Last year, the Web magazine Slate (which, like NEWSWEEK, is owned by The Washington Post) convened its first ever Gaming Club to discuss the year in videogames. Participants included New York Times op-ed page staff editor Chris Suellentrop, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, New York Times games reporter Seth Schiesel, and the staff of Level Up. We debated and discussed such notable titles as BioShock, Halo 3, Desktop Tower Defense, Portal and more before drawing things to a gentlemanly close. Now don't go calling it a comeback, but we've returned for a second installment of what we all hope will be an annual affair. The epistolary exchange kicked off yesterday with three of the Four Musketeers contributing, while today's round will include the full quartet. Some excerpts:
Chris Suellentrop, New York Times: One thing I've been wondering: Is it a good sign or a bad sign for the medium that this year's crop of games has produced such a wide divergence of opinion? Michael "the Brainy Gamer" Abbott thinks Fable 2 is perhaps "the most seductive game world ever created." Chris Dahlen thinks Fallout 3 "balances—and sometimes betters—the approaches of other videogame masterpieces: the retro immersion of BioShock, the paranoia of Portal, the exploration of Oblivion and the seamless storytelling of Half-Life 2. The pseudonymous "Iroquois Pliskin" says GTA IV is "a classic, and stands head and shoulders above its previous iterations and nearly every other game released this year."
Those are three more of the smartest people writing about games. They each think their Game of the Year is a new addition to the canon. Maybe they're right. Or, more likely, this was a year of just-misses, which is why there's an absence of consensus.
Stephen Totilo, MTV News: Fable II as Game of the Year? Getting warmer. In the reverse order of what happens in GTA IV, this game begins with a poorly defined character in an uninteresting medieval European fantasy world but winds up with you controlling a man or woman who is literally the shape of the choices you've made in the game. All that celery he ate made my guy skinny; his ample scars came because he was a clumsy swordsman; his youthful visage remained, because I chose not to sacrifice his looks when given the alternate option to sacrifice a maiden to the gods instead. Ten years from now, the world will remember Nov. 4, 2008, as the day America elected its first black president. I'll also remember that day, I'm sure, as the day when I was first emotionally affected by a video game. Pausing my DVR just after California was called for Obama, I had to go back to Fable II to make the game's final moral decision, a triple-optioned Sophie's choice involving money, loved ones, and community that would affect characters I'd interacted with for weeks. I'm still haunted by the pick I made. Obama's victory speech later that night distracted me from the unease that my final actions had put in my heart, but as I went to bed, with cheers still echoing down the Brooklyn streets near my apartment, I was haunted by the wonderful emotional pain I finally felt from a video game.
Yeah, that's my frontrunner for Game of the Year.
N'Gai Croal, Newsweek: [Fallout 3 and Braid] aren't the only two games I'm considering for whatever top 10 list I assemble whenever I assemble it; others include Patapon, Grand Theft Auto IV, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, Gears of War 2, LittleBigPlanet, Left 4 Dead, and Play Auditorium. But I'll end here by asking each of you to name and discuss the game you've had the hardest time expressing your opinion of. For me, it's Resistance 2, a staggering work of heartbreaking mediocrity from one of the industry's most accomplished studios. Staggering in its we-put-every-dollar-up-on-the-screen production values, in its scope, in its careful borrowing from all the right touchstones of the shooter genre. Heartbreaking in that its overblown scale may have helped do it in, in that it has created a fictional world that over two games has never truly connected with me, in enemy encounters that hit all the notes without ever quite playing the tune. It's not mediocre in the way that most games are mediocre. It's just off, and for the life of me I still can't figure out a succinct way to explain why.
Any games from 2008 make you feel that way?
Consider this an open thread for sharing your opinions on our discussion as well as your favorite games of 2008, and check back later for a post on Round 2.
