No other game released in 2007 was quite the sensation that Portal was. Portal is a unique, puzzle-focused first-person shooter that clocks in at about three hours of length and, if my thorough reading of the internet is any indication, everyone and their mother has played it.

Portal has spawned a number of internet sensations since its debut. Probably the most significant, in terms of pop-culture, would be the wonderful end-credits song by Jonathan Coulton “Still Alive.” If you haven’t heard the song, you should find it and listen to it…now…and after you do, you should wait feverishly for the track to be released for Rock Band.

Another internet sensation created by Portal is the character of GLaDOS. GLaDOS is your malevolent benefactor-slash-tour-guide-slash-tormentor. She/it is a brilliantly personified, homicidal computer system that… conducts science… for those who are still alive. Also, she/it has cake. Which is another internet sensation… and a lie.

Finally, the last major internet sensation birthed from Portal is: the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube. “Companion Cube” or “Cube” for short. As you can see from the provided picture, the Companion Cube is a cube…with hearts on it. Apparently making it distinct from the Aperture Science Weighted Companion-less Cubes littered about the testing facility.

While reading over some of the coverage of GDC ‘08 the last week, I came across an interesting quote from the “Developer’s Rant” section of the conference.

Clint Hocking said: “It doesn’t surprise me that the most meaningful relationship we had in a AAA title this year is with a fucking cube.”

Now, I’m taking the quote slightly out of context, as he was talking, primarily, about how people went to see “The Lord of the Rings” not because of the nifty effects or the stunning locales, but because of the powerful bond between Frodo and Sam. From there, he rather quickly moves to the statement above, that the strongest bond between the player and a game this year occurred with a “fucking cube.”

I’m sorry, but when GLaDOS piped in that I was the Test Subject quickest to dispose of the Companion Cube, I smiled. I thought, in a Psycho Mantis sort of way, that Steam was tracking how long it took each player to dump the cube in the Memory Hole and rewarded my quick-thinking with an appropriately hilarious audio quip.

Unfortunately, it appears that every player gets the same message no matter how long it took to barbecue the cube.

Regardless, I simply do not understand where this internet-wide love of the weighted companion cube comes from. I do understand anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, I do it all the time. I feel bad for my car when it doesn’t work. I have pangs of guilt when I throw out an object I loved as a child, imagining it had feelings of neglect and uselessness. So, I get the need to become emotionally bonded to an object.

However, I simply don’t get the cube. The player encounters the cube for a total of one puzzle room in Portal. The map itself takes five to ten minutes to figure out the first time (if you’re me…I don’t know if that is fast, slow, or appropriate). The cube is used to safely traverse a section of map with a deadly energy ball and, if I remember correctly, weigh down one button.

That’s it.

From there a whole internet meme has been spawned. Companion Cube plushies were made and sold out. T-Shirts have been created, professing the wearer’s love for the cube. Developers are ranting about how the relationship between the cube and the player is the most emotionally-relevant in a game from the year 2007. I’ve even read about people spending an inordinate amount of time trying to save the cube from its fiery fate and, I ask you, why?

Have the long years as a single person chilled my heart to love? Can I no longer feel compassion for others? Have I died, fundamentally, somewhere deep inside my soul? Am I flawed as an individual because I hucked a six-sided object with hearts on it into a furnace without a second thought, laughing a black laugh when GLaDOS taunted my callousness?

No, no dear reader. There’s nothing wrong with me.

There’s something wrong with you.

Head881,

I originally composed this with a top ten list, then I realized I was just lowering the bar to fill it up entirely. Make no mistake, there were plenty of really awesome games in 2007 and if we expanded this out to a full feature length Game of the Year type thing (like you’d read on Gamespot or whatever), I’d have a million special commendations to give to games other than these. However I feel that less is more, and I needn’t include all of the games that were fun in 2007, as it just dilutes the recommendations of the games I have included. If there is a common thread through all the best games of the year, it’s that the games’ styles have become a form of substance. The graphics, sound and overall art direction enhance the experience such that it’s more than mere eye-candy. It’s a real improvement on the experience.

#3) The Orange Box: We generally have a pretty good idea what to expect for our 60 dollars when we go to buy a game. Orange box like so totally reset the scales on value for games. For 60 dollars you’re getting some of the best games in the last few years and three amazing new games. Each of the three new games would have been reasonable competitors for Game of the Year on their own but as a threesome they were that much more formidable.

Team Fortress 2 was a game in which the art style really made a huge difference. In a scenario where games had been leading towards more and more realistic graphics it was an incredible breath of fresh air with it’s beautiful Incredibles style visuals. This style though became substantive in a variety of ways. First of all the degree of expressiveness of the characters, even doing mundane things is a highpoint for games. After you die it cuts to a quick shot of the guy who killed you and at first you might think that these shots are in some way stylized but they come straight from regular gameplay.

Portal was the surprise game that got everyone talking. It was an indie game that was seemingly just the cherry on top of the Orange Box’s Sundae but it turned out that maybe the rest of the game could have been seen as the cherry on top of Portal. The writing for Portal was hysterical, containing some of the best dark humor that’s ever been in video games. In addition to that, it’s first person puzzle game mechanic was just utterly brilliant and while a lot of the puzzles weren’t particularity difficult some presented some really entertaining mind fucks trying to plan out what you needed to do. In addition to that Portal gave us some of the year’s great big Internet craze’s the cake is a lie, and some people fell in love with the companion cube—which was oddly enough a crate with a heart drawn on it. This was really quite an accomplishment. However I’d like to say that I never felt guilty about the companion cube as without choice there can be no heroism nor crime.

Episode Two was the middle chapter in the Half-Life 2 episodes saga. And as such, it really has neither a beginning nor a really proper ending but a bunch of actions that hopefully will all make more sense in the course of time. The game doesn’t really mess with the formula of Half-Life but that’s not really a bad thing is Half-Life 2 is one of two games i gave a 10 to and I’m not really tired of that game’s style. One thing I’d like to point out is how much more intellect Half-Life 2 assumes we have compared to it’s competition. There are some great puzzles in Half-Life 2…in one instance you need to use a grenade to jump and they teach you what you need to do not by some NPC beating you over the head with a solution but rather by using the art to clue you in on the solution just enough so that you can think up an answer. The game cements that by after having one of the most enjoyable final battles in recent memory adding one of the most outrageously shocking endings I can remember.

#2) Mass Effect: Mass Effect is the best example I can think of to illustrate the fact that games are more than the sum of their parts. Mass Effect created an awesome sci-fi world that apes a variety of sources Star Trek and \BSG probably most of all. Much to my surprise this game was not much of a Star Wars Imitator, it’s political not mystical, you’re not the chosen one just a experienced officer in the Human navy.

One of the real strengths of Mass Effect is its creation of a universe that’s full of characters who are really unique. It also created a lore that’s worth paying attention to if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading books in Elder Scrolls there will be just as much of that kind of detail in the Codex of Mass Effect for you to dig into. The game’s graphics allow the creation of these really amazing characters who show emotion and are so very animated and sit right outside the beginning of the uncanny valley. It’s a case again of style becoming substance as when you’re standing there next to this huge Krogan Mercenary he doesn’t seem just like a human with bumps on his head but it really does a great job of creating various races. The voice acting is also really remarkable and that leant to creating amazing characters even your character is for the first time defined by the voice actor and they found some fantastic ones. I’d especially like to give credit to Jennifer Hale who has been a standout for Bioware in the past and does a fantastic job giving life to Jade Sheppard much like she did Bastilla in the past.

I’d like to take a minute to talk about the issue of sex in games. Mass Effect got a lot of press for having a sex scene that’s semi-explicit with a choice of two humans (male or female) or a mono-gendered alien race that for all intents and purposes aside from lore are female. These were handled very tastefully and I felt they really created a fantastic love story between my Andrew or Jade Sheppard and Liara T’Soni or Ashley Williams.

#1) Bioshock: I have not used this phrase lightly but Bioshock was one of the greatest games ever made. I don’t want to get into rewriting my review of Bioshock and do a blow for blow recreation of everything I loved about Bioshock and made me play it almost non-stop for two trips through Rapture. The primary where the game succeeded was in creating one of the most amazing game worlds that any game has ever created.

From the moment you step into the Bathysphere, and dropped down int Rapture it was an amazing place to visit. Like even months after my trip through Rapture I can vividly remember the beautiful levels throughout the game. The wharf of Neptune’s Bounty, the foundry of Hephaestus Core, the beautiful gardens of Arcadia, and finally the chaos of the residential districts. These zones were so memorable thanks to the tremendous artistic cohesiveness of the design. The whole game is so incredibly cohesive that it lent to a world. On this same note they also really nailed the 50s art style for the game’s wonderful advertisements and P.A. Announcements which were all so spot on. It is in this way that the game’s style becomes a substance because it’s tremendous graphics help really flesh out the immersion of being in a place that’s real and that’s frankly creepy.

Another part that really hit me with the game was how much thinking and feeling the game made me do. As I played through the game I spent a lot of time wondering….hmmm is Ryan really such a bad guy? Like one of the amusing things is, that like his disdain for altruism and religion is proven to be spot on. I never really had a completely certain picture as just when I thought I had a judgment figured out something a little twist came up. In addition to that the game inspired the feeling of guilt as I killed things. Splicers and Big Daddies I never particularity wanted to blow away as I felt like it was often them or me and I was acting out of necessity. I want to talk about the Little Sisters for a moment because they received so much attention that it’s worth exploring a bit more. I’m normally something of a completionist when it comes to games with branching paths so after playing the game through saving every single little sister I decided to go back and see what it was like harvesting everyone of the little girls. When I chose to save the little girls I really felt like I was doing something that was good, it brought a smile to my face, when I chose to harvest the girls I found it remarkably unpleasant.

Revisionists have recently retconned the debate about Bioshock and made the complaint that the choice about the Little Sisters is in fact the only real high level choice in the game, and that it’s a flaw that the endings represent that one choice in the game is somehow a flaw. I think this is nonsense, the theme of the game is about a lack of choice but yet you are presented with these little small choices along the way and I think that really is a good secondary message in that even when the path is really just someone else pulling the strings and making us dance the way we conduct ourselves on that path matters. One critic Jonathon Blow, even went so far as to say the action the player takes respecting the Companion cube, was superior to the choice presented with little sisters. The problem with this lies in the nature of your behavior. With the companion cube you do what you must to advance—if you feel guilt over it it’s only over a regret of the circumstances, much like I regret not being able to save the splicers or the big daddies. With the Little Sisters because i have made an active choice to sacrifice them to gain more power myself rather than to save them and give them a chance to escape the fate that they were sealed into, causes legitimate guilt because it was a choice made freely knowing that there was an alternative. IT was not a necessity to kill the little sisters if I did so I did so for my own reasons and that makes me worry about why people chose that path.

- Andrew “Vermouth” Martin

I’ve thought about writing this piece for a long time, because I have a lot to say about the current state of the gaming sites I used to love. I didn’t, however, want to drag this site down in to an out-and-out bitch fest. Given the latest happenings on GameSpot, however, I can’t help but let everyone know what happens to a gaming site when the establishment goes from being passionate to being corporate.

There is of course far more than what I have written below. I am keeping it brief, however, because any more detailed and it would just be too long winded and difficult to understand for those who weren’t there.

After being a reader for a year or so, I decided to sign up to GameSpy’s forums. This was back in March 2001, when their latest forum system, ForumPlanet, had just entered a beta testing phase from which it never escaped. At the time it was all pretty good. GameSpy wasn’t the biggest gaming site out there, but the GameSpy Grudge, comics, and decent media was what made me prefer it over the others. There was a fair amount of interaction between the GameSpy staff and the community.

As such, my impressions on what happened next are all from the view of a community member. IGN’s merger with GameSpy was the real turning point (at least that I witnessed) in the 6+ years now that I’ve been a registered member. It’s certainly been long enough…

The Community

In the months following the merger, the changes to the community began to rear their ugly head. Previously the man in charge of GameSpy’s forum, shaithis (also GameSpy’s web designer and veteran grudge matcher), left the company. At the same time, GameSpy staff made their own visits much more seldom. This wasn’t a huge deal in itself, as the community was strong enough to essentially keep itself afloat.

Issues soon cropped up regarding the moderators and admins of the forums. These were users who volunteered their time and effort to keep the place in order. In typical circumstances, users who had problems with these mods would contact shaithis who would generally take care of it. With him gone, the contact moved straight on to IGN’s overzealous customer service department. Initially (and when I was a moderator), mods were simply considered users who had some extra powers to keep the peace. According to IGN however, they were now IGN representatives, and had to act accordingly.

One mod was fired for making a post about an awkward (but not explicit) experience in a public restroom. No regular user would have had such a topic removed. The user admin was then fired by IGN for refusing to fire the moderator himself. Another admin was fired for using colourful language in a private message to someone who was being a genuine pain in the ass (and admitted as such later on). Another moderator had the same fate for swearing at spammers who had signed up to the forums for no other reason that to advertise their crap. As it stands, GameSpy’s main boards currently have no active user moderators at all, and it shows.

The place is now a husk of it’s former self with barely a fraction of it’s former posts per day being made. Who wants to be on a forum with no active moderators? And who wants to be an unpaid, volunteer moderator if you can’t act like a regular user anymore and have fun? When the corprorate feel seeps down to the core community and extinguishes it, you know you’ve gone too far. Well done, IGN.

The Network

In 2001, I essentially viewed every GameSpy “Planet” site as being one of the best places for coverage on that particular game. PlanetDiablo was always my first stop for Diablo II information, PlanetCnC was always where I went for news on Command & Conquer. The same went for almost every other game I played - with the exception of StarCraft because for some reason, there was no Planet for that. I actually found it rather odd that such a popular game had no Planet.

Given previous planet creations, I was under the impression that a fan site which joined the GameSpy network and did really well could eventually become a Planet site if it were financially viable. I do, in fact, believe this is how it originally was. My time viewing the hosting department’s staff forum showed something a bit more disturbing though, with the head of the hosting department saying, on new-Planet criteria:

Some of this is simply based on our judgement of popularity/potential of a game/franchise, and the quality, consistency and level of traffic on the hosted site can also be a big factor. Our relationships with the developer/publisher also play a role.

That final relationship role certainly proved one thing. Useless Planet sites such as Planet Stacked and Planet Nile could only have been created out of that final criteria - a publisher deal. I was there when both of these planets were first created. No-one could figure out why they existed at the time. The credibility of a “Planet” has ever since been in tatters.

While a good mix of useful and useless Planet sites were popping up, I can’t forget the declining nature of others. Planet Civilization has long stood as a disaster of a site - being unable to hold a candle to either of the two main Civ fan sites. The original forums on PlanetCiv were also completely unmoderated, and for years just stood there with automated spam barraging the boards and rendering any real user activity on there completely pointless. They have of course now been replaced entirely, with the spectacular dud that is ForumPlanet v2 - a reskinned and tweaked version of IGN’s horrible forum system.

Giving the final blow, just recently, was the long awaited creation of Planet StarCraft. The desolate message boards on this site prove that it is too little too late. Unable to match the excellent timeliness of established sites such as StarCraft.org and a fantastic newcomer this year, the StarCraft II Armory. Planet StarCraft offers nothing more, and plenty less.

The entire network of Planets, at least for the games I play, are completely obsolete.

The Other Site

I used 3D Gamers a fair bit back in the day, as an alternative to FilePlanet for downloads. Once I got broadband, I was pleased to see that my own ISP, Internode, provided a mirror of 3D Gamers files, which means top speeds and no download limits (a scourge of Australian broadband).

After seeing what became of the GameSpy acquisition, I was dismayed to see that the same thing was happening to 3D Gamers. It wasn’t long before my fears proved justified with the departure of the site’s main man, Frans. His departure seemed to signal the onward march of the suits, with the site’s own community now only getting a few dozen or so posts in a whole week. My ISP was even forced to remove it’s file mirror, and had to announce it on their forums because they couldn’t get in contact with anyone who was running 3D Gamers itself. Assuming anyone was.

Afterthoughts

When the IGN-GameSpy merger first went through, I didn’t quite understand it due to the immense content overlap. It still doesn’t make much sense - I can see the desire for IGN to own GameSpy’s software, and FilePlanet, but there’s not much else they didn’t have already. It’s no wonder that GameSpy.com is now left out as the unwanted little brother - it always seems to attain new screenshots, videos, and other media a few days after they go up on IGN.com.

It’s a shame to see the same corporate mentality has now taken over at GameSpot. It now seems assured that for my gaming news and media, I’ll be sticking to the dedicated fan sites for the franchises I care about.

Also, it isn’t a very accurate title. I’m not referring to all war games across all genres. The games I’m referring to are the historically-themed First-Person Shooters that have been choking the video game market for years.

One doesn’t have to look too far or too long to find examples of the games I’m talking about: the “Medal of Honor” series; the “Call of Duty” series; the “Battlefield: X” series, just to name a few. Make no mistake, I do not have a problem with any of these games in terms of their actual gameplay. My problem is with their content.

Each of the game series listed above have had World War II as their backdrop. At least one of those games has ventured into the territory of using Vietnam, and most of them have moved on to a more “modern” version of simulated warfare. While I’m not aware of any game that takes place during the “War on Terror,” I’m sure such a game is only a few years off down the road. However, some of these games are starting feature the Middle East as a prominent theater of war.

“So, what’s the problem?” you might ask. The problem, not to be too cliche, is that war is not a game. Millions of people died in World War II alone, and without sounding like a bleeding-heart liberal, what right do we have to be entertained by their sacrifice? Or, too pull it out a bit more: what right does a company like Electronic Arts have to make a profit out of World War II?

The products of the companies who make these kinds of games are built, either directly or indirectly, on the graves of humanity. Consider the atrocities that happened during World War II: the Holocaust, obviously; 25 million Russian Serfs sent under-armed to their doom; the fire-bombing of Dresden; and the release of atomic weapons in the skies of Japan. Next, consider the atrocities of World War I: the Armenian Genocide; Trench Warfare; chemical warfare. What about Vietnam? Witness: the My Lai Massacre; Agent Orange; the secret bombings of Cambodia; the exaggeration of the attack on the American Navy vessel that started our involvement in that morass. Stop me when I hit on something worth doing for shits-and-giggles.

While I can see the appeal in a theoretical game about shoving pineapples up the asses of Nazi War Criminals, I’m not so sure about the rest of them. Scratch that, I can see the appeal in World War II games. As one ornery video game commentator recently pointed out, World War II was the last war where the sides of (mostly) good and (very) evil lined up neatly opposite one another to have at it. However, even that description overly white-washes the conflict as not all Germans, Italians, and Japanese were War Criminals, and by the same token not all Allied Generals were saints.

Still though, where’s the entertainment? Where are the games that can put me in the boots of a World War I French Soldier suffering from Trench Foot? Where are the games that let me control fifteen or thirty soldiers crossing “No Man’s Land” hoping one or two make it to the other side to be cut in half by machine gun nests? Where are the games that let me wander through dense jungle, hoping I don’t step on a land mine or fall into a pit of sharpened bamboo sticks? Where’s the game that let’s me not salute a commanding officer, lest he be sniped? Where’s the game that let’s me come home from an unpopular war, having risked my life and seen my friends’ lives end, only to be spat on?

Again, stop me when this starts sounding like a good time.

Content aside, I have another problem with these kinds of games: people play them. All kinds of people play them. Young, old, man, woman, you name it, these games are popular. I suppose that if a game is good enough, it should be played by a lot of people. However, how many of those people playing these games are war veterans? How many of these players have served a Tour of Duty, anywhere, at anytime?

Millions of people play these games. Millions of people choose to simulate being in a war, a real war that actually happened or a close approximation of the war we are currently in, for entertainment. I have an idea: why not instead sign up for the military at your local recruitment station?

You want to know what it’s like to be shot at, or to shoot off rockets, or to race humvees, or to watch your friends die, or to hold your own organs in your own hands, you don’t need a video game for that, Uncle Sam just needs you.

There are millions of men and women all around the world who volunteer to serve their country, whichever that country may be, and put their lives on the line daily for that service. There are many millions more who stay at home and for a few hours a day or week pretend to be those brave men and women.

I don’t have a problem with members of the armed forces playing these games. I have a problem with the pretenders to the throne.

On the one hand, I am loathe to spend so much on what will now only be used on a handful of games - unlike before, I now tend to just stick to a few treasured series. It will also be less of an upgrade and more of a… complete replacement. Most of the technologies inside my current box (AMD Socket 939, DDR memory, AGP graphics) are all well and truly out of date, and aren’t going to catch up to the demands of modern games with a simple component upgrade here and there. I’ve never had to buy a whole new box up straight before.

On the other hand, now I have a real job it is the first time I can actually afford to buy a whole new box. Getting Team Fortress 2 running well is important to me - Unreal and Crysis not so much. But beyond all these there is one absolute imperative: I must have a PC which runs StarCraft II without issue. Given that I don’t yet know just what the requirements for that game are, it only makes sense to prepare accordingly - but at least we can be sure it won’t be as demanding as Crysis, and I know what is needed for that.

The other thing I have decided is that I want a quiet PC. During all of my last upgrades, my computer has sat down in the study of this house with several others - all blaring out so loud that it was impossible to hear mine over the others anyway. Now I have it in the same room which I sleep in, I’d like to entertain the possibility of leaving it on while I sleep - though I will settle for just having it quiet enough for me to watch videos on it without the fans disturbing me as they do now.

Going for a silent PC can be pretty expensive. A high quality Antec P182 case (with sound-deadening panels) is going to set me back a fair bit. Thankfully quiet hard drives are no longer hard to find, with Samsung and Western Digital both making pretty big strides in this area, along with the rubber mounts for the case vibrations. For a power supply I’m looking at a rather expensive Corsair branded one, which is reportedly extremely quiet. The choices for a silent CPU fan/sink combo are many, so thankfully that’s not an issue either.

The video card, however, is. Right now I have a Zalman heatsink which I installed on my GeForce 6800 - it works a treat, but if I am spending even more money on a video card this time around (probably an 8800 GT) then voiding it’s warranty by installing one of those doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve heard my friends’ 8800 GTX’s wailing, and from the reviews it seems like the latest Radeons are even worse. Is there no company that sells high-end graphics cards with quiet fan/sinks? Ridiculous.

Lastly, there is a need for a screen. I’ve been unhappy with this BenQ LCD since day one, with the poor viewing angles and the uneven backlighting. Considering the number of hours I spend staring at the screen, it only makes sense to get a good one, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. The other week I noticed my optometrist had one of these. He said the high cost was justified because it’s excellent for looking at detailed digital photos of peoples retinae. That sold me.

And so without further ado, these are my rough plans for a new PC:

• A quad core CPU. We’ll see if AMD is a contender in another month or so
• 3GB of RAM, more doesn’t make sense as 32-bit Windows won’t use much of it
• The motherboard will most definitely be Gigabyte or Asus, purely for reliability reasons
• Samsung’s latest HDDs are a tad quieter than Western Digital’s. Size doesn’t matter
• For graphics, if this upcoming GeForce 8800 GT works out, it’ll be one of those
• An Antec P182 case, and probably a CPU tower cooler from Noctua or Thermalright.
• A Pioneer SATA DVD-RW drive. Hooray, no more ribbon cables!
• Corsair 520w power unit. Enough power despite what some graphics companies say
• Samsung 226BW 22″ widescreen LCD Monitor. But will it fit on my desk?

I actually haven’t yet decided if I am going to bother with a floppy drive. I don’t really think it matters too much these days, but when they’re only going for $10 it does make sense to be prepared for anything.

The plan is to have this thing last for quite a while. I don’t really want to have to upgrade anything inside of it except the video card in another couple of years. But then, looking at Nvidia and ATI’s record, that’ll need a new power supply too… damn this never-ending cycle.