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?"

Comments

Galactic Civilizations

[vjmurphy]

Great game, killer AI, and massive support from the publishers. Never had this much fun with turn-based strategy games since Alpha Centauri.

Re:Best game this year?

[AnriL]

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.

Re:Another question - why no 2D games?

[SamSim]

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.

Re:best original: Animal Crossing

[agent oranje]

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...

Ikaruga

[Etriaph]

This is a 2D shooter which is *hard* and completely innovative for a shooter. Your ship has two polarities, black and white. When your ship is in white polarity, it can absorb white enemy fire and you can easily destroy black ships. When you're in black polarity, the situation is opposite. You can destroy white ships easily and absorb black enemy fire. The more enemy fire you absorb, the more it powers your super weapon (and there's only one of them). Object of the game is to survive really, but it's amazing.

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.

Wow, how original

[Overly Critical Guy]

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.