Tunnels of Doom

I’ve been having fun following the Game of the Decade series over on Crispy Gamer, but I have to say that I’m baffled by the result of the first round which was handled by a hand-selected panel (I guess to avoid having the final results be little more than a popularity contest). The initial selections, including the four games added by the CG readership via popular nominations and then a vote-off, were pretty solid I thought. I won’t detail the whole list here but instead I’ll break down the results after the panel (Game Trust) narrowed it down to 32. I also like that they divided the field into four divisions just to keep it interesting.

Koopa Division

1. Metroid Prime vs. 8. Super Smash Bros. Melee
12. Animal Crossing vs. 4. Katamari Damacy
11. Ico vs. 14. Psychonauts
7. Shadow of the Colossus vs. 2. Super Mario Galaxy

I’m not a fan of fighting games because they’re either these super-precise skill matches that I don’t have the patience for or they’re lunatic button mashers with no purpose and Smash Bros. is the worst of the latter. I also happen to think that Metroid Prime is a pretty significant achievement in game design so the choice there is easy. I don’t have much of a preference between Animal Crossing and Katamari, both are quirky fun for a little while but as far as I’m concerned neither holds a candle to Metroid Prime so flipping a coin I’ll say AC. I realize that Psychonauts isn’t a perfect game and there is a lot of love out there for Ico but honestly I never really got much aside from frustration out of Ico and I still think Psychonauts is criminally overlooked despite its near universal critical acclaim. Since I think Shadow of the Colossus is far superior to Ico, I’ll go with Pychonauts and then let Shadow represent Team Ico’s output.

My picks for the next round:

1. Metroid Prime vs. 12. Animal Crossing
14. Psychonauts vs. 7. Shadow of the Colossus

Alucard Division

1. BioShock vs. 9. Portal
5. Grand Theft Auto III vs. 4. Resident Evil 4
6. Fallout 3 vs. 3. Half-Life 2
7. Batman: Arkham Asylum vs. 15. LEGO Star Wars

Portal narrowly edges out BioShock because I have zero complaints about Portal which is as well-crafted and complete of a video game experience as you’re going to encounter in this decade or any other to date while for all of BioShock’s strengths it does have some notable weaknesses. The true travesty present here is that Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was given a reprieve and included in the initial round via community demand but then unjustly pitted against Portal of all things and, well, you have to admit that Portal has a decent shot of being the literal Game of the Decade. ED deserved a better fate. I find it hard not to grant RE4 the edge over GTA given that I simply prefer Resident Evil and survival horror over sandbox games, but I have to admit that other games this decade have improved on what RE4 did and the game itself was primarily great because it took a beloved franchise that was getting stale and brought it into modern times. Given what GTA3 did for gaming in general in the decade, it’s hard not to go with it. I grant Half-Life 2 the win over Fallout 3 even though I probably played Fallout more because at their foundation Half-Life 2 tells a better story (more effectively) than Fallout. Both have their gameplay issues, but Half-Life 2 is the superior game by a small margin. As for Batman vs. Star Wars? I don’t think either game deserves to be here, really. Batman is a great use of the license in a Metroid Prime-style game, while LEGO SW is a great use of the license in a simplified platformer. Neither game is particularly revelatory and both are strong for similar reasons, I give the edge to Batman just on the strength of the extraneous content—which both games have in spades—which in this case is more compelling.

My picks:

9. Portal vs. 5. Grand Theft Auto III
3. Half-Life 2 vs. 7. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Chocobo Division

1. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs. 8. Deus Ex
12. Plants vs Zombies vs. 4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
11. Lumines vs. 14. Peggle
7. The Sims vs. 2. World of Warcraft

The biggest struggle I have in the whole competition is Oblivion versus Deus Ex. Now, I put hundreds of hours into Oblivion and absolutely loved it, but it is hard to say that it is a better contender for Game of the Decade than Deus Ex that was so ahead of its time for so many different reasons. From the FPS/RPG hybrid that would later come back in games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Borderlands (or even Fallout 3 and, in some ways, Oblivion itself) to the fact that you can beat the game without actually killing anyone plus a brilliantly realized story that is far and away better than most of the current crop of “story-driven” games, it really was and is something special. Though it saddens my heart, I have to turn my back on Oblivion and say Deus Ex is ultimately more deserving of the title regardless of what my personal feelings on the matter were. Plants vs. Zombies is cute but no match for KotOR, and Lumines verses Peggle is like saying “do you prefer Peanut Butter and Jelly or Peanut Butter and Jam?” I’ll say Peggle for no reason other than that I played it more so it must be better. I guess. And I doubt any game that didn’t have a very strong case for being the top when the dust settles has a prayer against World of Warcraft which, regardless of your opinion of the game or MMOs in general, has to be on the short list since it’s second only to Minesweeper and FarmVille as “Game You’re Most Likely to be Surprised by Who You Find Playing.”

My Chocobo Division picks:

8. Deus Ex vs. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
14. Peggle vs. World of Warcraft

Bo Jackson Division

1. Halo: Combat Evolved vs. 8. Soulcalibur II
12. SSX vs. 4. Gears of War
6. Advance Wars vs. 14. Left 4 Dead
7. Rock Band vs. 15. Battlefield 1942

Fighting games again? I think the original Halo is good for what it did: Bring FPS legitimately to consoles, so I suppose it’s mildly worthy but at best a long shot. I’d argue that God of War which Soulcalibur beat out brought more to the table as a GotD contender and could have even claimed the spot from Halo, but given the options I’ll grudgingly go with Master Chief’s flawed first appearance. I similarly dislike being asked to choose between a meh racing game and a meh shooter that was mostly just a testosterone overdose applied to Resident Evil 4 but since I passed on RE4 itself I’ll have to give Gears the nod here. Left 4 Dead is a terrible addition in my opinion since even though it had some cool ideas and I had a blast with it, it never stopped reminding me that it needed a sequel or a whole bunch of DLC or something to make it more complete. Advance Wars 2 was better than the original and Jeanne D’Arc was better than them all but I need to give a shout to my turn-based strategy homies so I’ll say AW takes the title. As for Rock Band vs. BF 1942, obviously Battlefield did a great service to modern gaming by paving the way for big multiplayer action games but I think the decade will be more remembered for its plastic peripherals cluttering living rooms around the world than for a game that maybe showed what was possible to the next wave of multiplayer developers. Rock Band gets the crown. All in all, though, I think this is the weakest division by far.

My final picks:

1. Halo: Combat Evolved vs. 4. Gears of War
6. Advance Wars vs. 7. Rock Band

The Final Four

There’s no need to break down the elite eight so I’ll skip ahead to the final four (as I’d vote it):

Koopa Division: Shadow of the Colossus
Alucard Division: Portal
Chocobo Division: World of Warcraft
Bo Jackson Division: Rock Band

I think the shame here is that Chocobo is so ridiculously strong with Oblivion, Deus Ex and WoW while Bo Jackson is so weak. By itself Rock Band is a remarkable achievement and one that I think if you had described to me in 1989 I would have salivated over. But just ten years later we were already seeing the kinds of things arcades were doing (or had done and still managed to fail to make money) and I would have thought, “Moving that concept into the living room? Yeah, I can see that.” For all Rock Band and Guitar Hero and the like have done to make the last decade memorable for fake plastic party rocking, they’re really not bringing anything to the media space that wasn’t already germinating there in some fashion before.

As part of the “Are Games Art?” debate, Shadow of the Colossus certainly (and deservedly) gets presented a lot as evidence supporting the thesis. For this reason it deserves its place here, but as a game it suffers for its art because a lot of the play is, let’s face it, pushing up on the analog stick to move you from point A to point B. It’s an inspiring piece of deconstructive storytelling and and an effective use of the medium to evoke a mood without resorting to a lot of the other-format borrowing that passes for the same in other development houses, which does a lot to (hopefully?) inspire others to follow. And frankly not enough games bother with things like mood and tone and pacing. Still, games are meant to be played and since playing Shadow isn’t as fun as talking about Shadow, it’s close but still the third place finisher.

The great thing about Portal is that in many ways it does what Shadow of the Colossus did without even relying on the last trope Team Ico employed which is the unplayable cut scene: They evoked a mood and told a story without beating the player with any of it. Some games seem to be written for the least attentive person the developers can imagine and practically go so far as to write on the walls of the dungeon/castle/office building/space ship/whatever something like “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING DREAD/TRIUMPH/TENSION/VICTORY/DESPAIR/WHATEVER NOW.” Portal, amusingly, does write on the walls but it writes atmosphere and it writes the seeds of stories and lets you fill in the blanks. Like a wonderful horror movie that doesn’t show you the murder but shows you the other characters’ reaction to finding the body, Portal shows you without telling you. Plus, they do so in the context of a joyous blend of physics tech display, puzzle gaming and mostly non violent first person action that is never not fun to play. Just when Portal feels like it might be wearing out its welcome, the game ends on one of the highest notes in gaming and completes the experience with the most satisfying and rewarding end credits yet. It doesn’t feel developed or designed so much as expertly crafted.

Yet, just when you think you can’t help but say Portal is the Game of the Decade, you have to think about World of Warcraft. The thing about WoW is that it isn’t particularly amazing. Like Rock Band it is more of an amazement to someone from twenty years ago than someone ten years back. Then again, what Blizzard does is rarely amazing in the sense that they’re breaking new ground. Rather, they take established settings and formulas and polish the edges until the whole thing is so glossy and smooth it creates a different kind of amazement more akin to “Why can’t everyone else make games this good?” The differences between WoW and Portal couldn’t be more broad: You have in one hand a tight, perfectly directed experience that wastes no single moment. In the other you have the most sprawling, staggeringly massive collection of high-quality content that could quite possibly never ever end. People who played the open beta of WoW are still grinding through instances and filling their social calendars with raids, happily immersed in a game that cost them $750 over the past five years to play. A rich RPG adventure to play through by yourself, an enviable social experiment to play with friends or to meet new people, World of Warcraft is really the antithesis of Portal in the same format.

So which game best defines the decade?

In the end I have to say World of Warcraft. “Game of the…” discussions are about the past and I don’t think any game better defines the last ten years than an epic online fantasy that tapped into both the social appeal and the human disconnect that may best describe the early 2000s in the years to come. While Portal may be a better game from a critical standpoint and it better represents where I hope games are going, it’s hard not to say that WoW matters more and that it is a better representative for what game developers and game players accomplished this decade.

Now we just have to see if the CG readers agree.

Listen, I’ve not neglected Tunnels of Doom out of some sort of vengeance. There is no animosity here. What happened is this: I found Kongregate and while before I would fire up Tunnels’ visual editor while I was away from my games as a means to remain connected to their sweet time-passing juice even when I lacked physical access to the fruit, I suddenly found myself in a position of either playing the games that occupied my mind or writing about them. Access and longing had forged a state of quantum superposition with a principle Einstein had not forseen: That when two states of a system overlap, other dependent systems collapse.

Actually, Einstein may have already talked about that. I’m not really a physicist, I’m just a gamer.

Ahem. Kongregate. Listen, Flash games are hardly new. Sites that feature a bunch of Flash games are established bedrocks of the online tapestry. And closed systems of imaginary rewards especially as relates to electronic games are also hardly unheard of. But Kongregate’s combination of a meta-game points system, user-submitted games and variety of titles makes it singularly compelling. Combine an accessible form of my favorite distraction, add an established addiction hook (see my year-long infatuation with XBLA Gamerscore points for reference) and add water. What sprouts, leafy and full, is a mind-gripping lock on my attention.

It would be one thing if the site contained just one or two games I liked. But the dangerous combination of tower defense titles, surprisingly rich old-school dungeon crawlers, strategic turn-based combat games, clever puzzle titles the likes of which you will never find on any PlayStation-branded device and the maliciously clever collectible card game tied closely to the already hostile points system and you have a place I can spend hours. And hours.

It’s not that Kongregate has no flaws, it certainly does. A plenteous selection of tower-defense variants and cookie-cutter platformers gives the site a certain redundancy and as cool as the collectible card game (Kongai) is in theory it’s implementation is by turns overwrought and too simplistic. But as something to do in lieu of make-myself-look-busy work and as a competitor with writing for my browser-time, it does it’s job well.

Too well.

Some time ago I compiled a list of my top 30 games of all time. It was about a year ago and for some reason I had call to revisit the list today and noted, with some dismay, that I have altered my list internally since this was published.

In an effort to correct the flaws inherent in the previous list, I’m reprinting it here, updated and revised to include games I’ve played since and games that I’ve reconsidered. Note that my criteria may have changed somewhat but it still remains rooted firmly in games that I’ve played that I feel have delivered the best experiences. Some games I recognize for their base brilliance and others because I just played the heck out of it in spite of some perhaps obvious flaws. For the most part whenever a game has several iterations or minor variants, I chose the one that I feel is best overall which is not meant to diminish the brilliance of the others, but mark that a game can be refined over time and also can in some cases be reduced to less than its original promise. For example, I wouldn’t put the GameCube Resident Evil and the PSOne Resident Evil on the list spearately, I’d merely include the former as being the superior version of the same game.

Finally, it should be noted that there are several games which do not appear because my memory of them is lost in a haze of thousands of games I’ve played and while I recall their general brilliance, I can’t remember enough at my advanced age to know what made them so great. They are on my short list of games to re-play but their omission here is a product of the continual refinement of this list and not of some slight against them. The notable examples are Chrono Trigger and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Full list after the click.

(more…)

Back when I was a wee lad my folks used to take me, on occasion, to various arcades. I believe that often the arcade in question was attached to a Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza “restaurant” whose food offerings contained all the basic ingredients of what you and I commonly refer to as pizza—your doughy crusts, your tomato-based sauces and your melted cheeses—but the flavors they created were quite unlike anything that you might want to pay actual currency to obtain. I’m still unclear how they managed to fail at a task that can be better accomplished with a Thomas’ English Muffin, a plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup and some Kraft Singles, but that’s hardly the point.

During one of these arcade visits I recall specifically seeing a game in the same vein as the popular Dragon’s Lair which was neither that seminal title nor its largely indistinguishable counterpart, Space Ace. This mysterious game involved, somehow, car chases and some kind of gangster activity. That is as far as my memory went. I don’t think I ever actually played the game but it was one of those trivial items that inexplicably left its print on my brain like a steel-toed boot in mud.

Later, after the spread of the Internet, I located the game online and identified it as Cliff Hanger, but I had never seen it since that one childhood encounter. Until yesterday when I stumbled across a copy of it at California Extreme. I played it and it turns out it is as bad of a game as all those Dragon’s Lair laserdisc-based titles are, but it was kind of nice to draw a close on a particularly mystifying recollection. And I did finally figure out why the game stuck with me for so long: The failure screen (akin to the regenerating skeleton sequence from Dragon’s Lair) features a fairly grim depiction of a hanging. It flooded back when I witnessed it again yesterday as being something less than traumatic but something more than easily forgotten. As a lad of an impressionable age, the invisible fingerprint of that scene has manifested itself repeatedly throughout my life in my darkest of nightmares.

I only wish I’d gotten a better picture of it. I’d make it my desktop wallpaper.