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The Top 10 PC Games of 2007 January 02, 2008 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: Our wrap-up of 2007 continues today with JCal's list of his favorite games released in 2007. Did Crysis grab the top spot? Only one way to find out!
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While 2007 was a banner year for quality PC games, there were some disappointments, with a number of titles not reaching their full potential. One that I thought I would mention right now is Hellgate London, the highly anticipated action-RPG from developer Flagship Studios. There's no doubt that the development team is highly talented and the game itself shows promise, but it was also clearly released to stores far too early with a number of bugs and issues that could not be ignored. Adding to those issues is the optional $9.95 a month charge for "premium" content that so far hasn't lived up to its price. Hellgate London could improve over the next few months, but Flagship and the game's publishers Namco and EA should have waited a few more months to polish the game. It's a situation that has occurred time and time again, particularly in PC gaming. You would think by now that developers and publishers should know that releasing a buggy product (that could have been improved with a little more time during the development stage) never works out in the end.
With that mini-rant out of the way, let's look at our picks for the top 10 best PC games released in the calendar year of 2007.
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#10. Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Electronic Arts successfully resurrected this seminal RTS game franchise with this latest installment, going "back to basics" by setting the game in the original C&C universe and timeline, bringing back the somewhat campy but still fun FMV cut scenes with Hollywood actors (oh, Tricia Helfer....oh, sorry), and most of all bringing back the intense and over-the-top gameplay of the series following the more "realistic" tone of the C&C: Generals line up.
While we still would love to see a new Red Alert C&C game, Tiberium Wars is still the best C&C game since Red Alert 2.
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#9. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Splash Damage took id Software's Quake franchise and created a solid multiplayer-oriented shooter with single player campaign elements and impressive offline AI bots. The Activision published game took a prequel approach to the Quake franchise (always a tricky move) but did so with some deep gameplay mechanics, great looking graphics, and overall a game that moved far enough away from the Battlefield style multiplayer formula to make it feel original but still kept what worked in that formula to make it entertaining.
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#8. Supreme Commander
This Gas Powered Games sci-fi RTS title published by THQ was supposed to be the "spiritual successor" to the terrific Total Annihilation (created by Gas Powered's founder Chris Taylor) and it (mostly) managed to accomplish this task. This game was by far the most diverse and most colorful of the many quality RTS games released for the PC in 2007 as the three factions fought for control. You have your massive units, you have your support for dual monitors and you have lots and lots of nukes. There's little that you can do wrong with picking this game up.
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#7. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
It took a good long while but GSC Game World's long awaited post apocalyptic open world shooter (published by THQ) turned out to be worth it in the end. It's not a happy place to explore but you will catch yourself checking out the bleak game universe in S.T.A.L.K.E.R which combines first person shooter aspects with RPG features and GTA style open world gameplay. While there are a few bugs in the game that have since been corrected by patches, it's still one of the best shooter titles in 2007.
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#6. Unreal Tournament 3
Epic Games latest entry in their long running multiplayer shooter series supposedly has experienced lower sales on the PC version than expected and that's a shame. For our money, this game (published by Midway) has more content and more stuff to do than any other shooter on the market at the moment. From great looking art design to a huge amount of maps, vehicles and just flat out fast-paced and fun gameplay, UT3's main failing is that it's basically just UT 2003/2004 with some improved graphics and AI. However, we don't think that's a bad thing considering how good the previous games in the series turned out. If you haven't picked up Unreal Tournament 3 yet you are missing out on some of the most fun you can have with your keyboard and mouse.
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#5. World In Conflict
In a year filled with a bunch of new and great strategy games, Massive Entertainment and Sierra managed to top all of them with this impressive looking and playing title that puts the emphasis on "action". This is a game for people who hate RTS titles; no resource management and no trying to coordinate massive amounts of units; just some impressive squad-based action combat set in an alternative timeline when the Soviet Union invades the US. Kudos also to Massive for continuing to support this title soon after it was released with new maps, features and mod tools.
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#4. Crysis
We really thought that Crytek and EA's long awaited sci-fi shooter would be the game to beat in 2007. The truth is that no game as heavily hyped as this title became before its release could fulfill our huge expectations. The fact that it came darn close in doing so is an accomplishment in itself. The game’s strengths are an impressive single player experience for one half of its length, along with elements of open-world gameplay, great AI programming, a surprisingly deep multiplayer mode in Power Struggle, and of course the best PC graphics that anyone has seen in some time. Only the flawed second half of the game's single player campaign and most importantly its super high hardware system requirements kept this game from being ranked higher on our list.
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#3. The Orange Box
It was definitely tempting for us to break down all of the new titles in Valve's game collection and list them as separate games on their own (as other 2007 year end awards have done) but that wouldn't be fair to Valve; most people we suspect bought the entire Orange Box collection. What those gamers got were two older games (Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1) and three new titles and all of them are excellent. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was a worthy continuation to the single player Half-Life saga with more open ended gameplay and a plotline that has us on pins and needles waiting for Episode 3. Team Fortress 2 brought some much needed artistic changes to the typical multiplayer shooter; the cartoony art style extended to the gameplay as well (although we still think the game needed more maps out of the box). Finally there's Portal, the puzzle-shooter title that, while extrememly short, combined gameplay that had not been seen before in a mainstream title with a laugh out loud funny script.
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#2. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
Developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision wisely got out of the crowded WWII shooter genre with their latest entry in the series. Putting the franchise in the modern time period was the least of the game's achievements, however. Call of Duty 4's single player gameplay, while still extremely short, was like experiencing a Michael Bay movie on steroids with fast paced gameplay, impressive graphics and a storyline that had a couple of solid twist and turns. However, It's the multiplayer experience where the game really shines with its upgradeable rank system and extra special features (nothing like ordering an air strike) keeping players on their PCs for hours.
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#1. BioShock
This was a tough decision all around but at the end of the year one game kept coming back as the most memorable gameplay experience we had had in a long time. Developer 2K Boston/2K Australia (you will always be Irrational Games to us, guys) had created great games before BioShock (System Shock 2, the Freedom Force series) but never really had the mainstream success they deserved. Ironically the team achieved that popular success with perhaps their most personal and original game they have created as we journeyed into the underwater city of Rapture and fought off the many different creatures created by mutating humans with the substance Adam.
Along the way we got into philosophical debates with unseen characters, tried to get a handle of our own moral choices (kill or heal Little Sisters) and overall experienced a single player storyline that, for once, wasn't predicable or expected. Add those elements with some unique visuals (satirical 1940's art-deco signs, the ever present water leaks, the Big Daddy) a great voice cast, cool music, the upgradeable weapons and Plasmid powers...all of these elements and more combined to make BioShock unlike any game we have ever played and that's saying something.
If any game released this year could be called a significant work of art as well as an entertaining first person shooter, BioShock is it.
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Extra Awards
I decided to spice things up a bit in the award this year and give out a few extra awards to games that deserved some special recognition
Honorable Mentions: PC games that are entertaining but just missed getting in the top 10 for 2007 included Timeshift, Stranglehold, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, Gears of War for the PC. Lord of the Rings Online and Universe at War: Earth Assault. Again, there were a ton of impressive PC games in 2007 but if you have the money you should try out all of these titles.
Best PC Game That Other Critics Hated: Shadowrun was a title that got slammed by other people in the game press. I think most of them didn't care for it because it was a first person shooter when they though it should be an RPG title like the original Shadowrun pen-and-paper game. However, I found the game to be a worthy title thanks to its unique gameplay decisions (classes that combined weapons and magical powers, true multi-level maps) and some solid AI. Yes, the game's graphics were not up to snuf. Yes, there were not enough levels. Yes, you could only play it on Vista. Yes, the whole PC-Xbox 360 cross-platform deal turned out to be a gimmick. However if you find the PC version of the game in the bargain bin in your local Gamestop (and you will) I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
PC Games That Shouldn't Have Been Released: When Microsoft announced that it would be porting over Halo 2 specifically for Windows Vista, we expected to see at least some cool DirectX10 graphics added to Bungie's original Xbox shooter. The final result, however, was a simple port of a over two year old game with little to no graphical changes and gameplay that in the PC world has moved on to bigger and better things. Microsoft should have just abandoned this project. The same goes for Painkiller: Overdose, a pale continuation of the great People Can Fly 2004 shooter that began life as a third party free total conversion mod from Mindware Studios but then got turned into a full scale commercial game by publisher Dreamcatcher Studios. The end result was an unimaginative and mindless shooter that used the three year old Painkiller engine and had none of the imaginative art and level design of the original. We think People Can Fly would be appalled at this title.
Best Non-Hardcore PC Game: Telltate Games's Sam and Max Season 1 began life as a downloadable title via Gametap but now the entire first season of the episodic comical adventure game (based on Steve Purcell's comic book characters) has been released as a retail game via The Adventure Company with lots of extras. If you missed checking out the episodes as they were released online in 2006 and 2007 you owe it to yourself to buy the retail version. You won't be shooting mutants and you won't fire nukes and you certainly won't task your PC hardware but you will laugh a lot and enjoy the puzzles and jokes that Telltale has created.
PC Games That Went AWOL In 2007: While heavily hyped when they were first announced in 2006 or even earlier, little to no info on upcoming titles like Alan Wake, Marvel Universe Online (rumored to be cancelled) Rogue Warrior and The Crossing in 2007 made us wonder if these games will ever be released.
Best Console Games Released in 2007 That Should Be Ported To The PC: BioWare's sci-fi RPG for the Xbox 360 Mass Effect was as deep and as compelling as we had hoped and we also hope BioWare won't wait nearly two years to get this game to the PC (as they did with Jade Empire). Real Time Worlds' Xbox 360 game Crackdown was a terrific super hero themed open world action game that turned you from a wimpy cop to a leaping-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound crimefighter. It's unlikely this title will be ported to the PC but we can dream.