can work the service desk, layaway (moot point now, more in a sec), automotive, sporting goods, electronics and something new which I will also get to in just a minute.

For anybody who hasn't read front page news, Wal-Mart has canned layaway, so I was there to see it off today. I went back at 8pm and things were pretty steady up until 9:30 (with two people back there). After the rush I spent the next 45ish minutes doing all the filing for the day. And once I escaped there was when the fun really began.

I've never mentioned it, but I've been hounding the powers that be about becoming a backup CSM (Customer Service Manager, or as I like to call them "Red coats"), but I my progress in getting anywhere close to that goal was slow at best (the biggest caveat being that I didn't pass the leadership assesment back in July when I was stupid). But, desperate times call for desperate measures and when Debbie (who I've erroneously called the "schedule lady" in the past, she's actually a support manager) found herself with next to no CSMs to keep the store going for the night made the call to get my status upgraded. Since this was an act of desperation I'm not sure how permanent it'll be, but it's a start.

Well, it seems to be 4:30 in the morning. Not sure why I get these blog urges in the middle of the night, but eh. I will now relay the words expressed by Tiny Tim: God bless me, and not you weasels :-D

Tags: wii csm work layaway

2 Comments

Wii Sensor Bar

November 21, 2006

Here's a quick video we shot explaining how the Wii's sensor bar works:

Tags: wii video

3 Comments

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