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World of Warcraft Gamespot GOTY 2004
Gamespot's annual awards have drawn to a close, with the Reader's choice awards finishing up tomorrow. Announced on Wednesday, Gamespot's Game of the Year for 2004 is World of Warcraft. Relatedly, there is an interview with the WoW composer at World of Warcraft Guru, and a piece on Wired.com about Virtual Trade and Blizzard's efforts to combat the trend. Finally, Blizzard's annual holiday festivities have resulted in a hilarious holiday mp3 being made available on the official World of Warcraft site.
The Virtual Trading is one of the most interesting aspects of online gaming. I'm sure books have been written about it, but it sort of points to the economic cancer of modern industrial societies. Killing that could kill a large part of the interest people have in it.
I am not an avid gamer, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I was playing xcom2 right up and to the point I bought WoW.
It is truly an excellent game. The graphics are very consistent ( instead of blah here, WOW here, blah here ) and look great. On top of that, my old(ish) system can usually push 30-40 fps where ever I am. More than smooth enough for me.
Beyond the graphics ( which aren't all that important beyond the immersion factor ), the audio is excellent. Very well done score. But what really grabs you and holds you tight is the gameplay. Very addictive. Blizzard must have spent months working on the questing system, which is unbelievably detailed.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
For years I have been playing MMORPGs.... and I come away from every single one of them (Ultima Online, EQ, and SWG were the ones I played) saying to myself, "jeez, ya know this game would be sooo much better if they just did X, Y, Z." Well, Blizzard actually DID the X, Y, and Z. It is almost like they were eaves dropping on the conversations of all of us gamers over the past 5 years. Everything we have been saying about these massive online games over the years they have addressed in one way or another. They took the bad parts and either dropped them, or made them good. They then went ahead and added all of the obvious features we have all been asking for and wondering why they havent been around. Its a gamers game. One that if I had the ability to make my perfect game... it would have been this. It really is fantastic. Blizzard might not have put out a groundbreaking new genre game here... but they did somethng even better. They took an already existing genre and finally did it right.
Pfft. Gamespot is far less of a corporate whore than either IGN or Gamespy, though I'm still boggled as to how they gave WoW GOTY honors over all of the other great games that came out this holiday season.
Rob
Whenever I get a new game, the fun and excitement of the game usually lasts for a week or so. After that, the fun kind of wears off and I gradually lose all interest in the game, eventually uninstalling it. It's been that way for every single shooter game I've played (America's Army, Doom Series, Unreal Series, Wolfenstein, Tom Clancy games, etc.) The only shooter that was better than average was Halo. Oni is another classic.
With WoW though, I have yet to lose that inital level of excitement and new discovery. Every day I play it, I discover a new cool place, new people, new interesting and challenging quests and so on. It never gets old. The graphics aren't the best I've ever seen (HL2 holds that distinction), but you can't expect worlds as large as those in WoW to be rendered in as much detail as HL2 without having the mother of all graphics cards. That said, the graphics are still amazing. I find myself taking at least several screenshots every time I play it. I've even setup a picture gallery on my site with my screenshots.
The music and sound are superb. Even better is that you have control over them. Don't like the music? Disable it. Really love it? Set it on continuous loop versus every now and then. With a nice set of headphones, the sound effects are amazing.
I could go on and on about all the great features of the game, but I won't. Hey! No clapping back there! It's safe to say this is my favorite game of all time, so far. When they release the LoTR MMORPG in 2005 (I hope), I will give it a try. If it's anywhere near as good as WoW, it should be an excellent game.
When I finished HL2 it was like when I watched the second Matrix film.
I'm going to see it as an expensive way to play half a game, with the real finale in half life 3.
There were many moments in the original HL where I felt I was at the end, and that I had finally made it - for instance, driving the little train outside, and the music starting, or getting past the big evil talen thing that came out of a hole in the ground (from memory however many years ago).
The ending of this second installment made me feel the same, like an end of level nasty, it definately doesn't feel over. We have removed the Earthly iconic leader, but not got rid of the actual alien invaders.
They are just milking it, and unfortunately, I've fallen into the trap, and will probably get any further installments.
liqbase
One is constantly challenged to look at the world and think about what is available to allow the objective to be accomplished more efficiently.
And if you find an alternative solution, and go do it... the game magically prevents you from straying from the official path. For example, there are many situations where you can see the next area across a low fence between buildings. Stack up a few cans, and you can build a staircase to get over. But, AFTER you do all that work collecting physics objects, you are met atop the fence with an invisible force-field.
Anyway, as others have posted, the gameplay mechanism about stacking random objects to get over stuff has been done before in Deus Ex and JP Trespasser. Half-Life's physics is a lot better, but they'd almost have been wiser to make a $19.95 "family-friendly" game focused only on construction.
What really boggles my mind is how Halo 2 won the "Best Multiplayer Game" catagory over Unreal Tournament 2004. Yes, Halo 2 does have good multiplayer, but I have yet to see a game that can touch UT2K4 - especially when you factor mods in. UT2K4 simply has better weapons, better vehicles, and better gameplay modes (Onslaught owns all!).
#include "sig.h"
Strangely enough, Painkiller was more like Doom than Doom 3 was. Doom 3 was very pretty, but Painkiller kicked ass.
There are other things to do.
"industry" when a title that will cost me $200 a year to play is GOTY? It's truly a big business now, which explains why so much marginal content fills the shelves and innovative games get ignored.
You know a game's good when people are inspired to adapt Dickens to it.
sig semper tyrannis!