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Games of the Year
markpapadakis writes "Gamespot and Gamespy have released their top games for 2002. Gamespot features worse game of the year as well as some additional categories."
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Penny Arcade has some of the best games of the year as well ;)
We're Right part one
We're Right part two
I agree that the best music of any game has to be Mafia. GTA3 Shouldn't of been nomintated for that award, simply because the music in that game sucks. It IS funny, though. UT2003 Really did deserve the best graphics win, and they got it. I only wish my geforce 2 mx could handle it :/ And how about the budget game!! Horray for serious sam. Playing cooperative missions at lan parties made that game great, and I love the graphics. Gamespot made some great choices, although I think Half-Life should still win awards :D
Moonbase commander, Best Game No One Played on PC.
Anyone else look for the games that fall through the cracks of marketing and end up in the discount bin? I know there are other poor college kids out there that can't afford $40-50 a game.
Mafia is truly a great game. The driving is VERY realistic in my opinion, and it is worth the money. The graphics, the story, hell, even the menus made this game by far my favorite new one of 2002. No multiplayer is the only downfall to this game however.
Ive played it, its nice but I wouldnt rate it the best RPG of 2002, Neverwinter Nights is more like it, but I still have my issues with action-RPGs. I grew with Final Fantasy, Ive played them all, Im used to them.
One thing I find VERY annoying about action-RPGs is its miss-rate, for an instance... in morrowind, you have good agility, good weapon level... you have a big monster in front of you... you strike.. and miss, strike again... and miss... and so on. Its even more anoying with non mastered weapons, you are not an expert using a long sword, you swing your sword and no matter what, youll never hit... I mean, come on! if you can lift the sword, you can definitevely hit, ok, it might be a lame strike, but you have to do at least a little damage, minimum but you CAN touch the enemy unless it is very nimble, SLOW and BIG monsters can be hit easily. The same applies to long range weapons, in morrowind you throw things, and they just go through the targets... the least they could have done is change the direction of the thrown object, so it is visually obvious it was a clear miss.
Another thing that really brings me down is when you are attacked from a blind spot, or when you hear some enemy might be coming, you have to search all around while it is coming and when you are attacked you dont even know where from. Its really anoying having an archer attacking you from some higher location and your character is so dumb he doesnt recognize the location... instead of the whole screen flashing red, it could have a hint about where you have been hit and an arrow giving you a little more hints.
Besides all that, having to be clicking like crazy is no fun. Besides if you are playing a role, your character levels up and gets smarter... I dont want the whole thing to depend upon my reflexes and stuff, the character is smart/strong/quick enough to turn around when it hears some enemy, attack automatically at its possible rate and stuff like that.
Ill still be waiting for a good RPG.
Is there any of you who knows the kind of RPG Im looking for?
In short, XBL is nothing short of a revolution in console gaming. Say what you will about MS software, few question the quality and innovation of MS hardware and the Xbox and XBox Live are shining examples of that.
I've rarely had so much fun playing video games. I know I'm not alone becuase I can hear the shrieks and groans, the yells and crys and curses, the outright bawling laughter of other gamers from across the country and the world coming right through my XBL communicator.
I'll start with a quick overview of why I chose the Xbox as my gaming console and then to a review of the XBox Live (XBL) service.
After wearing out my N64 I was ready for my next gen console. The decision was fairly simple. Yes the PS2 had more games, but a great majority of those games were throwaways. Not only that but I wasnt planning on buying a bookshelf worth of games anyway. I usually just buy the best games of a genre and play them through and through. The Xbox seemed like the best choice. It had the better graphics (by far), the HDTV, the 5.1 sound, the hard drive, ethernet, CD burning to HD all built in! The other two did not even come close. I buy a console because of the CONSOLE, not the games.
So I buy a Xbox and Halo. On a side note, Halo might be just be the best video game ever and definatly the best FPS ever. But don't take my word for it, just read the reviews.
When Xbox Live was released I was first in line. Setup was super easy and painless. Drop a line from my hub to the Xbox, insert setup CD, verify that I'm a adult with my credit card, pick a gamertag and presto! I'm online.
Xbox live comes with two games. Whacked! and MotoGP. Whacked is some whacked platformer that girls seem to line. MotoGP is one great motorcycle racing game. Needless to say, the graphics and gameplay are outstanding. But the no doubt..the best part is the online play.
So far I'm playing Unreal Championship, MotoGP and Mech Assault. All games are great. Online play is smooth. Lag is almost non-existant. The voice-communicator works great. The sound is clear and clean, and has the quality of a cell phone.
To sit on my soft, legs on the coffee table, 27" TV in front of me (soon to be HDTV), hooked up to the world and kicking peoples ass on Unreal is a amazing thing. It really really is.
There is sense, when talking to other people on XBL, that were part of a something new. And indeed we are. Ok, ok, I know all this is possible on a PC. But we're talking console here. Since my XBL, my PC is exclusivly for work and making money and my console is for games. I play in my den, I work in my office.
I'm sure the PS2 and GameCube have some fun and great games, but if I cant
Play online with one login across all games
Listen to my music playing from the HD of the console as I play
Listen the games in 5.1 and see it in hi-res HDTV
Hear you curse as I blow your ass-up in Mech-Assault
And much much more
Then I'm not intereted.
You don't think the Xbox and Xbox live are revolutionary? See if the next gen Nintendo and the PlayStation3 don't have everything the Xbox has today.
See you online!
I have read the sites, the nominees and the winners, but what I find confusing, with regards to the strategy games, is that none of these sites makes it clear whether a strategy game is turn.based or real-time. For me that's hugely important, because I stopped liking real-time strategy games a few years ago. I got slow (eh.. the age) and more impatient with RTS games. And I know at least one more guy like me in my town ;o) so there is at least some segment of the market that would really like a clear information about the kind of strategy game at hand. Note that most of the time not even the box/cover of the game spells it out clearly whether it's RTS or turn-based.
My question, finally, is: is there a gamer's site that lists strategy games and has an appropriate designation whether a game is RTS or turn-based? It seems that perhaps there's a lot of fine strategy games out there, except for the Civiliation and HOMM series - the ones to which I'm sticking, for now...
Sigged!
Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.
I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
And their gamecube games choices, well they were smoking crack or something in their pipes. About the only thing they got right was giving metroid prime GOTY on GC.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
I bought bf1942 when it first came out sometime in September. I think I picked it up on the second day of its release. Come to find out, they released a patch for the game at the same time they shipped the game. Even with 1.1 it was nearly impossible to kill people. You had to aim an unrealistic 1 inch in front of the player, and had to calculate your lag in order to figure out how far to shoot in front of your opponent.
Yes, it's really neat that you can play with a wide assortment of WWII vehicles and on 64 player servers, but the gameplay still needs improvements IMO.
The ground infantry interface is clumsy; Day of Defeat (half life mod) does it much better.
Yes, I do realize that one can't classify this as a first person game per se--strategy is required for enjoyable play--but I found the game more frustrating than fun. I often felt that there were often too many elements out of my control.
I did play in a clan for a few months and then decided it would be a better use of my time to carve a 1880 Victorian city out of a large soapblock I found by a local prison while joyriding.
I'd much rather see an award go to a well polished, well designed, well tested game that works like a champ on one platform, than look at a game which is ok-looking, fairly well designed, and somewhat tested on all platforms.
Working with one set platform has a way of allowing designers to be more expressive. I mean, if it's a problem for you, go buy that console. You obviously really don't want to play those games if you haven't bought the consoles that will play those games. And a PS2, Xbox, and GameCube all together still costs less than a Radeon 9700 and new mobo/Athlon CPU to run UT2K3.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I picked up 2 copies on a whim monday for $10 ea at Best Buy. Just now I finished my first evening of online play (the gamespy service is decent) - and I'm totally hooked. Our final game was a 4-player (2 teams) 4 hour marathon, with some seriously surprising twists. It eventually ended due to Internet disconnects. I can't really compare MBC to anything else, it has a very unique feel. Easy to pick up, hard to put down, and really tough to master. Turn based but fast paced, and very intense.
There's a downloadable demo, but I'd even recommend just buying it outright. If you like strategy games, you won't regret it.
I've been very disappointed with the releases in 2002.
;-)
2001 had Wolfenstein, which provided a lot of multiplayer fun, and while GTA3 provided many wonderful hours, I can't help but feel 2002 has been an extremely crap year for games.
2003 promises us SimCity 4 in January, along with Vietcong, the AI team-based action game, Doom 3 will be out, Half-Life 2 is on the cards, Halo for PC will be out, Vice City for PC will be out. 2003 is going to be a BUMPER YEAR for PC games! I think the studios have been focusing on PS2 and XBox this year.. so next year it will be our turn.
I have been enjoying Half-Life this Christmas. I have found nothing that beats the FPS gameplay of Half-Life (or its add-on packs). Max Payne was good, but way too short.
I found Half-Life BlueShift for $5 in a bargain bin a few months ago, I completed it within a few days, but for $5 that was great value! And it still looks like a great game.
Unreal Tournament 2003 disappointed me a lot. It's SO SLOW! I have 1Ghz and a GeForce 4 Ti4200, yet I still can't run it at 1280x1024 over 20fps. I think my system upgrade for Doom 3 might solve that
So.. I still think a 4 year old game engine is providing the best entertainment out there right now. Let's hope 2003 gets the PC gaming industry innovating again, instead of throwing out rehashes of other games (MOH:AA comes to mind)
mogorific carpentry experiments
Obviously, you haven't played WC3 enough to make that judgement
I used to think the same thing when I first started plaing it, but then, after a week of plaing it, I realized that this game has a TON of strategy! I used to be a big Age of Empires buff, and thought that this game paled in comparison to WC3 when it came to stratgey, but I found out that I was very mistaken
In fact, the strategy in WC3 is unbelievible! You have to micro-manage EVERYTHING! Loosing just a couple more units in one battle can turn the tide of a game. Healing units is VERY important, as is managing the limited gold on the map. I have won MANY games where I had less resources, produced feweer units, and had less technology than my enemies
Try playing the game for a month or so against some better players, and you will see what I mean. It took me to see it to believe it myself. WC3 is one of the BEST strategy games out right now. In fact, I quit playing Age of Mythology and went back to WarCraftIII just because I am sick of the shitty stratgey in the Age of xxxxx series (I thought I'd never say that!!!)
Just my 2 cents
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Is it me, or am i the only one that EVER plays halo? I know it's not meant to be played online... but i see an average of 400 people playing it on GameSpy, every time i logon. Although that number is not high at all, it's good considering the very high possibility that the game will lag to hell and disconnect if you have more than 3 boxes playing together in a game. Halo wasn't mentioned once though. I think it should get best shooter, best graphics, and best game of the year... if it didn't lag, best online multiplayer game too. Maybe it was counted last year or something, anyone know? O well. I must be getting old, i haven't heard of ANY of these games... well.. some anyway. BTW: how does Super Mario SunShine get "Best platformer" and "Biggest disapointment" at the same time? weird...
I'm not drunk, I'm just in touch with pi.