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Best Original Games of 2003?
PapaZit writes "It seems like most of the games that I purchase these days are sequels: GTA3 and Vice City , Zelda: Wind Waker, even Knights of the Old Republic and Galaxies built on the Star Wars franchise. What are the best original (not a sequel or franchise) games that you've played this year?"
Great game, killer AI, and massive support from the publishers. Never had this much fun with turn-based strategy games since Alpha Centauri.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Quite a good game which i play on PS2. Action, strategy, adventure... it's got it all!
on the original game, but part of the simpsons franchise : The Simpson Hit&Run is by far the best simpson game ever and is a GTA kind of game with more cartoon fun (cant kill, cant realy steal car, no gun) so far i've played this new game with a big smile on my face... on the FPS genre, Call Of Duty strikes in my opinion, everybody with think that BF1942 is the best sim of the WWII, but they never played COD on single player mode... best FREE game... yes... SplashDamage have releave the follow up multiplayer mod of RTCW and give it for FREE ... Enemy Territory is not original, and its part of the Wolfenstein franchise... but... ITS FREE DAWMMIT! and its a great fun game...
Other games to seek out for :
Ratchet and Clank
Mario Kart : Double Dash
Zelda:Windwaker...
and more... my prediction for 2004 : a lot of society games with minigames (kind of Mario Party or Warioware) ... its already beginning, but i think it'll it the PC Market in 2004
That definition pretty much edges out every game. Nothing's truly original, and you can classify almost anything as "franchise" like with D&D.
For the sake of actually having a decent selection of games, I'd say that NWN would be classified as original, but Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark would not be.
This year I'd say the best original games were;
... these are the ones I liked the most!
-Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, brought a whole new idea into the Console RPG genre by making the two characters in the party controlled on seperate buttons.
-XIII, WOW.
-Ultimate Baseball Online, first MMOSports game.
-Wario Ware, the best way to waste hours on end.
-Battlefield 1942, took FPS's to a new level by adding planes, tanks and automobiles.
-Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, is kinda a sequel but goes to show how popular and great a free game can truly be!
-GBA eCard Reader, the games were mostly rehashed NES titles, but the idea is unique, plus the add-on levels for SMB3 and the deck of cards that forms Mario Party GBA were really unique idea.
And finally,
-Temple of Elemental Evil, yes it could be argued that since this absolutely wonderful game has its roots in an old D&D module it's not as original as above. But this game fixed all the problems I had with Neverwinter Nights! NWN takes a turn based game (D&D) and tries to make it realtime. Temple decided to make a true D&D game and then use that engine to recreate one of the kewlest, deadliest, and interesting "Dungeon-Hack" adventures ever printed for D&D. Anyone who likes D&D will love Temple. And anyone who's never played D&D but who likes NWN will probably bitch because they won't understand how much better the translation in Temple is.
These are just my opinions obviously, but if you're looking for original
Kleedrac
Sure we wang, can.
Absolutely! And aside from being an innovative concept in gaming AND a completely new approach to human input to games, it is an astonishing technology demo which works fantastically well. For those who have not seen it, it's not just that the camera recognizes motion on the screen in real time in wildly varying lighting conditions and uses it as input for boxing, keeping up a football in the air with your head, popping baloons, etc - the whole input system is camera based. When in the menus, the screen has several hot-spots (Select, Cancel, etc) and you just wiggle your fingers at the hot-spot for a second and the system will take your hint and accept it as input.
In any way, kudos to Sony R&D for putting lots of cool technology to a very practical use. I'm still amazed at how flawlessly the system works in less than ideal lighting.
Ikaruga on the GameCube (and Dreamcast if you swing that way) is a fantastic example of a game with a wholly two-dimensional game mechanic using three-dimensional graphics to stunning effect. As far as I can tell only the projectiles are sprites in the game - your craft and all the enemies, scenery and bosses are spectacularly animated 3D objects. And WHAT a game it is. Fluid graphics throughout, frantic, difficult... this is what I think you're talking about. And I agree that I'd like to see a lot more of this. Game designers are only slowly beginning to realise that just because we have the processing power to handle a third dimension now, doesn't mean we have to make use of it.
qntm.org
Animal Crossing was new for the United States - I think a N64 version was released in Japan. But, regardless, it is an excellent game that stole a few months of my life. I wouldn't compare it to The Sims at all - in The Sims, you don't plant fruit trees for fun and profit. You don't go fishing to become immortalized in your local museum, or maybe to win the fishing tournament.
What Nintendo did present was the potential of "goal-less games," as well as the potential for games based off of a real-time clock. I admit, I felt kinda geeky when I got all excited over the first snow in the game...
-agent oranje.
Count one vote for Karaoke Revolution! I know that karaoke is nothing new, but this game could drag it out of the bars and into the mainstream living room.
I was never going to buy a karaoke machine, but I picked this up the day it came out based on previews. I've been singing/screaming my guts out with my kids ever since! The game is easy to pick up and play. The computer avatars are pretty cool and the special effects are decent, which makes it a fun game even solo. The song selection is pretty good with the promise of expansion discs in the future. So if you want some fun even with your nongamer friends, this is the ultimate party game. If it came with a handheld usb mike rather than the headset, it'd be perfect!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Another game I've played is Bejeweled by Popcap Games. Definately the most addicitve puzzle game I've ever played. Between those two I've wasted enough time to limit my capability to produce the cure for cancer this year.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
Viewtiful Joe for the Nintendo Gamecube. it may be the best game I've played since something like Super Mario World. It's just a perfect gamer's game, with so much attention to detail, and it's now the new benchmark that I judge games against.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Hit the wrong button, so I'm replying to my own post.
Call of Duty is the best game this year in my opinion. The engine is spectacular, and being able to shoulder the weapon is a new idea. I hope more games in the future take advantage of this innovation. Single Player is a little short, but I would imagine there will be add-on packs...
As for RTS type games, Empires: Dawn of the New World is the best of this year because it is historically accurate in its campaigns (far as I can tell), and has an excellent story line filled with curve balls.
First Person Shooter meets Real Time Strategy.
To top this off, the two sides (Aliens and Marines) play completely differently; the Marines require a commander (who plays from an overhead view) to build structures and acquire weapons, each Alien chooses their own role: builder or fighter. The depth of this game is simply stunning, the maps are amazing (and this is on a 5 year old game engine) and there are lots of servers to play on.
Lastly, if you own Half-Life (and who doesn't these days) you can get it for free.
http://www.natural-selection.org
_f
Yep, not much to watch, but playing it is totally different.
And it drips originality. There's exploration, action, strategy, resource managment, puzzle solving and a whole bunch more that blends together to make a very fun and enjoyable game
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
"This is Konami's famous BEMANI series!"
"Give it your best!"
Great game. Vaguely related to Dance Dance revolution. And it is going to have sequels. Or add ons. Or something.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Gee, you can choose an alignment (i.e., "Light" or "Dark" force). I can't tell you how many games I've played with an alignment attribute since the 80s.
That's not a new thing in an RPG. A new thing in an RPG would be abolishing ridiculous "experience levels" and finding new ways to simulate skill improvements that don't require textbooks of rules and numbers to understand.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Is Nethack really any better than Angband or Moria? I got started on Moria, beat Angband, but never gave Nethack much of a chance.
When I finally faced Morgoth in Angband, it had taken me over 40 days to develop that character. I broke out into a cold sweat over a capitol M that was quickly smashing its way through permanant walls while it chased me. Earthquakes and Teleports barely slowed him down. Never have I felt so much tension in a turn-based text game.
Troll Like a Champion Today
...says the guy who STILL hasn't made a point other than "I don't like console games so they must suck". Says he to a guy who owns only one console - a PSX (not PS2 - PSX) - that he hardly ever plays. Says he to a guy who just finished shopping at ebgames for some cool new computer games to play on his brand new custom game rig.
Says he about a system that introduced, what, 4 Unreal games without any significant differences? 4 or 5 Quake games with little or no distinguishing features? A system that incessantly releases a new rehash of the original Rainbow Six without any significant differences? A system that releases remakes and clones of the original Diablo on a regular basis? A system that continually redoes the same old trite AD&D rulesets with new character sprites and spell effects and packages it all up as a new game? A system that makes huge bucks by selling leftover maps and missions as "Expansion Packs" over and over again?
Get off your high horse "kid". I prefer computer gaming to console gaming anyday, but I'm certainly not so blind and stupid as to sit here and claim that the computer gaming scene is any less barren and littered with total garbage than consoles. Not only that, while I don't mind shelling out $700 for a decent set of components and then assmebling them myself, then shelling out another $200 - $300 every few years for a new video card, not everyone wants to do that.
And don't give me any shit about computer games being more innovative or intelligent either. The most "innovative" game of the last few years was probably Black and White, and it still sucked ass.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I just - like 5 min ago - finished the Hordes of the Underdark expansion (on Linux, thank you very much)
This is, by far, the best one yet. The quality of NWN doubles with every expansion pack. It's so far ahead of the original NWN single player campaign that it might as well be a new game.
Very, very highly recommended. And did I mention works on Linux?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Bah, the lack of love I see for it hurts me. It's by far my favorite system ever to be released.
While not a totally new idea in the handheld industry, it IS the first large and successful step towards the "correct" way to handle handheld gaming. Backlight, rechargable battery, flip screen since Nintendo's creation of the Gameboy Light. It has even cause quite a revolution for future handheld systems of other brands (PSP, Zodiac, N-Gage).
Oh and we musn't forget Wario Ware, I do believe someone did mention it earlier and I am quite glad about it. I think it was the only game to be released this year that actually could NOT be fit in any genre. I think "puzzle" may be the closest you can find, it had far to great a mix of other genres to be one.
Also, I don't think many remember Four Swords that came with Zelda: Link to the Past (Not a new game, but Four Swords was quite new) was quite an interesting creation of fun cooperative, yet competitive multiplayer in 2D system.
There are a whole slew of other titles on the GBA, that I'd rather not explain and just let others venture through them themselves, such as Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Mario and Luigi, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age (A "continuation" of the first Golden Sun, while not necessairly innovative it stills shows that the 2D system is NOT dead and can still impress).
Call this a fanboy rant if you please, but I must say that I am not that. I just favor the system. I do agree with many other suggestions from the various other consoles that are noteworthy, but I would just like the system of my choice to not go unmentioned. It was quite the right step towards the way portable gaming should be, and makes me all the more hopeful for the industry. Wireless multiplayer is next on the horizon, consoles are getting smaller... there maybe a time when they're just portable system able to plug into TVs.
Guys, guys, guys...
If you consider all the arcade games, military simulators, etc, there's nothing new since Doom, and Warcraft. Games are either first person shooters, simulators (flying, driving, etc), which are really a variation of FPS, or third person games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, or The Sims. These are really nothing more than interactive chess. Anyone remember Battle Chess?
The 'New' Prince of Persia game, though technically a sequel is such a great and unique game, I see no reason it shouldn't be counted here.