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2007 NWR Awards

Most Surprising Game

by James Jones - March 5, 2008, 10:05 pm EST

Nintendo World Report honors 2007's best games.

Every year a handful of titles come out of nowhere and blow us away. The Wii and DS both had more than a few surprise titles in 2007.Most Surprising GameZack & WikiLet's be honest; Zack & Wiki really came out of nowhere. Originally called "Treasure Island Z," the game was announced and later given a title with little fanfare. Despite being from the creators of Power Stone, nobody really took note of Zack & Wiki. It wasn't until E3 '07 that the little game that could began to garner attention, and accolades.One game journalist after another proclaimed it among their favorite titles of E3 '07. It made many "Best of E3" lists. Just three months after being a "minor" announcement, major gaming sites had begun "Buy Zack & Wiki" campaigns. The relatively minor announcement from Capcom became a media darling. When Zack & Wiki was finally released it was almost surprising that it was able to live up the substantial hype that followed the title, despite its "value" pricing. Capcom's charming puzzle solving adventure helped shock us out of our "sequel malaise" and in doing so earned our "Biggest Surprise (game)" award of 2007Runner-up: Contra 4 The Contra series has had its ups and downs since the NES and SNES days, but the general trend was downward. When Konami announced that an American developer would be making the next Contra game for the DS, that it would feature dual-screen gameplay, and that it would return to Contra's roots (bearing the numeral 4 after fifteen years of subtitles), we hardly dared to hope that it would live up to the legacy of classic Contra. What a surprise it was to find out that Contra 4 not only avoided mediocrity, but that it's quite possibly the best Contra to date.

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