As an unreconstructed wishy-washy moderate, I read Slate daily. It’s how I stay non-committal on so many things.
And this year they have decided to publish a year end wrap up discussion on video games. The discussants are all top notch talents, too. Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal, the New York Times’s Seth Schiesel, MTV’s Stephen Totilo and Slate’s own Chris Suellentrop. Well, I’m not very familiar with Totilo. But the other three are good.
Suellentrop opens with some talk about 2007 being one of the best gaming years ever, and I’m not sure I see any of that on my side of the genre divide. Promising titles
(If you’re into shooters, though, I can’t imagine a better time. Bioshock, the Orange Box, Halo 3, Crysis…all apparently well above average titles.)
It’s Totilo. One L. :)
Also, he’s probably the best of all those assembled names as far as not putting himself above the industry press like N’Gai seems interested in doing all too often. His blog is one of the better ones you can read about games.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/author/stephentotilo/
As for this being one of the best years ever, that’s bunk. One of the best years for rehashes of the games we’ve been playing for the last ten years or so? Sure. A great one for new ideas? Not so much.
It certainly begs the question, if this is the best year ever, where can we possibly go next year but down?
Isn’t every year pretty much ZOMG TEH BEST YAR EVAR!!!!! when you have these end year retrospectives?
Also, I think it’s amusing that a tower defense game is his top pick. Wasn’t everyone playing tower defense maps in Warcraft III like three or four years ago?
“Isn’t every year pretty much ZOMG TEH BEST YAR EVAR!!!!! when you have these end year retrospectives?”
Depends where. I have read some year-end retrospectives over the years that seemed to accurately take into account the relative merits of previous years’ offerings. At least in the sense that they coincided with my opinions!
Also, check spelling of Suellentrop. As in Sue Ellen.
If people had good English names like Smith, Long and Goodfellow, I wouldn’t be making all these typos.
“One of the best years for rehashes of the games we’ve been playing for the last ten years or so? Sure. A great one for new ideas? Not so much.”
When was the last magical year of originality? 1986? And when hasn’t it been the case that the year’s best games were refinements of previous ones?