Surprises/Disappointments of '07

Oh man, AT is ALL about the innuendo. Its a dating sim that doesn’t put out.

I was both surprised and disappointed with heavenly sword, both because it only takes 6 hours to complete. Could have been a great game otherwise.

Assassin’s creed is awesome, but once you go through it once there’s not much else you can do with it ( except play it again, to bask in it’s awesomeness:D)

Motorstorm is the most disappointing racing game ever, besides big rigs: over the road racing:p (you’re winner!!!). Was it to much trouble to put in an extra race mode or two?

EDIT: I’m also surprised that someone actually beat GH3 “through the fire and flames” on expert. I had enough dificulties on medium…

Disappointment - Guitar Hero 3.

I have no idea why. The game just didn’t sit right with me and wasn’t nearly as fun as one or 2. But maybe I’m just getting sick of the series.

I don’t play many RPGs anymore, aside from MMOs. But I’ll toss in my 2 cents anyway.

Biggest Surprise…

Portal, for sure. I got the download version for $20 bucks off Steam, even though it’s short it’s really good and I think it’s entirely possible a new genre of first-person puzzles games might come into being as a result of it.

Disappointments…

Burning Crusade - When my priest who I’d raided with extensively in 2006 started replacing his epic gear with blue drops from the Ramparts 1 day in, I was annoyed but I took it as an opportunity to reroll as one of the new fancy alliance Shaman.

Got the end-game a few months later, and it was basically the same thing, just in a format that forced a very strict progression. I dunno. Maybe I’m just tired of raiding, maybe it was my wacky work schedule, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I did have a lot of fun with the heroics and I probably would have stayed if there was any decent 5-man content other than doing the same dungeons you already did before only with marginally better loot.

Still though, given that they totally reset everyone’s gear when they launched TBC, they could have at least taken the end-game in a new direction, instead of the same raiding format, only tweaked a little bit and with better dungeons.

Crysis. Sure it’s pretty but for some reason I just couldn’t get into it. The fact my PC that’s still better than 95% of the rigs out there could barely handle it probably has something to do with it, but there’s also that nagging feeling that I’ve played this a hundred times before.

The 360 in general. After having my 3rd one die on me I decided to sit out this generation. PS3 still doesn’t have enough games to justify its price tag, and I guess I’m getting old or something but I just don’t ‘get’ the Wii. It’s not HD, the games feel ‘gimmicky’. Mario Galaxy and Zelda are great of course, but I’m not going to buy a whole system for one or two games, even if it is mad cheap.

Lived up to expectations…

Bioshock. Too easy, IMO, but still one of the dwindling number of games that manages to both look great and play great.

As for Assassin’s Creed… doesn’t come out on PC till Feb. Hoping it’s as good as everyone says it is.

I’d say more but a lot of the games I bought last year were actually old games. Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 4, Resident Evil 4, Eve Online (not really ‘old’ since it gets updated all the time but still), a few others as well but nothing big-name.

The Good:

Team Fortress 2: Fast, furious and no nadespammers.

Super Paper Mario: Merely the nostalgia is enough to wet your pants, but wait 'til you get to the original parts…

(The Battlefield 2142 expansion pack kicked ass with the awesome new vehicles and near-critical upgrades for squad leader beacon, assault rifle rocket clip expansion and engineer clip expansion. RDX Clark also opened new opportunities…)

The Bad:

Mario Strikers Charged: The mario-style quirky supers would be tolerable but items in general make this a horrid game - especially when you can’t turn most of 'em off >:/ We want fast-paced soccer where all punts and shunts count! Gamecube original was better, IMO.

Children of Mana: !"#%¤!"%¤, get an R4, code/emulate diablo 2 for it and play that instead of this piece of not-so-fine work with bloody brilliant cover art. Guh.

The Ugly:

No Smash Bros Brawl >:(