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I like those gaming-moments-of-the-year lists, but they don’t always tell you what the best games were or even what they were like. So mine’s a games-of-the-year list, but with defining moments instead of descriptions. There’s often a particular experience in a game that exemplifies its appeal, usually the one that springs to mind when you fancy playing it. I’m talking about those rather than highlights or secrets - though often they coincide. This’ll be spoiler-free - indeed, it will at times say nothing meaningful at all - and in descending order: best first.
Fallout 3
It’s: a huge open-world action RPG set in Washington two hundred years after a global thermonuclear apocalypse. Wilted fifties chic mixed with zombies being decapitated in slow-motion.
Defining experience: The Oasis
I’m not going to say anything about where or what Oasis is, and the screenshot above isn’t from it. Most people probably complete Fallout 3 without ever finding it - I know I did, first time through. Oasis is just the crowning example of what made Fallout 3 my favourite game this year, and the main thing it has over Oblivion.
I’d heard of it, but I wasn’t looking when I found it. I was just investigating some interesting rocks, as one likes to do on a Sunday. The wasteland is generally pretty flat, but I’d found a complex network of valleys and crags that looked like they might contain something interesting. They did.
Despite its size, and despite is apparent barreness, every interesting-looking place actually is interesting. It doesn’t have Guilds like Oblivion, so its content isn’t organised into neat little mini-careers your character can systematically complete. It’s sown evenly throughout its blasted landscape, leaving little pockets of story, character, treats, secrets and unique treasures.
It’s a brave choice. More people will miss more of Fallout 3’s most extraordinary moments than they did with Oblivion. But once you realise it, once your pessimism about this next house, cave or Vault being a generic one has been disproved often enough, it evokes an explorer’s excitement that I don’t get anywhere else.
But I wish: the skills were more fairly balanced. Small Guns and Repair are just flat out more effective than the others. Melee and Unarmed are crippled because you can’t target bodyparts, and Lockpicking gets its arse kicked by Science because most locked things have a hackable terminal to unlock them.
Left 4 Dead
It’s: a co-operative horror shooter for four people, in which the tide of zombies and superzombies intensifies towards the end of each hour-long campaign.
Defining experience: “TANK!”
“I’ll throw a-”
“Oh God, I’m on fire!”
“So am I!”
“So am I!”
“Hunter!”
“So’s the Hunter!”
“I’ve got him. Look out for the Smo- ack!”
“I’m coming!”
“Help!”
“I’m coming!“
“Aaaargh!”
“I can’t move right now, and I’m still very much on fire, but I am coming!”
“Aaaargh! Look out for the-”
“Aaaaaaargh!”
“AAAAAAH!”
“AAAAAHHH!”
“AAAAAAH!”
“AAAAAAAAAAHH!”
“Heheh. Again?”
But I wish: there was a difficulty mode where the first four levels are frantic, but the finale isn’t impossible. And that Versus mode was just the latter two maps of a campaign, and the Director would give the losing side the Tank earlier or at the same time as it did the winning side.
World of Goo
It’s: a squishy building game in which you conjoin sentient goo-balls with different physical properties to reach your goal.
Defining experience: A Blustery Day
Not my favourite level - that’s Red Carpet - but Blustery Day is more typical of World of Goo. A new style of art that the level’s theme exquisitely, a booming score far too stirring for a physics game, and a smart new kind of puzzle that seems impossible until it occurs to you, obvious thereafter.
But I wish: there were fewer simple levels. Early on this makes sense, but later there are one or two where the task is simple but daunting - building a very long bridge, or a very tall tower. I never hit a difficulty spike in World of Goo - it’s eerily close to flawless - but on these few the challenge felt fussy rather than creative.
Spore
It’s: a creative adventure in which you play every phase of a species’ life, from the microscopic to the interstellar, designing how it evolves along the way.
Defining experience: “Holy shit, what’s that?“
Spore’s riddled with Star Trek references, but there’s a more profound one that’s not explicit: here’s the game where you seek out new life. There’s an actual galaxy to explore, and you’ll meet species that perhaps one other human has ever seen: their creator.
I know a lot of people got pretty hung up on what they expected from Spore, or what else Spore could have been - and that is an interesting discussion. But I hope it didn’t blind anyone to what Spore actually is: an extraordinary exploration of human creativity, and the home of the most astonishing creatures I’ve ever seen.
But I wish: the other stages were integrated into the Space stage: fight an eco disaster by designing an anti-virus that you then control in the Cell game, impress a warlike race by beating their champion in the Creature game, claim a planet without a colony module by beaming down and starting a Tribe, or mind-control an enemy leader from orbit and take his planet by winning a Civilization game.
Mass Effect
It’s: a sci-fi action RPG with guns and science-magic in which you captain a spaceship to search for a single evil alien.
Defining experience: “I’ve had enough of your snide insinuations.”
Actually that’s not the defining experience, but anyone who’s played it and said that line knows why it springs to mind whenever you try to nail down why Mass Effect is so much better than ordinary RPGs. For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, be sure to say it if you ever get the chance.
For me the defining experience was when I’d landed on a new planet, and was asked by security to surrender my weapons. I wasn’t going to do it. Thinking like a gamer, I’d assume the designers would never kill me while I’m defenseless. But I’d become so wrapped up in the character that BioWare’s writers, my decisions, and Jennifer Hale’s exemplary voice acting had collaborated to produce that I wasn’t thinking like a gamer anymore. I was thinking go to hell. You want my weapons? Come and fucking take them, see what happens.
I won’t spoil what the outcome was, but the moral of the story is this: trust Mass Effect. It’s so well written and exciting that you’ll find yourself slipping into a role that’s very much your own - stick with it, and you’ll find the story moulds around it beautifully.
But I wish: exploring a new planet felt a bit more like exploring a new planet. The Mako fun-bus was jarringly at odds with the serious tone of the game, I’d much rather have beamed down on foot.
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Let Tom Francis tell you all what it's like, being male, middle-class and white.
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