But the fact that Nintendo seems willing to release games that won’t work on the Lite means that the potential exists for me to want both a DSi and an DS Lite (the latter being my defacto GBA player). I suppose the same effect could be achieved with a DSi and a Game Boy Micro but either way I’m looking at two systems. I was willing to step away from the Game Boy backwards compatibility but introducing a schism in the user base on the same basic hardware is just mean.

It occurs to me that if someone ever wanted to get me the best present ever they could get me something like a GP2X and load it up with emulators for NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Turbo Grafx 16, Neo-Geo and MAME so I can move on past my infatuation with old school games knowing I have access to them without having to take the bitter medicine of “official channels.” If wanting that makes me a bad citizen in the gaming world, then brand me a traitor. I’ve easily dropped over $100,000 on games in my lifetime so maybe the consumer overlords will forgive me this one little lapse if I promise to keep doing my part to drive the industry on the front end of the cycle. Wanting to play Battletoads from time to time doesn’t stop me from buying the new Call of Duty games so cut me some slack here.

But what I can do is provide some non-fanboy comparison of the PS3 to the 360 that doesn’t focus on the number or quality of titles for any respective system. I think we all realize by now that the Xbox has a richer and more robust library than the PS3, so that’s hardly the point here. My comparison points are below, but please note this is merely a trivial exercise. I’m certainly not making purchase recommendations here, as far as I’m concerned the only reason to choose one console over another is the available games.

Non-Game Features

• Aesthetically, neither system is particularly wonderful. The 360′s silly cream/white default color makes it a mismatch in most entertainment centers and the faux chrome disc tray is rather unsightly. The (occasionally infamous) power button quadrant lights offer a nice effect, though, and the covered input ports (rarely used thanks to the wireless controllers) give it a nice unblemished facade. Meanwhile the PS3′s clunky concave exterior seems over-designed (much like the original asymmetric PS2, later vastly improved for the slimline version) and the slot-loading disc drive, while welcome compared to the awkward tray drive on the 360, is set in a clumsily recessed section that looks like an accident. But the PS3′s glossy black finish is sleek and impressive for the few seconds it isn’t covered in dust and the soft touch face buttons feel nice and futuristic.
• Comparing the controllers is a little tough: The best aspects of each are identical: Remote system-on; responsive face buttons, wireless connectivity. Beyond that they each have their strengths and weaknesses: The 360′s weight and offset analog sticks are possibly the most comfortable I’ve used and the trigger buttons are shaped and feel like triggers which is exactly what you want from shoulder buttons. The removable battery casing is a nice bonus as well. However, the D-pad is practically unusable out of the box and the positioning of the Start and Back buttons right next to the Guide button means games that require access to those buttons (map screens are often accessed via Back) can easily lead to accidental pausing while the guide is popped up. Also, the rounded face buttons are significantly less comfortable than the PS3′s wide, flat buttons. But the PS3 missed the mark with the L2/R2 triggers which are arced inward instead of away from the player like a trigger making them feel slippery. The lack of rumble (while not exactly a deal breaker) means the whole thing has a weightless, fragile feel. Still, the Sixaxis controls—while far from perfect—are pretty nifty and the D-pad is excellent (as has been the case since the original, analog-deprived PS1 controller) as is the Home button (in placement, size and feel). One other minor nit with the Sixaxis is the fact that it doesn’t have a removable battery pack so you have to recharge the controller by plugging it into the console via (included) USB cable.
• I’ve actually had two Xboxes: The first was an original chipset unit which died almost exactly a year after I purchased it. I was able to replace it with a newer model (an HDMI-equipped Pro). The original was excruciatingly loud all the time. The replacement is an improvement but it still outputs a game-volume-competing amount of racket. Meanwhile the PS3 is whisper-silent… until the fans kick on which usually happens about 45 minutes to an hour into any game or movie that’s playing. At that point the PS3 and the Xbox are in hot contention for the more obnoxious system. One leg up the PS3 has: Eventually the fans will shut off while the 360′s noise remains steady and constant. Of course, the spin-up, spin-down process in the PS3 also draws extra attention to the volume but I’d prefer moments of peace compared to a steady white noise.
• A lot of people have remarked about the clumsiness of the PS3′s user interface. I haven’t found it to be that bad in practice, and I kind of like the Cross Media Bar. What kills any comparison though is the ubiquity of the Live service through the UI compared to the PS3′s shoved-off-in-a-corner PSN functions. Xbox Live’s Marketplace interface has been updated fairly recently and the adjustments are welcome though still not exactly what I’d describe as “user-friendly,” but they seem like design nirvana compared to the atrocious and frustrating PSN Store interface, which is simply a mess of confusing menu options, wasted space and almost unusable input options, including a brain-dead mapping of the circle button to “Exit the Store” which causes countless snarls of agitation.
• Playing a media disc in either system is mostly the same experience: The controller acts as a remote and some of the buttons are mapped to commonly-used functions while they reserve advanced features for an overlay menu you can toggle. In both cases the biggest annoyance is that the triggers or R2/L2 are mapped to fast forward and reverse which makes a certain amount of sense except those buttons are notoriously easy to bump on accident which results in a lot of frustrated panic as you try to get your movie queued back where you left off. Because of the bad trigger design on the PS3′s Sixaxis it’s a little worse there than on the 360, but I’ve had encounters with the behavior on both systems. One thing that helped a lot for the 360 was picking up a universal remote, but one of the downsides to the PS3 is that it uses bluetooth for controller and remote input which means it’s incompatible with nearly all universal remotes by design. The PS3 has a perhaps obvious edge in this department since it can play Blu-Ray discs (which produce the best source signal for an HD-capable TV that I’ve seen, by a pretty large margin) but the 360 pushes sharp, possibly upscaled picture from standard DVDs and looks better than any standalone player I’ve used.
• One thing the PS3 has that doesn’t even have a 360 analogue is PSP integration features. By and large these are somewhat underdeveloped at the moment limited to some remote on/off functionality, data transfers and a couple of isolated game sharing interactions. Notably missing is the ability for the PS3 to act as a wireless bridge for the PSP which can be sometimes difficult to connect to a third-party WiFi access point with enabled encryption but there is a lot of room for cool down-the-road features and it’s an exciting territory that MS can’t even start to match without a handheld gaming device of their own (no, the Zune doesn’t count).

Game Features

It isn’t easy to compare PS3 and Xbox 360 side-by-side in terms of games because the games themselves are different. I did run a very subjective test by downloading the demo for Devil May Cry 4 on both the 360 and the PS3 and then switching the inputs back and forth to do a graphics comparison. At least with that game, the differences are remarkably minimal. The PS3 seemed to have a slight edge on fidelity of distant geometry and a couple of textures looked a tiny bit sharper and more defined; the lighting effects were a hair more pronounced in the PS3 version but as you might tell by the adjectives I’m relying on, unless you were flipping back and forth you’d think they were 100% identical. Even with the flipping, you’d still have to say they were 98% identical. So round it off and say that at least for the time being they are capable of about the same level of graphical quality.

People also complain about the lack of integrated online features in the PS3. It’s certainly true that the 360 utterly owns Sony’s attempts at online presence-setting and community integration, but as someone who has subscribed to Live since the original Xbox days, Sony’s first foray into integrated online service is actually fairly impressive, and thruthfully is probably further along than Live was at a similar stage of development. Though you have to give Microsoft credit since Sony is using their trailblazing as a means of catching up.

The biggest factor when it comes to gaming on the PS3 versus the 360 is the integrated hard drive of the PS3. Graphics-intensive platform exclusives have a fairly noticeable difference in performance due to the fact that PS3 developers can rely on a hard drive being present to help with load times. Comparing the performance of a game like Uncharted with Mass Effect shows that while both look phenomenal, the experience of Mass Effect is marred by constant texture pop-in and frame rate issues while Uncharted (arguably the prettier game) has some occasional loading but runs very smoothly. It’s possible that Mass Effect’s performance troubles would not necessarily be eliminated if Microsoft included a hard drive standard on every 360 (note that this design decision is a marked step backward from the original Xbox that had an 8GB drive in every unit), but it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t help.

The biggest leg up the Xbox has in terms of game-related features is the curiously compelling meta-game that is Gamerscore. Fed by in-game achievements that all 360 games are required to boast (even the morsels on Xbox Live Arcade), your persistent profile gets fed new points for completing various in-game activities. Sony seems to be slowly aping the feature; Uncharted includes something similar but for the time being the awards you unlock have no relevance anywhere outside the game itself. This minor distinction makes all the difference as seeing your Gamerscore grow by playing more and more 360 games creates an all-too-easy compulsion.

While Live and it’s myriad features is superior in almost every way to PSN, Live also requires a $50/year subscription. It’s arguably worth the price but if Sony ever manages to get PSN even close to Live without requiring a subscription, it’s going to make Live look a lot worse.

Finally, the PS3 is completely schizophrenic when it comes to backwards compatibility. Any PS3 will supposedly play PS1 games, but certain models (including the 40GB one I purchased) are not backwards compatible with PS2 games, while other models are either almost entirely BC with an Emotion Engine included on the board or somewhat compatible through software emulation. It’s also difficult to tell which units have which features just by looking at the box making shopping somewhat frustrating if you didn’t do your research ahead of time. Meanwhile the 360 is backwards compatible with a large number of original Xbox games, but not all of them will work and the experience of playing an older game isn’t as smooth as the normal 360 experience.

Summary

Side by side the consoles are actually (anecdotally) very similar. The Xbox 360 has a slightly better controller, a more streamlined and mature online platform and a much better digital distribution service that includes non-game media as well as downloadable content and complete games. The PS3 however has a better overall aesthetic, makes a better media player with the included Blu-Ray drive and has a sort of ephemeral untapped potential especially in terms of PSP integration.

It’s a little difficult to compare them on pricing terms as well; the PS3 has more features right out of the box (guaranteed hard drive at greater capacities and value, built-in WiFi, full online multiplayer support without required subscription) which means your $400 goes further with a single purchase. To match up the PS3′s feature set you’d need to buy at least the Pro 360 model, a $99 WiFi adapter and a $50/year Live subscription which actually makes the PS3 cheaper by $100 if you want to compare the two feature-for-feature. However, not everyone needs WiFi capability or wants to go online at all. I suppose not everyone wants a hard drive either but I can’t recommend the Xbox 360 Arcade model partially because the memory cards are prohibitively expensive but also because I don’t want anyone giving Microsoft the idea that their multi-SKU product lineup including the key feature-deprived low end model is okay.

With so much actually in common it really does come down to the games and while the Xbox has the edge for now, most of the current gen games that you’d want to play are cross-platform. Which means it kind of boils down to a comparison of a handful of games: Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect, BioShock, Dead Rising and Forza Motorsport 2 on the 360 and Heavenly Sword, Motorstorm, Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Warhawk and Uncharted on the PS3. I’d have to recommend the 360 on that list alone, but it may be worth noting that the PS3 has the better lineup of upcoming exclusives with Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, God of War III and Heavy Rain compared to Halo Wars, Fable 2, Too Human, Alan Wake and Ninja Gaiden II. Admittedly in either case you have plenty of great options and good things to look forward to, but my personal evaluation is that the 360 peaked last fall and the best of the PS3 is yet to come.

The Honorable Awards

Best Rental Game

Winner: Crackdown

For a few days I was absolutely enthralled with this game. They did so much right with it, from the comic-book style to the wonderfully exaggerated powers to the tight controls, it was really hard to put down. Crackdown even offered a sense of scale that is rarely seen in games: The achievement-landing leap from the top of the Agency Tower literally induced a sense of vertigo as I plummeted and the enormous city was so well crafted that it was (finally) an open-world title I really wanted to explore. Unfortunately the game is over really quickly unless you count orb-hunting (which is really only fun until you get your attribute bonuses filled) and that feels strange in a GTA-inspired game. But rather than hold that against Crackdown, I feel it deserves note for being a really triumphant rental game.

Runner-up: Beautiful Katamari

Most Gripping Multiplayer

Winner: Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat

Forget Halo 3. It’s nice, for a time. But it’s extension device is Forge which, for load-n-play shooter fans, is not exactly the kind of structure craved for an extended time frame. It’s more of a playground, having its place but forgetting that rigid competition is what the online gamer craves. Enter CoD4′s unexpectedly thorough ranking system: It’s an achievement-based matching and progression tree that is divorced from the ubiquitous Xbox 360 Gamerscore platform yet captures the essence of what makes the score-chasing fanatics (yours truly included) salivate. The common complaint about barrier-to-entry is largely unfounded as Infinity Ward has infused its system with enough leniency to avoid ever being punishing but offers enough tantalizing reward to encourage pushing through whatever small pains may remain. The game’s design brilliance is hinted at in the single-player campaign but only occasionally achieved (usually in unexpected ways) but the core design shines and demands one shade their eyes when the specter of AI is shed leaving behind only the simple joy of knifing some poor schlub in the neck while he tries to play a claymore.

Runner-Up: Carcassonne

Favorite Internet Meme

Winner: Portal’s Weighted Companion Cube

So much about Portal is great: It has a sublimely minimalist narrative, some of the best comedic writing in a game ever and a nifty gameplay mechanic that feels fresh and rich enough to carry the game. But nothing about Portal is as great as the year’s top in-joke: The Weighted Companion Cube. Whether you actually feel for the thing or not is beside the point: That you believe you could is all that matters. The ‘net exploded with plushies, pictures, YTMNDs, paper crafts and all manner of parodies almost immediately after the game was released and while the song at the end of the game (“Still Alive”) made the rounds and is just another small element to the brilliance of this game/morsel, it’s spoilerish lyrics made it less of a joy to share.

Runner-Up: Pac-Man: Championship Edition’s surprising brilliance

Best Control Scheme

Winner: The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass

I admit, I was really skeptical about Phantom Hourglass’ stylus-only controls. No Z-locking? No sword-swinging? How was it going to work? Well, I can tell you how it works in a single word: Brilliantly. That the game manages to return the series to form with less early-game pacing issues and more whimsy than even the excellent but under-appreciated Wind Waker could muster is just icing on the cake. The real star of the show is the pitch-perfect controls and the best use of the DS as a platform since Kirby’s Canvas Curse and Trauma Center.

Runner-Up: Halo 3

Most Thought-Provoking

Winner: BioShock

2K Boston’s creepy and atmosphere-saturated shooter does a lot of things that aren’t exactly original but when crafted this finely the originality comes from a general sense of coherency. It’s strange that a mostly horror-styled shooter could be so intellectually intriguing, but the way the game plays with its central moral quandary and the questions that are knitted tightly within but never explicitly asked made and continues to make for fascinating discussion.

Runner-Up: Mass Effect

Best Original Setting

Winner: Mass Effect

Building original settings and characters is hard. It’s why so many games, movies and other forms of narrative media are knock-offs, licensed properties and sequels. But the folks at BioWare created in Mass Effect a pulpy SciFi setting that straddles that line between nerdcore obsessiveness (akin to what hard core GMs do with their world building exercises) and accessible familiarity. It’s got the sort of attention to detail that is really vital in bringing an expansive place like this to life, and the mythology that permeates the world of Mass Effect is compelling enough to make for a marvelous story. In some cases the game is a bit too proud of its own exhaustively considered backdrop, but you can hardly fault BioWare for wanting to leave no avenue for sloppy storytelling, and it’s clear they find these rigid guidelines liberating.

Runner-Up: BioShock

Best Music (Score)

Winner: Halo 3

Strangely enough this may have been the most difficult award to grant because three games really raised the bar on the musical front this year (music in this case excludes music-specific titles like Guitar Hero and licensed music-fests like Madden): BioShock which was ultimately disqualified for its over-reliance on licensed period tunes, even if they were brilliantly applied; Mass Effect whose pitch-perfect score was so fitting of the already remarkable environment (see Best Original Setting, above) that it seemed an integral part of it and, of course, Halo 3. Halo won out in the end because the score of Halo is the most anthemic modern game soundtrack and while Halo is a capably molded FPS with a fairly interesting plot, I find that so much of the emotion of the story is derived from the score that I wonder if I’d even like the games without it. I’m even hard pressed to tell you specifically what has happened in previous Halo games, but I know how I felt in certain key moments because I can recall the soundtrack. Marty O’Donnell pulled out all the stops for Halo 3 and it elevates the game closer to where its hype level suggests it ought to sit, even if the game itself never quite manages that mesa.

Runner-Up: Mass Effect

Best Handheld Title

Winner: Planet Puzzle League

It’s almost impossible not to fall in love with PPL. It has a simple mechanic, but a surprising depth. It boasts a wonderful soundtrack and appealing visuals, it offers an insane amount of game modes and types, it has nearly infinite replayability but what really makes PPL the handheld game of the year is that it gives you some of the best multiplayer gaming you can find on handhelds or on consoles. The fact that you can play for hours with a single cart should be evidence enough that it’s doing something special, but that the single-cart play isn’t some one-trick wonder but has depth and options in itself really seals the deal. Plus it has WiFi play with plenty of puzzle addicts online around the world and none of that even touches the options available when multiple players own the game. With all those Tetris-playing moms out there I can’t understand why this game hasn’t exploded the way Brain Age and it’s ho-hum Sudoku has, but I challenge you to find someone who un-self-consciously dislikes this game. If you own a DS but not this game, you’re doing something wrong.

Runner-Up: The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass

Best Downloadable Title

Winner: Puzzle Quest

Puzzle Quest is a flat-out remarkable game. The curious genre blend—executed almost flawlessly—is so compelling that the most common sensation generated while playing is awe that no one thought of this before. Taking an addictive but fundamentally flawed core mechanic (Bejeweled, essentially, which is enjoyable but lacks enough focus to make it fun for any gamer who’s ever branched beyond PopCap) and adding purpose and depth to it creates an experience that is an improvement in all respects over the basic gameplay and in fact transcends all the individual pieces creating something sublime. Now, this game won best download title and not best handheld for a number of reasons but the principal is that a new DS or PSP copy runs in the neighborhood of $25-30. The XBLA version—identical in every respect—is a mere $15 and has achievements and online vs. play. Don’t even bother looking for a better way to spend a quarter what it would cost for a full retail title: Such a transaction does not exist.

Runner-Up: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Strongest Ending

Winner: The Orange Box

It feels odd to give the best ending to a collection, but really the award is more about Valve than any single game. When compared to games like Lost Planet or Bullet Witch, examples of horrific video game writing, you can easily see where Valve’s care in crafting not just experiences but experiences that engage a player and make them care serve them well. But it takes comparing to games with a better understanding of interactive narrative to really see the shine of Valve’s brilliance. Compared with the ending to BioShock, the end of Episode 2 encapsulates more emotive power than either of 2K Boston’s largely glib closing cutscenes. Looking at the cliffhanger wrap-up in Mass Effect finds Half-Life 2′s creepy deja vu conclusion more maddening in its appetite-whetting partial resolution. Even Halo 3′s melancholy but satisfying final moments don’t hold a candle to the triumph felt from completing Portal and the delectable reward that is “Still Alive.”

Runner-Up: Mass Effect

Game of the Year

Winner: The Orange Box

What criteria do we use to determine the best of the best? Is it quantity, as in the most enjoyment over the longest sustained period? I played through BioShock twice, enjoyed it intensely for almost the entire time (minus the final boss battle) and probably got a full 35 hours of spectacular entertainment out of it. Perhaps it’s value, where I’ve sunk 45 hours into Puzzle Quest for a mere $15 entry fee. Or maybe it’s just an experience, something that strikes you in a way you didn’t expect or that gives you pause, like the fully interactive cut scenes in Call of Duty 4. But then, wouldn’t it be all those things? The Orange Box includes, essentially, Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The inclusion of the original Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 is generous gift from Valve saying, “Hey thanks for checking out our stuff. Maybe you haven’t seen this yet?” Half-Life 2 itself is not perfect but certainly pushes the edges of what one might expect from a shooter, especially as seen a couple of years ago. Possibly BioShock batters those edges even more intently, but then you get to Episode 1 where short-form content is explored as a means of connecting with a character even under the artificial limitations imposed by Valve’s previous design decisions.

Somewhere along the line you note that both of these games existed before and then you reach Episode 2 which does as much to create a sense of place and time as Halo 3 yet achieves an emotional connection Bungie can only hope to one day entice. Oh and then you skip ahead to this little gem called Portal. Portal is a small game with big purpose. The fact that it rattled people’s expectations so violently suggests that there is room left in the industry for revolution and in the case of Portal it got everyone’s attention for all the right reasons. It is dark without being morbid. It is funny without being crass. It is challenging without being forced. It is well-written but not over-wrought. It is brief but dense.

All of which indicates that The Orange Box is among the most amazing packages in gaming, something that could have commanded full price with one fraction of its sum (I didn’t even fully explore the cleverly designed multiplayer bonanza TF2) but has here been somehow casually tossed into a single regular retail-priced container and presented not as anything particularly remarkable but given as if Valve were saying, “How great would it be if all games offered this much…” and allow you to fill in your criteria of choice. Value? Fun? Polish? Depth? Variety? It’s all here and more, in what must be the best of 2007.

Runner-Up: BioShock

BioShock can’t manage the same girth offered by Orange Box, but it bears mentioning how a fresh new setting (recall that despite being a spiritual successor to System Shock, BioShock takes place entirely outside that realm) was able to seize so many people’s imaginations. 2K Boston’s attention to atmosphere and detail creates a world that evokes many of the reactions the game wants from you: Awed fear, or uncomfortable fascination.

What they were able to do with the medium in terms of pulling a player into a world and then battering expectations, casting the player as more than casual observer but an integral part in the experience is nothing short of remarkable. Sure, there were things that could have been better, which is ultimately why BioShock is the runner-up and not the winner. But there are moments when BioShock surpasses all of the Orange Box’s triumphs, if briefly, that speak volumes about what 2K Boston might be capable of in the future. If you have to pick just one game to buy this year, you’d better make it The Orange Box. But if you can squeeze in two, you’ll find no better examples of what video games offer as entertainment, storytelling mediums and visceral experiences than those found in these two packages.

Dishonorable Awards

Worst Difficulty Settings

“Winner:” Guitar Hero II

The ramp up between Medium and Hard is among the most jarring transitions I’ve encountered. While earning five stars on “Free Bird” seems like it should prepare a player for what they are about to experience in the easiest songs on the next step up, the truth is you have no idea what to expect. With contracts ending and the teams splitting to do the Rock Band/GHIII face-off later in the year it’s no surprise that no one bothered to fix the broken difficulties of GHII when it hit the 360 this year, but it was such a problem that despite my soldiering forward and eventually completing Hard, I traded the whole game away within a month or so because I had no more fun to be found.

Runner-Up: Contra 4

Game Most Hampered By Its Pack-In

“Winner:” Crackdown

Maybe Crackdown would have found an audience without the Halo 3 beta key. I’d like to think that a solid original IP with fun gameplay and a cool sense of style would have succeeded. Unfortunately we’ll never know since plenty of people bought the game only to play the Halo 3 beta and Crackdown was largely seen as—this is strange to think about for a $60 game—bonus content for the beta key.

Runner-Up: BioShock’s Limited Edition with Broken Big Daddy Figure

‘King Kong’ Award for Biggest Achievement Hand-Outs

“Winner:” TMNT

Five hours, 1,000 points. Simple. Easy. Not the best use of five hours, but not the worst either, unless you’re one of those people who gripes about the “devaluation” of gamerscore points. Probably the only reason this game got as much attention as it did was those simple points. Which brings up an interesting question: Will we see other games including “cheap” points as a way to gain attention for their mediocre titles?

Runner-Up: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Biggest Disappointment

“Winner:” Beautiful Katamari

It seemed so perfect: Katamari on a next-gen system, with achievements and DLC. Instead we got a tiny package with no graphical improvements, short campaign mode, lame achievements and on-disc bonus content that had to be “unlocked” by paying money. Lame, lame and more lame.

Runner-Up: Lost Planet

As we approach the end of the year, it’s time to evaluate some of the games and look back on what transpired and single out some titles that were exceptional in some way or another. Since there was so much gaming (especially video gaming) I’m splitting the posts into two parts: Part I is where I break down what I played this year and Part II will be the actual awards. You might think of this as an uber-Gaming Weekend.

Completed Games

These are games I played until I reached the end, or if it is a game with no discernible end, a game I played for more than ten hours.

Xbox 360 Retail Titles

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Dead Rising
• Viva Piñata
• Guitar Hero II
• Gears of War
• Half-Life 2
• Half-Life 2: Episode 1
• Half-Life 2: Episode 2
• Portal
• Lego Star Wars II
• Saints Row
• BioShock
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent
• Call of Duty 2
• Call of Duty 3
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat
• Prey
• Halo 3
• Tomb Raider: Legend
• Crackdown
• King Kong
• Lost Planet
• Beautiful Katamari
• Condemned: Criminal Origins
• BulletWitch
• F.E.A.R.
• Kameo
• TMNT
• The Darkness
• Mass Effect

Xbox 360 Arcade Titles

• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
• Jewel Quest
• Carcassonne
• Catan
• Alien Hominid HD
• Hexic HD
• Pac-Man: Championship Edition
• Aegis Wing

PlayStation 2 Titles

• God of War II

Nintendo DS Titles

• Planet Puzzle League

Played Games

These are games that I played at least two hours worth, but did not necessarily finish or didn’t put in enough time to say I got all that I could out of them.

Xbox 360 Retail Titles

• Rainbow Six: Vegas
• Forza Motorsport 2
• Fight Night Round 3
• Battlestations: Midway
• Armored Core 4
• Superman Returns
• Rumble Roses XX
• Hitman: Blood Money
• Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
• Tony Hawk’s Project 8
• Rockstar Table Tennis
• Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II
• The Godfather
• Star Trek Legacy
• Phantasy Star Universe
• Ninety-Nine Nights
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
• Enchanted Arms
• NCAA Football 2008
• Earth Defense Force 2017
• Assassin’s Creed
• Rock Band

Xbox 360 Arcade Titles

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989 Arcade)
• Smash TV
• Contra
• Gauntlet
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
• Puzzle Quest
• Zuma

Xbox Titles

• Psychonauts
• Ninja Gaiden Black

PlayStation 2 Titles

• Silent Hill 2
• Rule of Rose
• Haunting Ground

Nintendo DS Titles

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
• Trauma Center: Life in the ER
• Trace Memory
• The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass
• Bust-a-Move DS
• Metroid Pinball
• Animal Crossing: Wild World
• Puyo Pop Fever
• Big Brain Academy
• Meteos
• Kirby Canvas Curse
• Contra 4

Game Boy Advance Titles

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Metroid: Zero Mission

Whoa

By my count that’s something in the neighborhood of 75 games this year. Whew! Of course not all of them were good, and a few only just squeaked over the two hour threshold. But that’s my year in a nutshell. My rough calculations put my gaming time over 700 hours this year, which is like one whole month spent playing games. But it’s okay: I don’t sleep that much and I eat fast.

Non-Video Games

I also played a few new non-video games this year, although far fewer than last year. Here’s the ones I could recall:

• Scene It: Squabble
• Kill Doctor Lucky
• Zombie Nightmare

So there’s the list. It’s been a heck of a year. Stay tuned for the best of the list in Part II.

…The single greatest achievement of the XBox is not its performance or any of the fancy graphics features, but in how I interact with the machine. The relationship you have with your XBox is the most next-gen thing about it.

He goes on to describe what he means by this primarily in terms of how the Live features dictate his gaming or the progression he goes through between powering on the system and actually firing up a game and summarizes the whole thought with this:

I’m turning on the machine before I know what I’m going to play. Instead of thinking, “I’m going to play Gears of War,” I’m thinking, “I’m going to play some XBox.”

I think he’s on to something here but he stops way short of describing what it really means for a console to be next-gen.

It starts with the online element: Live, Home, Wii’s Channels are all part of the always-connected aspect of the current crop of consoles. They leverage the expanding broadband ubiquity into a realm where you have your internet connection—in some way at least—piped right into your living room. The encroachment of your computer’s real source of power (network connectivity, arguably) into your primary living space is something that is happening with these game devices not so much the way it did into your work or home office environments, which was top-down and force-fed to accomplish some particular task either onerous or at the very least razor-focused, but gently from the bottom. It’s not some sort of draconian requirement, it’s presented in a “hey, wouldn’t it be cool…” sort of manner. With the original XBox we saw some of it begin, like the germination of a seed where we had things that were cool growing but had not yet reached their full potential. Whether the potential was obvious to everyone or not doesn’t matter, it was certainly there.

That matters because when the evolutionary steps manifested this time ’round, it felt incremental and, well, obvious. Of course there would be mandatory online presence for every XBox game. Why not? Clearly we needed some sort of focal point for our online profiles (birthing the Gamerscore/Achievements concept which, incidentally, you can bet your bottom dollar will be even more fully explored later this gen by the competition and explode into mania next gen), it’s only natural. And there was no reason why we couldn’t use some of this available space to play some games that weren’t purchased elsewhere but used the network to complete the entire transaction and distribute the files necessary to run the game digitally. So it follows that if we did that with games, why not other stuff—say, movies or TV shows?

It feels less like a paradigm shift and more like a step up because the frameworks for these activities and features were laid several years ago. But the whole premise of the living room box as networked extension of your virtual self is where the real shift is happening, and it has been handled so delicately that I don’t think most people even noticed. You see the gamercards everywhere; but do you consider how they really represent a constantly updated notion of your on- and off-line life? Maybe look at it a different way: Consider 360 FriendSpot’s LiveEye or 360Voice.com and note how easy it is to go about your normal (gaming) activities and using only the simple hooks Microsoft has left in the Live system, monitor, catalog, sort and encapsulate your online life.

For the most part these features and projects are novelties for now: They track a mundane and non-critical part of our activities. Imagine, though, a more robust system. Note that as with the original XBox the features here are either seeds or stages of development for a larger set of possibilities to come. Consider a successor to the 360 which does more than provide API hooks to the games you’re playing, but also notes the TV shows and movies you watch. Think about features like the Friends lists that are generated in IM programs, services like Live but also Netflix and even more robust systems such as those found on sites like Last.fm with it’s data-mined “neighbors” who are really just potential friends based on similar interests culled from tracking activity online. The core of 360 FriendSpot’s functionality does this same thing for Live gamers as well.

The key is integrating the features of Live with a broader scope that encompasses all or at least a much larger number of online activities. Think about what it might be like to have a single online identity whose taste in music, movies, shopping, games and more is easily trackable based on songs listened to, films watched, items purchased and games played. Consider having those things collated into a series of badges or condensed into a small, transferable graphical representation not dissimilar to a gamercard but more broadly applicable. Imagine then having a single point of identity that can be associated with other identities which works across applications and services so that your Netflix friends, your Skype contacts, your AIM buddies and your Live Friends are all part of the same global list then further enhanced with neighbors who represent people you don’t know (yet) but whose aggregated data suggests similar interests.

Now move beyond an abstract “identity” concept into something more like Sony’s Home, with it’s graphical avatar representation which is more akin to Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse concept: A virtual playground where you have not only a collected set of data to define you but also a “character” or a digital self-portrait that interacts in interesting ways (which are still abstract, only less obviously so) with those friends and neighbors. The possibilities expand from there given additional technology and interface refinements (physical gesture control via something like the Wii’s remote?) but it all starts with something as simple as a box in the living room connected to the Internet all the time.

And note that in all this, games are a very minor bit role. But consider that to a certain degree the whole product becomes a sort of game: Like with the meta-game of the Gamerscore which applies a sheen of “game-ness” to your whole online personality, it means neither instant respect nor total disdain but does offer some clues to a person’s actual life and from the player’s perspective brings a sort of unifying theme to all activity centered on the device (in this case the 360). Obviously the system is artificially game-y for the moment because at its heart the 360 is still a traditional game console. What about perhaps a subtle game element to more activities? Would completing an interactive DVD quiz earn some sort of point value? Listening to each of a band’s albums all the way through? Making x number of posts to a particular online forum? If creating a sort of collective game element for more than one game is effective in engaging the audience, why not create a sort of social game element for all digital activity?

Of course, the limitation is the device. The assumption here is that the cohesiveness of the concept is dependent on the ubiquity, or at the very least popularity, of a particular platform. And to a certain extent this is what these console wars are being fought for: To create the perfect launching pad for the cornerstone of the next phase of a digital society. And the polygons are not a factor.