Portal gets Gamasutra's Game of the Year...

After playing Portal as well as a host of the other games on the list, I concur. The game is extremely efficient sticking to it's core mechanic most of the time but by incorporating such great chracter throughout it becomes something much more than solid but vanilla gameplay.

Still without the mechanics it wouldn't have been much more than a cheesy B-movie on the sci-fi channel. Somewhere in the middle of gameplay and story this game becomes a classic. As I played I kept feeling thankful that I was able to experience the story in a game playing medium as if I actually grew more somehow or learned something from the experience that I could not have gotten if it were presented in any other medium.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3228/gamasutras_best_of_2007.php?page=10

I aim to pick it up vie the Orange Box soon.
Has it spawned any clones yet?

x-play rated bioshock the #1 game of the year, ive never played it, but i felt like it was more between assassins creed super mario galaxy call of duty 4 and portal.

Portal felt like an older game, before they started adding lame cutscenes and cheesy dialog. The cutscenes usually remind me that I am playing a game, beause they are almost always done so badly. For example, when Major Strickland stays behind to fight that giant hunter in Crysis, and says "Don't worry about me, I'm a marine", I laughed my ass off at how stupid it was.

BioShock isnt a game, its an interactive entertainment experience. One gets the feeling of having a role in a epic film. The sound effects, commentary from recorded diarys slowly exposes the game' plotline.
Various help arrows and helptexts guides one through the level. You never get stuck on a level becos u failed to pull a lever 2 levels ago. One can almost "rush" throuwh the levels. The difficulty levels can be adjusted though. When hacking machines that Pipemania mini-game can be a real challenge, fun fun :).

My ratings BioShock.
Grafics 99%
Sound atmosfere 95%
Graphics 95%
Value for money 99%
OVERALL rating 100%

To compare, this year I have bought ArmedAssault, C&C3, Stalker, Dangerous Waters, Guildwars and some others none of which gets even CLOSE to BioShock in fun and entertainment.

BioShock is frigging AWESOME.

I thought Bioshock highly overated, it was fun for a short time because of the novel graphic style and the mini games were kind of fun. But after a couple of hours it seems extremely generic. The bad guys are not at all interesting, the Big daddy just goes on and on doing the same old thing.

I stuck with it right up to the garden level at which point I was thoroughly bored to the point of nausea and uninstalled it from the HD.

So Bioshock was an overhyped generic FPS with nice graphics, Crysis was an overhyped but fun evolutionary SP FPS that pushed a lot of boundaries earlier in the game. I only got about half way and havent bothered to play it since I got into Witcher, and back into Medieval II.

This year my favourite game was a surprise hit in the form of The Witcher. They just released a patch to speed up loading and saving times amongst other things, which makes it a lot more playable with less than 2GB or ram. That game was way more fun than Bioshock or Crysis.

I'm back to playing Medieval II now, just got the Kingdoms expansion which I prefer to the original Medieval campaigns, being more focused on a smaller area and portion of history.

Yeah, Bioshock felt like Unreal 2 in a different setting. I didn't understand why people loved it.

The first 3/4 of Crysis were pretty novel. I don't think I have ever played a game with that much open area, where you can attack a small town any way you want.

Now that I am done with that, I think I am going to finish up a couple games I never completed; STALKER, Lego Star Wars 2, and the challenge levels on Portal.

The Witcher sounds interesting. I might check that out, though RPGs aren't really my thing.

The only game I have installed on my PC right now is Crysis. I kind of like having only one game installed, because otherwise I tend to revert back to multiplayer UT2004.

It was a good year for games:
-STALKER
-Portal
-Crysis
-HL2:E2

As a plot-driven interactive experience thingabob (eg: movie-like game), I think COD 4 has surpassed Bioshock. The way they weaved that story using conventional FPS gameplay, by changing the player's focus, is brilliant.

For example, that assassination scene was done in an absolutely gripping way that I simply cannot compare to what a movie can do. By having the player as the guy getting beaten and killed, watching his country in ruins through a car window, they convey emotion far differently than one typically sees in a Hollywood style thriller.

I also just really liked the loading screens. On an newish computer, there is absolutely no pause in the movement because of how the cutscenes are blended in. For once, I have a reason to appreciate those things...

*SPOILER* (Sort of)

A part that particularly interested me was that big Chernobyl scene with Captain Price. Instead of the usual quick (and almost comical) flashback where the old captain just says "damn, so all that work was a failure," they have the player actually doing that whole operation. By the end of it, having "experienced" the entirety of not only shooting that guy but also the complete mess of an escape, the fact that it was all for naught gave some very tangible emotion. Not tears, but a feeling of distaste and exasperation that video games have always been perfect at giving.

*Spoiled*

I have started playing The Witcher. It is really good, although I am hardly anywhere in it so far. I am not an RPG person either, but this one is taking a considerably different direction which I am liking much more than usual. For one thing, no character customization, and your name must be Geralt.

If it was trying to be a cookie-cutter RPG, that would obviously be bad, but The Witcher is not a cookie-cutter RPG. It is built to be linear enough that dialogue and story do not suffer. The dialogue in this game, even after translation, is top of the line. Funny, detailed and *gasp* actually referring directly to my character!

Having people actually call my character by his name, and talking to Geralt instead of just saying "somebody saved us!" (for example), is really uncommon in modern RPGs, and, in my opinion, very welcome. The fact that I may only be a witcher means that peoples' reactions and behaviours can be precision tuned to this one scenario, instead of having a million different half-assed ways for them to behave.

Alas, there are some bugs (for example, a character who gets to know Geralt well in one area, then turns into a surly sales person who does not seem to recognize him at all, a day later in another building). Also, it is not working right in Vista. 20% of the time, it loads. That 20% is completely random; the other eight in ten times, it just hangs forever at the loading screen.

Are you running the patch for The Witcher? I had no problems at all from it on Vista after installing the 1.1 patch ( which was out on the day of release. ) There is now a 1.2 patch which apparently speeds up loading and saving as well.

I finished the Witcher a couple of weeks ago and I concur, it had a much greater impact on me then Bioshock.

One interesting aspect was that at the game's end, when it was dealing with free will vs environment (or destiny(?)) I half wished that it wasn't set in a fantasy world - that it had been all real-world and the player had been dealing with real-world conundrums and the ending didn't involve generic fantasy elements. Glimpse of the future in gaming?

I agree about Bioshock. Seemed really cool to begin with. But like most fps, it got extremely boring and repetive. I don't think i've played a game in a good while that has captivated me. I felt like this with condemened as well.

I agree Portal was good - mainly because the length of the game was just right.

But I think my GOTY would have to be Team Fortress 2, just because it's pretty much perfect.

Portal got me emotionaly involved, more than any other game I have ever played. I agree with what is explained. But I also agree that the graphics aren't cutting edge. But I really liked how the materials came out, like the metal tubing or the "plastic / paint" type shine on some elements.

Perhaps others have a different portal than mine, but my PC Orangebox Portal on release day did have even less story than Episode 1 of HL2 which already was quite flat and short and didn't really create any feel of "beeing part of it" ...

Portal was nice for the 3-4 hours it took to finish it but definitely not worth a GotY ... Would be as if Quake Wars got "visuals of the year" for its low quality terrain texturing.

I agree. For me, a 'game of the year' has to capture my attention for a considerable time (among other things).

I suppose my pick would be Mass Effect. It’s not perfect: the interface and inventory management stand out as dodgy, but overall it had enough to keep me playing for many hours until the end without any prolonged stints of boredom. I even completed quite a few side-missions and read/listened to the setting backstory information, which I don't usually bother with these days...

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Where is this version of Portal which everyone else was playing? The one I played was a nice concept, well executed, with not enough levels and not much story.

Probably have to agree with Impixi that Mass Effect was GOTY for me. The inventory management was horrid, but otherwise it was a remarkable game. A thirty-hour space opera with exceptional writing and virtual acting isn't something you see very often. As usual with Bioware they did an excellent job of giving you choices without big gaps where the dialog doesn't fit what just happened. They also managed to make the combat fun without letting it descend into button bashing. But it's the plot, the "actors" and sheer cinematic spectacle of the whole thing which elevates it above everything else.

Particularly so if your definition of games isn't wide enough to encompass anything except formulaic first person shooters.

For me, GOTY was Puzzle Quest. As-in the only game I've bought this year (that wasn't an expansion pack or MMORPG).

No it wasn't. You are wrong.

The big thing about Portal, and I think that's a new concept for games, it's to put you in the main actor's seat, and play the victim. The game is ultimately based on this, and it pays off.

I'm the type of guy that enjoys Odyssey 2001, Cube, Misery, Demon Seed... Stuff like that. So Portal was right in my league!

How can the total be 100% when each of your categories still has room for improvement? :-?

I have Portal but I haven't played it yet... Maybe I should crank it up tonight.

Portal may be short, but it manages to maintain the same level of awesome the whole way through. They could have drawn it out with dozens of completely sparse levels, but they didn't. Instead, Portal is an incredibly solid game that is meant to be short.

The excellent pacing in Portal is surprisingly uncommon. Besides, Portal still lasts longer than a movie ;)

It's also twice as expensive.

But it's 10X as educational ...

Well that would depend on the type of movie. But as it were, I don't think people play Portal for it's educational value.

BTW, do you reckon we're gonna see a lot more Portal clones in the immediate future?

wouldn't be surprised. Theres a moveable portal scene manager for ogre that lets you move portals around with physics and stuff thats freely avaliable. And I've seen much talk of people wanting to use it for stuff like this.

Here's the latest test video of it in action on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHiNjLbaSNM