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2004 Indie Games of the Year
cyrus_zuo writes "For all those who think that the best games that came out this year were all sequels Game Tunnel presents a different angle on things with their 2004 Independent Game of the Year awards. For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2, check out the awards for a different side of gaming than you are used to."
Self published? Made by a non public company? Made by part time developers? Published by a company with revenue of less than x per year? No advance/royalties only? Budget of less than y?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I believe it is divided accross 8 pages beacuse it makes the pages smaller. If you have one huge ass page your web browser might not load the images in order they appear on the page so it will load ones that you don't want loaded while you trying to view ones at the top. Hope that makes sense I think I phrased that horribly :) Happy new year guys!
Have you metaroderated recently?
Although sequels certainly abound, anyone who complains that the major publishers produce nothing original obviously never played Katamari Damacy. It's probably much more original than any of the indy games this year.
And... so? I mean, what do you care? Clicking on some type of "next" for subsequent pages is quite common. What's your real problem here? It's obviously not the fact they're getting ad revenue. You've got a different chip on your shoulder. Did they not choose your game?
Bill
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
Darkspace by PaleStar / Richard "Faustus" Lyle.
Darkspace is Space Combat MMOG, not a mining simulation like Eve; imagine multi-player elite on steroids. PvP combat in a large scale persistent Meta-Verse of about 40 Star systems of 10-30 planets with 3 factions, 2 human and 1 alien.
Each faction has about 30 unique ships. You can fly combat ships from small fast stealthy long range scouts, frigate, destroyers, cruisers, dreadnaught and even space stations, each ship has uniques capabilities. There are also support ships such as engineers to build planets, supply ships to repair friendly forces and transports to trade resources, carry troops or ships mods.
You form fleets, or join an established fleet, or fight as a lone wolf. You can put down rebellions, capture planets & moons, bomb them, mine them, build them up with a wide range of structures as mining colonies, military training camps for troops, factory planets for ships mods, or front line supply depots using various structures including habitation, factories, powers planets, repair depots, barracks, defensive installations, supply depots and factories, even shipyards.
You can modify your ships extensively, upgrade your engines for more power and speed, switch between long range/stand-off weapons like fighers and missiles, or get close up and personal with cannon and torpedoes. You can sneak up to enemy ships, and paint them for your big guns, board and capture them with elite troops, or simply spy scout them out. As you go gain prestige, rank, earning honors alone the way, giving you a progress increase in choice.
I've been playing Darkspace for 2 years, I'm ranked in the top 30 players out of 6000 regulars and it still holds a challenge. IMHO its up there amoungt the best games of all time.
You dont even have to believe me, you can download the game client for free (windows only) and receive a weeks free trial.
10. I of the Enemy
9. Revolved
8. Smugglers 3
7. Global Defense Network
6. Anito: Defend a Land Endangered
5. BreakQuest
4. Outpost Kaloki
3. Hamsterball
2. Wik & The Fable of Souls
1. Gish (by the fantastic Chronic Logic)
That's the REAL list. Gish is the only one I've heard of, though some of those look interesting (and many have GREAT graphics). The one game I wish was on there is N by metanet software. I was addicted to that game for weeks. Very cool little game - "play as a ninja trapped in a world of well-meaning, inadvertantly homicidal robots. " Give it a try!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I played Halo 1 for years and could not have been more disappointed. There are so many flaws in Halo 2 they can not be listed in one post. That said-
The boards blow. Zanzibar, Burial Mounds, Foundation, lockout, collosus, they all suck for one reason or another. Zanzibar and Burial mounds are always used for single flag CTF and assault and if the teams are _any_ good the game is always a tie.A myriad of comments can be made about the other boards as well.
WHY THE FUCK DOES RED WIN IF THERE IS A TIE AND THEY SCORE ON THEIR SECOND ATTEMPT IN A CTF OR ASSAULT GAME???????? There is NO logic behind this! None whatsoever!
The weapons- The sniper rifle is basically unstoppable now on a number of boards. If someone on ascension gets in the banshee and gets on top of the tower then they can't be killed because the other weapons are now so much weaker.
You can not switch between Halo 1 and Halo 2. Believe me I try. Between the differences in the way the weapons operate (the rocket launcher for one), the fact that you have to drop weapons twice when dual wielding you almost can not switch between the games regularly without going mad. And the feel of the sniper rifle is so disgustingly different it makes me cry to use the new one.
There are about a thousand other problems but they have been covered by so many people on bungie.net that it isn't worth repeating here.
-sirket
Halo 2 is a fucking joke online. Bungie has turned into a bunch of lame jackasses. The game has pulled in over $300,000,000 now and they can hardly be bothered to give us any updates on the tons of stuff that need to be fixed. All the cheats and exploits? Don't worry about it. New levels. Don't worry about it. Red team winning when it's a tie. Don't worry about it.
Their latest posts:
12/30 - "Halo vs Half Life Comparison"
12/24 - "Gamespot Reader's Choice Awards"
12/20 - "Getting Started With Halo 2"
12/20 - "Humpday Challenge: Clan PMS "
Great guys! Thanks a bunch. Now, what's being done about all the cheating online and all the other bugs? Oh, great, I get to read about Clan PMS!
And don't get me started on the single player. What a crock. Barely any earth levels? Check. Playing as some other stupid character? Check. A fucking stupid ending? Check.
And FFS, why does bungie.net have to suck so much in Firefox?
You know, we often hear the old hash of a joke about Slashdot readers not reading the linked articles. On one hand I can understand this, because they are often Slashdotted. However, just because they can't be read by a viewer does not mean that those said viewers should then make comments about the article site unseen.
For example, Albert Pussyjuice (675113) here gripes about "For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2, check out the awards for a different side of gaming than you are used to," being a comment by cyrus_zuo. Well, Mr. PJ, if you were to even cursorily glimpse the actual article you would seen that this is a direct quotation from the first paragraph in the linked article. Amazing, isn't is, what an ass a minor convenience has made you to be!
Then there is saltydogdesign (811417)'s comments in a sister post where he breaks down the initial paragraph of the article into pieces and lamblasts the author. Well let's read that paragraph in whole again:
"For all those who think that the best games that came out this year were all sequels prepare to open your mind. For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2, you are about to see a different piece of gaming than you are used to."
As one can see when he stops to obsorb the actual meaning of this paragraph, he can see that the author is addressing those whom believe the best games of this year were sequels such as _Halo 2_. saltydogdesign somehow takes this personally though he is obviously not the group that the opening paragraph is addressed to. The point of the linked Web site's author's writing of the column is to hopefully "wake up" those he considers "in the dark" about the other side of gaming, the small, independent studios' games rather than the large juggernaut publisher's games.
Albert Pussyjuice, saltydogdesign, and others like them would be better off if they would not attack Slashdot for posting opinions in the article summaries when they themselves don't read the article. Often the articles summaries are either partially or in whole taken from the original article anyway.
So I propose we all make a deal: when we as the Slashdot viewers start reading the featured sites' content before posting comments then we can complain about the admins duping and posting false stories and opinions because they did not RTFA themselves.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
Multiplayer fixes? The game has been out for about 45 days. Relax.
As far as your commentary on the single player, I spent far too much time listening to other people about the abruptness of the ending, and found myself expecting the game to end for about 6 straight levels. I think that you are suffering from the same problem.
Why does there NEED to be Earth levels? More specifically, why would that make or break the game? Just because you wanted the conflict to take place on Earth does not make the game bad. Why is playing as another well-developed, interesting character who functions in exactly the same manner as the Spartan, except with an AWESOME NINJA CLOAK capability with STEALTHY INSTANT KILL LASER NINJA SWORDS a bad thing? Why do you think that the ending of the game was bad? I believe that you went into this game with the expectation that it was going to be bad and were not going to be happy with anything else, and as far as I am concerned, you received the product that you deserve.
I see the game as a minor improvement on the previously fantastic game, with the IMPROVEMENTS (emphasis important here) being in character depth, weapon choice, dual wielding, opponent variety and intelligence, and vehicle use/hijacking.
If in 2 months the glitches have not been resolved then I will side with you in the multiplayer gripes. In the meantime, until you can explicitly explain to my why the single player campaign is not good I will have to chalk up your "Insightful" rating to typical fanboy bullshit.
(Please pardon the tone of my post. Listening to lazy fellow Canadians explain why they do not have to help with the tsunami aid effort gets me quite agitated)
>Wouldn't Slashdot be so much better like that?
Are you kidding. A whole bunch of people come here for the OSS kiddie 'tude. Another interpretation of the post would be "Screw MS and its popular Xbox game!"
Yeah it would be better, but it would lose readers and I doubt the editors have it in them to be even-handed about anything. They are simply advocates and dont want to change their roles.
Like I wrote, there's an allure to going someplace where the editors have the same bias you do. Same with political blogs. Same with blogs about music. Same with what newspaper/media you chose to read.
To slashdot's credit at least they fess up to their bias now and again, unlike Fox News or somesuch.