There have been plenty of great years for gaming, but 2007 may very well top them all. Halo 3's "biggest media launch ever" is obviously at the forefront of newsworthy events, but it's far from the only item worth talking about. New IPs were a big theme this year as well, with titles like Crackdown, Overlord and, of course, BioShock impressing the hell out of gamers the world over. Many also see 2007 as the year of the casual gamer, with ever-escalating enthusiasm for Nintendo's Wii and DS devices driving a newfound mass public interest in video gaming.
However you choose to look at it, the medium has made some tremendous evolutionary leaps in the past year. As with when sound was added to film and color to TV, gamers must now wrestle with a number of less tangible unknowns as the face of video gaming continues to mature. Before leaping into the great unknown of 2008, join UGO now for a look back over the greatest hits, misses and head-scratchers of the past year.
Feature by Russell Frushtick and Adam Rosenberg.
MW 2019 is five years old at this point and on previous gen hardware, but it is still the best looking Call of Duty game to date.
MW was an excellent videogame. They messed up Spec Ops big time, but aside from this it was a huge step in the right direction initially. Most notably, at launch it seemed to come from a very cohesive creative vision that was felt across gameplay, to story to art style/visual direction. It was also very notably written by prominent ex-Naughty Dog guys that quit almost immediately before release.
That COMPLETELY dissolved through post-launch content and the full pivot to a "cross-mode" narrative that completely obliterated the cohesion in overall story direction. Warzone then "became" the new face of Call of Duty and the franchise completely removed itself from anything remotely creatively "good". It is a pure money machine, so I kinda get why they're doing it....but I personally completely lost interest.
I would love to see Infinity Ward move off CoD and get to make their own product with full control. They clearly have some massive talent in their ranks but it's perverted by Activision's corporate interests.
Cultured Vultures: Put on your freshest dungarees and chow down on the ripest mushroom as we reel off the best Mario games ever made to celebrate Mar10 Day.
My top 3 are Mario 3, Mario World and Mario 64. Mario Odyssey is also excellent, and I enjoyed Sunshine but didn't care for the Galaxy series.
Hey Poor Player's James Davie Takes Us On A Bio-Shocking Deep Dive Into Irrational Games' Nautical Nightmare.
