Game of the year?

[Shaviro]

What do you think deserves the "Game of the year" award?

Here's what I think.
This year I've played 4 fantastic games, each with their own unique features and worlds. Design is outstanding in them all and the gameplay alike. The four games I'm thinking of are:

GTA 3: Vice City (PC) <--I'm not 100% sure this was a 2003 release, but I'm pretty sure. This game has many positive things to it. From incredible missions to funny and thought out dialogue, this game excels. I was actually surprised when I first played, I had not imagined it would be that much fun compared to even GTA 3 which was also great.

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. You could argue whether this is just a mainstream Star Wars game, but I think it deserves a mention in the top games of the year. The design varied from mediocre to incredible and the gameplay followed the same path. What made this game great was the ability to choose which missions you wanted to do. These missions were often excellent with great variation. From a high-speed train mission to a "Don't touch the ground" desert worm mission. Great game.

Max Payne II. Another incredible game. I played this one through twice and then went back to the first one and gave that a go as well. The graphics were very impressive and the design was pretty good, if not a little standard. We've already seen those locations a million times. The gameplay was like the first, excellent and immersive. The story really helped the immersiveness as well. One of the few games where you actually cared about the characters. Also, the awesome Twin Peaks references made it top notch ;)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I don't know where to start on this one. I got this game with the intention of just checking it out, I didn't have any expectations to it. I sat down, booted up the game and started a new game. I played around for a while and then quit it. I wasn't really hooked on it as I was with the other 3 games. The next time I played, I passed the first mission and arrived at "Taris". From here I became completely addicted to this game. The design was so incredible, the locations were the some of the best I've ever seen. The music was a mixture of the old and the new Star Wars movies - 4000 years. Truly incredible. The further I got in the game, the more I fell in love with the gaming world. I really cared for the persons involved and for once they didn't feel like game models, but actual living persons with actual lives.

I could talk all night about these 3 games, but that wouldn't be good for me or any of you! :P

Number 3: GTA 3 Vice City (PC)
Number 2: Max Payne II
Number 1: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

What do you think?

[Fredrik]

Hmm, I can't think of any game released this year that caught my interest.

[nxn]

Vice City, definatly.

[Cyb]

VC for PC was indeed in 2003, I bought it the day it came out last May.

I'd be inclined to say Max Payne 2 just because the game is so astoundingly well done. All the areas look real, there's such insane amounts of detail everywhere, and the plot snd story are quite excellent and it's got some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a game. The only problem with it is that's painfully short (I beat it in like six hours of playtime maybe) and it has nearly no replay value since it's so linear.

So yeah, I'll say Vice City because it's just so much goddamn fun, and even after I've completed the main missions I'm still playing it, which is quite an accomplishment since I usually get tired of a game after I play it once or twice.

I'd also put up a nomination for Call of Duty. I know the WW2 game thing is pretty played out (when I first heard of cod my initial reaction was "who cares, another WW2 game") but that game is very well put together, though it suffers from Max Payne 2 syndrome of being very short (I beat it in a weekend of play, maybe 8 - 10 hours total). Still, it's quite well done, and features some great AI and overall is pretty fun, though I have yet to play it again after beating it.

I also liked Halo PC a lot, though indoor areas are bland and repetitive and it doesn't run as well as it should on my system, but it's still a crapload of fun, but not as cool as Vice City.

Whoo rambling!

[mewse]

tron 2.0, call of duty.. vice city.. the bf1942 expansion packs.. cant think of other games

[Ichor]

Space Invaders maybe?

[sargebaldy]

Dunno, never played KOTOR or Max Payne II and I wouldn't really give it to vice city because it's not really that much different than gta3 (even if i do like it better). i guess my vote would be for civ3 ptw, civ3 conquests, or maybe the bloodmoon expansion pack for morrowind.

[Nanami]

DOOM! If we all vote for it, it can win as a write-in right?

[Disorder]

I played a lot of good games this year. But none of them was worthy of a 'game of the year' title if you'd ask me. I never got hooked to any game at all.

[Job]

Maybe Soul Calibur 2 or Prince of Persia.
-Funk Factor-

[NiGHTMARE]

PC

Runners up:

- Command & Conquer: Generals
- Ghostmaster (this one definitely goes in my "top five British games that no-one bought" list ;) )
- Jedi Academy
- Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

The winner:

- Star Trek: Elite Force 2


PS2:

Runners up:

- Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
- Jak II: Renegade
- Medal of Honour: Rising Sun
- Silent Hill 3

The winner:

- Ratchet & Clank 2

[Sharessa]

I havent played any games newr than like last summer, unless you count Civ3: PTW. That came out last November or so though.

I played a little Vice City on my friend's PS2 a while back, and it looked about as good as GTA3, so I guess it's cool.

/me plays some more Fallout

[sargebaldy]

NiGHTMARE said:

- Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

What was so great about that game? O_o Everything in it was clearly taken from some other game. The plot: Starcraft, "heroes": Heroes Of Might And Magic, auras: Diablo, undead: moreorless the protoss from starcraft. The only original things I saw in it were the incredibly annoying upkeep, very cool animations, and a more cohesive single player. Unfortunately the single player somehow ended up more fun than the multiplayer, even though very few people care much about sp in non-historical strategy games anyway.

I expected this game to have sleeker design than Starcraft but somehow it actually has less options. You can't check when you're ready to join a multiplayer game and their attempt to balance the races was to give them each very similar things. Does everyone really need some sort of catapult? Was a meat wagon REALLY that necessary? And the highly restrictive unit limits not only make it impossible to wage a big war, it also means you can't play a 2 on 3 game very well, because no matter how good two people might be they're not going to be able to defend their base effectively enough (without building a hundred towers at least). I really can't see why anyone would play this instead of Brood War. Anyway, that's the end of my rant :P

[NiGHTMARE]

Plot: I can see the similarity between it and the plot of the original Warcraft 3 (two sides at conflict, an invasion by a third force forces them to come together - although in War 3 that happens twice, with both Humans and Orcs and Orcs and Night Elves) but not the Frozen Throne.

Heroes: Masters of Magic had hero units long before the original Heroes of Might and Magic, and that probably wasn't the first either.

Auras: From what I hear, Diablo's auras were ripped straight from D&D.

Undead: Umm, there have been PC games with undead being made since the early 80's. Warcraft 1 and 2 even had undead! For that matter so did Warcraft 3, so this particular bit criticism can't be levelled at Frozen Throne (they're hardly going to remove a side from the original game, are they now?).

Brood War being better: in your opinion, but regardless I didn't post my top five games of all time, I posted my top fives games of 2003, and neither Brood War nor indeed any of the other games you mentioned were released this year.

Of course there may well have been 2003 games that were better than any of my top five, but since I didn't play them I can't comment. I pick which games to buy very carefully though, and from what I've seen/heard, the only two 2003 games which I haven't played that might be better are Call of Duty and Knights of the Old Republic.

[deathbringer]

Will half life 2 be out this year?, if so then that will probably nab it, if not max payne 2 will. I would like Vice city to win it because thats the game i played the most this year (well, maybe i played doom more), but the first version on PS2 (which was awful and had a ton of bugs) came out in 2002, so they'd probably judge it by that

As for game of the year 2004...theres only one realistic contender, heh (okay, 2 if HL2 comes out that year as well)

[NiGHTMARE]

There's a few 2004 PC games I'm desperately anticipating :)

Thief 3 (which I'm actually looking forward to more than Doom 3)
Doom 3
Half-Life 2
Deus Ex 2
Sam 'n' Max 2

Hmm... notice they're all sequels? For that matter, all but one of my favourite 2003 games on both PC and PS2 were sequels two... (sic)

[fodders]

In UK Xmas edition of PC Gamer, the readers vote for top 100 all time best, Doom2 is at #12 :) IIRC

[Tyockell]

no games released this year really interested me.

[Enjay]

NiGHTMARE said:

Thief 3

Oh yeah! I'm looking forward to that too. After you mentioned it I had a quick look around and saw Amazon listing the release date as 6th Feb 2004. I got quite excited until I noticed they also list Doom3 as 27th Feb 2004 and are therefore quite possibly speaking out of their arses for both games. :-(

[Sharessa]

NiGHTMARE said:

Thief 3 (which I'm actually looking forward to more than Doom 3)
Doom 3
Half-Life 2
Deus Ex 2
Sam 'n' Max 2
(sic)

Don't forget Fallout 3!

[doomedout]

sargebaldy said:

I expected this game to have sleeker design than Starcraft but somehow it actually has less options. You can't check when you're ready to join a multiplayer game and their attempt to balance the races was to give them each very similar things. Does everyone really need some sort of catapult? Was a meat wagon REALLY that necessary? And the highly restrictive unit limits not only make it impossible to wage a big war, it also means you can't play a 2 on 3 game very well, because no matter how good two people might be they're not going to be able to defend their base effectively enough (without building a hundred towers at least). I really can't see why anyone would play this instead of Brood War. Anyway, that's the end of my rant :P

Damn, you don't know what you are talking about right? Balance the races by giving them similar things? Are you on crack? Can you explain this to me, because frankly I'm too dumb to understand it at all.

Catapults(meat wagons) were given to all the races because not only are the effective against the annoying turtlers, they also have splash damage(excellent against a strong melee front) and do extra damage to fortified and unarmored units. Plus meat wagons have an option of storing dead bodies, which works exceedingly well with a couple of necromancers around.

The biggest reason why warcraft differs immensely from starcraft is perhaps because of the restrictive unit limits. The emphasis is on micro-management, as opposed to broodwars which was more about macro. Its hard to draw a concrete comparison actually. If you play a 2v2 or 3v3, how is it hard to defend a base (towers are useless in TFT anyways, they take extra damage from even normal attacks)? I play online a lot, and people who actually rely on towers for defence inevitably lose. Usually the tactic is to have a hero rush/ creep counter or have a normal unit rush while teching to tier 2, tier 3. Why the need for a big war? The whole fun in warcraft 3 is the ability to have small armies and effectively "out-micro" your opponent. Even a 4 unit rush can mean the end of the game if you micro insanely well.

[Scabbed Angel]

Vice city, not as good as GTA3 imo, but the best of the list.

Max payne 2 would be a close second, but I hate how the model was changed (facial wise) from the first (think Ted Bundy), the graphics, sadly, didn't impress me very much at all. Did they even use bump mapping? I could't tell. I'm sure it was a great game and all, I just couldn't get into it, which kind of sucks, but maybee I'll give it a second shot sometime.


VS The first Max Payne did not look like Ted Bundy.

[Arioch]

I'd vote war3(x) and kotor.

[sargebaldy]

doomedout said:

The biggest reason why warcraft differs immensely from starcraft is perhaps because of the restrictive unit limits. The emphasis is on micro-management, as opposed to broodwars which was more about macro. Its hard to draw a concrete comparison actually. If you play a 2v2 or 3v3, how is it hard to defend a base (towers are useless in TFT anyways, they take extra damage from even normal attacks)? I play online a lot, and people who actually rely on towers for defence inevitably lose. Usually the tactic is to have a hero rush/ creep counter or have a normal unit rush while teching to tier 2, tier 3. Why the need for a big war? The whole fun in warcraft 3 is the ability to have small armies and effectively "out-micro" your opponent. Even a 4 unit rush can mean the end of the game if you micro insanely well.

Well, perhaps I should upload to something higher than 1.0, because the units aren't priced relative to their worth in it. Frost wyrms use up a ridiculous 7 food or so and frankly they aren't nearly that awesome. I've actually found the best strategy (for the undead) to be to just make a ludicrous amount of spirit towers (40+) before setting out on a major assault. I just wished they'd have at least included an option to remove unit limits.. it gives a huge advantage to teams with more players and if the unit food requirements is just a tiny bit off it can have a huge effect on the balance of the game. But anyway, good points. I didn't realize anyone actually preferred everything minimalized, I've always been one for nice fat battles near the end of the game.

[Lord FlatHead]

I didn't play much new games this year (though I'm sure that's going to change now that I've got a 3Ghgz/Radeon 9800 equipped system :D ) but I have played Vice City and I must agree it was the most fun-assed PC game i've played in a long time.

[NiGHTMARE]

The consoles (especially the PS2) have seriously outdone the PC in terms of the number of above-average games released this year. Sadly this is more do with the fact that there have fewer good PC games released than normal (too many damned MMORPGS!) rather than more good console games.

Hopefully 2004 will bring the PC back to the throne, because this is probably the first year the PC has been beaten by another system in this regard since the days of 8-bit computers :)

[Coopersville]

The XBOX Remake of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield is my choice for Game of the Year. It's the only game to use both Ragdoll Physics and Real-Time Lighting out right now, I think.

[Tobester]

I vote Vice City. I've been addicted to Vice City for the last month. stats

I warezed mp2 the day it came out. It was great, but absolutely zero replay value for me.

Plus Vice City has a lot more celebrity voice talent (ray liotta, tom sizemore, dennis hopper, etc) than Max Payne :P

[Cyb]

I would look forward to thief 3 if it weren't being worked on by ion storm for a concurrent release with the xbox version :/

[Vile]

Cyb said:

I would look forward to thief 3 if it weren't being worked on by ion storm for a concurrent release with the xbox version :/

I guess this translates to a good game on it's own but a disappointment as a sequel... well, I haven't played the thief series yet (I'll get around to it when finals are over... along with a ton of other stuff I haven't had time to try).

NiGHTMARE said:

Hopefully 2004 will bring the PC back to the throne, because this is probably the first year the PC has been beaten by another system in this regard since the days of 8-bit computers :)

One can hope, as we'll see the return of old franchises from the more familiar developers like iD and Valve (and one can hope Duke Nukem would make a triumphant return if 3DRealms ever wants to return from the rift). As for upcomers, I'm really looking forward to this underdog, Painkiller, due out in March 2004. I dig a serious sam style shootemup, but add in ragdoll physics and a real badass look to it, I can hardly wait, especially since the next Serious Sam is getting a new engine so it's a ways off.