The Burning Crusade gets my vote. I've clocked quite a few hours into that sucker, and I'm still playing.. so.. if it keeps me entertained for that long, I think it deserves my vote.

Rock Band should be there but no one except me and my mom rock out, so

I'm surprised too. I haven't played it, but considering how I see people leaving the mall every day with that huge box in their hands, it can't be that bad.

The games valve make have soul.

And brattitude.

A long time ago, I told myself that I wouldn't give Bioshock the game of year. But now, about my 3rd run-through, I have to say it gets my vote.

I don't know, it was just one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with a video game. Things are a bit repetitive in places, but I still just plain love the game. The very first time I played through it, I was hooked. It was my favorite game ever at that time. And even though the games I'm playing now are really fun, I just haven't found that "satisfaction" that I had the first time I played through Bioshock.


P.S. If Super Mario Galaxy wins, that's fine. It's one of my favorite Mario's to date.

P.P.S. If Halo 3 wins, I will punch everyone in the face who voted for it. Repeatedly. Tenfold.

P.P.P.S. If I had voted sooner, Halo 3 would've been my letdown of the year.

P.P.P.P.S. I agree with the disqualification of The Orange Box by a few people. It is indeed a very fucking awesome package, but the fact that it has numerous games is unfair. It should be a choice of one out the package.

The reason I combined The Orange Box games into one category is to give all of them a chance.  Most people voted for Portal, then TF2, and only a handful picked Episode 2.  Portal definitely would have made it into the top 10, but perhaps not the others.  This way, whatever game from Orange Box you liked you can vote for.

If it wins (or maybe even now) I will create a poll asking Best Game of The Orange Box.

i'm usually a sucker for things like that, but i really didn't like bioshock. i don't think HYPE and DESIGN INTENT has ever ruined a game before for me. all the utter bullshit that they kept claiming the game would accomplish in the story department really got my hopes up. the guy who wrote that shit is such a fucking retard. i read a heard a few interviews with him and he kept foaming about all these complicated moral issues that would be constantly at work but when it came right down to it, bioshock ended up being some heavy-handed splatter of good and evil wrapped up in a generally typical game story of greed. it's not BAD, but it's really not special. either way, i've never seen anybody in my entire life who so completely overestimates their faculties as a writer as ken levine does. he's lucky that bioshock is so fucking beautiful. as dumb as gamers are, i don't think anybody would really fall for his shit otherwise.

anyway, i picked mario galaxy(currently i am the tie-breaker!! my vote is important!!!). fun little game and the only wii game i've played that i never grew to hate.

What do some people have against the halo series? To me, it is one of the best game series created. Plenty of other people would agree. Then you have those that think it is pretty bad. I don't understand, can someone fill me in on why they don't like it? 

as far as i can tell, it's all about the combat and the emphasis on multiplayer. people seem to REALLY dig that, but i'm just not one of them. and beyond that, the game series really doesn't have anything else to offer. i haven't played the third one, but i found the other two visually bland with boring music and an even more uninteresting story and overall design. of course, i'm not the type that really gives too much of a shit about multi-player, and that really seems to instantly exclude me from the target audience.

unless i'm really missing something dramatically important about the game, halo is probably the most overrated game series i've ever come across. that's really saying something because i can typically find redeeming qualities in any first person shooter. i even managed to enjoy fucking project: snowblind despite it being a dreadful videogame experience. i require a little bit of substance and innovation when i'm playing a videogame, and there just isn't any in halo.

still, what irks most people i think is how it gets put on such a lofty fucking pedestal. the game just IS NOT that good, regardless of how much fun people can have with it with friends or whatever. i know people who generally like the game, but get really irritated when people talk about it like it's some superior first person experience. i'm of the belief that the only reason why halo became a NAME in games was because of all the xbox owners who had to convince themselves that the $300 they spent on their system wasn't a total waste of time. it's kinda perplexing now that xbox is the best console and STILL people cling to halo like it's the videogame equivalent of the orgasm.

i'm of the belief that the only reason why halo became a NAME in games was because of all the xbox owners who had to convince themselves that the $300 they spent on their system wasn't a total waste of time.

So i'm not the only one!!

I think it also has to do with the fact that at the time, FPSs on consoles were basically nonexistent and people were like WOW NEW GENRE.

i'm usually a sucker for things like that, but i really didn't like bioshock. i don't think HYPE and DESIGN INTENT has ever ruined a game before for me. all the utter bullshit that they kept claiming the game would accomplish in the story department really got my hopes up. the guy who wrote that shit is such a fucking retard. i read a heard a few interviews with him and he kept foaming about all these complicated moral issues that would be constantly at work but when it came right down to it, bioshock ended up being some heavy-handed splatter of good and evil wrapped up in a generally typical game story of greed. it's not BAD, but it's really not special. either way, i've never seen anybody in my entire life who so completely overestimates their faculties as a writer as ken levine does. he's lucky that bioshock is so fucking beautiful. as dumb as gamers are, i don't think anybody would really fall for his shit otherwise.

you're kidding right?

Bioshock had the best plot of any game I've ever played to date bro. how can you say it's typical? it's the first game I've ever seen that actually levels an extremely harsh criticism against a political ideology that isn't just FACISM. I mean, I've seen people say Andrew Ryan's shit before the game became popular and all the crazy shit in the game justified by libertarian ideologues; you don't even have to look beyond Rand's writings.

I didn't pay attention to any of the hype at all, so I didn't care about this moral issue boiling down to "kill a babby/no dooooont" but I thought the political critique was spot on, something that creators in any medium usually fail to do (hi Matrix trilogy how much dick can you suck), and if the trend of games were to lean to relevant issues and criticisms around fairly interesting characters and a decent plot twist that actually makes sense within context, I would be ridiculously happy. I don't see how you see it as good vs evil; the neat little implication is that the libertarian will act on what he believes is good for everyone and will die on his own terms (as Ryan did) and even though they have the best of intentions, horrible shit will ineventibly happen. if you want to boil away all the politics or just talk about Fontaine himself (which was a small let down) maybe, but the main conflict of the game being between someone who was trying to create utopia and never sold out once and some dude just hitting people with a wrench didn't seem like a clear cut good and evil story.

it's also not greed with Ryan, but yeah with Fontaine (probably the weakest part of the game that I think people give a let considering the plot twist right before it). as far as games go, I don't think I've seen one deliver a message so well and so bitterly. the last part of the game was kind of bad (in a mostly stereotypical way, not in an Indigo Prophecy way) but before that I enjoyed every second of the plot.

so yeah it got my vote!

But the thing is, Bioshock kept pushing it's LOL MORALS engine, in which you only have GOOD OR EVIL for only certain situations in the game.

The way they kept describing it made it seem like KotOR, in which every action or conversation has the possibility to be GOOD or EVIL.

He just said he ignored most of the hype. The game itself didn't push MORALS OH NO a lot, really. I also didn't pay much attention to the hype, I just figured it would be a good game and I downloaded the demo, got hooked, then bought it.


And Hundley pretty much summed me up on Halo 3. Although I do tend to like some multiplayer, I don't get Halo 3. I think that Call of Duty 4's is far superior.

you're kidding right?

Bioshock had the best plot of any game I've ever played to date bro. how can you say it's typical? it's the first game I've ever seen that actually levels an extremely harsh criticism against a political ideology that isn't just FACISM. I mean, I've seen people say Andrew Ryan's shit before the game became popular and all the crazy shit in the game justified by libertarian ideologues; you don't even have to look beyond Rand's writings.

I didn't pay attention to any of the hype at all, so I didn't care about this moral issue boiling down to "kill a babby/no dooooont" but I thought the political critique was spot on, something that creators in any medium usually fail to do (hi Matrix trilogy how much dick can you suck), and if the trend of games were to lean to relevant issues and criticisms around fairly interesting characters and a decent plot twist that actually makes sense within context, I would be ridiculously happy. I don't see how you see it as good vs evil; the neat little implication is that the libertarian will act on what he believes is good for everyone and will die on his own terms (as Ryan did) and even though they have the best of intentions, horrible shit will ineventibly happen. if you want to boil away all the politics or just talk about Fontaine himself (which was a small let down) maybe, but the main conflict of the game being between someone who was trying to create utopia and never sold out once and some dude just hitting people with a wrench didn't seem like a clear cut good and evil story.

it's also not greed with Ryan, but yeah with Fontaine (probably the weakest part of the game that I think people give a let considering the plot twist right before it). as far as games go, I don't think I've seen one deliver a message so well and so bitterly. the last part of the game was kind of bad (in a mostly stereotypical way, not in an Indigo Prophecy way) but before that I enjoyed every second of the plot.

so yeah it got my vote!

i'll be honest with you: i didn't actually finish the game. i played several hours of it, got the details of the rest from talking to people and reading about it, and watched each of the [dreadful] endings. when it all comes down to it, i really can't speak a whole lot about the backstory.

what i did play, however, left me really underwhelmed. there was never a point where i found myself saying HEY THIS IS WELL WRITTEN/EXECUTED/MORALLY CHALLENGING which is, like i said, what ken levine was insisting he was doing the whole time. i get really bored by games and stories where there is this overarching concept(whether or not it's good means nothing to me) that is the foundation for the entire story, but the vast majority of things you read/do are just not very skillfully put together or of any legitimate creative value by themselves. this may be more of a particular opinion of literature and creativity in general, but it's my belief that for a work to really be of genuine quality, it needs to perpetually working as a whole. you can take excerpts out of classic literature, film, and even some games and see their inherent creative worth independently of the greater context. i saw none of that in bioshock, apart from how poignant the game physically looked, which, to be perfectly honest, rubbed me the wrong way anyway. the lead visual designer of bioshock should absolutely write a nicely written thank you letter to the lead visual designer of fallout. must be pretty easy designing the style and personality for a world like rapture when some other dude effectively did it for you several years ago.

anyway, this is the same reaction i had to silent hill 2, despite everyone saying it was BRILLIANT. you play the fucking thing for 5 hours and it is just MONSTORS and SCARY and i don't care at all. actually, faulkner's as i lay dying did this too, come to think of it, but i forgave faulkner because you're given all the critical information at a point in the story where you become really acutely aware of the absurdity of the whole story. the first half of as i lay dying bored me with the tale of SORROW and TOUGH LUCK, but the book became hilarious after you find out that the mother hates them all. i've never seen futility presented with such clarity and purity before.

unfortunately, i'm not going to give ken levine that much credit. regardless of what higher concepts levine is getting at in some extraordinarily roundabout way, i do not think the act of getting through bioshock is insightful or even particularly worthwhile. i really, really hate using a bad high school creative writing cliche, but it's telling and not showing. it feels more like A TREATISE ON OBJECTIVISM happening somewhere in the distance as you butcher creepy mutants in the dark while solving creepy puzzles. i'm certain that this is an over-simplification and i missed out on some well-written, conceptually intriguing scenarios, but i don't have the patience to sit through some largely generic survival horror gorefest to hear a couple of mildly interesting musings by a videogame designer late in the game.


ps i am not going to debate that it isn't the best plot ever in a videogame. to be honest, i believe you! i've never played a videogame that i thought had a particularly good plot. all the games that i call well written/designed were just executed well despite the fact that the major thrust of the work is fairly useless or unimpressive.

i'll be honest with you: i didn't actually finish the game. i played several hours of it, got the details of the rest from talking to people and reading about it, and watched each of the [dreadful] endings. when it all comes down to it, i really can't speak a whole lot about the backstory.

what i did play, however, left me really underwhelmed. there was never a point where i found myself saying HEY THIS IS WELL WRITTEN/EXECUTED/MORALLY CHALLENGING which is, like i said, what ken levine was insisting he was doing the whole time. i get really bored by games and stories where there is this overarching concept(whether or not it's good means nothing to me) that is the foundation for the entire story, but the vast majority of things you read/do are just not very skillfully put together or of any legitimate creative value by themselves. this may be more of a particular opinion of literature and creativity in general, but it's my belief that for a work to really be of genuine quality, it needs to perpetually working as a whole. you can take excerpts out of classic literature, film, and even some games and see their inherent creative worth independently of the greater context. i saw none of that in bioshock, apart from how poignant the game physically looked, which, to be perfectly honest, rubbed me the wrong way anyway. the lead visual designer of bioshock should absolutely write a nicely written thank you letter to the lead visual designer of fallout. must be pretty easy designing the style and personality for a world like rapture when some other dude effectively did it for you several years ago.

anyway, this is the same reaction i had to silent hill 2, despite everyone saying it was BRILLIANT. you play the fucking thing for 5 hours and it is just MONSTORS and SCARY and i don't care at all. actually, faulkner's as i lay dying did this too, come to think of it, but i forgave faulkner because you're given all the critical information at a point in the story where you become really acutely aware of the absurdity of the whole story. the first half of as i lay dying bored me with the tale of SORROW and TOUGH LUCK, but the book became hilarious after you find out that the mother hates them all. i've never seen futility presented with such clarity and purity before.

unfortunately, i'm not going to give ken levine that much credit. regardless of what higher concepts levine is getting at in some extraordinarily roundabout way, i do not think the act of getting through bioshock is insightful or even particularly worthwhile. i really, really hate using a bad high school creative writing cliche, but it's telling and not showing. it feels more like A TREATISE ON OBJECTIVISM happening somewhere in the distance as you butcher creepy mutants in the dark while solving creepy puzzles. i'm certain that this is an over-simplification and i missed out on some well-written, conceptually intriguing scenarios, but i don't have the patience to sit through some largely generic survival horror gorefest to hear a couple of mildly interesting musings by a videogame designer late in the game.


ps i am not going to debate that it isn't the best plot ever in a videogame. to be honest, i believe you! i've never played a videogame that i thought had a particularly good plot. all the games that i call well written/designed were just executed well.

a lot of it is because I never heard anything about moral choices. haha, I know it's shitty symbolism, but I thought the chains on your character's hands were a nice tongue in cheek YOU'RE TRAPPED HERE NOW ENJOY THE RIDE, and basically took for granted I'd have little choice! but I'm dumb like that.

I guess part of the problem is something panda and I are discussing; games don't really lend themselves to criticism well, since it's so difficult. I mean, I'd say what Bioshock did as far as interaction, it did well; like the ingame explanation for not dying, the stores being placed around the city after mobrule becomes active since the cops are privately funded, even dumb little call backs to the 1920s or whenever the game was set. but like, I don't think there is a way for the critique on objectivism to have come out in any way other than as background noise, outside of some ridiculous edutainment shit which I think is just beside the point.

I bet if I had followed the game at all, I'd be pissed (since I have a huge problem separating art from artist usually (except for gangsta rap (white guilt (parentheses))) I had to count to make sure I got them all) but since I didn't, I really liked how your character is purposefully underdeveloped (because of a plot thing I'm not sure I should talk about or not) and you are essentially the perfect slave. I'm probably giving them too much credit, especially considering the stuff they seem to have hyped up before, so w/e!

but yeah, I don't think a game like this could have lent itself to the Half Life 2 style, because I really felt like the driving ethic behind the game was a political criticism and well, outside of massive satire (like, had Bioshock been set DURING the fall of the city, maybe), it's kind of hard to pull off. actually, that parenthetical would have been an interesting idea so maybe you are right!

still, I really appreciate a game that tries to make a real message, and while characters were sacrificed for that message, I still didn't play much this year anyways so Bioshock #1 (I played Portal and TF2 so w/e).

1984 THE GAME: YOU ARE A FACE DODGE A BOOT 0 LIVES LEFT.

also As I Lay Dying is the only Faulkner book I picked up and never even bothered to try finishing, and now I'm a retard and can't read complex words (only slack grammaticals).

but like, I don't think there is a way for the critique on objectivism to have come out in any way other than as background noise, outside of some ridiculous edutainment shit which I think is just beside the point.

actually i don't think it's beside the point at all and i almost devoted a paragraph to it but my stupid post was getting long enough anyway. i kinda feel like they did as good as could possibly been done with bioshock. there just isn't that much room for substance, given that so much of the game's events really deal with LARGE POWERFUL PEOPLE that you rarely get to literally interact with. all that's left are the borderline retarded mutants running around and the mute main character, both of which realistically have little to no dramatic potential. you can really summarize all of it as YEAH IT DIDN'T WORK AND GOT MESSY and not miss out on that much, at least from what i've seen.

I guess part of the problem is something panda and I are discussing; games don't really lend themselves to criticism well, since it's so difficult.

yeah i know. you're really left to just taking it AS IS and trying to develop some kind of context based almost entirely on the quantity of mistakes. this is why i voted for mario galaxy. mario galaxy is NOT a better game than bioshock, but i never ended up getting terminally irked with its horrible mistakes. it's good for what it's goal is: to help me pretend i do not have a brain and am perfectly happy with assuming the persona of a fat plumber making cute little beep noises as he travels the galaxy looking for stars and coins.

I bet if I had followed the game at all, I'd be pissed (since I have a huge problem separating art from artist usually (except for gangsta rap (white guilt (parentheses))) I had to count to make sure I got them all) but since I didn't, I really liked how your character is purposefully underdeveloped (because of a plot thing I'm not sure I should talk about or not) and you are essentially the perfect slave. I'm probably giving them too much credit, especially considering the stuff they seem to have hyped up before, so w/e!

yeah man, you're pretty lucky you didn't follow any of that. ken levine is a really disgusting guy to listen to. i mean, it's clear that he isn't retarded, and he did design a quality game, but he made all these claims for the game which just weren't in there. or if they were, they were nowhere near as "revolutionizing" as he constantly claimed them to be.

but yeah, I don't think a game like this could have lent itself to the Half Life 2 style, because I really felt like the driving ethic behind the game was a political criticism and well, outside of massive satire (like, had Bioshock been set DURING the fall of the city, maybe), it's kind of hard to pull off. actually, that parenthetical would have been an interesting idea so maybe you are right!

i absolutely agree, particularly about your parenthetical. bioshock was so far after the fact that not much interesting really COULD happen apart from just tearing it all down. in fact, that's really what kept system shock 2 from screwing up in the same way that bioshock screwed up. most everything that could happened has already happened and there's not much going on BUT everyone involved in the critical events of the backstory chronicled everything, usually as it was happening. plus, the order in which you get the recordings in system shock 2 were typically in chronological order, so you really could experience the events and the aftermath simultaneously. my brother even spent some time going around the various decks trying to figure out who all the unnamed dead bodies were. it was actually kinda sad getting to know those characters as they do neat shit and then finding their rotting corpse in a cargo bay or something.

regardless, i think i have grown kinda tired of games that take place IN THE AFTERMATH, particularly if the story itself was really neat despite it relying on stuff that happened prior to what the story covers. like i can put fallout on and have some fun with it, but i'd really have a lot more fun seeing the apocalypse actually happening.

still, I really appreciate a game that tries to make a real message, and while characters were sacrificed for that message, I still didn't play much this year anyways so Bioshock #1 (I played Portal and TF2 so w/e).

yeah, definitely. i don't want to give the wrong impression. i do like bioshock, and do appreciate that they wanted to do something more than BULLSHIT COMBAT. i'm just bummed that the game doesn't have MORE, you know? it was clearly their desire to make something really worthwhile and meaningful, but there is way too much dead air. i kinda feel like this was like the game industry's ONE CHANCE to make something absolutely fucking incredible and they blew it because ken levine can't fucking micromanage at all.

also As I Lay Dying is the only Faulkner book I picked up and never even bothered to try finishing, and now I'm a retard and can't read complex words (only slack grammaticals).

man, as i lay dying is both EXCELLENT and HORRIFYING. and i don't mean horrifying in a good way, either. to the point where i kinda regret ever recommending it to anybody ever. it's a story about futility, so you really have to endure a lot of really deadly boring and useless shit with characters that you will REALLY DISLIKE and find yourself pulling against by the time you finish the book. really, the effectiveness of the story only works if you manage to pull yourself up until the point where you realize that everything they're doing(and, by extension, you're doing) is total fucking bullshit and a waste of good human life. it's not what i call a GOOD READ.

in fact, my brother works at a local bookstore and hates his job, and whenever anybody asks him to recommend a book to them he ALWAYS says as i lay dying because he wants those people to be as miserable as he is. the last chapter might as well say I'M WILLIAM FAULKNER AND I HATE YOU SO MUCH IT HURTS

now i am getting kind of mad because there really WAS no reason they couldn't have done the plot via playing through the fall of the city except for the major plot twist at the end.

which is really aggravating writing. man, that pisses me off. it was a decent plot twist, but it wasn't a natural one by any means.

fuck and they could have gotten rid of the whole fetchquest aspect of the game as well.

NOW I KIND OF HATE BIOSHOCK GREAT JOB AWESOME SHOW.

also I seriously think Faulkner tries to be the most difficult writer ever. I could read through Joyce quicker than Faulkner. there's more of a payoff, but goddam part of me wants a bit of Hemingwayesque "the retard wanted to fuck his sister" or "the student felt bad for past offenses in his family"

now i am getting kind of mad because there really WAS no reason they couldn't have done the plot via playing through the fall of the city except for the major plot twist at the end.

which is really aggravating writing. man, that pisses me off. it was a decent plot twist, but it wasn't a natural one by any means.

fuck and they could have gotten rid of the whole fetchquest aspect of the game as well.

NOW I KIND OF HATE BIOSHOCK GREAT JOB AWESOME SHOW.

man this is one of the biggest problems with writing in videogames. the more you think about the writing of ANY VIDEOGAME the more you can pull that shit apart completely and see how fucking terrible it is because NOBODY has done it right. for years i thought deus ex was some GRAND MASTERPIECE and then i played it again recently and realized how not that great it is.

the only game writing i've been able to really stomach and not tear apart are anachronox and killer 7, because neither took itself too seriously and both have such fucking terrible gameplay that you really can't even compare it to games that begun doing things right. i'm just kinda happy that they had fun with it and did whatever the fuck they wanted to do, regardless of how incredibly messy the end result was.

also I seriously think Faulkner tries to be the most difficult writer ever. I could read through Joyce quicker than Faulkner. there's more of a payoff, but goddam part of me wants a bit of Hemingwayesque "the retard wanted to fuck his sister" or "the student felt bad for past offenses in his family"

this is why i have not bothered reading faulkner in many, many years. it was possible when i was a bright-eyed college student eager for information, but now i am jaded and shitty and would rather faulkner just come back from the dead to punch me hard in the dick