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More GOTY Awards
More awards are available at Voodoo Extreme (who has separate categories both for PC Games and Console Games) and at the mega-hub Gamespy, who gives Halo 2 the top nod for Game of the Year 2004.
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[i] Justin: Few games come tailor-made for success like Halo 2, but it still surprised me with how damn good it ended up being. Once again Bungie innovates in several ways -- new vehicles, dual-wielding, the deadly melee weapon -- that are sure to be poorly ripped off by lesser games for years to come.[/i] You mean to say other games before Halo 2 didn't have vehicles, dual weapons and melee weapons?
Obviously the people on Voodoo Extreme don't own PCs .
How to get your story on slashdot? State they are the best site!
Under "Other Awards:" on 2004 PC Game of the Year Awards.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Like Dawn of the Dead, Paintball, or Ohama.
Add in the glitching (highimpacthalo.org) and the online play is actually better than most console FPS (exception to CS and CoD).
The single player is really good, once you play it on legendary you'll understand why, and it's only better if you understand the story.
Winner of The Second Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
Ok... how much is this guy getting paid by Microsoft?
Well then, what makes Halo 2 so special that it should be regarded higher then other FPSs? Is it innovative? No. There is nothing new that has not already been used five years ago in FPSs on the PC or even console for that matter (Goldeneye64). Is it revolutionary? No. The graphics are subpar to other FPS shooters out there. They look like crap compared to PC FPSs. Nothing special or new with the weapons, vechiles, gameplay, physics, etc either. Is it evolutionary? No. Halo 2 is just a rehash of the first game. It does not set the bar for next generation FPSs.
Halo and Halo 2 are the most over-rated games I've ever known. The marketing guys at Microsoft did a fantastic job, but all the developers did was create two very medicore first-person-shooters. The Halo games might be alright compared to other XBox games, but seriously, lots of PC FPS games which game out over 5 years ago are superiour!
Any professional reviewers who voted Halo 2 as game of the year ought to be fired. But, as somebody else pointed out, those reviewers were probably bribed. I hope they weren't stupid enough to honestly vote that game "game of the year".
I quite enjoy the Halo series and I can't seem to fit into your categories. I have been a FPS fan since it became a genre.
1. the first FPS I played was Wolf3d on a 286 if I recall correctly, followed by the Doom series, Rise of the Triad (great game, under appreciated) Quake 1, 2, & 3, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, Counterstrike, Soldier of Fortune 1 & 2, and numerous others.
2. See # 1
3. I played Battlefield 1942 though I believe it was released after the original Halo. There were others before that though I can't think of a better example at the moment
4. Played Battlefield and Tribes 2, didn't care much for Flashpoint though a friend of mine liked it.
5. I have a custom PC which I upgrade every year or two. I also have a Gamecube, and I had an N64 (Goldeneye 007 was great).
Despite all these things I still enjoyed Halo and even Halo 2 (though yes I want more closure in the story).
Forgive my trolling but a gross generalization begs to be refuted.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
I absolutely love the way an honest opinion is equated with flamebait. And, if my post were flamebait, it failed to bait anyone into flaming. I guess there really are people out there who are rabidly attached to crappy games.
How can UT2k4 be the best sports game?
Sounds like they don't play real sports games at all.
Whether you like Microsoft or not, the Halo games are friggin' great, and some of the best FPSs to date. And yes, I've played a shitload of FPS, both PC and console.
And a game doesn't need to be 'innovative' to be GOTY in my opinion. What happened when a game can just be just pure fun to be considered great?
As for those who say "but Goldeneye had dual wielding too!" clearly haven't played Halo 2. Dual wielding here doesn't mean "each hand holding the same gun". Instead, you can pick and chose between the guns in your hands. This opens up a myriad of combinations and really lets you discover really cool and ass-kicking combos out there. Also, if you're dual wielding, the right trigger fires the gun in the right hand, and the left trigger fires the gun in the left hand, so effectively you can fire with one gun only until the ammo in it depletes, and while its reloading, fire with the other gun.
Besides, the vehicles are all great, and jacking really adds to the gameplay. There's nothing better than someone in a Banshee getting too close to the ground and you jacking it from him.
And online multiplayer is great, especially for those of us that don'y play 24/7. Live does a great job of matching you with people of your own skill so you never feel overpowered in any single game, which means you're having fun playing and not dying 10 seconds after respawning.
What else can I say? If you don't like it, try taking out your Halo 2 disc and cross out the 'Microsoft' logo with a marker. See if you'll like it better then ;).
1. Of the games I can remember: Played Wolf3D, Doom 1 and 2, Rise of the Triads, Half-Life, CounterStrike, Quake 1 2 and 3, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike Source, Unreal Tournament 2004
2. Non-PC FPS: Goldeneye64, Red Faction, Time Splitter 1 and 2, Nightfire
3. UT2k4, Goldeneye, HL2 and Red Faction all had vehicles. None of the games I've played had dual wielding in which you could: a) yield two different kinds of guns and b) fire each gun individually.
4. I've never played those games, but I never say Halo 2 has the largest multiplayer maps.
5. Got an Xbox, PS2, GameCube, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Game Gear, SNES, NES, Genesis, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn
Try not to generalize about these things. It doesn't do you good ;).
It's amazing how many fanboys are crying in their milk over the GOTY annoucement. It's an awesome game. More power to you if you don't like it, but there's a reason it's doing so well. Just because you loathe it with a vengeance does not erase the fact that it's an amazing game which many people love and enjoy.
And while you're at it do the following:
1. Put down your milk and cookies
2. Take off your MS bashing beanie
3. Repeat after me: "there is no conspiracy."
Rinse and repeat a few times, or you know - just go play your own personal GOTY.
Although I agree that Halo 2 has some very good singleplayer, I disagree that playing it on legendary will some how make it better. Fun single player comes from a wide variety of weapons, enemies, and level designs, not from being absurdly hard to win.
I hate my sig
In general, I find PC FPS players prefer things faster paced, so it's understandable you may not enjoy Halo 2 and that's fine. Just understand that your tastes may be unique.
... unique, but shared by nearly all other PC FPS players? i'm definitely of the 'i have no idea what you people see in this game' category, and it's almost definitely because the game is painfully slow to play.
err
Well critics don't count. Most game critics think video games started with the playstation. Hell, most gamers too. Which is like taking a film critic who has never heard of Casablanca or the Godfather seriously. Oh, and the film critic's publication only advertises movies, and movie playing equipment.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Well, i also think it's wildly overrated, but i'll say this much: for a console FPS, it's very fun and easy to dig into; which i beleive explains it's appeal to a lot of people that wouldn't normally play FPSs. I still hate gamepads for FPSs, but Halo is the only one that i found bearable to play with them. I've played it, and enjoyed it. Same with Halo 2. It's a nice console game in a genre which usually doesn't translate well to consoles.
But, come on, that game has been done before (and after), and MUCH better IMHO. UT2k4 for PC dances circles arround Halo as a multiplayer game, which, let's face it, it's what people get wet over. Goldeneye had a much better single player experience, and a great multiplayer one. Been there, done that.
It's not a bad game IMHO, by any measure - it's just that there's nothing meriting a GOTY award in it. There were a crapload of much better games in the genre this year (for other platforms). Guess they weren't as hyped.
I seriously doubt there are actually any cases of magazines being paid for ratings. However, the writers are certainly aware that failure to gloss over the flaws of a heavily advertised game or to elevate its position in lists like this will be punished with reduced advertizing funds later. I do not think that any gaming publication supported by advertizing can afford to be truly honest. The writers can inject their opinions into the corners, but the bulk of any review is devoid of any actual substance. I doubt that the writers are actually "whores," but I know they are always aware of these things whenever they write anything.
Few of the heavily hyped games are really that awful, but it's more than a bit disheartening to see critics always claiming that the latest games are tremendous improvements over games published 6 months ago. Newer games always get priority since they know that the publishers are watching what they say about games that are still featured prominently on shelves.
Movie criticism is much more insulated from these pressures. Movie criticism is published in newspapers, magazines and on TV. While these media do advertize for movies, very few, if any, of them receive 90% or more of their revenue from movie publishers. As a result, movie studios are unlikely to adjust their advertizing in response to any single publication's review since they know that they can't be a real threat to them.
The gaming press can't be trusted.
Yeah, yeah... blah, blah, blah... mouse and keyboard rules... COUNTERSTRIKE is God... UNREAL did everything before everything else... First, HALO 2 is very, very good. GameSpy is right. There are remarkable ideas throughout the HALO series like The Flood. Plus, Larry Niven, author of RINGWORLD, did not patent a ring in space. In fact, he took the idea from Olaf Stapledon's STAR MAKER and LAST AND FIRST MEN. Second, copyright laws are very specific about what can and cannot be copyrighted because ideas are in the ether for anyone to use in storytelling. Only specific combinations of story ideas can be copyrighted. Recycling ideas is a part of the artistic process. It's called inspiration. You say, I want to write something like BLADE RUNNER, but in a prison and RIDDICK begins to form. You know, GOODFELLAS or RAGING BULL aren't terribly original, but they are still brilliant films. HALO 2 is a brilliant game. Some of you guys go on and on pining for the glory days of PC gaming and it just ends up sounding defensive and silly. You're too imprinted on the PC. I own one. I love playing HALF-LIFE 2 on it. I also own an iMAC, an Xbox and a PS2. I own an iPOD and a Sony digital camera. It's a big world out there, gentlemen. Who cares if PC is the best quality? Yes, 35mm motion picture film exists, but Michael Moore won an oscar for a documentary shot on videotape. Get my drift? Stop banging the PC drum. Turn down the testosterone. It ain't such a big thang. It's tired.
I think I speak for most of my bretheren when I say:
Fuck! Off!
To write about games you have to give two shits about them. Even people I know who write for utterly shite official magazines know their stuff back to the 80s - the reason that so many games magazines are utter turd is that the publishers are convinced that you, the public, want lowest common denominator trash rather than anything interesting, and thus most magazines are pressurized into writing what gets the publishers sales. Rather than bitching about games journalists, why not go out and buy the better examples of it - UK Edge magazine may be pretentious wankers, but they know their stuff.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
We got stern looks in the next meeting with Microsoft after we posted our 8.0/10 review of Halo 2, but I'm pretty sure no bribery of any kind went on with Halo 2.
Unlike Driv3r and Worms 3D...
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
You're in Europe, you guys went gaga over crazy things in the 80s!
Anyway, go to IGN, Gamespot, or any of the main US-based magazines or sites. Read their reviews of any number of games, particularly extremely hyped things like Halo 2. Absolutely no knowledge of everything that came before is displayed. Their forums are worse.
When people call things new that aren't new at all within a genre, the simplest explanation is that they didn't play the games where those features were used. This seems quite prevalent in reviews of gametypes that have crossed over from the PC, like FPSes. For everything else, well, they don't make 2D games much anymore...
Too bad you guys are in Europe and thus 6 months+ behind the NA release cycle. I read through a few of your reviews and found them to actually be quite a bit better than most.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
I don't get it? Maybe its the online social thing or maybe the machoism? I don't know. I have Halo 2, finshed it on hard(but not legendary obviously). Played through it a good few times. It's probobly the best game on Xbox of 2004. You could argue for Fable as well, I won't disagree.
But to look me right in the eye, to my face, in all seriousness and tell me that GTA: San Andreas was not the best game of 2004 is quite plainly either outright lying or fanboyism gone mad!
Now, I'm no fanboy. I gave up the console patriotism thing years ago. But in all fairness, San Andreas is an absolutely mind blowing game. I understand that many might not have had the chance to play it, but anyone who has, just has to admit freely that it is completely unrivalled by any game that has come out in the last year. Completely unrivalled I say! Halo 2 was the more hyped game( actually most hyped game ever), and is the best FPS this year, but that will not disguise the fact that it simply not a better game than San Andreas. Not better. No way. This isn't fanboyism. Play San Andreas. See the size! The scope for christs sake.
Now I understand the whole, Halo/Xbox is American, Oh-rah, Master Chief rocks!, phenomeon. And that's OK! Halo 2 is awesome. Fantastic even. But I'm afraid that only the deprived, deluded, overzealous and bribed will hold it over San Andreas.
May the Maths Be with you!
Not suprised but... honestly, as fps's go, thje pc is years ahead... before i rant let me say i've played halo2, and really enjoy it. great game, step in the right direction. GOTY? No way... for XBox sure, but not all systems. hl2 and d3 have better graphics... I've like dthe vehicles in UT2004 better, for Melee? JK Academy. Story? Tough, but I'd probably still pick hl2. Each to their own but... really Halo2 ,mauy be the best CONSOLE FPS, but in this market PC is where it's at..
btw excuse the spelling / grammer, i've got 2 bandaged fingures so typing is toughre then usual :)