The PlayStation 4 already is in the hands of more than a million gamers and the magical (when it works) Xbox One is coming soon. That means the generation of consoles that arrived in 2005 with the release of the Xbox 360 is, after eight years, finally coming to a close.
To say a lot has changed since the Xbox 360 came along in 2005 would be putting it mildly. We began this last console generation with a relatively stable definition of a videogame as a product -- a disc that you paid $60 for that never changed. As this generation comes to a close, we expect radically different things from our games and there are many ways to make, distribute and pay for them.
With that in mind, we at WIRED are looking back over the past eight years and choosing the games that set the trends. They might not have been the best games (although some of them are), but they had massive impact. These are the games that broke barriers, changed the landscape and served as signposts for changing times. They are the most WIRED games of the previous generation.
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Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
Originally included as a mini-game on the Project Gotham Racing 2 disc for the first Xbox, Geometry Wars was updated and re-released alongside the Xbox 360 as part of its initial Xbox Live Arcade downloadable games offering.
Retro Evolved was the first Xbox Live Arcade game with a soul. It was surrounded at first by old games like Gauntlet and Smash TV and a couple quick-and-easy PopCap Games ports. With Xbox 360's on-disc launch library lacking in killer apps, this was the first game I'd ever played on a high-definition TV, and I couldn't get over the hundreds of colorful on-screen enemies, exploding particles and gorgeous, rippling background special effects. I'd lean in dangerously close to my 27-inch, 720p monitor and declare, "You can't even see the pixels!"
It also didn't hurt that the game was incredibly fun. I spent so long chasing high scores that my eyes would literally water. More than once, my eyes dried out and I lost a contact. The game's thumping theme song still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
More than that, though, Geometry Wars was a symbol of what the Xbox Live Arcade service would become. Before Pac-Man Championship Edition, N+ and Castle Crashers, it was a beautiful, original, bite-sized game available to download for cheap, the first in what would become a flood of many more to follow.
- Ryan Rigney
Monster Hunter Series
It's arguable that no other game released in the 21st century has had the impact of Monster Hunter -- although you might not have felt it if you don't live in Japan.
The series may have started nine years and two generations ago on the PlayStation 2, but ever since Capcom's multiplayer action series migrated to Sony's PSP in late 2005, it's become the kingmaker of Japan. The top four PSP games in Japan are all Monster Hunter, and when the series jumped to Nintendo in 2011 it was a huge coup for the then-struggling Nintendo 3DS.
Flash forward to today, and Monster Hunter games on 3DS continue to move millions of copies. Sony, not to be discouraged, markets the Vita as the best choice for "hunting games" -- now a genre unto itself -- because it offers a dozen Monster Hunter clones.
The success of Monster Hunter and its imitators has altered the gaming landscape in Japan to the point that portable consoles far outsell their high-def counterparts. Put simply: As Sony sold a million PlayStation 4 consoles in the United States last week, it launched the PS Vita TV microconsole in Japan. Who needs next-gen when you can play handheld games on your television?
- Daniel Feit
Wii Sports
I was a freshman in college with the Wii launched in North America in 2006. Being a poor student, I bought Wii before any other new console thanks to its significantly lower price point of $250. The system launched with a few titles I remember enjoying, like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Trauma Center: Second Opinion, but the one that received the most playtime -- and was the most influential -- was the disc that came bundled with the console itself: Wii Sports.
A tech demo wrapped up in a collection of mini-games, Wii Sports introduced and showed off the Wii's motion control system, the first major departure from the traditional controller in the history of gaming. The motion tracking was crude, but it accomplished two major things: It got people who were already gamers up off the couch, and it got people who weren't gamers to give playing a game a shot. I played Wii Sports with everyone: All of a sudden I was sharing the camaraderie my friends and I felt when gaming together with my girlfriend's parents. And it wasn't just me, as Nintendo enjoyed similar success stories all over the world, making Wii the best-selling console of the generation and throwing the whole industry for a loop.
But even more than that, Wii Sports was a sign of things to come. In the following years, motion control became a cornerstone of both Sony and Microsoft's gaming strategy. From flailing about in Dance Central to mock-passing a football in Madden, Wii Sports is the game that proved it could be done.
- Bo Moore
BioShock
When it comes to interactive storytelling, few games were more influential than Irrational Games' 2007 masterpiece BioShock. The spiritual successor to System Shock 2, a game widely praised for its excellence in narrative design, BioShock offered an engaging story, innovative gameplay, and more than anything, an immersive, atmospheric setting. Both a critical and commercial success, BioShock paved the way for both the first-person-shooter genre and videogames in general to be taken seriously as a compelling storytelling medium.
Released in 2007, BioShock was certainly not the first game to feature an engaging or well-written story. The presentation, however, sets BioShock apart. Where most games up to that point relied on either lengthy dialog or extensive cut-scenes, BioShock incorporated its storytelling into the gameplay. Much of what made the game so interesting was its atmospheric underwater dystopian setting. The crumbling ruins of Rapture told a story as players explored its flooded chambers and blood-stained walls, while the audio recordings strewn about told the story of life before the fall.
Interestingly, BioShock as a franchise has done little to move the needle any further than its initial surge â€" BioShock 2 was forgettable and Infinite, while excellent, was more evolutionary than revolutionary. But regardless of the performance of its sequels, the accomplishments of the original game and what it did for videogame storytelling as we know it are undeniable.
- Bo Moore
Portal
What Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved did for the bite-sized arcade game on consoles, Portal did for the $15, four-hour game. Portal proved to game developers that it's okay to make games with high-production values and a few neat ideas, and then sell them digitally at a price point that wouldn't necessarily work at retail.
Portal's basic mechanic, using two "portal guns" to open extra-dimensional passages between distant surfaces in a room, is fascinating enough, but the game won everyone over with its hilarious narrative (driven mostly by the hilarious, beautifully characterized antagonist GlaDOS) and surprisingly dark undertones that hinted at a whole world outside the existence of the game's tiny spaces.
It's no wonder, then, that Portal lead designer Kim Swift was propelled to fame by the game. Forbes included her on their 30 under 30 list of high-profile young creators, and many have begun to see her as another Jonathan Blow, an artist that will push the medium forward. The Museum of Modern Art even included Portal in its initial batch of 14 games acquired for inclusion in the museum.
And yet, Swift does not aspire to be an artist. In fact, she rejects the "art" label altogether, telling me over a year ago "I work on toys. Don't take that away from me. I like that I make toys."
I won't argue with her, but I will say this: Portal is one WIRED toy.
- Ryan Rigney
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
It's funny to think about what Call of Duty was before Modern Warfareâ€"a series of World War II-themed period pieces that spun off of Steven Spielberg's desire to do a Saving Private Ryanesque WWII game with Electronic Arts, the original Medal of Honor. The team that made the third game in that series bailed out of EA, reformed themselves as Infinity Ward and set about making a competitor, Call of Duty.
The series became so popular that it seemed like every other publisher felt the need to release World War II games. "They should call this game 'Duty of Publisher,'" a friend said to me as we watched Midway unveil the now-forgotten Hour of Victory in 2007. But just a few months later, Infinity Ward threw everyone a change-up when it announced Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It wouldn't be another WWII game but a near-future, plausible-fiction adventure, incorporating powerful scenes like no one had ever seen before in their military shooters.
More than that, Infinity Ward added role-playing game mechanics into their multiplayer mode. Now, by playing more and more games online, you could level up your character and gain more and more advantages in the next fight. Suddenly, playing deathmatches online wasn't just a diversion for whenever you had the time, it was your life. Modern Warfare sent everyone scrambling, and the Call of Duty series went from a successful period piece to a dominating force in the industry. Only now is its throne about to be challenged for real -- this year's Call of Duty: Ghosts is getting dinged in the reviews, and Bungie's Destiny and Respawn's Titanfall (made by the former Infinity Ward team) about to make landfall soon.
- Chris Kohler
Braid
Braid was the launchpad for not only its creator, Jonathan Blow, but for the popularization of the idea of the lone videogame auteur, the artist who approaches his craft with a passion bordering on zealotry. A horde of artsy 2-D platforming-puzzle games followed in its wake, but Braid's real legacy lies in the explosion in the indie game development scene that followed.
Whenever people talk about videogames in the context of that hateful word "art," Braid is the game that is referenced more often than any other. Many see Blow as one of the few people trying to push videogames forward artistically, Blow himself included: He considers many other critically acclaimed games to be "infantile" and compares them to dog food.
He has his detractors, of course; in his infamous dismissal of games as an art form, Ebert called out Blow and Braid specifically, calling the game's writing "prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie."
Although there's certainly something WIRED about a prickly artist with strong opinions about What Games Should Be, it shouldn't be understated how excellent Braid really is. Its aesthetic and thematic elements give it style, but the core of the game is a series of exceptionally clever puzzles that ignore conventional game design wisdom. Braid never coddles you, but provide enough visual information on-screen to equip you to figure things out on your own. It's a delightful brain teaser that will not be forgotten in the years to come.
- Ryan Rigney
Angry Birds
I wrote about Angry Birds's cultural dominance a few months ago, for WIRED's 20th anniversary issue. You still see kids wearing Mario shirts today, but more and more they're decked out in Angry Birds tees and wool caps.
That scowling red bird-ball has become the most prominent signifier of the dominance of mobile games. When we began this generation they were relegated to feature phones, totally unplayable, none of them a household word. Now they're eating everyone's lunch and occasionally creating pop culture sensations that rival the best of the consoles.
- Chris Kohler
Minecraft
And much in the way that Angry Birds became the breakout hit of the mobile phone era, so did Minecraft become the biggest smash of the digital distribution, indie-developer boom. Knocked out in a couple weeks by one guy with a cool idea, then endlessly iterated upon, Minecraft grew and grew into its own cottage industry.
Along the way, Minecraft typified many of the lessons about the new era of gaming. Your game could just be a creative playground; it didn't necessarily need a linear story to succeed. You could release your game in a barely-finished state, then gradually improve it. You could sell your alpha version to players, promising to push them updates for free later, and make a lot of money. You could go from unknown to superstar overnight.
- Chris Kohler
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Games That Changed Everything
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