Best of 2008 Awards: Best Co-Op Game

Zestful Contemplation's Best of 2008 Awards

Way the hell after 2008 is a thing of the past, it’s Zestful Contemplation’s Best of 2008 Awards. I’m not pretending to make my awards comprehensive or unbiased or any of that other pretentious crap. The fact that these awards reflect my own personal experiences, tastes, and dislikes is exactly the point. I haven’t played every game that came out this year and I’m not going to consider a boatload of titles I never played. But I did play a huge number of games this year, and these choices reflect my personal tastes and thoughts about the games I spent time with in 2008.

Best Cooperative Game

• Gears of War 2
• Left 4 Dead
• Rock Band 2

You know what? There was no contest here. Left 4 Dead wins this by a mile. I’m not going to spend a long time blabbering about why, primarily because I already have in a previous award. This is, plain and simple, one of the best cooperative experiences I have ever had, much less the best of 2008.

Playing through a game together with a friend is, to my taste, worlds more fun than competing against them. For a while it was something that was also fairly rare. I am pleased to see that more and more games are adding in co-op as a feature, and more of them are putting quite a bit of emphasis on it as well. None of them do it as well as Left 4 Dead, however. The visceral thrill of surviving the zombie hordes with the help of a good team and some decent strategy is simply unmatched.

So Apparently iPhoto's Faces Feature Isn't Perfect

Having just installed iPhoto 09 recently, obviously one of the first things I did was to test out its spiffy new ability to detect faces in your photos. Well, let's just say that it's not quite perfect. I'm not saying it doesn't work at all, but... well, just see for yourself.

Ok, so I'll give it credit that this Christmas present label Santa is kind of technically a face, at least, but that doesn't mean it's not amusing anyway. And yes, in the interest of full disclosure, I did tag another picture of said label Santa before this, so maybe this is actually an endorsement of the feature, not the other way around.

So this picture isn't exactly one that I would normally be anxious to show off in a public setting, as it shows my apartment's bathroom after a rather unpleasant plumbing accident. I'll just leave the details at that. Still, the fact that iPhoto somehow found a face in this thing is more than worth putting this ugly pic on display.

And finally, apparently my family's Chicago river cruise tour guide from a couple of summers ago resembles a plastic light-up Halloween skull that my roommate and I decided to name Yorick. Almost makes me feel sorry for the guy. I mean, you can't deny the resemblance.

Best of 2008 Awards: Best Shooting Game

Zestful Contemplation's Best of 2008 Awards

Way the hell after 2008 is a thing of the past, it’s Zestful Contemplation’s Best of 2008 Awards.  I’m not pretending to make my awards comprehensive or unbiased or any of that other pretentious crap.  The fact that these awards reflect my own personal experiences, tastes, and dislikes is exactly the point.  I haven’t played every game that came out this year and I’m not going to consider a boatload of titles I never played.  But I did play a huge number of games this year, and these choices reflect my personal tastes and thoughts about the games I spent time with in 2008.

Best Shooter

• Gears of War 2
• Left 4 Dead

Shooters are quite the competitive category these days. It is a genre I enjoy, but one in which it is easier than some of the other crowded categories for me to choose a favorite. This is because I tend to be rather selective with my shooters. It is a genre from which I accept no mediocrity. The primary reason for this is honestly that I get bored of any shooter that isn’t fantastic, so I don’t waste time or money on anything that’s not pretty much spectacular. Thus, for me, a game like Call of Duty 4 was only a rental. I haven’t even bothered to play Resistance 2 yet. Call of Duty 5 and its WWII setting holds no appeal whatsoever. You see my point. Two shooters in particular managed to sneak their way into my lineup last year. For me the choice was clear. Gears of War 2 was a brilliant dose of high-octane, testosterone packed, spectacular action fun. It was also immensely predictable, bogged down with poorly told story points, riddled with a few too many moments that were overly frustrating, and set damn near entirely in drab underground environments. Left 4 Dead, on the other hand, is a game that is brilliantly simple. There’s no unnecessary story. Just four people, a few guns, and a whole hell of a lot of zombies. The environments themselves tell all the story you need to know (and do a great job of it). It is one of the best cooperative experiences I have ever played in a game. While there are perhaps fewer levels than I might like, you can go back to them countless times without getting bored thanks to the AI Director. This artificial puppeteer keeps things so consistently intense that you’ll never once be bored, changing things up every single run through a level just enough to keep you on your toes and avoid too much predictability, but at the same time rarely lets things feel frustrating or needlessly difficult (unless you happen to be playing on Expert of course, but the entire point of that difficulty level is to be stupidly hard, so I can’t really fault the game for delivering there). I even enjoyed the online play and the versus mode, which are things I normally don’t even touch in shooters. Now that’s an impressive feat. Left 4 Dead is one of the most intense and consistently fun games I have played in a long time. It nails the aesthetic, the difficulty, the co-op mechanics, the online play, the versus mode, and pretty much everything else (hell, even the achievements are pretty well done), making it clearly my favorite shooter of 2008. Now come on, Valve, just give me a few more levels.

Best of 2008 Awards: Best Racing Game

Zestful Contemplation's Best of 2008 Awards

Way the hell after 2008 is a thing of the past, it’s Zestful Contemplation’s Best of 2008 Awards.  I’m not pretending to make my awards comprehensive or unbiased or any of that other pretentious crap.  The fact that these awards reflect my own personal experiences, tastes, and dislikes is exactly the point.  I haven’t played every game that came out this year and I’m not going to consider a boatload of titles I never played.  But I did play a huge number of games this year, and these choices reflect my personal tastes and thoughts about the games I spent time with in 2008.

Best Racing Game

• Burnout Paradise
• Mario Kart Wii

As much as I love Mario Kart and as great as I thought last year’s particular rendition of the game was, let’s face it, it’s not really in the running here.  Mario Kart is fun but this iteration was probably even less innovative than the GameCube installment.  There’s nothing wrong with that mind you, and I had plenty of fun with it, but come on, it’s up against Burnout Paradise. Mario Kart Wii’s biggest new feature was probably its motion controlled steering, which nobody who actually cared about winning every once in a while actually used.  On the other hand, Burnout Paradise took an already awesome racing series, took a rather spectacular leap into an open-world setting, and made it significantly more awesome in the process.  Seeing your Miis cheering from the sidelines of the race courses, while awesome and much-appreciated, just can’t compare.

Rarely does an open world game truly feel like it needs to be open world to me.  Most of the time all it means it that you have to walk farther to get to where you need to go instead of being able to select it from a far more convenient menu.  Sure Burnout Paradise should have given up some of its realism for a restart option, but it used its open world setting to its fullest.  Just driving around randomly at top speed for no reason was immensely entertaining.  Every street had its own records to set.  Every stretch of road contained its own challenges.  Showtime mode is addictive in its simplicity and can be played at any time the player desires.  The game is filled to the brim with fun stuff to do and is one of the most refreshingly fun racing games to appear in quite some time. On top of all that, the developers have produced what has to be one of the more impressive efforts of post-release support for a game seen outside of the Rock Band platform.  The sheer amount of cool free stuff they have released for the game combined with the paid content that is quickly forthcoming has kept this game relevant and continually fun and fresh for far longer than it would have otherwise.  The motorcycle content alone could have been its own $10 download and few probably would have complained. Plus, we’re getting our restart option now too.  And for free.  It’s nice when a developer listens to its fans.

Press X to Not Die

All right, that’s it, timed button pressing minigames have got to stop invading my videogames.

I know it’s some sort of shiny fad or obsession or fetish or in-thing, but they’re not fun.

You hear me developers? Not bloody fun! Unfun. Anti-entertainment. Enjoyability factor zero. Stupendously unentertaining. Spectacular fun-fail of the highest order.

The only reason these stupid things even exist is because developers get on their cinematic high-horse and want to have the spiffy-ultra-cool protagonist do some insane, needlessly showy, bring-in-the-stunt-double move and can’t figure out a way to make it actually, you know, interactive or enjoyable or fun or involving for the player.

“Hey, I know! Let’s throw in some parts where the player will have to randomly press a button that flashes on the screen during the scene suddenly and without any warning whatsoever! That’ll be great! That’ll solve all of our problems! That won’t be distracting or repetitive or annoying or cliched or old or not actually all that interactive at all! It’ll be like a miniature rhythm game slapped in the middle of our super-ultra-shiny-superfluous cutscene. Only without the music. Or the fun. That’ll totally draw the player into the experience and make them forget that our canned movie scene is having all of the fun instead of the player. I’m a freakin’ genius.”

Yeah, right along with the fifty gazillion other people who have now done the same thing.

You know, the idea was acceptably unique when Dragon’s Lair tried it in 1983. It added a small dose of interest to Shenmue. It provided for a few cool moments in God of War. It allowed a couple of tense actions scenes in Resident Evil 4.

But the concept is dead. Done. Overcooked. Destroyed. Played-out.

Take Prince of Persia, for instance. Clearly this was a team that had no earthly idea how to make an enjoyable combat system. I mean, I don’t think these poor guys even knew where to start.

First of all, the whole “combo memorization” thing got old just shortly after Mortal Kombat II. I prefer something slightly less putridly archaic in my action-packed battles, thank you very much.

Secondly, there’s nothing quite as jarring as having the fighting system randomly determine that it’s time to take control completely out of your hands and test your reflexes instead of your skill.

“All right, Prince! Yeah! Show that enemy who’s boss with your sword-slinging prowess. You’ve got him right where you want him. Now, use your skills to -- HOLY CRAP PRESS THE SQUARE BUTTON RIGHT NOW!” “Oops, too late. You fail.”

Now that’s my definition of fun combat, let me tell you.

...

For some reason, more and more of these aggravating twitchy tests appear in the combat sequences the further you get into the game. As if that’s the way I want my progress to be rewarded. As if that’s the way I’m going to be able to tell that my skill is growing and the challenge is rising.

But of course! I’m failing more of these distracting button-matching sequences. I haven’t matched this many shapes since I was in kindergarten. I must be getting better at the game! Or something.

This has to stop.

I’m all for interaction in games. As you might be able to tell from my cleverly subtle wording, I’m decidedly more a fan of games that let you play them as opposed to games that decide to show you crap while you sit back and twiddle your thumbs.

But half-assed, needless, mindless sequences like these “Quick Time Events” aren’t the way to go about it. If you seriously can’t think of any better way to involve me in your sequence, just show me what you have to show me and get on with it. Don’t shove these reflex testers in my face and then smile smugly in the corner thinking you’ve solved the problem of interactivity in cutscenes and created the ultimate involving story sequence.

You haven’t. You’ve created another in a long string of glorified movies that require you to press a button within a half-second time frame to continue watching them.

Would watching movies be more fun this way? Would you finish the ending credits with a smile on your face if you had to press the “2” button on your remote in 3/4 of a second before Neo’s punch landed on Agent Smith’s ugly mug or else it would kick you back to the beginning of the scene?

No, of course not. That would suck. Just like it does in movie sequences within games.

Would Metal Gear Solid have been more fun if, during the interminably long codec sequences, Meryll would have randomly burst out with, “Press the triangle button, Snake!” every few minutes and you would have had to react before the anti-triangle-button explosive charge went off in your head and blew your slimy brain to bits?

Well, maybe, but that’s just because I don’t like Metal Gear Solid anyway.

The point is, if you can figure out a clever way to bring interactivity into your games, then great. More power to you. Go for it. Even if this happens to involve timed button presses.

For instance, look at Indigo Prophecy. It was flawed, but the buttons you had to randomly match on screen at least occasionally matched up with what was going on behind the prompts. Mind you even then you couldn’t actually see what was going on because you were too busy looking for the damn prompts so your eyes couldn’t actually focus on the action, but it was still better than some other implementations.

Or look at Heavy Rain by the same developers. It’s much the same idea only the buttons to press are floating over the in-game items and actions they correspond to.

Now that’s more like it.

But having Prince’s sarcastic little ass blown across the screen every time I don’t press the square button quickly enough?

Well, you can take your Quick Time Event and shove it down your circle button.