Game Dork Awards
The Oscars, Grammys and Emmys always come too late, months after the turn of the year. Meanwhile, the video game world already has ushered in awards season, and most of the right games are winning respect.
The big victor, “BioShock,” won Game of the Year from both the Spike Video Game Awards and the G4 “X-Play” awards. “BioShock” wasn’t my favorite fun. But it deserves the honors, and I’ll tell you why in my 2007 Game Dork Awards.
Game of the Year: Xbox 360’s “BioShock” isn’t just a scary horror game with girls in pigtails sucking spirits out of corpses with the tips of medical needles. It’s a broadly cinematic outing, populated with crazy-talking demons living in a creepy art deco otherworld, where you sneak around and kill your way to the end. Being ambitious is great. But succeeding at every ambitious turn makes this a masterwork. “BioShock” (rated “M”) also is the Adventure Game of the Year.
Couldn’t Have Lived Without It: Xbox 360’s “Shadowrun” (“M”) operates unlike other online shooters. After every 10- to 20-minute battle, you lose all the guns and magical powers you just gained, and you start over from scratch. This sounds pointless. But once it got under my skin, I wanted to play nothing else all summer and fall. It’s also the Online Game of the Year.
Interactive: “Rock Band,” for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PS 2, can be had for $170 (yikes). You play this “Guitar Hero”-patterned musical (“T”) on guitar, microphone and drums. You also can get friends to join you for a full rock band experience right there in your living room. That does sound complicated, doesn’t it? It kind of is.
Overlooked: “Raw Danger!” for PS 2 (“T”) looks terrible and seems unbelievably simplistic at first. But it’s a lot of fun, playing a waiter guiding people to safety during torrential flooding. Also, “SingStar Pop” (E 10+) is a fantastic karaoke series. And “Kororinpa: Marble Mania” (“E”) spruces up the marble-madness style with easy to impossible challenges.
Racing: “MotorStorm” (“T”) is an artistic achievement for the PS 3, both as a solo racer and as an online competition. Nothing else came close to providing this much car fun this year.
Fighting: “Mortal Kombat: Armageddon” (“M”) translates the popular franchise for the Wii by letting you swing the Wii wand to beat people up. Pretty cool.
Action: “God of War II” (“M”) for PS 2 lived up to the pressure to look, play and feel as good as the original, and it met expectations just a little more than did the also-excellent, superhyped, best-selling “Halo 3.”
Sports: “Major League Baseball 2K7” (“E”) combined realistic baseball player movements and attributes with smooth batting and fielding. It’s available for every console and hand-held system.
Shooter: “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” (“M”) pretties up “Call of Duty” graphics for solo play and introduces the second-best online shooting of the year, for Xbox 360 and PS 3 (and DS).
Reissue: “Resident Evil 4” (“M”) for the Wii reminded everyone why it’s one of the best four games of all time. It’s scary and intense, now interactively murderous with the Wii wand.
Kids: “Super Mario Galaxy” (“E”) turns you upside-down as you run around planets to kill evil mushrooms and such. Looks familiar, but the game play is sleek.
Maverick: “Manhunt 2” (“M”) looks like the future of PSP games. It maximizes characters’ bodies so they don’t look like little tiny fellas on the hand-held game system. Also, the playing system is a blast.
DOUG ELFMANMORE COLUMNSNEW IN STORES
“Indianapolis 500 Legends” is a niche-driven racer that offers famous winning autos from 1961 to 1971. The game retails for $40 for Wii. It’s rated “E.”
“Atari Classics: Evolved” recycles the company’s core classics, from “Asteroids” to “Centipede,” “Missile Command,” “Tempest” and “Battlezone,” but also includes versions with more contemporary visuals, plus dozens of lesser-known titles from the Atari vault. The game retails for $20 for the PSP. It’s rated “E.”
— By DOUG ELFMAN
