What A Scrabulous Year!
Most journalists who write about videogames compile a list of the year's best games. At NEWSWEEK's Level Up blog, written by yours truly, N'Gai Croal, I'd rather single out the year's most important games. Here's my top five:
1. Scrabulous on Facebook
There's nothing new about Scrabble—which dates to the 1930s—nor was Facebook the first social network. But when you combine a game that most people know with a well-populated community of people with whom users have a real-world connection, the result is perhaps the ultimate time waster. Along with its various quizzes and list comparisons, Facebook is redefining interactive entertainment.
2. Halo 3
No, it wasn't a shoot- 'em-up for the thinking gamer, as some claimed. (See entries Nos. 3 and 5, if that's your bag.) But its "saved films" feature, which allows us to record all of our play sessions to the hard drive for subsequent playback, is the equivalent of a TiVo for videogames. For multiplayer, we used it to revel in our pwnage; for single-player, we dropped the camera behind enemy lines to listen to their chatter. The prospect of revisiting previous bursts of play years from now, as if they were home movies, is (for us) strangely intoxicating.
3. Portal
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Loading Menu
Member Comments
Posted By: lostalaska @ 01/08/2008 8:18:31 PM
Comment: grifter999, I totally agree about Halo 3 being (IMHO) inferior to HalfLife 2 and CoD4. Still the entire point of this article/list wasn't so much about which games are best, but about which games brought some form of innovation that will have a lasting impact on gaming for years to come, and Halo 3's video replay and posting abilities definitely raised the bar in that aspect. Most Important is very different than most fun or best games of the year.
Posted By: griffter999 @ 01/05/2008 2:54:12 PM
Comment: Personally, I didn't like Halo 3. I'm not a fan of the series. This may come as a shock but I feel disconnected when I play a game like Halo. There are shooters out there that make me feel like I'm a part of the action and that I'm really the person behind the gun and Halo just doesn't do that. The important thing I find in a shooter is that I want to know I'm shooting someone and that there's always a reasction when you shoot whatever it is that you're shooting. The two games that are the best at this in my opinion are half-life 2 (and all the subsequent episodes) and Call of Duty (all of them) which is why I'm surprised that CoD4 isn't in your list.
www.wannabegamejourno.blogspot.com