Patrick R

A Decade Ago: The Games of 2007 Thread

Recommended Posts

[Sorry, accidentally prematurely posted right before leaving for a doctor's appointment.]

 

Me and Painkiller Overdose are done, professionally. Still interested in giving the original a play someday, but Overdose isn't my jar of jelly.

 

According to Gama Sutra and a baby Griffin McElroy writing for Engadget.com, Chain Factor is a game that was only made to be part of an ARG for the CBS show Numb3rs. I can't speak to any of the fictional ARG hooks in Chain Factor, but I can say it's a really fun and addictive puzzle drop game. The premise is somewhat difficult to describe well (pop bubbles by putting them in rows or columns that are as long as their number), but like any good game of it's ilk once you get the hang of it it opens up as a game of spacial and resource management, and trying to make every move work towards clearing out garbage blocks.

 

The music is fantastic and Gamasutra's write-up of it seems to suggest the music comes courtesy of minimalist composer Steve Reich, though it's entirely possible they only meant to imply it reminded them of his work. The whole thing makes me wonder if ten years from now someone might stumble upon Glittermitten Grove blissfully unaware of what Frog Fractions 2 is.

 

chain-factor1-480x397.png

 

Going back and doing more research I discovered the game Drop 7, which I had heard referenced on Idle Thumbs (I think) but never seen in action. I've found videos listing Chain Factor as a Drop 7 clone except that Drop 7 was officially released two years after Chain Factor? So either Drop 7 is a Chain Factor clone or the people who made the game for the ARG went on to further develop it for themselves and release it as Drop 7. What a strange development! 

 

 

EDIT: Talked about this in Slack and learned that not only is it the same developer for both, but there's a good Designer Notes episode about the whole thing!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A quick three!

 

Crayon Physics, the game that would become Crayon Physics Deluxe two years later, had it's debut as a tossed off proof of concept in 2007. As an early version it's very limited (you can only draw rectangles), and I cannot for the life of me get past the fourth screen.

 

crayon physics.png

Stumped.


Kyntt Stories is an engine of some sort by Nifflas for people to create platforming adventure games. It comes with one story, The Machine, but there are more to download from the site. I feel like I've played a dozen games identical to it on itch.io on the past couple years. Maybe they were made with this engine? Got lost 10 minutes in, called it quits. Kinda dull. Pretty good music though.

 

KnyttStories-TheMachine-Land2.gif

 

Rose and Camellia is kind of a joke Flash game, but it's a joke that made me laugh really hard. You should probably just play it for a couple minutes, or watch this video.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love Knytt Stories. It's really great like pretty much everything Nifflas has put out. It's been years since I last visited it, but it's such a short game that it's worth a revisit. Samorost is another short one with the same feeling.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Today I learned about the existence of Peggle Extreme, the Orange Box themed Peggle game, which lead me to discovering that 2007 was also the year the original Peggle debuted. I played a ton of Peggle Nights and will have to go back and get the original as well.

 

0.jpg

 

The theming is completely irrelevant for a game like Peggle (and I'm honestly a bit surprised they never cranked out an endless stream of licensed Peggle games a la Angry Birds), but more Peggle is more Peggle. Pretty sure there were portals (just not Portal portals) in the original game, but either way those levels at the end of this are definitely the highlight. I always remember Peggle as a game that is kind of mindlessly satiisfying, but the later levels are actually a real challenge that have you thinking in terms of positioning, resource management, and risk/reward. It's just that there's enough random elements (between orange peg placement and landing in the bucket) that even if you stink you'll probably eventually be able to beat a tough level by dumb luck.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Peggle Extreme! I remember getting hooked on it before buying Peggle Deluxe. Bundling it with The Orange Box was a masterstroke. It's still free on Steam if anyone's curious.

 

Also they did a WoW version, according to Wikipedia. Two addictive experiences combined in one package!

 

*hums "Ode to Joy"*

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Last year, before I came up with this project, I decided to give Gears of War another shot. I really didn't like Gears of War. I didn't like it's meaningless story. I didn't like it's stupid characters. I didn't like it's look, it's color palate. I thought it's world-building was criminally underdeveloped, to the point where I didn't know if the Locusts were human beings until I asked people on Slack. They are called Locusts, sure, but they move identical to the player characters, they look like the player characters (you never do get a good clear look at them for the first hour or so), they play exactly like the player characters, they sound like the player characters, they use the same weapons as the player characters. It's one of the most monumentally unimaginative sci-fi worlds I've ever had the displeasure of visiting.

 

I am told all this is in service of balancing towards the multiplayer, which is what the game is actually about, and that just leads to more disappointments. Like none of these enemies seem to react when I am blasting dozens of bullets from an insanely large machine gun into them. If they started their run animation, they're gonna finish their run animation. If they're gonna leap behind cover, it doesn't matter how many rounds you pump them with, they're gonna leap behind cover. It makes the combat incredibly unsatisfying, as I never feel I'm actually inflicting damage. Sometimes enemies fall over dead sometimes they don't and I assume I'm the one doing it. It's not fun at all.

 

But I figured, for the good of this thread I should go ahead and pick up my save and keep playing. Apparently the last checkpoint I was at involves flocks of bugs or something that divebomb you from the sky at random and instantly kill you? Over and over? Like, I've restarted this checkpoint 9 times and each time it ends with bugs randomly deciding to kill me in an instant? And then I look just this moment and THIS ISN'T EVEN A 2007 GAME. I WROTE THIS BIG LONG THING AND SPENT ALL THIS TIME PLAYING SOME PIECE OF CRAP 2006 GAME.

 

Oops. Oh well. Look at what came in the mail today.

 

IMG_1408.JPG

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Important Assassin's Creed update: I pretty much instantly fell into hate with the world, story, characters, etc. but I discovered that even if the game doesn't let you skip cutscenes, it does let you ruin them by letting you spin your character in little circles during all the dialogue, even his.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's terrifically amusing when you can make your PC misbehave during cutscenes. Oh, Alyx is talking to me, for ages? I'll just rattle a few wooden crates into her boat race, see how she likes that. Ah, she's pretending not to notice. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

this thread is so good. Thanks for documenting. It's weird how games from 10 years ago seem both really old, and kind of recent. If that makes sense?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm enjoying this nostalgia trip thread!

 

An underrated and overlooked game from 2007 was Crush. It's a PSP game, which might explain why it never got much attention. The core concept is that you navigate a 3D world by looking at it from side-on or top-down perspectives and "crushing" into 2D. So a platform that is far away in 3D can be brought adjacent by crushing the perspective down to 2D. If you've played Fez, you probably get the idea. If not, here's a short gameplay video:

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Crush got rereleased on 3DS later in 2012. It looks quite different and the console's 3D slider was made useful in it. I've never played the original PSP version myself, but the 3DS version was fun.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow, I can't believe Puzzle Quest is 10 years old. I played the shit out of that. This thread is making me a bit sad that I hardly play games any more.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This will probably get repeated in my FPS thread, but here is what I posted about some 2007 games on the Size Five forums.

 

Portal, when I played it in 2011:

 

Quote

It's awesome, and reminds me of Half-Life1 in the environments and the storytelling through them. Got to the sentry bots, which are hilarious and terrifying at the same time.
I'm finding it very easy so far, though, tutorial level easiness, and it feels like I'm almost done.

 

Quote

Brilliant game. It deffo got harder, and the

 

fire

bit onwards was all just amazing. The only minor gripes I'd have would be re-use of certain assets (the 

 

graffiti

, basically - that's the one thing that shouldn't get repeated) and the fact that I didn't get the chance to do quite as many cool actiony things with the portals as I would have liked (using them to bounce up a series of towering platforms, or portalling the ground from beneath a sentrybot so it falls into another one were so cool).

 

Tomb Raider Anniversary:

 

Quote

Just rage-uninstalled Tomb Raider Anniversary. Got to the T-Rex fight and could not get the stupid fucking adrenaline-headshot move to work with anywhere near enough consistency to also get myself lined up with the spikes that I can't see because they're behind me the whole time. Crystal Dynamics - if you're going to have a stupidly complicated and fiddly special move, don't make it the core mechanic of your first boss fight.

I wasn't enjoying the game that much anyway, it was a bit dull and irritating.

 

Telltale's first season of Sam And Max was released. I wasn't a big fan of this, to be honest - I didn't really enjoy the Telltale SnMs until season 3.

 

And Crysis (I'll spoiler this to avoid cluttering the thread, as there's quite a lot here. TLDR: a game with lots of cool stuff about it, but too much fluff and a crap ending) :

 

 

firstly when I tried it briefly in 2012

 

Quote

Crysis has a problem where it crashes if you try to change the settings, but apart from that it's pretty sweet. I'm getting my arse handed to me in every firefight, though. The suit-powers run out too quickly to make any difference, and it doesn't auto-switch to another weapon when you run out of ammo. Still, it's good fun and I seem to be running everything on high no problem.

 
Then when I came back to it in 2014:
 

Quote

That settings crash seems to have been fixed in the past two years! I think I was on Medium before, now I'm on Easy it's not half so insanely difficult. I do still run out of ammo a lot and sometimes get too cocky and die. The suit powers are still useless though,. Just leave it on armour for health regen and ignore the others. Do they get upgraded during the game, or is that in the sequels?

They've taken out the tagging-enemies-with-your-binoculars thing from Far Cry which is a shame because you lose the whole sneaking around making a plan thing, but I guess this isn't that kind of game. [edit: no they haven't, Ben, you fool] It does feel really cool when you're sweeping through a village, chucking grenades and taking cover, though.

 
It's pointed out to me that if you stand still the suit power barely depletes:
 

Quote

I'm enjoying Crysis a LOT more now that I've got the hang of the suit powers and stuff. I'm on a bloody annoying tank level at the moment, though, which apparently most people loved? It's the one where you're driving the tank and shooting all the other tanks. You're constantly one or two hits away from dying, it keeps auto-saving in the middle of it and the tank gets stuck really easily.

 I'm looking forward to the aliens, actually, even though everyone says they're rubbish!

I had a very nice Far Cry 1 moment in my last session where I tagged a jeep that was patrolling round a warehouse. I managed to hide inside the warehouse, watch my radar to see when they were coming back round, then shoot a barrel just in time to catch them in the explosion!

 

Quote

 I'm up against cheap-Korean-knock-off-super-suit guys with miniguns now, it's pretty cool. I'm really enjoying finding cover, going invisible, nipping out for a bit to cause some mayhem then disappearing again, but it's also fun when that goes to bollocks a bit and you end up charging round dig-outs blasting everyone in sight.

The weapon system is a bit weird - there are some guns like the SCAR that you barely get any ammo for and have to discard immediately, plus I've picked up some rifle grenades but I have no idea how to use them. I've googled it and apparently:
 
"Hit 'C' while holding the weapon. You can step through each selection by hitting the corresponding number key repeatedly. To select incendiary ammo, use '5'. To use rifle grenades, use '3' to select the launcher mod and right-click out, then hit 'X' to step through the rifle's ammo select: full auto, single shot, grenade."

Fucking what?!

 

Quote

I've figured it out now, but I'm sure I tried to have a fiddle around with this stuff earlier in the game and didn't have the option, so I guess it levelled me up  without me realising. I think once I finish/give up on (if it gets as bad as everyone says) it, I'm going to have a quick go from the start on medium, now that I actually understand how the hell everything works...

 

Quote

Ok, I'm in the alien ship. The gravity going was quite fun, but the floaty alien ghosts are annoying and I've just got to a bit with timed locking forcefields and I cannot see what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't realise quite how heavy a slump this game would take!

 

Quote

I got out of that alien room - it turns out that the sparkly tunnel I tried was incoming, so I needed to go in the other one. That sent me to another room where I could barely figure out where to go, then I got out of the spaceship to the icey island, which was fun for about two minutes shooting the aliens as they jumped around the place, until it put me on an escort mission, then three turret sequences in a row (truck, AA, dropship). I fucking hate these turret sequences, they always handle like shit and have really low health. This dropship is fucking impossible to manoeuvre. Then the game crashed. I'm pretty tempted to uninstall. Crazy how badly they can fuck up a game halfway through.

[EDIT: looked at a walkthrough, seems I've got two of these air fights then some corridor shooting then that's it. I might give myself 5-10 minutes to get through the air battles and if not just give up]

[EDIT: ok, managed to fluke my way through the air battles - seems you just have to keep shuffling about like an idiot until you've shot everything. It crashed again as I was finishing the mission, so not sure if it saved or not...]

 

Quote

I encountered two massive game-breaking bugs on my way to the last section, so I gave up. I started again on the second highest setting, and it's definitely a lot more fun once you've had a ten-hour tutorial! Just knowing how my suit and weapons work, plus remembering there's a prone key, really helped. The first bits are still pretty tough, though, because they're completely out in the open with loads of enemies and boats. No wonder I felt overwhelmed.

Anyway, a game with lots of cool stuff about it, but too much fluff and a crap ending.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Crush looks pretty great. Too bad it's not on Steam. I am considering purchasing a DS Lite for the sake of this thread (Phantom Hourglass! Picross! Prob a Pheonix Wright!) but that is about as far as I'm willing to go, so I won't get to any PSP games.

 

I am really looking forward to replaying Portal, as I genuinely believe it features the greatest storytelling of any game I've ever played. Be fun to go back and see if that holds up.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Portal is one of the best tutorials in any game. It only really comes to life at the last test chamber, but from that point the challenge keeps escalating. It's suprising for a short game to feature so many mechanics and have them work so well.

 

I didn't play Tomb Raider Anniversary when it came out (actually I think I finished it last year), but it's one of the best TR games IMO. Found myself wishing they'd given Tomb Raider 2 the same treatment, but alas. It'll never happen now that Lara is copying notes from Nathan Drake.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been slowly making my way through the original Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii U. For some reason I have a very clear memory of the first time I ever saw this game in action: it was 2007 or 2008, and I was visiting an old friend at her flat in Manchester. I'd never known her to show much interest in video games, but she had a Wii, and for some reason she was wildly enthusiastic about this new Mario game. 


This was at a time in my life when I wasn't playing too many games - I would sometimes play old things on PC, but I was totally out of touch with the world of consoles, and Nintendo stuff was entirely alien to me. So I remember seeing it on her little 20" CRT and thinking 'this is very nice but I have no idea what is going on here'. Perhaps it didn't strike me as being so very different to the old 3D platform games of the N64 and PS1 era - but those were out of my wheelhouse too, because games like that were never released on PC. So basically I was clueless.


Fast forward ten years or so, and oddly enough, it would be the Wii U that rescued the reputation of the Wii in my mind. By the time the Wii U came out, I feel like I'd been through the stage of scowling at its shovelware and underpowered specs, and a new appreciation was starting to form in my mind around a good number of indisputable classics in its back catalogue. For me at least that was part of why I bought one - because there was so much that I didn't want to miss out on. 


Super Mario Galaxy is one of those classics. And it is very good. I'm not sure I can say too much more about it that hasn't been said already, but a few detached observations:


I have no idea how anyone would go about designing a game like this. I'd have trouble drawing many of these maps on a piece of paper; how they were conceived and built in 3D space, I cannot imagine. The gravity manipulation and use of 'slingshot' physics mechanics stills feels revolutionary. The way they use it to solve the first problem of platform games - it doesn't matter if you fall off the platforms now! - is instantly satisfying. But of course they then have to provide a whole lot of ways in which you can fall off the world.


It looks great. I don't much care that it looks a little fuzzy now on a HD TV. I wonder about the extent to which the art design - much of which is a lot of otherwise unremarkable Mario stuff -  is elevated by the game design. To put it another way: you have a lot of familiar and fairly unremarkable Mario tropes that suddenly look amazing and new because they're painted on to a set of tiny, meticulously crafted little interlinked worlds. It's a very, very, very good idea.


I think the controls are fine, though if I were given the option of using the Classic Controller Pro, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Shaking the Wiimote/Nunchuk to do the spin attack becomes tiresome almost instantly, and shooting star bits at stuff feels like a disposable mechanic included only to support the pointing functionality (though let's be honest - shooting stuff with a light gun is always kind of fun, isn't it?).


The story of Rosalina - seemingly inspired by The Little Prince - is a really extraordinary thing. I've no idea how it got made, or why it is in the game. On a certain level, it's totally irrelevant to Mario's actual quest (to rescue Peach) and it's hard to make any kind of link between the story and what it is you *do* in the game. Rosaline never features in the actual levels, that I can recall; she only presides in the hub world as a sort of maternal deity. A bit like the Fire Keepers in the Dark Souls games, perhaps. 


I should add that I don't really care that Rosalina is irrelevant to the game at large. The storybook is beautiful. Her home is beautiful. But questions abound. Am I the child Rosalina is reading to? Or is the whole thing a story being told to Mario, who is her child? Or is Mario just her corporeal messenger in the galaxy, the agent through which she is slowly consolidating her power through the accumulation of chubby little star dudes? 


It's all very confusing, and - if I stop to think about it too much - deeply weird. I find it kind of compelling and haunting at the same time. I wonder if Nintendo would ever include such a defiantly odd bit of myth-making in one of their most prominent games again. I suspect not? New Super Mario Bros U, Super Mario 3D Land/World and Mario Maker were all devotedly pedestrian* by comparison. It'll be interesting to see if Super Mario Odyssey brings anything new to the picture - beyond, you know, the horrors of forced interaction with actual human beings.

 

* - There's a gravity-related joke to be made here but I can't for the life of me figure out how it might go.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

New Super Mario Bros U, Super Mario 3D Land/World and Mario Maker were all devotedly pedestrian* by comparison. 

 

* - There's a gravity-related joke to be made here but I can't for the life of me figure out how it might go.

 

They're more grounded?

 

Thanks for writing about Super Mario Galaxy. It's the one major game from 2007 that I really regret I won't get to play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm gonna say that it's worth buying a cheap Wii just to play it. Console + Galaxy would probably be the cost of one brand new game. Then you could play Galaxy tutu. TOTALLY worth it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A few years back, a shop called GAME announced they were selling off their stock of Wii consoles very cheap. Went right out and snapped one up, and it wasn't long before I'd softmodded it and filled a memory stick with amazing games. Probably didn't emerge from my house for about a week. 

 

Had the best time playing Galaxy (and then G2) with my SO. Just such joyful and creative games, which I could enthuse about until the cows came home.

 

Anyway, God of War 2 came out in '07, and what a huge step-up from God of War it proved to be. Hugely immature and over the top, in all of the right ways, with the notable exception of a sequence where Kratos takes a break from single-handedly dismantling the Colossus of Rhodes to drop in on two very booby women and, with nary a word spoken, you mash triangle, faster and faster, until you all cum together.

 

Mario Galaxy it ain't.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was thinking about maybe trying to borrow a Wii from someone on the forums, and paying for shipping, but that seems like too much to ask. Seems like Wiis alone are still in the 50-80 dollar range on eBay, which is a lot of money for me, especially for consoles that may or may not work properly. If I can't end up playing Super Mario Galaxy I will at least watch a playthrough online.

 

My time with Assassin's Creed was short but most everything about it was very off-putting. I hated the story, I hated hated that there was no subtitle option, I hated the framing device, I hated all the techno garbage that filled my screen, I hated how that garbage made the world ugly and unappealing to explore, I hated how everything was just doing exactly what onscreen prompts told me to do, I hated that the combat was just mashing X over and over, I hated how I was constantly holding a trigger AND the A button...basically the only thing I liked was randomly parkouring around and accidentally jumping off ledges into bales of hay. That was always fun.

 

Obviously a seminal video game franchise, but perhaps it is one that just isn't for me. So far it's my least favorite game of 2007.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

oh dude, now I feel awful. I sold my spare Wii earlier this year for like $30. :\

 

I'd have been happier knowing it went to your cause. I'm actually surprised that they're going for so much right now. I feel like for a while there they were tough to give away. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Uh oh, sounds like your experiment is getting feature-creep. You'll be buying Duke Nukem Forever before you know it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Listening to the back catalog of the Bombcast (which started in 2008) reminds me that this was an era where people were still trying to make MMO's that competed with WOW. One 2007 game no one can play anymore is Tabula Rasa, a sci-fi shooter MMO from Ultima creator Richard Garriott. Here's the Thumbs talking about it being shut down at the start of 2009.

 

 

 

Apparently there's an MMO based on the SyFy Channel series Defiance that plays very similarly? MMO's in practice are not things I enjoy playing, but as worlds and communities that are born, live for a couple years, and then die, I find them pretty interesting. Especially when it ends with a big narrative event like Tabula Rasa, to emphasize the apocalyptic feeling of the world ending. Glad people have captured games like this on video.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Apparently I am a #FakeGamer because I just used this thread to bash the non-games of Assassin's Creed and Gears of War but I cannot stop playing Peggle. Right now I've been trying to top the high scores and get medals on the challenge boards, taking 30 minutes out of my day to do one or two as I listen to a podcast. Peggle is the best game I've played for this thread. I keep meaning to start a new game of Mass Effect, but Peggle.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now