A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Cash Rules Everything Around Me

This is the seventh in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Case Study: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption."

There's an old joke I've seen attributed to Woody Allen: "The food here is terrible -- and the portions are too small!" Many critics have said much the same thing about games, only without irony. The graphics are terrible, the play control is non-existent, the storyline is stupid... and it's only six hours long! What a rip-off!

Thus far, we've been able to talk about gaming in a vacuum, without consideration of the practical side. Games cost money. Consoles cost money. For most of us, that means we've got to choose carefully what we play, and what system we play it on. That's the obvious reason for the fanboy phenomenon, in which people declare themselves on one console's "team" and do battle with opposing teams: people don't want to have wasted their money. With games these days costing sixty dollars apiece, and consoles going for as much as $500, it's only natural that people want to get their money's worth. As with the disparity between Skill Players and Tourists, it turns out that getting one's money's worth can mean completely different things to different people.

Let's try to put this in the simplest manner we can. A consumer buys a game, and either likes it or doesn't. For that person's purposes, the game is either too long, too short, or the right length. That would seem to leave us with the possibility of a game being any of the following:

• Good and too short
• Good and too long
  
• Good and long enough
  
• Bad and too short
• Bad and too long
  
• Bad and long enough
  

"Good and too long" almost seems like a contradiction. But what if you really don't have enough time in your schedule to play a 40+ hour game, no matter how much you like it? We've covered this topic before, and it's a real concern for a lot of people. We'll leave that on the list. A lot of people would tell you that most good games are too short, and "good and long enough" works to describe any satisfying game. Those all stay.

The "bad" list is a little different. Can a bad game be too short? I would submit that no bad game could possibly be short enough! So let's strike that one from the list. A bad game could conceivably be too long, but if it's truly that terrible then you'll quit playing before you ever reach that point. In a sense, every bad game is too long. Strike that one, too. That leaves us with "bad and long enough." What does "long enough" mean in this case? It means playing long enough to know the game stinks -- making the temporal descriptor redundant.

Our new list looks like this:

• Good and too short
• Good and long enough
• Good and too long
  
• Bad

Relative terms like "too short" and "too long" are likely to mean different things to different people. If we can define them in a way that works for everybody, we have another chance to broaden the foundation of gaming discussion.

Next: Supply and Demand

Recommend gaming blogs

Hello there, Insult Swordfighting readers! I have a question to ask of you. What are some gaming blogs I should be reading? My blogroll is woefully thin, and I'm starving for new content. I'm looking specifically for blogs that traffic in commentary and analysis moreso than straight news or reviews, but anything you enjoy is welcome.

Please leave any suggestions in comments, and, if you're so inclined, a few words about why you recommend those sites.

Buy Smash Bros. for $19.82

No, that's not a typo. As of this writing, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is available for pre-order at Wal-Mart.com for under $20 (shipping raises it by a couple bucks). Limited quantities? Bait and switch? Colossal corporate screw-up? Either way, you probably should act fast if you're interested.

(In fact, the site has several games available for pre-order well under market value, such as Haze and The Club. That lowers the likelihood that somebody messed up.)

Update: They fixed it! It's now $49.82.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Case Study: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

This is the sixth in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Skill Players: Drilling Down."

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would seem, on paper, to have something for the three types of gamers we've identified so far. For the Tourist, there are imaginative worlds to traverse and dramatic narrative moments linking a galactic conspiracy. For the Perfectionist, there are tough boss battles and difficult puzzles. For the Completist, there's a wealth of hidden treasures to discover and secret areas to explore. It sounds like there's something for everyone. But let's go back to that quote from Penny Arcade's Gabe:

Tycho talked about the different reasons people play games ... I remember it came up while we were both playing Metroid Prime: Corruption. I was talking to him about how I was getting frustrated because some of the boss battles were really giving me a hard time. I realised I don't play games for the challenge. I don't need or want to be punished by a game for making mistakes. I play games for what Ron Gilbert calls "new art". I play to see the next level or cool animation. I don't play games to beat them I play games to see them.

Gabe is a Tourist, which shouldn't ipso facto preclude him from enjoying a game that rewards Skill Players. Indeed, Metroid Prime 3 seems like a better candidate than most to satisfy gamers of all types. Judging by its Metacritic score, you could say it did.

Hold on a second. We've already said that these categories aren't mutually exclusive. A critic seems more likely than your average gamer to exhibit traits from across the spectrum, thanks to his obvious passion and extensive experience with all types of games. When somebody raves about Metroid Prime 3, it's because they responded in more than one way to it. They enjoyed it as a Tourist and as a Skill Player.

In that case, the question is why Gabe's Tourist tendencies were unsatisfied by a game that clearly possesses many of the qualities a Tourist looks for. The reason is that the elements in Metroid Prime 3 that Gabe responds to were not unified with those he doesn't. As we saw in the Guitar Hero analysis, the way to do this successfully is to associate more than one kind of feedback with a single action. Metroid Prime 3 doesn't do that. Rather than cohering the Tourist, Completist, and Perfectionist aspects, it keeps them separate.

Here's an example. Early in the game, you're told that you've received a signal from a particular location in Skytown. Samus hops out of her ship to see a whole new environment and with a specific and definable goal: reach the location of the beacon. This is a Tourist moment, but one that doesn't put off either of the Skill Players.

As she makes her way across the level, she blasts at some wimpy foes, which disappoints the Perfectionist. Very little is involved in fighting the grunts of Metroid, as most are complete chumps. It's simply not challenging to move from one place to another.

Finally, Samus reaches her destination, only to be told that she is missing a specific upgrade necessary to continue. To the Tourist, this is like turning down a dead-end street on the way to the Eiffel Tower. Why would the game direct you to a place where you couldn't do anything? In this five-minute span, the game has managed to alienate Tourists and Perfectionists. Only a predominantly Completist gamer wouldn't notice the missteps.

(It's important to note that this wasn't a case of the player simply exploring and bumping up against an invisible wall. The game explicitly instructs the player to go to that far-flung location for the purpose of demonstrating that the player needs a new power-up.)

There are numerous other examples. Obviously a Tourist like Gabe found it jarring to contend with the boss battles. And indeed, the boss battles are repetitive and difficult, nearly all featuring some variation on the "shoot the glowing weak spot" strategy, as well as pattern-based enemy attacks. The bosses are usually just guardians of power-ups; few are germane to the storyline. For Perfectionists, this is ideal -- but they have to wade through long stretches of unchallenging gameplay and a fairly intricate storyline in order to find what they want. Both Tourists and Perfectionists would likely be put off by the game's endless tangents and backtracking.

As for Completists, there's a lot here for them to like: tons of hidden upgrades, and a giant map to fill in. If someone's primary motivation for playing games comes from the Completist point of view, then I suspect that's the true cause of Metroid Prime 3's critical success, particularly if those Completists also harbor Perfectionist or Tourist tendencies.

That's the key: if a player fits more squarely in one category than another, than that will necessarily color his perception of the game. And it explains why a Tourist with Completist tendencies will feel put off by Metroid Prime 3, without even realizing why, whereas a Completist with Perfectionist or Tourist tendencies will probably love it. (For an example of the former, read my original review.)

Notice that we have not made any judgment here as to whether Metroid Prime 3 is "good" or "bad." Those terms are irrelevant! We're critiquing the game by identifying the desires it satisfies, or fails to satisfy, wholly in terms of our new gamer taxonomy. We're creating an unambiguous vocabulary for talking about games that applies across genres and transcends the vague notion of "hardcore" versus "casual." This method of evaluating games is starting to look much more robust and useful than a ten-point ratings scale.

Unfortunately, we're still missing a big piece of the puzzle. And it's got nothing to do with Skill Players and Tourists.

Next: Cash Rules Everything Around Me

In praise of Capcom

That Umbrella Chronicles post reminded me of something. Whenever I get to thinking about my favorite game development houses and publishers -- and, believe me, this is what I spend most of my time thinking about -- one name invariably rises to the top: Capcom.

I could spend all day lauding the work of other companies, but not often without caveats. Valve has never made anything but a great game, but they barely ever release anything. Nintendo has been making great games for decades, but many of their 3D flagship games have struck me as a tad overrated, or at least less interesting than what their competitors are doing. Square Enix falters whenever they step outside their comfort zone, going back at least to Einhander. I have the utmost respect for what Atlus does, although their games are usually a bit too out there for me. Konami is one of the more reliable large publishers, but particularly with their 3D Castlevania offerings they can be guilty of one of gaming's cardinal sins: making boring games.

Capcom, on the other hand, may not always make great games, but even their failures are more interesting than other companies' successes. Dead Rising, for example, was so obtuse as to be maddening, but the bold vision behind it was unmistakable, and those who took the time to delve into it were amply rewarded. Lost Planet, a rather rote third-person shooter, presented a chilly Arctic setting that stood out among the gray and brown mechanical nightmares of other science-fiction-inspired games. Even God Hand, a gigantic mess by any measure, was an audacious joke that cleverly tweaked video game clichés.

And when Capcom connects, they get all of it. Capcom released my game of the year for 2005 (Resident Evil 4) and 2006 (Okami). This year's Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition was a more thrilling, complete game than any new intellectual property. It's quite likely that the upcoming Wii remake of Okami will do the same thing next year. With RE4, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and Zack and Wiki, Capcom is showing a mastery of the Wii that's far beyond the half-baked mini-game collections of their competitors.

They're no upstarts, either: Capcom has been rocking consoles and arcades for decades. Check out Wikipedia's list of Capcom games and try to count all the classics. Tally up the high-quality franchises. Mega Man. Street Fighter. Resident Evil. Devil May Cry. Phoenix Wright. Look at the memorable arcade games: Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, all those great beat-'em-ups and shooters.

And, of course, they also made Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. I rest my case.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Skill Players: Drilling Down

This is the fifth in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Case Study: Guitar Hero."

We've established that Skill Players are concerned primarily with mastery of the game rather than enjoying the stops along the way. Their idea of "beating" a game is to pound it into submission. But this can mean different things depending on the game and on one's inclinations. It may be that Skill Players themselves, while broadly similar, have different motivations for playing games, and can be further classified into two more similar but distinct groups: Completists and Perfectionists.

A Completist may be less interested in maximizing his ability to play a game, and more interested in making sure he doesn't miss anything. Certainly you wouldn't say it takes skill per se to locate all the packages in Grand Theft Auto III, or all the agility orbs in Crackdown. It takes patience and determination. And while the game does offer incentives to do these things, in both cases they're non-essential to the task of beating the game in the traditional sense. The reward is having no mountains left to climb.

Compare this to the Tourist, who may find packages along the way and appreciate the financial reward, or who grabs agility orbs as a necessary part of gameplay, but won't take the time to find that 500th one. In the case of Crackdown, there is no quantifiable difference in your character's jumping ability between the 499th and 500th agility orb. It does not help you complete the missions to acquire every single one, but it does net you achievement points. The reason a Completist falls under the Skill Player heading is because his concern is not with surrending to the rules of the game world, but instead with asserting his dominance over them.

A typical Perfectionist is the classic high-score freak. Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe come to mind. They don't care about rescuing the princess; they care about proving who's the best Donkey Kong player. Donkey Kong himself is not the antagonist to these players. The scoreboard is. Other players are. There's a reason the only people still playing Donkey Kong are Perfectionists. A Completist would just need to make it to the kill screen once. A Tourist would probably do a cost-benefit analysis of rescuing the princess and move on to a different game.

Bottom line: the Perfectionist sees success as relative to the performance of others. In a sense, the last-place player in a Halo match could be said to have finished the game. But for the Perfectionist in him, it sure doesn't feel that way. Other examples of the Perfectionist style might be trying to get all "S" rankings in Devil May Cry, or playing through Ninja Gaiden Black on the hardest difficulty. In both cases, the appeal is in accomplishing something that only a select few ever will.

As with the earlier Guitar Hero example, which described how Skill Players and Tourists may differ in their approach to performing the same task, we may see situations where the Completist and the Perfectionist seem to be doing the same thing. Consider somebody who earns all 1,000 achievement points in an Xbox 360 game. For the Completist, there's no surer sign that he's completed everything there is to complete. There are no more worlds to conquer. For the Perfectionist, it means he has earned the highest possible score -- a perfect score. The biggest difference is that this likely means the Completist has, for all intents and purposes, finished his experience with the game. We can't infer the same thing about the Perfectionist unless we have more information.

Earlier we looked at how Guitar Hero was able to appeal to Skill Players and Tourists equally. Now that we've split Skill Players into two sub-groups, while leaving the Tourist group as it is, it's time to consider a different scenario. What happens when a game contains discrete elements that appeal to all three types of gamers, but those elements work in discordance with each other? Can we use these terms as a window into why a well-made, premium console game might still seem off -- why it might not work on a gut level? And can we isolate those traits in a single game that appeal separately to Completists, Perfectionists, and Tourists?

We sure can.

Next: Case Study: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Our own worst enemy

Via Kotaku, the latest episode of the aroused fanboy hordes involves an op-ed piece in the Sun-Sentinel. In it, the author, Ralph De La Cruz, grapples with the moral issues raised by Call of Duty 4, which he bought as a Christmas present for his son. De La Cruz contrasts his sanguine attitude toward killing Nazis on the virtual battlefield with his uneasy reaction to a game set in modern times, and which speaks to contemporary fears. The column is thoughtful and moderate, completely lacking any animus toward games. But you'd never know it from the comments -- 15 on the newspaper's website as of this writing, and 227 on Kotaku.

The majority of the comments challenge De La Cruz on the same point. Although he says the game "sends you... into the teeth of the Iraq war," most commenters point out that Iraq is never mentioned and then do a victory lap. This is the first, typical response to the newspaper piece: "Call of Duty 4 is an entirely fictional conflict that takes place in an equally fictional country. How you missed this, I can't even imagine."

Well, er, that's not right either. The Middle Eastern country is indeed not Iraq, and given the storyline of the game -- a strong-armed dictator controls a nuclear-powered military -- there are several real-world countries that are better parallels. Pakistan, for one. Furthermore, much of the game takes place in Russia and Azerbaijan, which certainly are not fictional. Nor are the allusions to the nuclear material that went missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. (For crying out loud, there's a slideshow somewhere online that compares the computer-generated Pripyat with its real-life counterpart. "Entirely fictional," you say?) The single greatest security threat in the Western world today is nuclear terrorism. How willfully obtuse do you have to be not to apply that knowledge to a topical game like Call of Duty 4? Maybe playing games really does desensitize you.

My biggest problem, once again, are the kneejerk attacks on Mr. De La Cruz simply because he bothered to engage the content of the game with his higher brain functions. Besides the petty gotcha of the "fictional Arabic nation!", one thing most people are saying is that it's just a game -- no need to take it so seriously. If you'll recall, when Roger Ebert dared to suggest that video games are merely playthings, unworthy of scrutiny or respect, the fanboy howls could be heard from miles away. After all, games are Serious, Important Art, and anybody who doesn't think so is trailing the zeitgeist by a good 20 years.

I've said it before and it didn't take, but I'm going to keep saying it until somebody listens: if you want people to take games seriously, the necessary first step is for you to take them seriously.

If your stock response to these types of criticisms is that it's only a game, then why are you playing video games at all? Why not just play Parcheesi? I don't accept that any video game is "just" a game, although there is obviously some wide latitude for pure escapism, or even video Parcheesi.

Call of Duty 4 doesn't fit that mold. Its aim, plainly, is to be realistic: to show the hectic and confusing nature of the battlefield, in which the difference between living and dying often comes down to something as simple and arbitrary as where you choose to take cover. It invokes historical events and real-world locations. It is deliberately set in legitimate geopolitical hotspots. Instead of running from this, as gamers, let's embrace it! Let's start the conversation ourselves.

Look at what De La Cruz actually wrote. He didn't condemn violent video games or worry that he was turning his son into a psychopath. He considers what the computer-generated foes of Call of Duty represent. One of the great things about art -- if you want to call it that -- is that it can mean different things to different people. One person isn't wrong and the other right, as long as they're arguing from a place of reason and mutual respect.

Why are we, as gamers, so apt to distance ourselves from this kind of discussion? When a movie like No Country for Old Men comes out, critics and audiences spend weeks or months talking about what it means. Gamers are more likely to be talking about how much it rules or sucks, and the extent to which we can pwn n00bs at it. Frankly, I find this embarrassing. I love games too much to treat them so disrespectfully.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Case Study: Guitar Hero

This is the fourth in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Skill Players vs. Tourists."

A game doesn't get as loyal a following as the Guitar Hero series has unless it appeals to people with different tastes. We've tended to think that hardcore gamers and casual players have taken to the game in equal measure -- but, as stated in part two, those labels aren't specific enough for us to embrace. Instead, we'll look at how a Skill Player's approach to the game might differ from that of a Tourist. And we'll speculate as to what each player think he's accomplished afterward.

If you were to look at the screen during a game of Guitar Hero with the sound muted and the player out of sight, you'd see what appears to be a purely skill-based experience. Multi-colored gems stream down the screen in irregular patterns and need to be destroyed as they pass a static point. You'd quickly discern Guitar Hero's precise timing requirements, but from this perspective, it's hardly different from Space Invaders. Even if you weren't acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of the guitartroller, you'd guess the game required good hand-eye coordination, as well as manual dexterity. Even more so, you see the goal of the game to be detonating every single one of those gems. You're seeing the game through the point of view of the Skill Player.

Now imagine a different scenario: the sound is on, but your back is to the television and you're watching the Guitar Hero player. Exactly what he's doing when he holds down the buttons and hits the strum bar isn't quite clear, the one thing you can say for sure is that his actions drive the song you're hearing. Now he performs star power. You don't realize it's multiplying his score -- you just see him tilting the guitar like a rock star. The cause and effect relationship that you observe is the guitar controller producing rock and roll music. Things like the high score and the difficulty level are irrelevant here. Now you're looking at the game from the perspective of the Tourist.

It gets tricky when you're the one playing the game. Now, you have to synthesize visual stimuli (the streaming gems), digital manipulation (fret buttons and strum bar), and aural feedback (the song). The distinction between playing as a Skill Player and as a Tourist is harder to define, because their disparate motivations result in interlocked results. For a Skill Player, accurately detonating the gems makes the song sound correct. For a Tourist, playing the song well will naturally result in a good score. These two people may not realize they're playing for different reasons -- even if they're playing cooperatively!

How might we differentiate between Skill Players and Tourists in Guitar Hero? The intention of this piece is to suggest a better framework for talking about games, not to try to pigeonhole gamers, so I offer these suggestions only as a place to start -- to show how people could derive equal enjoyment with entirely different goals in mind. (It's also possible that someone could exhibit traits of both the Skill Player and the Tourist; in fact, I imagine most people do.)

Characteristics of the Skill Player in Guitar Hero:

• Plays on expert difficulty, or strives to
  
• Activates star power with the select button instead of tilting the controller
• Uses practice mode
• Pursues a five-star ranking in every song, even the terrible ones
• In multiplayer, prefers face-off or pro face-off
  

Characteristics of the Tourist in Guitar Hero:

• Plays on whatever difficulty they've mastered (this could still be expert)
• Activates star power by tilting the controller
• Learns songs by playing them
• Disproportionately plays the songs they like
• Prefers co-op multiplayer
  

Defining people simply by these traits may be problematic, because to do so is to attribute motivation to action after the fact. But if you know that you fit more comfortably in one category, you may be able to apply that perspective to other games where the dichotomy is less obvious.

The question now is whether we've taken this to its logical conclusion. I think there's further still to go.

Next: Skill Players: Drilling Down

Stand underneath my Umbrella

So what if it's not the timeliest review in the world? January is slim pickings, and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a fine game that deserves some belated props. Like the man said, if blasting those damned, dirty zombies is wrong, I don't want to be right.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Skill Players vs. Tourists

This is the third in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games." Or read the previous post, "Hardcore? Casual? Hardcasual?"

The problems with the hardcore/casual distinction are evident. The terms may still be useful to us, but for now let's leave them there and explore some other top-level possibilities. In a recent news post, Penny Arcade's Tycho mused on a different dichotomy: "people who play games in order to excel at them, and those who play games as a conduit to fantasy." I'd been thinking of something similar for awhile, but had never written about it because I couldn't think of what to call those groups of people.

The solution hit me while reading Slate's Gaming Club. Seth Schiesel writes:

Thinking about the twist in BioShock—and the huff that some folks have gotten into over it—brought to mind something Hilmar Petursson, chief executive of the Icelandic game company CCP, told me recently. He was referring specifically to online games, but it illuminates an important component of single-player games as well.

"There are basically two schools of thought for operating an online community," he said. "There is the theme-park approach and the sandbox approach. ... Most games are like Disneyland, for instance, which is a carefully constructed experience where you stand in line to be entertained. [My company focuses] on the sandbox approach where people can decide what they want to do in that particular sandbox, and we very much emphasize and support that kind of emergent behavior."

Couple that with the words of Gabe from Penny Arcade, who said:

Tycho talked about the different reasons people play games in his post and I thought it was pretty interesting. It's a conversation we've had before and I think it's something a lot of gamers probably don't think about. I remember it came up while we were both playing Metroid Prime: Corruption. I was talking to him about how I was getting frustrated because some of the boss battles were really giving me a hard time. I realised I don't play games for the challenge. I don't need or want to be punished by a game for making mistakes. I play games for what Ron Gilbert calls "new art". I play to see the next level or cool animation. I don't play games to beat them I play games to see them. Coming to that realisation was actually sort of important for me.

There are two fundamental reasons people play games. They're not mutually exclusive, but they are separate. Some people play to master a game -- to perfect its mechanics, to explore every inch of the game world. Some play to "see the sights" -- to hit the high points and not get too caught up in the minutiae. Let's call these groups "Skill Players" and "Tourists."

"Skill Players" is a nice, literal designation that I think will make sense immediately. We're talking about people for whom the appeal of a video game is becoming an expert at it. People who hanker for high scores and unlockables. These are the guys who pursue achievement points long after beating the main campaign of a game, because, to them, completing the story isn't the real purpose of the game. Genre may be less important to these gamers than simply having a challenge to overcome.

"Tourists" is more euphemistic, but I think it carries the right connotations. Imagine somebody visiting France for the first time. They want to see the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and the Louvre. They don't speak the language or know the streets, and they don't much care. As long as they can get where they're going, they're not interested in experiencing what a native might call the "real" Paris. And when the trip is done, they probably won't be heading back to France any time soon to find some hidden gem of a crêperie. Instead, the tourist wants to go to China to see the Great Wall. The Tourist gamer is the same way: "beating" a game is more about checking off the big moments than earning a 100% completion rate.

I like the sound of this. We've got a way to classify gamers not by the games they like, but why they like those games. But remember, the reason we're talking about this in the first place is to try to solve the problem of how to talk about games on common ground. We're still not there, not least because many successful games find a way to appeal to Skill Players and to Tourists. It may be useful to look more closely at a single game through this prism.

Next: Case Study: Guitar Hero

Water in video games: A retrospective

A user at Gametrailers has put together a seven-minute video that details the evolution of water in video games, from the earliest Atari games up through Uncharted. It's an awful lot more interesting than you might think.

Water has always been one of the things people point to when talking about the power of new hardware. I remember having my mind well and truly blown by Wave Race 64; in fact, their water still doesn't look that bad in the video. Even so, you can see the individual polygons dancing on the surface, and the progress from there to games later in the video, like Far Cry and BioShock, is remarkable. Try to envision how much better it'll look in another ten years. The game console will probably spray a fine mist at you.

I was astonished when Sonic the Hedgehog showed up less than halfway through the video, since when it was released it seemed like the logical endpoint to game development. And, of course, it was -- in 1991. But the original Sonic was released only 12 years after Asteroids. We're now 16 years past Sonic. Feeling old yet?

One last note on this video: I haven't listened to Sigur Ros in years. That's an unexpected song choice.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: Hardcore? Casual? Hardcasual?

This is the second in an 11-part series. To start from the beginning, read part one: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Games."

Think about all the words we have to describe our games. You probably have concrete, specific associations with words like "platformer," "JRPG," and "brawler." Hell, "Metroidvania," with all its rich connotations, has even made its way into the lexicon. What words describe gamers with a similar lack of ambiguity? Those few that spring to mind are nebulous at best.

To the extent that we consider ourselves specialists within the broader rubric of "gamers," it's mostly to express a preference for a genre. That's not good enough. It confuses the effect with the cause. You don't like role-playing games because you've liked other role-playing games. You like them because you respond to qualities endemic to that genre, but there's no reason you wouldn't respond to those same qualities skillfully deployed in another type of game. We need a bottom-up taxonomy that accounts for this.

The two classifications most commonly applied to gamers are "hardcore" and "casual." These terms may be hopelessly broad, but they're an excellent jumping-off point. It would help to define them, once and for all. That's easier said than done. Is a "hardcore" player somebody who eschews popular mainstream games like Halo, or plays weird Japanese games like Persona to the exclusion of all else - that is, someone with narrow or elitist taste? Does a player count as "casual" if they spend hundreds of hours playing only mini-game collections for the Wii, or racking up high scores in online puzzle games?

Maybe we should distinguish the two solely in terms of dollars spent on games -- but I think anybody who got hooked on Desktop Tower Defense this year would admit to having felt hardcore at least some of the time, like when their boss was at the door but they kept on placing turrets. And some of the most committed gamers around pirate a good majority of their software. So expenditure isn't it, either.

If we can't accurately define the two most common terms applied to video game players, then we'll have to look for better ones.

Next: Skill Players vs. Tourists

I think I'm viewing Gmail through a wormhole

Because right now, the news link above my inbox reads, "'Major Nelson' emerges as face of Xbox."

Other possible news items I'll expect to see: "Apple plans portable music player," "Uphill battle for 'Nintendo Entertainment System'," and "Scientists split the atom."

Dean Takahashi falls on his sword

Don't worry: as per our earlier agreement, this is not a Mass Effect post. Not really. It seems that San Jose Mercury News critic Dean Takahashi has retracted his negative Mass Effect review after comments from numerous readers led him to discover that he had missed a crucial component of the game. He wasn't assigning his characters the talent points they had earned, which left them woefully underpowered as he tried to progress. In fact, Takahashi's original review echoes my own thoughts about the game quite closely, even though I wasn't forgetting to assign my talent points. But, again, this isn't a Mass Effect post.

Instead, this episode spotlights a problem that's unique to video games in the world of arts criticism: many times, it's simply not possible to fully review a game in a timely manner. I get the impression this is something no reviewer wants to admit. We're positioned as experts, and I think many of us are content not to disabuse our readers of the notion that we see all and know all. But of course that's silly. Our opinions aren't any better or more valid than anybody else's -- we just have the ability, hopefully, to express those opinions in a way that's entertaining or enlightening.

Not everybody agrees with me on this, not least some outlets themselves. Gamespot's explanation of their ratings system actually says this:

"Wait, reviews are just opinions. Right?"
Actually, we don't think so. We make no excuses for our verdicts about games and believe our reviews stand for themselves. While our reviews, of course, do contain an element of subjectivity to them, we see the process of reviewing games as one that primarily involves the reporting of facts. To an extent, we naturally color these facts based on our own experiences of having spent much time playing other games in the past, but we make every effort to look at every game on its own merits, and we describe each game in the most factual terms possible.

Yet just above this, in response to the question of how long they spend playing a game prior to the review, Gamespot uses the weaselly phrase "we play games extensively before committing to our full reviews," and defines "extensively" as about 10 hours. This blows my mind, because that's about the average time I can put into a game before deadline, and I would never deign to call my reviews anything but "just an opinion."

Which brings us back to Dean Takahashi's problem with Mass Effect. He put in, by his own accounting, about eight hours, which is obviously far too short to explore the vast majority of what the game has to offer. By its nature, this is a game designed to be played over and over, in endlessly different ways. It's practically unreviewable, if completeness is your primary concern. I've said it before, but movie reviewers don't have this problem. Record reviewers don't have this problem. Book reviewers don't have this problem. They clock in for a couple of hours and they're done.

I've seen it suggested that game critics ought to disclose just how much time they spent with a game before writing their reviews, and while I don't think this is necessary in all cases, it might not be a bad idea to mention if you kept running into roadblocks early into the game, as Takahashi and I both did. But isn't that, too, a legitimate point of contention for a review? While playing Mass Effect, I said to more than one person, "All I do is play video games and I can't make the slightest sense of this game." While this is a minority opinion, I'm obviously not alone there. How long do you let a game suck in hopes that it'll get better? Why not just load up a game that's fun from the get-go?

All this is certainly not to duck the very real responsibility a game reviewer has to the readership. Our charge is to make a good-faith effort to play as much of the game as possible without bias or prejudice, and to communicate, as clearly as we can, what the experience is like. That doesn't mean everyone is going to agree with us, obviously, or that our take is somehow more correct than that of your average player. It just means taking the time to play both single-player and multi-player modes, and whatever else the developer has thrown in there. It means trying to identify the primary purpose of a game and judging whether the game fulfills that purpose.

As an example: I played the lame, tacked-on CTF component to The Darkness, and didn't mention it in the review because it was so clearly irrelevant to the mind-blowing single-player campaign. Similarly, in my review of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, I mentioned specifically that I retreated quickly from online play because I was getting smoked. Maybe it's not what everybody wants from a critic -- but, hey, at least I was honest. What matters is that the reader knows where you're coming from.

Dean Takahashi, to his eternal credit, has done just that. And in spite of this event -- in fact, because of it -- I'm a lot more likely to trust him in the future. Certainly much more than I trust Gamespot's opinions.

Oh, sorry, I meant Gamespot's edicts.

A New Taxonomy of Gamers: What We Talk About When We Talk About Games

This is the first in an 11-part series. A new installment will run each weekday until the conclusion.

Why are online game discussions so contentious? Why are Joystiq commenters and NeoGAF boarders so apt to substitute chest-beating and mud-slinging for substantive debate? The easy answer is the dismissive one -- that gamers are socially stunted men-children who have been conditioned by years of fragging to consider every online interaction a fight to the death. But that can't be true of everyone. I don't think anyone who ever has shared an opinion about games online would put themselves in this category, and we can't all be wrong. (Can we?)

I think the answer is more prosaic. I think the rancor stems from a lack of understanding. Playing a game, even a multiplayer game, is a singular and subjective experience. No two players will experience a game the same way, even one as rigorously linear as, say, Half-Life 2. It's not simply a matter of interpreting the events differently, as it might be when discussing a movie. As a participant, your unpredictable actions and style of play are what determine the end product.

Continue with the example of Half-Life 2: if you spend your time trying to find new and creative ways to exploit the gravity gun, then you'll have a vastly different experience than somebody who sticks with the more familiar firearms. Your proclivities determine equally how you respond to a game, and how you affect the game. We may be talking about a particular title, but in a very real sense, we're not talking about the same thing at all. What we lack is the vocabulary to bridge that gap.

By "vocabulary," I don't mean words about the games themselves; rather, we don't have a workable idea of the different kinds of game players out there, and that makes it difficult to establish a conversational framework. I don't want to just slap labels on people or pigeonhole them, but I think it's important that we make an attempt to better understand the people we're talking and playing with -- and ourselves, too. Because when we talk about games, we're really talking about the people who play them.

Next: Hardcore? Casual? Hardcasual?

Call of Duty 4 is awesome

I was finally able to get in a good-sized Call of Duty 4 session recently, playing through the conclusion of the Chernobyl mission. I haven't touched multiplayer yet (since I'm not reviewing the game in a professional capacity, I probably never will), but the single-player campaign does so many things so well that I've got to talk about them somewhere. And since the statute of limitations on this game has presumably expired, we're going deep into spoiler territory.

I had played just one game in the series before, Call of Duty 2. My predominant memory of that game is of an aural fusillade, a non-stop barrage of rifle shots, mortar rounds, and battle cries. I am pleased that this aspect of the game has not changed in Modern Warfare. For all the praise the game has justifiably earned for its visuals, the audio is what distinguishes it. Even running down a barren Middle Eastern street, you hear stray bullets chipping at nearby buildings. The tension never lets up. During battle scenes, the sound gets me so keyed up that I tend to run around in a panic, disregarding my objectives and simply trying to locate some safe haven where I can make the gunfire stop. Some games make you feel like the baddest man alive. Most of the time, Call of Duty makes you feel like a small, expendable piece of a very large war machine.

But the detours the game takes can be fascinating, not only for the rhythm and flow they lend to the narrative, but for the perspective they grant to the ground-level action that comprises most of the gameplay. In one memorable sequence, your squad radios an AC-130 gunship for escort. Suddenly, you're whisked away from the ground and placed behind the plane's sights. The display is now a cold, grainy black and white. The friendly troops can be identified only by a flashing beacon that's difficult to discern, and if you fire on them you lose. Instead, you have to blast your howitzer and vulcan cannons at all the other tiny figures scurrying across the landscape. And when you nail somebody with one of those big shells, they turn into a white splotch. If it were rendered in full color, the gore might seem gratuitous -- even funny. Through the cold lens of the big ship's sights, it's disquieting.

Another quieter sequence is the Chernobyl level. It's a flashback, taking place about fifteen years before the main story arc. In it, you play as one of a two-man British sniper team working to prevent the illegal sale of nuclear materials to a known terrorist. For long stretches, this sequence is as silent as the rest of the game is loud. You follow your commanding officer, Captain MacMillan, as he dashes across fields and hides in shadows, only occasionally picking off essential targets. This level contains two masterful set pieces in which you never fire a shot. First, you lie in a field as what seems like an entire company of troops, plus armor, passes by right over you. In the other, you crawl under a line of trucks through a mass of enemies, then dash from car to car in an environment where your camouflage is not only useless, but a beacon. Even the behind-home-plate view of Captain MacMillan's taint as you wriggle across the dirt can't defuse the tension.

There is one other surprising and somber moment in Call of Duty 4 that I can't quite get my head around. Over the course of the game, you play as a few different characters, but mostly as an SAS operative named McTavish and a US Marine named Paul Jackson. The Marine portions of the game take place in a lightly fictionalized Middle Eastern country. In one astonishing in-game cutscene, a nuclear bomb detonates and crashes your chopper. Shocking enough that such an event would be included in the game, instead of allowing you to defuse it just in the nick of time.

Then a very strange thing happens. A new level begins, and you start in the back of the downed chopper. You crawl out into the apocalyptic ruins of the city you've already spent a couple of hours fighting in. Any second, I expected my character to pick up a discarded rifle and stand up. After all, this is a scene that's been repeated through countless games (including twice in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, if I recall). Instead, you make it a little ways out of the chopper, just enough to see a crimson mushroom cloud lingering over the horizon, and then you... die.

Sgt. Paul Jackson isn't developed as a character -- like, at all -- so his death didn't hit me on a personal level. Not the way it would if, say, Gordon Freeman were to bite the dust, suddenly and for good. Even so, I wondered why the developers would do such a thing. It just seemed cruel. These things aren't supposed to happen in a video game, but they happen in wars all the time. And what makes Call of Duty 4 so special is that Infinity Ward managed to create a thrilling game about war without making war seem fun.

Some time ago, the US Army released a game called America's Army to help them pick up new recruits. If those kids played Call of Duty instead, they'd probably make a run for Canada.

Killing spree!

If you read between the lines of my Unreal Tournament III review, I think you'll find that what I'm really saying is that I liked it because I was good at it, which is not often the case with these things. I don't last a second in Tom Clancy games, or even Halo. Only once in my life have I been truly skilled at a game, better than most people, and that game was Quake II CTF. Playing UTIII reminded me a lot of those days. The rocket launcher feels almost exactly the same, even with a control pad. And so if these days I'm not really looking for the kind of gameplay you find in these skill-based multiplayer games, at least this one didn't grind me into a pulpy mess beneath the other players' boots. Hence, a positive review.

Is that cynical?

Further note on Fairway Solitaire stability

In comments to previous Fairway Solitaire posts (here and here), one of the developers at Grey Alien Games suggested that the problem may been with the video drivers. It's true, my drivers were woefully out of date. I updated them and have yet to encounter trouble in my subsequent play sessions. But I should note that the problem doesn't actually occur during gameplay. The publisher, Big Fish Games, makes you install a Steam-like front end, which is where I've been having the trouble -- usually, I quit the game, their app opens up, and then it all goes horribly, horribly blue. We'll see if this happens again.

Even so, I am still hopelessly addicted to this game. I've been off work the past week, and fully intended to spend my time catching up on some past console games. I managed to put a few hours into Call of Duty 4 (it really is that good!), but other than that it's been all Fairway Solitaire all the time.

In the initial two posts, I hadn't yet discovered the helpful items available for sale in the pro shop. As the game progresses, you can buy items like x-ray goggles that allow you to see the next card in the deck, and one that turns 25% of the cards face-up at the start of a hole. It adds a new level of complexity that helps a lot. I just wish you could buy irons in the pro shop, as well. I've been accruing money at a far greater rate than I could spend it, and I always wish I had more irons. Maybe in Fairway Solitaire 2.

Fairway Solitaire update

It's now crashed my computer three times, or three more times than any other game has in the three years I've owned this computer.

Still awesome, though. Don't let these complaints dissuade you.

Fairway Solitaire

On Bill Harris's recommendation, last night I downloaded a game called Fairway Solitaire, the only computer sim that dares to combine the cerebral thrills of single-player card games with the fast-paced action of golf.

Whoops, I can't help the sarcasm sometimes. It's actually a fantastic game, to the point where the 60-minute cutoff on the demo elicited something like rage. I spent a few hours trying to resist dropping the $19.99 they wanted, but at that point it was essentially like heroin. Fortunately, the publisher is running a holiday special for 40% off. (If you're ordering the game, enter SAVEFORTY in the "coupon code" field. The offer expires on 12/31/07.)

What is Fairway Solitaire? It's set up like a golf game, with several courses to play through and a hilarious, cartoonish presentation that mimics the solemnity of a TV golf broadcast. Instead of hitting a ball, though, you play a modified solitaire game. Each "hole" on a course is a different layout of cards -- some face up, most face down. At the bottom of the screen is your anchor card, which dictates what card you can remove from the hole. If there's a 5 at the bottom, you can remove any available 4 or 6. If you remove a 6, you can then click on any available 5 or 7. The challenge is to go on long runs without drawing a new anchor card.

There are more twists, too. You must contend with sand traps and water hazards, and occasionally you can find a wedge to put in your bag. You can play a wedge as a normal number card without interrupting the run you're on. So if you've tapped a bunch of jacks and tens, but have a 3-iron in your bag, you can start removing threes or twos without penalty -- but then you might not have an iron when you need it later.

Sounds simple, and it is. Still, it's the sort of game you can feel yourself improving at with each successive round. Strategies begin to reveal themselves the more you play. Each hole takes just a few minutes to complete, but with nine holes per course, and dozens of courses, I can see this thing robbing me of innumerable hours of productivity. And I am perfectly fine with that.

With all that said, Fairway Solitaire has twice crashed my system and I've had it for less than 24 hours. Make of that what you will.

Winter games preview 2008

Putting together a seasonal games preview is always a dicey proposition. You don't have much to go on for release dates besides what Gamestop tells you -- and quite often their guess is as good as anybody's. With that said, I'm fairly certain that some of the games in my 2008 winter preview will be released on schedule, such as Burnout Paradise and Devil May Cry 4. Grand Theft Auto IV? Not so much. That's due for another catastrophic delay or two.

And if the Tom Clancy game that caps off this feature makes it out by April 1, I will eat my hat. You hear me? My hat.

The Year in Review: Year-End Superlatives

All this week, we've been recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

To finish up our look back at 2007, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Noble Failure of the Year: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Every year there's at least one game that should be great, and that I still kind of like in spite of itself. This year, it was Puzzle Quest. The premise -- a fantasy role-playing game in which battles take the form of a gem-swapping puzzle game -- is truly inspired. Thoughts of what the game could have been kept me playing long after it was clear that the game mechanics weren't nearly tuned enough, and my computer opponents were plainly cheating. I never went back to this after I filed my review, but I haven't had the heart to trade it in, either.

PR Knucklehead of the Year: Jack Tretton, Sony

The fine folks at Activision made a late run for this award with their monumental pettiness regarding guitartroller interoperability, but nothing beat Jack Tretton's bizarre, continued pronouncements from Bizarro World about the earth-shattering success of the PlayStation 3. His opus came in February, when he declared: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." Now that's chutzpah!

The Donut Hole Award: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

If I had played it in time, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin would have been a lock for my top-10 list of 2006. It may even have had a shot to place on this year's list if it had been eligible. So consider this my formal apology to a fantastic game, and a strong recommendation for a worthy addition to any Nintendo DS owner's library.

Game Blog of the Year: Dubious Quality

It is a cruel irony that the best video game writer I know of isn't really a video game writer at all -- which is to say that Bill Harris doesn't write about games for a living, and if he does any freelance work he doesn't mention it in his blog. He doesn't even run ads on Dubious Quality. The pearls he continually hands down are proffered free of charge, whether that means crunching the NPD numbers so we don't have to, or delving more deeply into the black heart of EA Sports than any mainstream publication would ever dare. No matter the subject, Dubious Quality is essential reading.

Publisher of the Year: 2K Games

With most publishers piling onto the mini-game bandwagon like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon, 2K Games this year was the paragon of where I'd like to see games headed. Both The Darkness and BioShock were thought-provoking, complex adventures that questioned the very nature of playing games (The Darkness did so implicitly, BioShock explicitly). Both games have stuck with me months after finishing them. Seeing that pitiful Duke Nukem Forever teaser only drove home how much more subtle and complex games have become, and nobody demonstrated that better in 2007 than 2K Games.

Developer of the Year: Valve

Valve had a shot at being the Publisher of the Year, too, but ultimately I decided to focus on their astonishing efforts on the development front (plus, I never use Steam for anything). Valve doesn't just develop games -- they develop talent. No game this year was more inventive than Portal, and Gabe Newell and his band of merry men deserve credit for identifying and nurturing the Portal team, which began as a group of ambitious students at DigiPen. Kudos to them also for taking the time to get Team Fortress 2 right, and for orchestrating one of the most thrilling battle sequences in history at the end of Half-Life 2 Episode Two.

Console of the Year: Xbox 360

Really, what other choice was there? The Wii had its moments, but many of its signature games fell short (Wario Ware, Metroid Prime 3). As for the PlayStation 3, it rebounded quite nicely toward the end of the year with price cuts and some strong first-party titles, but that wasn't enough to make up for all that had come before. No other system could boast the quantity and quality of software that graced the 360.

Publishers churned out fantastic games all year, from Crackdown in February, to Guitar Hero II in April, to The Darkness in June, to BioShock in August -- all traditionally dead times on the release schedule. Even with the apparently catastrophic hardware failure rate of the 360 (mine's still going strong -- knock on wood), it'd be hard to suggest another system to somebody who's looking to buy only one.

The Year in Review: The Worst Games of 2007

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: the worst games of the year.

Although it was an historically good year for games, 2007 had its share of stinkers. Bad games aren't always bad for the same reasons good games are good -- a game can be technically competent and still be philosophically or spiritually repulsive. In fact, nothing is more disappointing than when genuine talent goes toward creating something ugly.

That's the case with the two worst games I played this year: Def Jam Icon* and Manhunt 2. We don't like being condescended to, you and I, and yet when I played these games my overarching impression was that of a publisher saying, "You'll fall for anything, won't you?"

In the case of Def Jam Icon, EA took the opportunity to charge sixty bucks for a game that was nothing but advertisements. Ads for albums, ads for clothing, ads for the rappers themselves. I'm not naive -- I understand that making games is expensive, and I'm not opposed to a little product placement if it's integrated in a way that makes sense. But there was literally nothing else to Def Jam Icon. The gameplay felt like it was happening underwater, and the interactive environments were repetitive and uninteresting. This was the most cynical game I've ever played.

Manhunt 2 was nearly as bad in that respect. It tried to be outrageous and in-your-face for no reason other than, well, to be outrageous and in-your-face. Roger Ebert likes to say that a movie isn't about what it's about; it's about how it's about it. Violence and sexual content are only as tasteless or offensive as how they're employed. Most of the best games of the year were extremely violent, but none were as exploitative and hollow as Manhunt 2. There was no real reason to go for the most gruesome kills except to see if you could do it. Your character was largely the aggressor, and didn't act in self-defense. These are not attractive qualities in a game. It became clear late in the game that the makers intended to make some kind of comment on the nature of sanity, and in that respect, at least, they succeeded: while playing Manhunt 2, I definitely questioned my sanity.

The most boring game I played was Battlestations Midway, a turgid World War II sim that combined featureless real-time strategy with rudderless action gameplay. This game was so unremarkable in every way, I'm no longer convinced it even existed.

And then there are two games that, objectively, probably aren't that bad. Two games whose off-the-charts hype and legions of devoted online footsoldiers probably did more to put me off than did the actual gameplay. I speak, of course, of Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Halo 3 is certainly a high quality product by any objective measure. But when you consider the still-boring single-player campaign and obnoxious Xbox Live community, some of the shine comes off. Why is this the game that everybody agreed on? I don't get it. I can think of at least four other 360 shooters this year that were better.

As for Mass Effect, I believe we agreed never to speak of it again.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

*Postscript: In linking to my original Def Jam Icon post, I saw that I had written this in response to a comment: "Gamespot had all the same criticisms I did, and then gave it an 8.1. I'm not always convinced that review scores are busted in general, but that made me pause." In light of recent events, it seems I was too charitable.

He's totally in my face!

I've gone back and forth about whether I should opine about that Duke Nukem Forever teaser. On one hand, what is there to say about it? DNF the biggest joke in videogame history, and the release of a minute-long video that doesn't seem to show any gameplay hardly inspires confidence. But there was one major difference between my reaction to this teaser and to previous Duke news: I've completely lost interest.

I don't mean I've lost interest in the game itself, because that ship sailed long ago. I mean the character himself is dead to me. Time has clearly passed Duke Nukem by. It's a little hard to watch. This video is a reminder that Duke is a relic from an era in which "attitude" was everything, and games really were nothing more than masturbatory macho fantasies. (Okay, I'm generalizing a bit.) Bruce Willis makeover or no, Duke Nukem is basically Poochie the Dog at this point.

Really, what response was 3D Realms expecting from this video? "Whoa, Duke is working out and smoking a cigar at the same time? He just doesn't give a fuck!" It's embarrassing. The line at the end about dropping bricks in an alien toilet only seals the deal. Poop jokes? Really? We're on poop jokes in the year 2007?

This guy doesn't care whose toes he steps on!

What's wrong with Guitar Hero III?

Chris Dahlen has a theory:

If you rock hard enough to score an encore, you notice that the crowd is roaring, and then you look over the fence and you see – a cop car! Someone called the cops! Except they’re clapping too! You’re such a hit that even the police don’t have the heart to stop the show. The long-fought war between the pigs and the kids has finally ended. This was the first in a series of wrong notes that left me with a clammy, phony feeling by the end of the career mode...

...Guitar Hero III has no message, no heart, and no edge. It doesn’t make knowing winks about old Boston rock clubs or out-of-town gig traditions; it’s more like a fratboy yell.

I think he's right, although it's not something I ever much thought about. The first Guitar Hero was the indie breakthrough -- a lean, mean labor of love developed in a short time on hardly any budget. Guitar Hero II was like Nevermind -- the shot across the cultural bow that announced the arrival of a major player.

Guitar Hero III? It's bloated, 1977-era Led Zeppelin, buckling under its own weight.

The largesse that allowed Activision to secure so many ostensibly better songs for the series' third installment also, paradoxically, led to the drop in quality. The concern was securing "cool" music and arranging the set lists accordingly, which is why the note charts vary so wildly in quality and difficulty. This was never the case when Harmonix made the game. Their goal was to make you feel like you were playing the song, and if the song was difficult, so be it.

Neversoft seems to have used a different approach. The difficulty isn't grounded in anything organic, and feels arbitrary. There's still a lot in the game for people to like, as evidenced by its massive popularity, but there's no question it's a departure. What happened to Guitar Hero, man? It used to be about the music!

The Year in Review: Honorable Mentions

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: 2007 honorable mentions.

The best games of the year were superb, every one of them. Today I want to give props to some high quality games that didn't make the list.

Two games this year belonged on the list, but were disqualified on a technicality: they were ports of games that had previously been released. They were Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition and Guitar Hero II (360). In fact, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition would have grabbed the number one spot if not for that rule. It's the best game I've ever played. But I think it's important to give the spotlight to new games, especially since RE4 and GHII have both made past top-ten lists. (I didn't play Ninja Gaiden Sigma for PS3, but there's a strong chance that would have been mentioned here, too.)

But there were a lot of other worthy games this year that, while not up to that high standard, are still worth anybody's time. In chronological order:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney -- Justice for All. The Phoenix Wright series just a joy to play. Not only are the games funny and populated by a menagerie of crazy characters, there's also a noble undercurrent running through it all: everybody deserves a fair trial based on the evidence. Phoenix wouldn't be half as appealing if he were a prosecutor. I'm also looking forward to Capcom's upcoming Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law game based on the Phoenix engine.

MotorStorm. Sony's alleged system seller may not have been that, but it was a good, solid racing game that hinted at better days to come for PS3 owners. And once they released free DLC that included essentials like a time trial mode, MotorStorm's value only increased. It's now a pack-in with the 80 GB PlayStation 3 model. You could do a lot worse.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Could also have been called Tom Tancredo's Ghost Recon, what with its hilariously paranoid take on US-Mexican relations. Still, GRAW2 was a tight tactical shooter that offered tense survival scenarios and was easy enough for someone as dumb as me to play through without much difficulty.

Super Paper Mario. Super Mario Galaxy got all the press, but Super Paper Mario was just as trippy and innovative in its way. The "flipping" dynamic between 2D and 3D space consistently surprised and delighted. Paper Mario's only real problem was a slow pace thanks to some uncomfortably integrated RPG elements.

Odin Sphere. Atlus's PlayStation 2 side-scroller was like Final Fantasy meets Streets of Rage. Its gorgeous, hand-drawn visuals had an artistic flair lacking in most games with technically superior graphics. A little too Japanese and weird at times, but its unique play dynamics really worked. Who knew you could make planting seeds fun?

Sam and Max Season 1. Like Phoenix Wright, the Sam and Max games are all about using your wits to solve hilarious criminal scenarios. Although this new series doesn't reach the twisted heights of LucasArt's classic Sam and Max Hit the Road, it's a worthy successor. The streamlined, low-budget approach suits the material well.

Skate. Probably the biggest surprise of the year. Skate tried to depict a more realistic skateboarding dynamic than you usually see. Its skaters don't have superhuman abilities -- they can't jump ten feet in the air or survive massive drops. Instead, the game was all about identifying trick opportunities in a realistic city, and it was a lot more fun that that description makes it sound. Skate landed one right on the chin of the Tony Hawk series.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. The Umbrella Chronicles is a whirlwind tour through the Resident Evil canon, in the guise of a light-gun shooter. With a few deeper mechanics than you'd expect, like the surprisingly useful knife, it's got a little more meat on its bones than something like House of the Dead. And being able to experience memorable RE moments and boss battles from a fast-moving, first-person perspective is worth the price of admission. For as much grief as I've given GameTrailers.com on this blog, their description of The Umbrella Chronicles as a love letter to Resident Evil fans is exactly right.

Tomorrow: The worst games of 2007.

Gamers with Jobs fillets Gamespot

I don't read Gamers with Jobs enough. A couple weeks back, they posted a satirical memo from an unnamed video game review site to its employees. It's pretty hilarious the whole way through, but this excerpt in particular gave me flashbacks to every glowing Mass Effect review I saw:

It is important to set aside personal preference, and be able to specifically and adequately demonstrate in an objective and quantifiable manner when a game is not fun. Do not be snide, sarcastic or unprofessional in your arguments, and remember to highlight what is fun about a game first. This is what readers want to know, and they will respect what isn’t said more than a caustic and unfair analysis. For example:

Game X is terrific fun to play from start to finish. It is an action packed, third person adventure through the gritty underbelly of the modern crime world as well as a nail-biting sci-fi shooter. The controls may take some getting used to, but once it becomes clear what the designers intended by using the function keys as the primary form of movement, you’ll wish every game used the scheme. While aiming in Game X can be difficult for those who aren’t very good at shooters, the method does a good job of recreating a real-world response to an alien shootout.

Dead on.

The Year in Review: Best Games of 2007

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: the best games of 2007.

My picks for the best games of 2007 are up now at thephoenix.com. You'll have to click through to read the blurbs for each, but here's the list:

1. BioShock
2. Portal
3. Rock Band
4. The Darkness
5. Crackdown
6. God of War II
7. Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
8. Half-Life 2 Episode Two
9. Super Mario Galaxy
10. Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

There are a few possible contenders that I missed and thus weren't up for consideration, including Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and Call of Duty 4. Even so, this is an unbelievably strong year-end list. I didn't even need to agree with the consensus on games like Halo 3 and Mass Effect to build it out.

Last year's was much tougher -- I ran out of gas after about number six. This year, I feel comfortable saying those are ten fantastic games that are well worth anybody's time.

Tomorrow: 2007 honorable mentions.

The Year in Review: Best of the Blog

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2007.

January: I discovered that Castlevania might just be the best video game series of all time, which permanently shook the foundations upon which my perceptions of reality are based.

March: In response to a Destructoid post called "Why Video Game Reviews Suck," I blamed scoring systems as the reason game reviews suck. Which may not necessarily be true -- it may simply be that people put too much weight on the score and not enough on the content of the review.

April: After spending a little time with the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II, I proceeded to bitch about it. I later determined I had been wrong about everything, and it's just about the greatest thing in the world. (I didn't even realize there were USB ports on the front of the console, but, in my defense, the instruction manual didn't say anything about it.) You even get used to the jagged contour of the X-plorer pretty quickly.

May: While revisiting the awesome 2001 Duke Nukem Forever trailer, I also came across a mind-blowing 2007 trailer that was, for whatever reason, not given adequate press coverage.

June: Manhunt 2 is delayed after big box stores like Target and Wal Mart refuse to sell it. I decry this creeping fascism. Later, after I play the game, I find myself wishing the game were not just banned, but that all existing copies were paved over in the desert next to all those Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges.

August: Accusations of racism in Resident Evil 5 unleash a torrent of actual racism, not to mention sexism, on gaming blogs and message boards across the interweb. I cannot resist throwing a few haymakers. Also in August: a review of the terrific documentary King of Kong, and much about BioShock.

September: Completing Guitar Hero II on hard mode leads to a rumination on the balance between hardcore gameplay and shorter, more "casual" play sessions.

October: Continuing in that vein, thoughts on the episodic model hitting the sweet spot for those who want the hardcore experience but don't have hardcore free time. Also in October: They're playing Halo in church, and the birth of Gamestop.com user-submitted previews.

November: Having now found our theme, and spurred on by a N'Gai Croal post, we also start to question how the definition of value might differ from one person to the next, particularly for the "hardcasual" gamer. Also in November: GameTrailers.com is terrible, Mass Effect stinks, Rock Band is awesome, and Gerstmann gets the boot.

December: Recapping December probably isn't necessary, huh.

Later this week: the best and worst games of 2007, honorable mentions, and year-end superlatives.

Consumer reports

Best Buy's weekly circular is advertising Call of Duty 4 for $44.99 this week, both online and in stores. Unfortunately, that's only for the PlayStation 3 version and not the Xbox 360 version.

Not to be outdone, Amazon is also selling Call of Duty 4 PS3(affiliate link) for $44.99, which will save you over two bucks in sales tax. 360 owners are, again, out of luck.

I'm still not sure if I'll get off my duff and pick it up, but I'm highly tempted.

Burnout Paradise demo impressions

Putting together a demo must be tricky no matter what the game is. You need to provide enough of a flavor to whet people's appetite for the whole thing without compromising either your game's quality or your business model. If you strip out too much, you may not accurately convey what your game's about. Include too much, and you may have eliminated the incentive to pay for more. This trick is doubly difficult for an open-world game, in which the experience is defined more by the user than by the developers. And that's the trouble the Burnout Paradise demo runs into a little bit.

Full disclosure: I'm head over heels for the Burnout series. They're not just my favorite racing games, they're some of my favorite games period. That's why I'm a little wary of Paradise; it's hard to imagine how such tightly constructed layouts and busy traffic patterns could survive the move to an open world. What made past Burnout games so great was its fanatical focus. Anything extraneous was excised entirely, and everything essential was revved into the red. A free-roaming, virtual world seems like the philosophical opposite.

After spending some time with the demo (admittedly not a ton of time), I'm not convinced that Criterion Games has solved these problems, but that may be due to the limitations of the demo format. For one thing, the majority of the race events are locked. Because you can drive anywhere you want in the city, the way to trigger specific competitions is to hold down the gas and brake at a traffic light. I found only one available scenario, and it was one of my least favorite kinds: a "stunt race," where the point was to earn a certain number of points in a time limit. Screw that, I want to race and smash up some jerks!

The encouraging part is that the racing and smashing do seem pretty sweet. I downloaded the PlayStation 3 demo, and it ran without any noticeable hitches in the frame rate. The sense of speed is as dizzying as it ever was. I died a little inside when the first thing the game had me do was take my car to a body shop, but it turns out that to fix up your car you just drive through a carport-like structure. Same goes for the paint shop, and if you drive through a gas station you refill your boost meter. I can see this working really well during race events.

The "aftertouch" mechanic is necessarily dropped from the free roaming portions of the game (I hope it's still in race events), but in its place is an almost pornographic slow-motion crash cutscene. You wouldn't confuse it for crash test footage, but watching the body panels buckle one by one, and cracks snaking across windows before they burst into tiny shards, is pretty impressive.

I also put a little time into online play, a mode called "Freeburn." I didn't quite get it. We were all driving around, doing our thing, and a stat sheet in the upper corner of the screen updated who had the longest jump, longest drift, longest burn, and so on. There wasn't any actual competition occurring. Or maybe there was -- after about three minutes I got a message that the session had ended. That was how I remembered I hate playing games online.

Urgent, breaking Burnout Paradise demo news

The Burnout Paradise demo is not yet in the Playstation store.

That is all.

Update, 3:49 PM EST: There it is. Maybe I actually am breaking this news now.

Eat it, Kotaku!