…to set you up for the New Year.

Gold Chains with Rock the Parti, because it is literally the only record you need right now.

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And Chewing Pixels’ Kid A wishing you a very happy one, because it’s a photo that makes me indescribably happy.

2009 is going to be the best one yet, right? See you on the other side.

(P.S. having 25 Youtube videos on the front page has been causing some visitors problems. For now I’ve scrubbed them, leaving just a fugly wall of text. Apols: will beautify in the morning, possibly.)

So Eurogamer’s Top 50 Games of the Year list draws to its conclusion. Because of the unique way in which the list is compiled the order of games bucks expectations, something many of the readers have struggled with.

As contributors and staff only get to submit their own top 10 games, a low ranked game on lots of people’s lists will place higher than a top ranked game on just one or two. This is useful data in that it communicates those games that most of the staff liked over those that a very few loved, but the mathematical outcome certainly upsets perceived wisdom. This year’s readers comments have been the most tantrum-y I can remember.

Here are my final few comments on some of those games that feature in the final ten placings. You can read everybody else’s here.

7. Left 4 Dead

It is, in almost every way that matters, the perfect zombie game, one whose effectiveness derives from tight, sensible boundaries rather than sprawling ambition. The four-mission, four-stage framework inspires repeat play and warm familiarity, the experience changing through shifts to AI patterns rather than raw geography. The limited number of weapons and inputs and the small roster of enemy types have allowed Valve to perfect a few ideas rather than half-deliver on many, a wise decision when you begin to understand the precise balance that underpins the experience. Played with three friends it is an exhilarating experience that rewards co-operation over showboating heroics. In this way it works against Xbox Live’s characteristic culture of individualism, encouraging teamwork and communication in exchange for survival. It’s all the more rewarding for it.

6. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

The six modes shepherd you around the game in a cyclical way so that you never grow tired of the mechanics: each mode emphasises a different mechanical nuance, trains a different muscle and, like a balanced work-out, improvement in one area has benefits across the whole. The game’s true genius though, the reason we all kept playing for well over a month (a long time in videogames, especially small ones) lies in the leaderboards. To have your closest rival friend’s score on the play screen at all times, like it’s the only thing that matters because it is the only thing that matters, gave me thumb fatigue.

5. Braid

It’s a game that can be played just once and then never played again till it’s been forgotten. In this way it recalls LucasArts’s best adventures, games that could be ruined with a peek at a guidebook, whose wonder and thrill derives from the release of pent up infuriation at the moment you solve an irksome riddle for yourself. The puzzles are ingenious, even beautiful in their construction. The way the time travel idea is developed over the course of the game demonstrates a growth of ideas that games many times its length never manage. The writing that garnishes the experience, while florid and ambitious, has mostly been criticised because it is different. Naysayers be damned, this is an exemplary indie-game, created by two lovely men, and this fruit of their hard work and dedication offers cause célèbre more than any other release in 2008.

4. Fable 2

The technical issues with the game are infuriating, not because they spoil the experience but because they dominate conversation about it, conversation that would be better spent discussing its triumphs rather than its shortfalls. The choices may be limited, the interactions simplistic, but buy into this world and its systems and you’ll leave a richer person, and not only in terms of virtual real estate.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV

It was the game that everybody started but, reportedly, few finished, if Microsoft’s drop-off rate stats are to be taken at face value. This dash to experience Vice City, to see the world and to be able to pass judgment on it quickly and urgently meant that most voices commenting on the game, from the highest critic down to the lowliest forumite, were often shallow at best. Now, months later, time has mellowed the extremist views, drawing players towards a moderate consensus that this is, in most ways, an extraordinary gameworld, one that houses, in some ways, an extraordinary game.

2. Fallout 3

If Oblivion was the kind of on horseback adventure that could only have grown out of a pastoral, pre-industrialised civilisation, then Fallout 3 is the kind that could only have come from the other end of humanity’s technological trajectory. This post-nuclear fallout world is beautiful in its ruin, the shoots of life sprouting from the rubble of a collapsed American dream. The systems that Washington clothes are barely a step on from those found in Oblivion, and the story shuffles along to an uninspired conclusion. The game’s wonder then lies in its details and verisimilitude: the bottle-cap economy, the clicking radioactive rivers, the abandoned gas stations and supermarkets, the open air cinemas and broke-backed flyovers. Fallout 3 is a revelation, one that we hope will never be realized in our world, but one, which we cannot help but revisit nonetheless.

1. LittleBigPlanet

Ollie Welsh pointed out in his review that, despite LittleBigPlanet’s many triumphs, it was nothing like as perfect a platformer as Nintendo’s Super Nintendo classic, Yoshi’s Island. Of course, believers argue that it’s so much more than a mere platform game, that it is in fact, a platform in and of itself, a tool for users to realize the inventions of their imagination. But, as a tool, surely its work is best demonstrated by the game Media Molecule created using it? If that’s the case, then the question becomes: can the game’s users transcend its inventors creativity to turn a great game into a classic one?

Limitless potential is of no use until it is somehow realized and, while the YouTube videos of fantastic contraptions inspire “how on earth did they…” gasps of wonder, for me, this is a game still only pregnant with potential. That the responsibility for the game’s greatness rests on us and not on the developer is unusual, and for that reason the endless plaudits make me uneasy. Whatever the end result, this is a game I’ve thought about more than I’ve played, and, as they say, actions speak louder than words.

20. Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Monolith stole the blueprint of hell and with it designed Condemned 2. A grotesque game both visually, thematically and ideologically, it trades the threat of violence and white fear that was so effective in the first game for its dumb and brutal reality, taking what was terrifyingly implicit and making it plainly explicit. The linear path, forcing you to behave in monstrous ways without rhyme, reason or wit makes this the gaming equivalent of torture porn. Meritless.

19. Tomb Raider Underworld

Some critics have misconstrued Underworld’s precision and polish for soullessness and yes, there are times when the design’s meticulous order robs its world of credibility. But really this is a game of supreme competence, executed by a developer that understands its heroine and the laws of her universe in full. The game suffers in some ways by comparison to newcomer rival Drake’s Fortune, both in terms of script writing and gunplay, but Lara’s latest contains enough jewels of its own to be an expedition worth undertaking.

18. Boom Blox

Boom Blox’s lacklustre sales contrast with its fawning, near-universal critical acclaim. In movie terms then, Boom Blox is an art house classic, loved by the cognoscenti, spurned by the massmarket, the kind of product one doesn’t usually associate with its director Steven Spielberg. Proof perhaps that, like their film-judging better cousins, videogame critics wield less power than they might hope.

15. Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Professor Layton takes the Sunday newspaper supplement brainteaser and nestles it into a Ghiblian narrative, proving that minigame compilations, when placed in the right metagame, can be more intriguing and compelling than the grandest long form epic. The watercolour aesthetic and eastern European soundtrack take videogames into fresh, welcome territory. This is the kind of village encountered in dream, the two-dimensional layout of half-memory, filled with curious, often senseless inhabitants. Then the game ends with a climactic twist that impresses upon your mind more than any of the constituent puzzles that led to its revelation. Spellbinding.

14. Rez HD

When I asked Kieron to offer some feedback on my review of the game, he took a long look, a deep breath and offered: “Yeah. The commission screwed you. It’s Rez, for f**k’s sake.” You see, Rez communicates so much of what makes videogames brilliant: the awesome spectacle, the otherworldly, esoteric visuals, the interactive soundtrack and the high-score chasing compulsion of repeat play. So to articulate what makes Rez a triumph is to try to encapsulate in words the very medium’s potential. Perhaps I failed in that aim, but this game, on this system, at this point in time, articulates all that is wonderful about videogames better than almost any other.

12. Rock Band 2

There is no game that I’ve played more this year, especially with friends, especially while having the best of times. Harmonix reveal their pedigree in an assured update to the best music game currently on the market. As a piece of software it’s superior to the new Guitar Hero in almost every way, from the slick, clean interface to the boisterous drum samples themselves. The world tour mode is something of a slog, and as a barrier to unlocking the game’s full roster of songs, is perhaps too steep, but otherwise Rock Band 2 is the greatest co-op music game on the market and that you can import songs from previous games points toward a happy future for its followers.

You can read the rest of the Eurogamer staff and contributor comments here.

30. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Nobody’s interested in the middle ground when it comes to polarizing videogames. When it comes to MGS4 this is a shame because there is just as much of merit in this experience as there is to spoil it.

In his fine, thoughtful review for Eurogamer, Ollie nailed this tension with skill and eloquence. That so many readers were unable to parse his thoughts, to appreciate the nuance and contradictions in the experience suggests that Kojima’s series primarily appeals to immature gamers. Perhaps that’s natural for a game born of Hollywood bombast, one that requires you to swallow its spectacle wholesale before being allowed to investigate its systems. Still, long live the middle ground: this is a game that has much to teach and much to learn, and we’re all the poorer if it manages neither.

28. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Atlus are at the forefront of JRPG innovation even though their inventiveness with the form is mainly characterized by the absorbing of elements from other genres. Persona 3 is, in many ways, a Japanese Bully, the structure of the school day providing the form and order into which the drama slots. The social sim elements of the game and Pokémon-esque collecting and breeding of the titular Personas add depth and complexity to its more traditional dungeon crawling. The only drawback to buying the game now is the presence of its sequel, released in America this month, which builds upon and perfects almost all of its innovations.

27. Chrono Trigger DS

While nostalgia is part of the aesthetic, through both design and circumstance, you needn’t have played the Super Nintendo original to be bowled over by Chrono Trigger’s timeless genius. Playing the game afresh today is a mixture of wonder and tragedy. Wonder at the quality of the design, storyline and tragedy that so few games caught on to its solutions to many of the JRPG format’s restrictions and problems.

26. SingStar PS3

SingStar has always been the best-looking game on the rhythm-action market, its white space and stylish understatement a refreshing antidote to Guitar Hero’s unsightly clash of stage light colour, sweat and lycra. Despite the pleasing neutrality of the menus and HUD, it’s more of a game than Microsoft’s rival Lips, which aims for a literal approximation of the Japanese karaoke experience. But SingStar’s competitive elements never disrupt the flow of a party by alienating non-gamers. Visiting the SingStore while drunk – the only time most players will ever visit the SingStore – can be an expensive excursion.

25. Wii Fit

The Wiifit experience mimics in small our wider experience of its host console. Initial wonder at the bright innovation of the concept turns to joy at first touch. Slick, utilitarian design guides you through the game’s exercises and physical games with the very best Japanese elegance and thoughtful efficiency. Then, a week into the relationship, joy gives way to ennui as the repetitive tasks fail to offer much depth (or weight-loss) and finally, you sink into buyer’s regret just as you slip the balance board into a cupboard and turn off the light, fat and a bit unhappy.

24. Pure

ATV games are so often presented with the exclamation point superlatives of the extreme sports vernacular, graphic design hype overcompensating for the underwhelming experience beneath the presentation. Pure is different. The lingering descents from mountaintops are two parts F-Zero, one part Pilotwings, those slow-motion moments spent soaring through blue, blue skies providing relief from the hot roar of engines that will resume as soon as you hit the ground below. The ATV creation system, which could so easily have been over fussy and tiresome, is executed with thought and elegance and the racing that these elements dress is never short of spectacular.

23. Race Driver: GRID

Codemasters’ delightful antidote to the earnestness of Gran Turismo and Forza was, for me, a rediscovery of what racing games can best offer. Service to realism can only provide so much enjoyment, and only to a niche audience at that. GRID, by contrast, delights in its videogame-ness, offering, without apology, an exaggerated, accessible version of the sport. The reapplication of Prince of Persia’s time rewind function was clever, the races in which you compete with and against a teammate ingenious but, most of all, GRID polishes the rough potential of Colin McRae’s DiRT into a bright diamond.

You can read the rest of the Eurogamer staff and contributor comments here

38 Lost Odyssey

Videogames’ immaturity has ensured that we’re used to questing for humanity’s baser goals: wealth, power, immortality and Princess Peach.

Lost Odyssey turns convention on its head (at least that of the narrative variety, this is a traditional JRPG elsewhere) by revealing an immortal protagonist who is fed up with life and wants out.

Littered throughout the game are 31 tiny stories plucked from protagonist Kaim’s 1000 years of existence. Penned by esteemed Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu and translated by Jay Rubin, a Harvard professor best known for his translations of Haruki Murakami’s work, they provide us with the year’s best writing in a videogame, stuffed with sentiment but shy of sentimentality.

While it’s a shame that Shigematsu’s pen didn’t extend to the rest of the dialogue in the game, it’s worth playing just for these moments. Elsewhere this is an orthodox but lovely JRPG that delights all the way to its conclusion, proof also, after the lacklustre Blue Dragon, that ex-Square founder Hironobu Sakaguchi really does know how to make a good videogame.

37. WipEout HD

Despite the far future aesthetic, the blemishless sci-fi visual design, and bonnets so clinical you could eat a meal off them, WipeOut HD bristles with a weird sort of nostalgia for players of the PlayStation originals. It’s a return to form, for sure, but also an extension of everything that made those first games so beguiling. And all for that price! Another game that’s unfairly struggled to have its brilliance recognized from behind this host console’s waning image.

32. Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer

There’s something extraordinary in the fact a tough old, cranky Rogue-like could place so highly in a list of this sort. But perhaps this is the logical conclusion for a game that somehow managed to find a wider audience than beardy D&D players. The bright visuals, cute humour and slim, fast flow of play no doubt make Shiren slip down where its bloated cousins would stick in the throat. I think Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon, despite the super-saccharine tone, is the better game, but Shiren’s portability makes it a more reasonable prospect for many players.

You can read the Eurogamer team’s comments in full here.

Eurogamer has begun publishing its Top 50 Games of 2008 rundown, a series of articles to which I contribute some words and thoughts.

This year, rather than commenting in rambling long posts or smart-arse one liners I thought I’d try to critique those games I wanted to write about in a paragraph of around 100 words: long enough to have to think carefully about what I wanted to say, but short enough to force succinctness.

I’ll post what I came up with here, but if you want to read everyone else’s commentary you’ll have to pop across to the full feature. Note that Eurogamer’s Top 50 is compiled in a different way to that of most of the large gaming sites via blind demo. Tom explains the process here, if you’re interested.

49. Mass Effect

It’s the sense that you can set down on any random passing planet in search of a side-quest that makes this universe feel, for once, like a universe: huge, intricate and bursting with mini-narratives. But in many ways it was this promise of adventure rather than its reality that made the journey compelling. Mass Effect is tension without much release. Beyond that, the technical creaks and groans bespeak either a game prematurely squeezed out for release or, worse still, one whose ambition outstripped its hardware’s capabilities. Either way, it’s a game that points to bright futures amongst Bioware’s stars.

45. Bangai-O Spirits

Bangai-O Spirits, like its maker, is slippery in the hands of genre. Across the gigantic spread of micro levels it slides unapologetically from puzzle game to shoot ‘em up to Brain Trainer. It’s a tussle of delicious contradictions: you control a giant mecha robot rendered as a tiny, ten pixel-high sprite; you set off firework explosions of rocket nukes, up to a hundred at a time, before swinging at enemies with the unsophisticated bluntness of a baseball bat. Then, when the fire and violence clears, you dash around the screen collecting up pieces of fruit. It will take a while to grow accustomed to the structure-less metagame – you can play any level in any order right from the off – but soon enough stamping levels complete becomes a collect ‘em up endeavor, irresistible to the last.

44. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

GTA has taught us that open world games must tick at the speed of reality, slow burning stories, brooding descents into violence and trudging ascents toward wealth and conquest. Mercenaries 2, by contrast, plays like an exuberant arcade game, 2-minute missions that leave you breathless and spent, its action rolling at double speed, its explosions all Schwarzenegger pyrotechnics. It’s brash, twitchy fun and while I didn’t finish the game, not even close, the time I spent in it was far more enjoyable than most reviewers led me to believe it would be.

41. Mario Kart Wii

The width of the tracks is not so much liberating as disorientating. Now you must plot racing lines within racing lines and as the pack scatters the experience is robbed of some of its traditional grasping competitiveness. That said, there’s much to love, from the way that, when organising an online race, your competitors’ Miis pop up from their real world locations on a globe, to the glorious ghost data challenges that you can send to bait your friends. But Mario Kart has always been a game that pits skill against luck, the premeditated against the random and in Mario Kart Wii fate wins too often over ability.

“Akron, 1978: A Sheriff’s deputy frisks Santa Claus, John Kaufman, 30, after he was arrested Tuesday for allegedly assaulting a jeweler who objected to his method of soliciting contributions. Kaufman, who was booked on assault charges, was in charge of a group of three Santas from the Cleveland Temple of Hare Krishna who were soliciting contributions in an aggressive manner, according to police reports”. Via.

Happy Christmas.

Chewing Pixels will be sporadically updated over the next ten days, in the meantime have the very best, most peaceful of times this Christmas.

Here is a song from the exceptional Tallest Man on Earth (also known as Kristian Matsson) which balances just the right amount of warmth and bleakness to make my holiday soundtrack this year. It’s called ‘It Will Follow the Rain’.

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Last night was spent collecting and writing up my thoughts on a selection of games that are to feature in Eurogamer’s Top 50 Videogames of 2008 list (published towards the end of the week).

What struck me, particularly when trying to articulate something fresh and interesting about those games that feature in the top ten, is how difficult it is to articulate something fresh and interesting about the games that feature in the top ten.

These are titles that the majority of the audience will have played, finished and discussed at length on forums and blogs over the previous few months. What insight could anyone possibly shine on Fallout 3 in a 100 word paragraph for an end of year round up?

This tricksy vying for a unique angle when, in reality there are probably none left to take, reminded me of something Kieron Gillen wrote earlier in the year: that very often the highest calling for a critic is to bring her reader’s attention to something unfamiliar. He wrote:

As a listener, I use music end of year lists as a way to catch up on all the great stuff I missed. Come December, I find all the incredible records which slipped me by. That’s a big chunk of the part of criticism for me – and games writing, traditionally, has been obsessed with talking about stuff people already know about, and ignored the Stuff You’ve Never Heard Of But You Desperately Need To part of the gig. But as gaming grows ever-more mainstream, the former loses importance – if you can find out about the latest Nintendo game by opening the daily paper, why read the game press? – and the latter grows ever more important, as those disillusioned by the mainstream pay attention to those who help them locate something to sate their ennui.

In other words, the weirder and more abstruse the critics become, the more chance they’ll be of use to you, the gamer who’s looking for something a little new. If they’re not afraid to say they prefer Trial 2 or Braid over GTA4, the chance of them doing their real job – that is, leading to you to nifty stuff – is increased hugely.

There are a few surprises in Eurogamer’s Top 50 (though you’ll have to wait till the end of the week to read about them) but much of the list is predictable, at least in terms of the contenders, if not their final placings.

Which leads me to Offworld’s excellent “2008 Best Overlooked” list. Of the countless end-of-year videogame lists I’ve skimmed this year, this is by far the most useful. Like Kieron, I use Pitchfork’s Top 50 albums list to discover treasures that I’ve missed over the course of the year. Likewise, Offworld’s list points to a number of games, a few of which you will have heard of, a couple of which you may have played, but many of which will be new and interesting and, for that, it’s a genuinely useful piece.

Beyond articulating for readers their in-game experiences, beyond providing simple buyer guide recommendations, one of the most important roles for a critic is to root out the obscurely worthy, the forgotten treasures hidden behind the hulking blockbusters. Head over there now and see what you have missed.

And, while we’re on the subject, is there anything that you think they’ve overlooked?

“Wow. This is excellent wine.”

She is exactly right. This is excellent wine.

In fact, that’s not the half of it. This is an excellent restaurant. The excellent food we are about to order will have been cooked from excellent ingredients by an excellent chef and we’ll eat it to the soundtrack of an excellent jazz trio (whose standards we’ll pretend to know by name).

The waiters, perfectly poised between attentiveness and professional detachment will provide us with excellent service. The loud bits of conversation that float over from our neighbours’ tables will be spoken by an excellent clientele, one that brims with that cozy warmth that comes from relaxing in excellent surroundings.

Outside it is cold and slush, a city returning home from a day’s Christmas shopping, shivering and spent in service to capitalism. But inside, here at this table, in this glass, all is peace and excellence.

I am the unknown quantity, the dark spot on the otherwise blemishless potential of the evening. Still, my hope is that, even if my performance is only satisfactory, the excellence of everything else will make this an excellent date nonetheless. This will be an excellent first date, I tell myself again. This will be an excellent first date.

“Yes. It is rather good, isn’t it?”

“So, where did you hear about this place?”

“Oh, er. A friend recommended it to me. Said they do an excellent tuna steak. Um, I mean, I don’t know if you eat fish but…”

“Yes! Fish. Lovely”.

She smiles for a beat, then her gaze retreats into the menu, lips parting as her head bows. Oof. She’s done this before.

We’ve both done this before. This is excellent wine.

“So, I think this is going pretty well…” I remark. We both laugh a bit.

“Yeah. You’re doing good. So, tell me a bit about yourself. Your advert said you like music and films and that you’re friendly, et cetera. All the usual stuff. Not much to go on though. I mean, who doesn’t like films and music? Also, nobody’s going to advertise themselves as a grumpy serial killer with a terrible sense of humour, right?”

“I guess not and you’re right: I don’t know why I wrote that. Blanket tastes are so dull. Like, when you ask someone what music they’re into and they say: ‘Oh, you know, a little of everything!’. I hate that. Saying that you like a little of everything is the same as saying you love nothing at all. I think you have to hate something if you’re to love something else. When it comes to music and films, at least. Possibly ex-girlfriends, too.”

“Haha.”

Her eyes twinkle with an agreement that goes beyond mere politeness. She is beautiful. Also: phew. Risk reward and all that.

Then she asks: “So other than dismissing people who don’t polarize their tastes, what‘s your hobby? What do you do to relax?”

Oh God. The question.

I can’t tell her. I won’t blow it all again for the sake of Pacman. Sure, playing games for a living and a pastime makes you a hero to every twelve-year-old boy, but the flipside is harrowing, all encompassing disdain from society at large.

The confused looks at dinner parties, the conversations cut short, the parting shot glances of pity. Not here, not now.

Sure it won’t be like this forever, but at this moment in history, saying you review games is like saying you critique Enid Blyton for a living. You are the boy who never grew up, the man-child who plays with himself (or worse still, with strangers, over the Internet) and for a woman that picture’s never going to be anything but a deeply, deeply unattractive one.

Her mind will race to the future, to when we’re married and she sits neglected, night after night, knitting on the sofa while her husband hunches cross-legged on the floor, barking orders into a headmic. Oh God. There’s me in a headmic. I am wearing a headmic and I am talking to teenagers over the Internet.

Then, the horror of the image fully digested, her mind will race back to the present and she will run far, far away and never look back.

But wait. What if I took the offensive here and, instead of mumbling apologetically into my soup about Mario and Master Chief, stood ground, raised my game and went for a conversion? Games are more than endorphins for tiny victories, right? There’s more to gaming than endless faithful model replicas of AK-47s and racing cars, surely. Where’s my ambition?

OK, let’s see. I need an argument, a pitch, a sell. Survival horror teaches us about how to cope with a scarcity of resources. Yes. That’s good. The Resident Evil series is basically an allegory for our inevitable dystopian future. Mhmm. The zombies represent nuclear meltdown and the intermittent SMG rounds and health packs are our food and clothing.

Hmm. Too much ambition, perhaps. What about MMOs? These giant social experiments teach us on a microcosmic level about our macro characteristics and challenges; they reveal the transient nature of society and the power of community via the medium of strangers coming together to beat on a swamp rat…

Er, what about Desktop Tower defense, a game that teaches us how to simultaneously juggle the demands of the present and the future? Or Braid, whose four-dimensional puzzles are something that could only have been constructed and presented in a videogame. Surely there’s some merit in uniqueness.

Oh gosh. I am a terrible gaming evangelist. Every time I think I’m onto something my mind’s invaded by Marcus Fenix and his sweaty, homoerotic pecs, by Cloud and his implausible sword and cod-philosophy and, most poignantly, by me, in my pajamas aged nine playing Tetris on the toilet and by me, in my pajamas aged twenty-nine, playing Tetris on the toilet.

Who are we kidding? There’s not one Schindler’s List amongst our eight thousand Pearl Harbours. We’ve nothing of worth. Even if we do have something to say to the world, I’m not sure we’ve come close to articulating yet.

The band strikes up a melancholy carol.

Silent Night.

She’s looking up expectantly.

Holy night.

Now I don’t know what to say.

All is calm.

Here goes.

“Um. I like to play videogames”.

“No way! Me too.”

All is bright.

…………………………………..

This column first appeared on GameSetWatch yesterday.

Minigames haven’t so much fallen from favour with contemporary gamers as plummeted to a grisly death on the spikes of their cynicism. While the Gameboy Advance’s WarioWare was a machinegun volley of microcosmic creativity, (requiring players pick the snot from a wincing nostril or jump a fast-approaching sausage on wheels), since those magnificent beginnings, our overexposure to vapid copycats has made the term a dirty word.

It’s also a dirty word that’s become synonymous with Nintendo’s Wii. While WarioWare showed Nintendo distilling gaming’s first principles into joy giving, 5-second interactive sit-coms, other developers have used the format as a way to make a quick buck with a minimum of thought and effort. Steal a few simple mechanics, skin them with a coherent and whacky theme, pour into a paper-thin metagame and bake for six months. It’s a recipe for fast money.

But it’s also a recipe for consumer skepticism, which has grown like a cancer from the Wii’s casual library into the console’s very soul itself, making it the poster child for all that is cheap, insipid and misleading about casual gaming. Mingame collections are scorned and shunned, as, increasingly amongst hobbyist gamers, is the Wii itself.

The danger, as with all black and white opinions, is that gamers throw the baby out with the bathwater. Good games are good games no matter what their length. Short form gaming can often be a hundred times more compelling and joyful than the long form epic, the Fallouts and the Final Fantasys, which require weeks and months of time investment before they fully reveal themselves and their treats. Nowhere is this more apparent than with Travelers’ Tales Guinness World of Records, a minigame collection for the Wii that has been bypassed by gamers at large (and the BATFA review panel in small) despite presenting one of the strongest developments in gaming this year.

The game’s triumph lies in its leaderboard, a fitting success for a license that whose raison d’être is to find the world top scores. During every one of the minigames your current score displays in the top left hand corner of the screen. Below that sits the top score that’s been registered on your console thus far. Pass that marker point while playing the minigame and the game will now display the best score recorded by players in your region. Now you’re fighting to beat Brian from East Sussex, or Bernice from Lancashire for the accolade of county champion. Pass them while playing and you’ll now be gunning for national champion and beyond that, you’re up against the world record holder, the only rival that stands between you and global dominance.

The genius lies in the constant relevance of the challenge. Like Geometry Wars 2 before it, which placed the next-highest scorer on your friends list on screen at all times, Guinness World of Records makes beating your next rival the only thing that matters. In most games the top spots on the global leaderboard are so out of reach that it renders the overarching competitive element to the experience largely meaningless. What’s the point in striving to record the fastest track time at Nurembergring when your best efforts place you in sixteen thousandth place, beaten by gamers half your age and with twice as much free time on their hands to perfect their technique? Guinness World of Records makes every single high score attempt matter, regardless of whether you’re trying to beat your mum or the reigning world record holder Troy_Wondercluck from Illinois.

By creating such a compelling competitive element to the game, one that dominates the experience and inspires repeat play after repeat play, any shortcomings of the minigames themselves are diminished. That’s not to say the tasks you’re competing for dominance over are in any way bad, far from it, just that the importance of their individual merits is greatly lessened. Seeing how many cockroaches you can eat in a minute is a stupid thing to attempt when sat in a dark lonely apartment on your own, but do it in front of cameras and a cheering crowd for a place in the record books and, at that moment, it’s the most important thing you can do with your life. Context trumps content.

You can read the rest of the review over at Eurogamer here