Sirlin's 2007 Game Awards

Giving out truly unbiased and thoughtful awards is a lot of work and requires a lot of research. It also yields pretty predictable, boring results, so that's why my awards are totally biased and generally unfair. Also, don't you hate it when award stuff starts counting up from like the top 100 when you just want to know the #1 winner? Me too, let's start with that.

Best Game of 2007: Portal
Even though it seemed packaged as thrown-in extra content on the Orange Box disc, the game is a real gem. You get to control your character immediately with no intro story. Even though there are no cutscenes or story segments, you learn the story of what's going on through context and voice acting from the computer that runs the facility. And most importantly, the portal mechanic itself is great fun and the developers did wonderful puzzley things with it. This is a good concept with great execution.

2nd Best Game of 2007: Tie! Chess, Go, Magic: The Gathering, and World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game
Just a reminder to look outside of just video games. These are hard to top, and honestly as good as Portal is, these games will be much longer-lived.

3rd Best Game of 2007: Resident Evil 4 Wii
You might be saying, "But Resident Evil 4 came out in 2005, didn't it?" Ok, that's true. Last year, you might remember that I was grumpy the game did not even get *nominated* at the 2005 Game Developer's Choice awards, and was somehow disallowed from a couple other award givers due to some technicality about the exact release date. That prompted me to, you know, accidentally include it in my 2006 awards due to a reverse-technicality.

But now we had a Wii version of the game in 2007, and it's definitely a barely, slightly better version than ever before. Aiming with the Wii remote makes the game feel a little better, and the prerendered cut scenes are actually real time in this version, making the game slightly more consistent-looking. It's two years old, but still quite an achievement.

4th Best Game of 2007: Super Mario Galaxy
I wrote an article about this game that will appear on gamasutra.com, so you'll have to wait for that to hear more. The short version is that in addition to having great art, this game is rare in that it evokes the feelings of surprise and wonder.

5th Best Game of 2007: Rock Band
This game resonates with hardcore gamers and even non-gamers, so it's doing something right. I'm missing the genes that make people care about music, and even I like it. There aren't many games I can play with my girlfriend, but this is one of them (and was Mario Galaxy, btw).

And now for some specialty awards.

Best Puzzle Game of 2007: Puzzle Fighter HD Remix
The original Puzzle Fighter is, in my opinion, the best 2-player puzzle game there is. Now that it has updated drop patterns for better balance and new graphics, this is lock. Factor in that I did the balancing on this game myself, and consider yourself lucky I didn't put it as best game of the year.

Worst Award Nominations of 2007: Gamespot's nominations for Best Puzzle Game. They managed to scrape up FIVE puzzle games that did not even include Puzzle Fighter. Ha! Seriously?

Award for a Bunch of First-Person Shooters: Tie! Crysis, Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, and Halo 3.
These were truly a bunch of first-person shooters.

Game Whose Amp Was Turned Up to 11: Every Extend Extra Extreme (XBLA)
Have you seen this thing?? It's a visual extravaganza. See my post about it here, but the short version is that it's the most incredible, mesmerizing screen saver I've ever played.

Best Character of the Year: The Weighted Companion Cube
There's something about this metal box with hearts on it (from Portal) that sticks in my mind. Other characters might have had more polygons or emotions or were humanoid, but the Weighted Companion Cube is hard to beat.

Hardest Gaming Thing to Buy: Nintendo Wii System
Did you try to buy these things? I tried to buy three in December and ended up with zero. Amazing that it's sold out two years in a row.

Honorable Mention: Rock Band (At least I managed to buy one of these.)
Best Use of Usually Pointless RPG Mechanics: Puzzle Quest
Combining Bejeweled with leveling-up RPG stats could have gone horribly wrong, but somehow it ended up as more than the sum of its parts.

Most Underrated Game of the Year: Settlers of Catan (XBLA)
IGN: 7.7. Gamespot: 7.9. I don't get it. What do you want form this game? It's an incredibly well-designed board game, usually regarded as one of the best and most landmark board games of all time by boardgamegeek.com (or in the top 5 at the very least). And now we have an absolutely wonderful translation to digital form, easily and cheaply available for download on XBLA. Maybe I should have put this in my top 5 of the year.

Most Mind-bending Game I Didn't Play Because It's On a Shitty System: Crush (PSP)
Please make this for Xbox or Wii or something, it looks really interesting.

Best Game That I Can't Ever Be Good At: Team Fortress 2
The art style is GREAT. The gameplay, from my limited understanding, seems great. I love the variety of abilities and the careful thought the developers put into balance and map design. If I liked games that involved spatial intelligence in a 3D world, or aiming, or relying on teammates rather than your own skills, then I would call this the best game of the year.

Best Game of Next Year That I Won't Be Actually Good At Either: StarCraft 2
It's going to be awesome and I'm going to be somewhat decent at it.

Most Reformed Game: World of Warcraft
You may remember a little soapbox piece I wrote about this game a while ago, and many of my objections have since been answered. Sure, solo play is still second class to grouping and the terms of service still add an unnecessary layer of squishy rules, but the game has made major advancements since I wrote that article. The old honor system is out and areanas are in. Arenas give rewards without demanding ludicrous amounts of time (at least I think, I don't actually play anymore). Raids have been reduced from 40 man to 10 and 25. PvP gear is good in PvP now, as opposed to raiding gear being the only viable gear at all as it was before.

I love all those changes, great job Blizzard. Now just allow me to pick a premade character for PvP so gear and time spent count for nothing and skill counts for everything, and then the game can be a real e-sport. There must be some way of doing that while still allowing it to appeal to the casual masses. If not, I'd like tomake that e-sport game as its own entity. Dear publishers: fund my idea. Dear developers: let's make that game, and no Guild Wars doesn't count but it was a good try.

Best Game Made By My Friends: God of War 2
God of War 2 is really good, surely at least a 9 out of 10 if not more. It improved on the mechanics and enemies of the first game and was as polished as ever. If you want to know how to do combat in a 1p game and you don't feel like hiring me as a consultant, then at least look at this game.

Worst Game Ending of 2007: God of War 2
Sorry guys, but I haven't been so let down in a long time. Nothing felt resolved and it blatantly ended at the most unsatisfying point possible. You can't just call it an Empire Strikes Back Cliffhanger and get away with it. I was going to say 9.4, the ending took it down to a 9 for me.

Most Excruciating Beginning of a Game: Super Paper Mario
You have to play this game something like 17 minutes before you get to the actual beginning. It's like 8 minutes before you even do anything other than click through dialog. A like 10 minutes, an NPC asks you if you will accept some item. If you say no, he asks again. If you say no again he says you really should and asks again. If you say no a third time, you get GAME OVER and sent back to the title screen. Note that there was no possible way to save before then and that there is no way to skip the 8-10 minutes of dialog to get back. Wow.

Best Fighting Game of 2007: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix
What, you haven't been playing this? I guess you haven't because it's not out yet. Well I've been playing it and it's really damn good. It's so fun now that special moves are easier for characters like Cammy and T.Hawk and that there are fewer character mismatches than before.

Best Fighting Game of 2008: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix
Yeah, I said it. Let's hope it stands the test of time.

--Sirlin

Every Extend Knitting

The Xbox Live game Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4) isn't so much a game as it is a thing you do--like whittling wood on your front porch, or knitting. In this, uh, "software experience" your main action is to destroy your own cursor which causes a chain reaction of other explosions. The floating things that explode then leave powerups (loot!) for you to pick up.

There are several strange aspects to that. First, there are no "lives" so you can destroy yourself over and and over forever. Next, after you destroy yourself, you have three seconds of total invulnerability to pick up the powerups--and these three second bursts are the only times you actually play the game. If you get hit by enemies (as opposed to detonating yourself), then you lose all your powerups, which greatly reduces your ability to earn points. There is technically no reason you'd ever die this way though, because you can always detonate yourself within the 3 second shield period and never be vulnerable the entire game.

The gameplay actually involves collecting the powerups in the most efficient way possible. For example, you'd like to collect a few powerups that extend your invulnerable shields a couple seconds, then pick up the time extender and various bonus multipliers. The only way the game ever ends is if you run out of time, but you can pretty much always focus on collecting the yellow time powerups to keep your time remaining at an acceptable level.

The very first game of E4 I played, I got my bearings and figured out what was going on. The second game...well I'm still playing it. It's been 2.5 hours so far with no sign of stopping. At some point I paused the game to answer the phone. At another point, I went to the grocery store. Now I stopped again to write this post. But my session of E4 is still there waiting, ready to go on forever if I like. I have 28 trillion points right now (yeah, trillion). I know you have BusyBeaver(7) points or whatever, so you don't have to tell me.

I'm not actually knocking E4. Like Rez, I enjoy it as an experience. I was totally shocked to see that my game session lasted 2.5 hours, because I didn't remember playing it for so long. It's a hypnotizing synethsesia that gives an overworked brain a vacation from itself for a while.

Another interesting property of the game is that on the one hand, it requires almost no skill because a very simple and obvious strategy allows you to play virtually forever. On the other hand, there is a skill in knowing when and where on the screen to detonate, when to cancel the chain reaction, and which powerups to get if you are trying to *efficiently* get a high score. That actually makes it nearly an ideal game to be used for crafting goods in an MMO. Anyone could play forever to get enough "magic essence" or whatever MMO quantity, but dedicated E4-crafters would learn to play efficiently and sell their greater wares to others who would rather spend their time killing monsters...or playing the Rez crafting mini-game to make green stitched linens or something.

I think E4 is going to be greatly misunderstood by the gaming public. As a relaxing flow experience, it hits the mark. Unfortunately most people probably don't understand the mark it hits.

--Sirlin

Update: I got to 126 trillion with no sign of it ever ending, but finally I wanted to play Rock Band with my girlfriend. Too bad I couldn't save and quit to continue the pointless, ProgressQuest-like journey. Instead I had to just let the time run out and lose. Anyway, E4 is quite an experience. Something compels me to keep staring at it. It's by far the best screen saver I've ever played.

The Chief Justice and a Movie

ast week I attended Judge Kozinski's screening of the court-room drama The Music Box. Alex Kozinski is the Chief Justice of the Ninth Circuit Court. I was the only game designer in the room.

I liked the film, though it's strangely named and I find the role of the music box itself pretty questionable. Still, it's an interesting film that follows the personal journey of a daughter who defends her father against heinous charges.

What's surprising to me is that 57 year old Kozinski knows a thing or two about games. I mean, how many people from his generation know how to be beat King Hippo in Mike Tyson's Punchout? Many years ago, he wrote some game reviews for the Wall Street Journal here, here, and here. I'm considering writing some law review articles for The Journal so we'll be even.

Kozinski is known for his writing, which is both clear and harsh. I think he delights in the controversy he creates, and he sticks in verbal jabs to those he thinks deserve it. Sound familiar? I think it's very weird that he's a judge who is a game designer in another life while I'm a game designer who is a judge in another life.

I didn't get a chance to tell Judge Kozinski that his law review article on patentsis way off when it says the system favors the infringer. It surely favors the deep-pocket companies who snatch patents that should never be granted, then hold them over the heads of everyone else. I'll cut him some slack since he wrote that before I was born, though.

More importantly, I wish I had thanked him for protecting my first amendment rights (and yours) against Mattel in the case over Aqua's song "Barbie Girl." Mattel claimed that the song infringed on their Barbie name and sought damages. Kozinski ruled that the song actually did dilute the value of Barbie. That means that it did create a negative associate with Barbie, and furthermore it added a second thing that comes to mind when you hear "Barbie" whereas before there was only the doll. Regardless of anything negative in the song, a second entity with the same name does dilute some brand value, such as if a string of dry cleaners called "Harry Potter Dry Cleaning" were to become successful. Even if it had nothing to do with the books, the brand value of Harry Potter is still diluted.

BUT, even having said that, there are first amendment concerns here. Although the use of Barbie is commercial here (the song was sold for profit) it is also has a non-commercial use. That is, the song isn't *just* labeled Barbie for the sake of confusion. It makes a comment about the values the songwriters believe the Barbie dolls to embody. This social commentary falls under the non-commercial exception (even though the song is a commercial product) and Kozinski said the potential damages to free speech outweigh damages to the Barbie name here. If this type of thing were allowed to succeed in court, then companies would start to own the language and it would become impossible to even refer to, parody, or critique popular culture.

His famous closing words in his written opinion on this case were, "The parties are advised to chill." I like his style.
Thank you Judge Kozinski, and I hope your kids are enjoying Guitar Hero 3.

--Sirlin

Virtua Fighter 5: A Little Rough Around the Edges

Virtua Fighter 5 just came out for Xbox 360. The gameplay is great as always, but a lot of features of this game leave me scratching my head.

Button Configuration
I think I have witnessed more players configure their buttons than any other US game developer. (Feel free to correct me if you know of someone else who tops me here). I watch people config buttons for hours and hours and hours as I run tournaments at multiple events per year, every year. There is a 100% rate of agreement among players that the best implementation is where the game lists the functions, then the player presses the button he wants for that function. So you highlight "jab" or "punch" or whatever, then you press the button you want to be assigned to that. This process does NOT require you to know that the button you presses is really X or Square or A or whatever else.

Virtua Fighter and many other fighting games STILL use the bad method where you cannot press the button you want to assign. You must highlight the *button* (not the function), then go left/right to set the function. So the game lists "X" then you have to look down at your controller, find the X button, realize that it should be kick or whatever, then go left/right until you select kick.

Believe me, this requires an extra mental step from players and it takes significantly longer for them to configure buttons with this implementation and as I said earlier, exactly no one likes it.

Still on the subject of button config, Virtua Fighter 5 has a major problem that I can't believed passed Microsoft's technical requirement checklist. I configured my buttons for player 1, then I played some matches online where I was the one creating the match. Things worked fine. Then I decided to *join* someone else's created match. I was put on the 2p side (fine), and my buttons were all messed up! I was now using the 2p button config! I can already sense the VF apologists trying to defend this with some kind of warped logic, but it's absolutely terrible. No other fighting game has this problem.

Online Player Match
Very surprisingly, after you play a "player match" (aka unranked match), you and the opponent are both kicked out back to the matchmaking screen. Want a rematch? Tough, there's no rematch option. You can't create a "room", much less with spectators, where you go around in a rotation like Dead or Alive and SF2: Hyper Fighting. Now, you *can* make a private room with someone on your friends list where you get to play them over and over (just them, no spectators or others in the rotation). This will lead to a lot of good players feeling forced to only fight people on their friends list just to have a logistically reasonable set of matches. Bad for community, because you want those players playing out in the open where everyone can challenge them.

Online Ranked Match
You are allowed to set whether you want to play opponents near your skill level or of any skill level. You are allowed to set whether you want arenas with no walls, low walls, high walls, or any walls. These options should not be in ranked matches. The premise of a ranked match in any game is that the player has as little leeway to affect who he fights or what the rules will be. It's supposed to be the same rules all the time and no ability to avoid opponents you're afraid of losing to.

Not only can you filter by skill level and arena type, but you can also see the opponent's name, rank, and exact win/loss record before you even accept the match. (Yes I know that you can see their names before the match starts in Puzzle Fighter's ranked matches. That is a mistake and will be fixed if there's a patch.) Anyway, you get an awful lot of info about your opponent before you even try to join his ranked match. This alone ruins the integrity of the leaderboards. I heard a rumor that disconnects don't count as losses, but I have no idea personally.

Character Selection
Virtua Fighter 5 does another strange thing that no other fighting game does: it tries very hard to get you to only play one character. Usually, character selection is part of the main loop, meaning you go back to it after every game. In VF5, after you play a player match (and are kicked out to the matchmaking screen, ugh), you are *still* tied to your character. You have to exit the whole online mode to switch to another character. Another character is basically like another account.

I of course know why they did this. In Japan, players tend to play just one character in a fighting game. In tournaments, they don't allow switching characters like we do in the US. Now, as a tournament player, I strongly dislike the Japanese method. If I can beat 70% of people in a tournament with character A and the other 30% with character B, I deserve to win the tournament. But anyway, let's not argue that right now. The extreme emphasis on sticking to one character in VF5 comes from how the game is played in Japan. That's nice, but I want to play Jeffry sometimes, Pai sometimes, and Lei Fei some other times. It's a real hassle to do this relative to every other fighting game. The designers are saying to me, "We don't really approve of you having that sort of fun" and it makes me sad.

As I said at the start, the gameplay in VF is just a technical and well thought-out as you'd expect and the online play is surprisingly unlaggy. That's what counts the most, but all the other rough edges are a bit of a downer.

--Sirlin

Update on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:06PM by Sirlin

A recent patched addressed a couple issues. During player matches, you now have the option to choose ‘rematch’ (they don’t have to be friends). You also see the connection of the person about to play you (no option to filter by connection though).

Evolution 2007 Finals

I did better than I've ever done before at our world finals event this year, taking 5th place in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I also got to test 18 decks of my Yomi card game, and got to lose Guilty Gear to Yossan, the #1 finisher in that tournament.

I won't say much about Guilty Gear other than having to relearn the strange lesson that my Potemkin gets much worse when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents, and yet my Chipp gets much better when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents. I call this the Curse of Chipp.

In ST, I made it to the top 8 without losing a single match. i tried this year to make an effort to "play the opponent" rather than "play the game." In my book, I talk about the player type called Planner. That's how I've always approached things, but the approach has weaknesses.

I've heard Seth off-handedly mention in his match commentary whether certain players "show no respect" for their opponents. He means this in a very particular way. He's not talking about sportsmanship at all, but instead whether a player does things within the game that a really good opponent should be able to counter. Seth isn't even giving an insult by saying this. He's just pointing out when a player is trying to get away with something that he might not try against a player he "respects." To be clear, you *should* do bootleg stuff that's easily counterable *if* you really think the particular opponent you are playing against won't counter it. That is what "playing the opponent" means, rather than "playing the game."

The toughest opponent I beat was Afrolegends. He's a rising star of a player. Determined and in practice. I think it's safe to say that he practiced at least 10 times more than me, if not 100 times. I invested nearly no practice time into ST this year, and instead have focused on designing STHD. Anyway, I didn't rely on practice or on scouting.

Here is what I did. I remember watching the match between Afrolegends's DeeJay and Graham Wolfe's Vega (claw) three weeks ago. I also remember playing the same match against Afrolegends right after that, and losing. Graham got hit by about 90 ducking medium kicks. Three weeks ago I tried very hard to avoid that fate, but still got hit by several. That match is on youtube, but I only watched it maybe 1 or 2 times casually. I'm honestly not trying to be arrogant about this, I'm just trying to point out all the things that I didn't do to prepare hat people probably expect me to do.

I decided to play the same character matchup against Afrolegends this time. I won't be bullied away from Vega just because of a damned ducking medium kick. So instead of trying hard to avoid it, I would just have to try REAL HARD to avoid it. To look into Afrolegend's mind and try to guess when he will do it, so I can slide a bit after. And just as important, try to guess when he will throw his sonic boom thing ("max out") so I know when I can go off the wall. I also factored in that I know he's sitting there waiting for me to go off the wall a lot of the time, so I have to avoid the temptation to do it when he expects me to do it.

I won this match by something like two pixels, so it's not like I dominated at all. It could have gone either way. But my point is that I got more mileage out of focusing on exactly when I think the opponent will do X or Y than I probably would have out of studying match footage or even actual practice. I should also point out that Afrolegends's tons of practice wasn't for nothing. He placed 3rd, which was two places higher than me.

To prove that I'm not just bragging, all this reading the opponent stuff went exactly the other way when I faced Graham Wolfe. After losing a game, I switched to Honda (a crowd pleaser!) and won one round, but in the final round of the match, Graham guessed right something like 4 times in a row. His final move was a ridiculous jumping strong with Balrog (boxer) that clearly proved he knew exactly what I was going to do, and when. Graham soundly beat me in that match, so my hat is off to him. He took 4th place.

My only other loss was to Tokido. I was very sure I would beat him. So sure that I knew overconfidence was probably bad, but I just didn't think he could be Bison (dictator) with Vega (claw). About four years ago, my friend first introduced me to the concept of Meyers-Briggs personality types and after a quick set of questions, he told me I'd be most likely to lose to a player who is capable of executing something in a game that I didn't think was possible or practical, so it wouldn't be in my "systems analysis" of the game. He was exactly describing John Choi's ability to custom-combo my Rose's low strong in SFAlpha 2. And, it turns out, he described Tokido, too.

There's something mysterious about Tokido's ability to go off the wall with Vega. Two different times, I saw his Vega touch the wall, then do the air throw just a bit earlier than I thought was possible. He also sometimes went off the wall then immediately attacked, just a tiny bit earlier than I thought was possible. Maybe more to the point, Bison can beat Vega if he can get close enough to do scissor kicks and stand roundhouses. It didn't really occur to me that Tokido would be able to run away well enough to avoid this for a whole match. I think I was one round away from defeating him, but he came back with his mysteriously good run away and off the wall tactics. He went on to defeat John Choi with similar antics, earning Tokido 1st place. I'm a little salty about it, but oh well.

Before signing off, I'd like to give my awards for strangest counter-character choices in the tournament. DSP was about to face Japanese Dhalsim player KKY. I asked DSP if he was going to win and he said "KKY's Dhalsim cannot beat my Vega." Pretty bold, but amazingly, DSP was right. KKY then switched to Blanka! Unexpected for a Japanese Dhalsim player, but nice move because it's counter-match heavily in Blanka's favor, in my opinion. KKY won game 2, but to DSP's credit, not by much. DSP could now switch to a new character in game 3. Luckily, DSP plays a wide variety of characters who have a big advantage here: Old Sagat, Balrog, and DeeJay for starters. But DSP chose to KEEP Vega, countering himself! I don't get it. It went down to the last hit and as KKY did whiff roll into bite for the final hit, both players physically leaped out of their chairs in excitement.

But this was not as strange as Alex Wolfe's choice. Let me preface this by saying that Alex Wolfe is one of the very best players in the US. He won 1st place at last year's Evo World Finals and just two weeks ago he and his brother Graham got 5th place in Japan. Anyway, his Dhalsim got absolutely destroyed game 1 against someone's Vega. It was really bad, but it happens. then Alex switched to ZANGIEF. Zangief vs Vega is an incredibly hard match and it's pretty damn crazy to intentionally play this match when you're 1 game from losing a tournament match. I guess his idea was that a good Zangief has a big surprise factor (and his Zangief is good), but Vega proved too strong even then.

I hope that gives you a taste of what the Super Turbo tournament was like. It was also a great opportunity for me to get feedback from the Japanese players about STHD...but that's all I'm allowed to say about that.

--Sirlin