January 2, 2008 -- Ars Technica takes a look back at some of the things they loved about 2007, and some of the things they hated. Then it's time to crown their 2007 game of the year. It was a hard choice, but in good years it always is.
Five things Ars Technica hated in 2007:
• Talking about Manhunt 2
• Exclusives coming to the PlayStation 3 to die
• Gerstmann gets fired
• Wii games are mostly crap
• Your Xbox 360 does not work
Five things Ars Technica loved in 2007:
• The PS3 Multimedia Functions
• Everyone is playing games!
• Portal
• Penny Arcade Expo
• Good, inexpensive downloadable games are here to stay
Game of the year: Rock Band
Today, Portal with RTX is being upgraded with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, multiplying framerates, as well as the transformer model for Ray Reconstruction and DLAA, enabling even better image quality. Portal with RTX is also adding RTX Neural Radiance Cache (NRC), a neural shader that improves indirect lighting, as well as a bevy of performance optimizations.
A gameplay demo of the cancelled Portal prequel F-Stop using recreated assets features no portals, and a unique camera that duplicates items.
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
"trying to make do in a way it was never meant to be played"
I disagree. The accessories were a fun gimmick (and very marketable) but they were added AFTER the genre had been well established with games like Frequency and Amplitude (both also made by Harmonix).
The gameplay formula is different on a controller - there's a focus on switching lanes and contributing to all of the instruments.
Never played Frequency, but Amplitude and Rock Band Blitz were really good. I would love to get more of that kind of game. It's basically a different part of the genre, and stands on its own.
The insurmountable difference in popularity between Amplitude and Rock Band proves my point
Popularity isn't proof of quality. If it was, then Harmonix wouldn't be making music for Fortnite now. lol. Our disagreement wasn't over which one is more popular. Amplitude and Blitz just aren't "torture" to play.
Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live failed to revive their sub-genre, and Rock Band 4 caused Mad Catz to have to file for bankruptcy. Doesn't mean that instrument-based music games are bad.
It does mean that there's too much overhead and risk for anyone to take a gamble on a big budget game that needs instrument accessories now though.
For the genre to thrive, for now, it needs to do so without the instrument accessories. That's just a fact, unfortunately.
VR games like Beat Sabre (a new sub-genre) and traditional music games make more sense and are more viable right now.
*"If quality is always proved by popularity, then Harmonix wouldn't be making music for Fortnite now."
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
The only issue I ever had with any of the hardware was the drum pedal on the original rock band set stared to crack in half. The reason I, and other friends I know who played, lost interest is they weren't putting out new tracks that we were interested in anymore. I think earlier this year I looked through the releases for the last 2 years or so, and there was maybe 3 songs I would have bought.
Yeah I had this happen too with my drum controller, I ended up attaching a metal strip to it which fixed it up nicely.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
HS which sold over 700,000?
Uncharted which sold over 700,000?
R&C whi9ch sold over 600,000?
Perhaps they are referring to Lair, TC4 and UT3. (Only one of those didn't deserve its poor numbers.