Dante
02-01-2007, 08:37 PM
Times Magazine: Top Videogames of the year (http://www.time.com/time/topten/2006/videogames/01.html).
1. WII SPORTS (for Wii)
There is no possible way to say this enough times: great graphics don't make great games. Perfect Dark Zero looked like a Titian, but it was a snooze. Wii Sports—a mini-sports anthology that includes golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling—looks like Colecovision. The little guys on the screen don't even have arms. But it's hilarious, and it shows off the power of the motion-sensitive Wii controller to put you right in the game, sweating and yelling and trying crazy spins and lunges and angles. The tennis game alone is worth the price of admission. Which is nothing, since it comes free with the Wii.
2. GEARS OF WAR (for Xbox 360)
2006 was the year that the overhyped, oversold, long-overdue Gears of—oh, snap, wait a minute, I can see heat ripples rising off my gun barrel. No, seriously, you gotta check it out—after I fire I can see heat ripples in the air over my gun. It is just bizarre that a game can be this detailed and look this good. I have more quibbles than most with the gameplay—oh my God, CliffyB, don't make me hit X every time I want to pick up ammo, just make it automatic like in every other damn shooter in history! But the graphics make it deeply immersive, the voice acting is actually pretty good, and—I'm sorry, I could just stare at those heat ripples all day.
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. (for Nintendo DS)
It's OK for a game to be derivative—when it's derived from awesomeness. This is the same loopy, addictive side-scrolling action Mario has been serving up for some time now, but it's never looked better. The graphics are bright and clean, with just a touch of 3D, and the music is funky-fresh. And there are still surprises—you never know when you're going to pop up through the clouds, or slip down an ice-slide, or crash down into a cave or an underwater seaweed forest, or pop open an entire new secret world. Although now every time he says "that's-a so nice!" he sounds just a tiny bit like Borat.
4. LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS (for Wii)
I prefer to finish a game before I review it. That hasn't been possible with Twilight Princess, because it's really, really long. That's a good thing: Zelda games are like novels, you want to get lost in them. The plot finds our young friend Link doing farm-type things in his peaceful little hometown. Strange creatures, fantastical journey, imperiled princess, you get the basic idea. This is basically a GameCube title redeveloped for the Wii, and a lot of the game's freshness comes from the clever new uses Nintendo found for the Wii-mote—aiming a bow-and-arrow, landing a fish, and so on. A ringing endorsement of the Wii platform, and a worthy addition to a hall-of-fame series.
5. RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN (for PS3)
Yay for Resistance, the only PS3 title that's actually worth all that money, kind of, almost. The concept is high: It's 1951, but not your 1951, human. In this version of history earth has been blighted by an alien threat called the Chimera, and you're slugging it out with them in a grim, deeply atmospheric, retro-futuristic version of Europe. Lots of really ingeniously deadly weapons, palls of doomy smoke, colossal levels—this is what major computational power is for. Plus, the multi-player is dope. Vive la Resistance.
6. PREY (for PC, Xbox 360)
OK, you're a Native American guy, and you're bummed because a bunch of frankly pretty gross-looking aliens just flew and down and slurped up your whole reservation, including your sweetie. Not cool. It's rare that we get any genuinely innovative takes on the shoot-'em-up genre, but Prey has some really smart ideas about how to use the dangerously realistic Doom 3 engine—watch for fun with teleportation portals and some gnarly firefights in variable gravity. The alien ship blends the organic and the technological in really disturbing ways, and unlike in Doom 3 they don't go overboard with the shadows—you can actually see the full horror before you kill it.
7. ROCKSTAR GAMES PRESENTS TABLE TENNIS (for Xbox 360)
They must have been drinking something other than hot coffee (get it? get it?) over at Rockstar Games—best known for its ultra-violent Grand Theft Auto series—when they committed to a ping-pong game. Except wait, it's actually good. The jangly caffeinated back-and-forth rhythm of ping-pong is oddly adrenalizing, and there's enough shot and spin variations to make this a real heads-up strategic battle. The visuals are spot-on—love those dreary high-school gymnasiums, complete with spooky gym acoustics. Plus, it's cheap. Please, gaming gods, let them port this to the Wii.
8. GUITAR HERO 2 (for PS2)
Probably the greatest novelty-controller-based video game of all time, Guitar Hero 2 will make you feel like you're a rock star. You are not. You're just pressing buttons on the neck of a little plastic guitar as color-coded notes stream by onscreen, but wow, it feels so good! There's also some co-op action, where one player handles lead, the other the rhythm or bass tracks. Guitar Hero 2 comes with 64 songs, including some legitimately eternal anthems like Guns'n'Roses "Sweet Child o' Mine" and The Police's "Message in a Bottle." They're covers, but come on—use your illusion, people.
9. LEGO STAR WARS II: THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY (for Xbox, Xbox 360, Gamecube, PS2)
It's like a mashup: The sci-fi grandeur of the original Star Wars movies (this game is blessedly midichlorian-free) with the winning charm of Legos. You play through a bizarro version of the first three movies, where everything—Leia, Boba, Dagobah, Jabba, Jawas—is made of Legos. Shoot them, and they spring apart into their component Legos. It's a double-shot of nostalgia for parents and just hilarious for kids Ð all the violence is played for laughs. And you have to give it up for George Lucas, who lets you commit Star Wars blasphemy. Haven't you always wanted to stick Greedo's head on Leia's body? Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
10. BULLY (for PS2)
The thing non-gamers miss about Rockstar, who make the controversial Grand Theft Auto games, is that they're storytellers. Graphics-wise their games are nothing special, but they use games to tell rich, branching, hydra-headed stories, and that's what makes them interesting. In Bully they take that narrative sensibility to a private school dominated by warring cliques: jocks, nerds, bullies, girls, etc. You play Jimmy, and your job is to scuffle your way through the social hierarchy, righting wrongs and shutting down the bad kids (put your outrage down, folks, this is an anti-bullying game). Bully throws new characters and storylines and mini-games and environments at you so relentlessly, it's impossible to get bored, and the script is witty and playfully self-aware. Plus, you can make a dude kiss another dude. Those Rockstar folks have got stones.
Do you agree with time magazine?
1. WII SPORTS (for Wii)
There is no possible way to say this enough times: great graphics don't make great games. Perfect Dark Zero looked like a Titian, but it was a snooze. Wii Sports—a mini-sports anthology that includes golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling—looks like Colecovision. The little guys on the screen don't even have arms. But it's hilarious, and it shows off the power of the motion-sensitive Wii controller to put you right in the game, sweating and yelling and trying crazy spins and lunges and angles. The tennis game alone is worth the price of admission. Which is nothing, since it comes free with the Wii.
2. GEARS OF WAR (for Xbox 360)
2006 was the year that the overhyped, oversold, long-overdue Gears of—oh, snap, wait a minute, I can see heat ripples rising off my gun barrel. No, seriously, you gotta check it out—after I fire I can see heat ripples in the air over my gun. It is just bizarre that a game can be this detailed and look this good. I have more quibbles than most with the gameplay—oh my God, CliffyB, don't make me hit X every time I want to pick up ammo, just make it automatic like in every other damn shooter in history! But the graphics make it deeply immersive, the voice acting is actually pretty good, and—I'm sorry, I could just stare at those heat ripples all day.
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. (for Nintendo DS)
It's OK for a game to be derivative—when it's derived from awesomeness. This is the same loopy, addictive side-scrolling action Mario has been serving up for some time now, but it's never looked better. The graphics are bright and clean, with just a touch of 3D, and the music is funky-fresh. And there are still surprises—you never know when you're going to pop up through the clouds, or slip down an ice-slide, or crash down into a cave or an underwater seaweed forest, or pop open an entire new secret world. Although now every time he says "that's-a so nice!" he sounds just a tiny bit like Borat.
4. LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS (for Wii)
I prefer to finish a game before I review it. That hasn't been possible with Twilight Princess, because it's really, really long. That's a good thing: Zelda games are like novels, you want to get lost in them. The plot finds our young friend Link doing farm-type things in his peaceful little hometown. Strange creatures, fantastical journey, imperiled princess, you get the basic idea. This is basically a GameCube title redeveloped for the Wii, and a lot of the game's freshness comes from the clever new uses Nintendo found for the Wii-mote—aiming a bow-and-arrow, landing a fish, and so on. A ringing endorsement of the Wii platform, and a worthy addition to a hall-of-fame series.
5. RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN (for PS3)
Yay for Resistance, the only PS3 title that's actually worth all that money, kind of, almost. The concept is high: It's 1951, but not your 1951, human. In this version of history earth has been blighted by an alien threat called the Chimera, and you're slugging it out with them in a grim, deeply atmospheric, retro-futuristic version of Europe. Lots of really ingeniously deadly weapons, palls of doomy smoke, colossal levels—this is what major computational power is for. Plus, the multi-player is dope. Vive la Resistance.
6. PREY (for PC, Xbox 360)
OK, you're a Native American guy, and you're bummed because a bunch of frankly pretty gross-looking aliens just flew and down and slurped up your whole reservation, including your sweetie. Not cool. It's rare that we get any genuinely innovative takes on the shoot-'em-up genre, but Prey has some really smart ideas about how to use the dangerously realistic Doom 3 engine—watch for fun with teleportation portals and some gnarly firefights in variable gravity. The alien ship blends the organic and the technological in really disturbing ways, and unlike in Doom 3 they don't go overboard with the shadows—you can actually see the full horror before you kill it.
7. ROCKSTAR GAMES PRESENTS TABLE TENNIS (for Xbox 360)
They must have been drinking something other than hot coffee (get it? get it?) over at Rockstar Games—best known for its ultra-violent Grand Theft Auto series—when they committed to a ping-pong game. Except wait, it's actually good. The jangly caffeinated back-and-forth rhythm of ping-pong is oddly adrenalizing, and there's enough shot and spin variations to make this a real heads-up strategic battle. The visuals are spot-on—love those dreary high-school gymnasiums, complete with spooky gym acoustics. Plus, it's cheap. Please, gaming gods, let them port this to the Wii.
8. GUITAR HERO 2 (for PS2)
Probably the greatest novelty-controller-based video game of all time, Guitar Hero 2 will make you feel like you're a rock star. You are not. You're just pressing buttons on the neck of a little plastic guitar as color-coded notes stream by onscreen, but wow, it feels so good! There's also some co-op action, where one player handles lead, the other the rhythm or bass tracks. Guitar Hero 2 comes with 64 songs, including some legitimately eternal anthems like Guns'n'Roses "Sweet Child o' Mine" and The Police's "Message in a Bottle." They're covers, but come on—use your illusion, people.
9. LEGO STAR WARS II: THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY (for Xbox, Xbox 360, Gamecube, PS2)
It's like a mashup: The sci-fi grandeur of the original Star Wars movies (this game is blessedly midichlorian-free) with the winning charm of Legos. You play through a bizarro version of the first three movies, where everything—Leia, Boba, Dagobah, Jabba, Jawas—is made of Legos. Shoot them, and they spring apart into their component Legos. It's a double-shot of nostalgia for parents and just hilarious for kids Ð all the violence is played for laughs. And you have to give it up for George Lucas, who lets you commit Star Wars blasphemy. Haven't you always wanted to stick Greedo's head on Leia's body? Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
10. BULLY (for PS2)
The thing non-gamers miss about Rockstar, who make the controversial Grand Theft Auto games, is that they're storytellers. Graphics-wise their games are nothing special, but they use games to tell rich, branching, hydra-headed stories, and that's what makes them interesting. In Bully they take that narrative sensibility to a private school dominated by warring cliques: jocks, nerds, bullies, girls, etc. You play Jimmy, and your job is to scuffle your way through the social hierarchy, righting wrongs and shutting down the bad kids (put your outrage down, folks, this is an anti-bullying game). Bully throws new characters and storylines and mini-games and environments at you so relentlessly, it's impossible to get bored, and the script is witty and playfully self-aware. Plus, you can make a dude kiss another dude. Those Rockstar folks have got stones.
Do you agree with time magazine?