The singer just got to the scream in "Won't Get Fooled Again"

In 1967, The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their seminal album, Are You Experienced?.  With Hendrix’s in-your-face style of guitar playing the world was turned on it’s head, and the face of rock and roll was never the same.  Fast forward 40 years until the next great Guitar God was among us … me, when I picked up the guitar and played Rock Band for the first time!  It has been quite some time since the world was able to sup from the Rock Chalice so freely.  Being the modest rock “sex cauldron” that I am, I won’t take all the credit.  Some of it must go to Harmonix Music Systems.

In late 2006, the dominant team of Harmonix and RedOctane were split up due to each company being bought out by different competitors.  RedOctane teamed-up with Neversoft to continue the Guitar Hero franchise, whilst Harmonix struck out on it’s own.  Thank God, is all I have to say.  Much like a pair of divorcing parents, these two competitors worked harder to win our love … and we walked away the winners!  This game took what Guitar Hero had started and took it to a whole new level.  All of a sudden you weren’t just a lone guitarist working your way through this tough world.  You had your friends there to back you up with so-so bass playing, mistimed drumming and horrible screechy vocals.  Life was good.

Thanks to Rock Band, I'm as good as Jeff Buckley ...

Now the question is raised: why didn’t Guitar Hero make it in if it was the first?  The main reason is that Guitar Hero took what was an existing idea in the arcades and brought it to the consoles.  A great idea, but it lacked that true party quality.  At the end of the day, you were just a couple of dudes strumming yourself to ecstasy.  With Rock Band it had a true party quality to it.  Everybody was having a laugh.  A similar singing style to SingStar made the game a lot more fluid, and suddenly it had you thinking that you could actually do this.

I also think that a major quality of Rock Band, and it’s subsequent series, is that it hasn’t turned it’s customers into shills.  Where Guitar Hero went overboard giving almost any two bit band it’s own game and leaving some crying in the shower eating short bread, Rock Band stayed pure.  Rock Band: The Beatles is an example of what can be done when real love is shown for the genre and the game itself.

Add to this a developer who cared about their community, who added multi-title song compatibility and fostered a DLC regime that has been bringing new songs to the game every week since it’s release.  A library of DLC songs that, I should add, has recently grown to be over 1000 tracks strong too.

At the end of the day, this game is here because it is an enduring series that honestly has the public excited about each new title that is coming out.  They have shown innovation at each new release and are continuing to push to bring new concepts and not fall into the pitfalls that their Neversoft-driven competitors have.  Harmonix are obviously the true innovators of the music game genre.  Rock Band has proven that it has what it takes to be played on your own, in a party, sober or drunk, and because of all this and more, we here at Armchair Diplomat have deemed it to be the No. 1 Game of the Decade!  Kudos to you, Harmonix, we’re raising our glasses right now!

So tomorrow we’ll be posting up our number one game of the decade as decided between our writers, but today we’re talking about our own personal number ones.  Each one of us made a personal top ten list, and we compiled the top five from there.  Below are the games that each of us put at the top of our very own lists, and the reason why we love them so much. If you’re interested, then (more…)

Blending in with a crowd? Sure, plenty of monks these days carry throwing knives!

This series is probably fresh in our minds from this year’s outstanding sequel Assassin’s Creed 2, but I’d like to think that even if the sequel had been knocked back into 2010 like so many other games this year, the original Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft would still be holding about this spot on our game of the decade list.

This is because, unlike so many other games this decade, Assassin’s Creed managed to give us something creative and new in regards to original storytelling. Admittedly it might be a little hard to explain to friends what the plot is about, or how exactly it makes sense, but as soon as you play the game it all just clicks.

The story revolves around Desmond, a bartender who has abandoned the Assassin order that his parents raised him in. Abducted by Abstergo, a corporate front for the Templars (the Assassin’s powerful enemies) Desmond is coerced into a machine called the Animus, which (and here’s where you need to make your own leap of faith) can extract memories from the DNA of a subject’s ancestors and replay their content.

OK, so the concept is a little strange, but if you can suspend your disbelief for long enough then the game is imaginitive brilliance from this point onward.

The Templars are searching for a specific memory from Desmond’s Assassin ancestor, Altair. But, and this is where things get clever, jumping to a specific memory is impossible without first “synchronising” the user to their ancestor. What this means, is that Desmond must play through a series of Altair’s memories before reaching what interests the Templars so much.

A man so dextrous, his fall could be broken by three stray strands of hay

The Animus is like the perfect excuse to blend video-game elements to what is essentially a medieval setting. Health meter? It’s the level of Desmond’s synchronisation with the machine. Mini-map? The Animus’ recreation of the city.  This also takes care of things like checkpoints, auto-saving and even the use of the controller itself (Assassin’s Creed‘s manual outlines the use of a game controller as it aides synchronisation).

Inside the game, the environments are vast and sprawling.  The game’s visuals recieved great acclaim, and from the first time you scale a tower to take in a vista, it’s not hard to see why.

Unfortunately the game’s gameplay never recieved such unanimous praise.  Many players found the assassinations repetitive and linear, mainly due to the limited number of objectives you had to go through to investigate your targets.  The gameplay mechanics, however, were nothing short of stellar.  An intuitive, contextual control layout (somewhat austerely labelled Puppeteering) assigned buttons to specific limbs.  The legs button controlled your speed, jumps and climbing for example.

Speaking of which, Assassin’s Creed first showed off a free-climbing environment that has yet to be matched.  While it may seem convenient that every building is littered with easy footholds and outcrops, watching Altair as he scaled effortlessly again and again never seemed to get old.

But in the end, what captured our imaginations was the plot.  The modern-day espionage delivered by Desmond in the present, mixed smoothly with the tale of redemption and betrayal experienced by Altair.  The stellar level of storytelling and intrigue delivered in this title is what puts it at number two in our games of the decade, slightly repetitive gameplay be damned.

So that’s our runner up.  What’s going to top the list? Tomorrow you’ll hear from each of our writers on their own personal choices for Game of the Decade, and then we’ll be posting up our official number one on the 31st, just in time to close out the decade!

Caution: Physics clean-up in progress

One thing I have never, ever been is a fan of puzzle games.

Just never enjoyed them. However, this game easily makes the list at #3, and I remember quite clearly when a friend was explaining to me the concept of Portal, Valve‘s highly-celebrated FPS puzzle game, which came out in 2007. And I was enthralled.

He explained it thusly:

“Okay, so you have this computer that wants to test you. And the tests are getting out of these puzzles, like a platform game. Except you have a gun that fires portals.”

Portals can be spawned on any two compatible surfaces with the portal gun, one orange and one blue.  The way in which portals interact is kind of difficult to explain on paper, but highly intuitive when it comes to gameplay.

Essentially, the game is a physics and timing game. You are Chell, a silent character who finds herself amidst a computer-run testing facility. The computer is GLaDOS, who’s eerie robotic voice will lead you through the testing grounds with an ever growing scientific interest in watching you die.

Chell is given two parts that make up a single portal gun, or “Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device”; one trigger firing an orange portal, the other firing a blue portal; these portals join to enable Chell to walk through one portal (fired onto one wall) and walk out the other (fired on any other wall, ceiling or floor).

It is as simple as this!

Okay, for those who haven’t played it, it all sounds too complex. But it is a wonderfully simple game that taxes the brain just to the right level: when posed with a problem that one cannot solve, you have a finite amount of time before you crack a wobbly and through the controller at the television.

Every one of the problems will have you thinking just up to the point of frustration, and you feel so clever at the end of every level.

The puzzles are a combination of physics problems (how to use inertia to jump a very tall wall, etc…) and timing problems (platforms suspended above acid moves around the level, so you have to jump on and off these platforms). And they are all fun.

The story is very light-on, which is to say that there isnt much said, but the game’s brilliantly constructed atmosphere provides just enough of an edge to enforce the feeling that something just isn’t right at Apeture Sciences. You find blood-scribbled laments from previous test subjects hidden through the levels, and GLaDOS (the centre’s AI) is so wonderfully menacing in such a cold blooded, logical way.

It is testament that every person I’ve ever spoken to has only good things to say about Portal, and moreso that it is still on sale (granted, as part of the Orange Box, which I still say is tip-top-value).

I started replaying this through a few weeks ago, and it still has the charm and fun of an original playthrough. A truly great offering from Valve and certainly one of the gaming highlights of the decade.

Three down and two to go, check back in tomorrow to see who claims the runner up in our personal game of the decade countdown!

Dystopian underwater hell-cities have never been so much fun!

It’s probably no surprise to most that Bioshock is included in our Top Games of the Decade. The creators, 2K Games,  managed to combine great gameplay, a menacing score and a high concept world into an epic gaming experience. It was a FPS that had an RPG story, with survival and puzzle elements. But most of all, it’s engaging plot was what kept us hooked.

It was probably the first time Ayn Rand was used as an inspiration for game storyline. Ryan, one of the many antagonists, believed in the intelligence and excellence of the individual, the stand alone genius, which should not be hampered by morals or laws imposed on them by a government. He created a city under the sea, Rapture, to bring together the brilliant minds that would thrive in an isolated utopia, as if Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was a reality in this alternate 1960. These great minds grew, bloomed and went wild, destroying their home with their madness and lack of control. There was obsessive-compulsive plastic surgeon that believed he was in direct contact with Aphrodite. A genetic scientist, indiscriminately creating the Little Sisters in an attempt to harvest what she needs to continue her work. The tragic artist, self obsessed and paranoid. And then Ryan himself, the glorious leader, challenged only by the uprising of the people, lead by ‘Atlas’ who will shrug as many times as possible to bring Rapture to it’s knees.

In my country, a Splice is an ice-cream ...

Along with an immersive storyline, Bioshock boasted a stunning art style for its environments, completely ruined. The city itself is never seen in it’s hey-day, instead Rapture is torn apart by rebellion, by faulty engineering, by madness. Even from the beginning, when you break the surface of the sea after your plane crashes and you see the lighthouse, it’s noticably damaged. Rapture’s slow decent is mirrored in it’s citzens; so many are scarred and sinister, destroying themselves from within with ADAM and constant body modification. The designers managed to create something both beautiful and ugly, with the Art Deco architecture evoking the power and wealth of the Modern Industrial movement and all the degredation of a society falling to ruin. Coupled with the architectural logic applied to a city built on the bottom of the ocean, it was great to play through. Almost distracting.

Another, more personal note, was the idea that 2K wanted people who hadn’t played an FPS before to play Bioshock. Of the three difficulty options available, the first was ‘Easy – for people who’ve never played an FPS’. Instant win! And although a lot of the game relies on your ability to shoot accurately – this is survivalist gameplay after all, you’re encouraged to conserve ammunition – it wasn’t the main objective.

Bioshock proved that a pithy, intellectual and mature plot still means something when constructing a game. It scored points with us because of it’s all encompassing storyline and it’s beautiful world, even with the blood and guts. And really, who doesn’t like a dystopian underwater world run by an Egoist madman?

Now, would you kindly stop reading this article and steel yourself for number three in the countdown?

I don't remember fighting any hooded skeletons ...

I don’t think it’ll be much of a spoiler to reveal that our number five game, Diablo II, is the oldest game to make our list – hell, its 2000 release date means it only just qualified for the list in the first place. But here we are, the better part of 10 years later, and we’re still rating this game.

The multiplayer side is undoubtedly what has kept the game going this long. Blizzard have continued to support the game since its release, even after World of Warcraft came along and there’s no sign that people are going to stop playing it any time soon. It’s been patched and updated many times and ladders and competitions still run years after its release.  And in the time since it’s release, just imagine how many hundreds of thousands of Baal runs power levellers have completed!

But nobody would have bothered with multiplayer if the basic single player game wasn’t fundamentally good to start with. And it is. Its action RPG style struck a great balance between the stat-building and item hunting that hardcore RPG players enjoy and the real-time combat system which means those who are bored by simulated dice rolls had nothing to fear.

It's the only skill you'll ever need!

The game looked pretty schmick for its day and even now it holds up pretty well. Same goes for the sound design. The story was a good one. And the randomised level design and item dropping pioneered in the first game meant there was fantastic replay value as well.

Possibly the greatest testament to Diablo II’s success is that to this day you can still walk into pretty much any video game store and find a copy on the shelves. I think the mighty Fallout is one of the only other games that can boast that so many years after its release.

It’s been a good few years since I’ve played Diablo II now. But writing this has me getting all nostalgic. I can feel a session of bone spearing* coming on over the holidays, if I can just find the discs…

So that’s number five!  Check back in tomorrow for number four, as we count down to our game of the decade on New Years Eve!

* actually not a euphemism – though I love you all for going there you sick, perverted people

The end of the decade is fast approaching. And it’s bringing a few thoughts to mind. One is LOL, wasn’t that Y2K bug a crock? Another is LOL, has it really been 10 years since I last hurled abuse at The Violent Femmes in a live format? Yet another is LOL, maybe next decade I should stop making obscure personal references in my articles.

But by far one of the most important things the impending end of the noughties has made me think about is this: what’s the best game that’s been released this decade?

While we could’ve settled the issue with a round of gaming spin the bottle, we’ve been a little more scientific. All your beloved AD writers have voted for their favourite games from the past 10 years and from December 26 we’ll be counting down the top five, one each day. There’ll be thrills, there’ll be spills and there might even be 1000 elephants. And in between, some of us will talk about a few of the other games that grabbed our attention but didn’t quite make the big list.

So put December 26 in your diaries and tune in as we start counting down to Top Five (Totally Abritrary and 100% Personal Opinion) Best Games Of The Noughties Evar!