Slashdot Mirror
2004's Most Creative Games
Gamasutra.com has the first in a new series of opinion gathering articles, where individuals can pipe up with their responses to a question of the week. The first query was "What was the most creative game of 2004?" From the article: "Katamari Damacy, hands down. Unique concept. Unique gameplay. Solid execution. And most important of all, it was _fun_."
I swear I was just about to write about Zero Wing being the most linguistically innovative game ever and at that very moment I saw--and I still see--a banner saying: "Roses are #ff0000, violets are #0000ff, All my base are belong to you" and it really scared me. Amazing, is it not?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
there were creative games released last year? after all the sequels i thought it had dried up :)
NS, that quite old (2 years now?) Half Life FPS/RTS mod is still the most creative/daunting game out there, imho. Multiplayer FPS/RTS against 2 different sides, one which is ranged, another melee, utlizing different command structures and technology. For multiplayer excitement, nothing beats it. Read more, if you want http://manual.nsguides.org/
I'm sad to say, I don't think it'd make the list.
An awesome game, I loved it. But it wasn't really super creative.
Pretty Pictures!
At first I was questioning a lot of games on that list. A lot of people talked about Half-Life 2, and then I realized that it was creativity we were looking at for 2004, not originality. That one change in word opened the door for all the sequel games that came out last year. No sequel is going to be loaded with originality since it's the second (or third or fourth or bazillionth) rendition of something that has already been done.
They have a good choice of games in the creativity department though. Too bad I don't have time to play them all!
I'm a fan of Katamari Damacy and it's nice to see so many people enjoying such a unique game. It makes me wonder why no company has made it their priority to translate and bring over more unique games from Japan for the American gamer to enjoy.
Fresh Games (the branch of Eidos) did bring over a few special games (Mr Mosquito, Mad Maestro!) but they pretty much stopped there. Maybe the demand just isn't there....or these games were not quality enough.
Taiko Drum Master for PS2 is a welcome addition as well but it would still be nice to see Vib Ribbon, Vib Ripple, Mojib Ribbon, Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, etc. I know most of those are music/rhythm style games but some of them are great fun and it's a shame they can't be enjoyed by those limited to playing only games without a modchip
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
the year of the monkey lacked a monkey ball game. Monkeyball 3 was supposed to come out last year, but now release dates for it vary wildly.
Shame too, since the first 2 monkey ball games were such a blast(if only they hadn't screwed up monkey golf in monkey ball 2)
Monstar L
Off-topic - what's with all the '[tt]' things in people's posts? Another Slashdot meme that's passed me by?
Clearly the editors of that article have never seen Alien Hominid's glorious giant, yellow, pixellated "PWNED" superimposed over a dancing Russian; otherwise they would not have made such a grievous "correction" to two of their posted emails.
Nope - it stands for troll tuesday.
Katamari Damacy deserves this award. I won't argue with that.
:-)
But take a look at a little gem of a game called Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater that also happened to be released in 2004.
Kojima's series has always been innovative in each incarnation, but I think this time he and his team outdid themselves.
Hunting for food, using trapped animals to distract or attack enemies, feeding enemies poisoned food, interrogating guards, holding them hostage, slitting their throats if you are so inclined... not to mention the new camoflague system that allows you to blend into the environment to prevent being seen.
Playing this game just feels so badass. I've never played anything like it in my life.
I felt as though this game deserved a mention in this thread, since in my opinion it's one of the more innovative titles to come out in recent memory
Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths....
*Rolls up anyone or anything that doesn't agree*
Katahada Damahoocha?
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Disclaimer: a friend of mine worked on it.
Nonetheless, it's a nice game that manages to stand out from the field of paramilitary/commando games.
You play a soldier with psychic powers ranging from telekinesis, to pyrokinesis, to mind control. You're fighting a clandestine group of Very Bad People who are also dabbling in the same field.
What saves it from being Metal Gear Psychic is the gameplay and the engine.
The controls are built around being able to use your psychic powers, and they work really well for that, while being very unlike your standard shooter controls. The levels are generally centered around puzzles that involve using your powers in creative ways. There is a nice balance between puzzles that involve stealth, and out and out combat. And the boss battles rock.
The engine features a very nice physics engine. When crates and boxes are being thrown around, they hit things and tumble around in a way that just seems right. This really grounds everything in reality, which is good for a game with a fantastic premise.
At any rate, I liked it, and it got solid reviews. I say give it a rental at the very least.
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
The critics love them, as do most of the people who actually play them, but they don't have the sales of GTA or Halo.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
I loved Katamari Damacy as soon as I started playing it after hunting it down through almost a dozen game stores. The best part of the game though is the difference in reactions you get between telling someone about how the game works and what it is, versus letting someone actually play the game.
I described it to about half a dozen people and the usual reactions ranged from "sounds weird" to "is this some stupid animu game?". I bring it over and let someone play it and the usual reaction is "where can I find a copy of this?"
There is already a Katamari Damacy 2 planned, and while I like the idea of a good game getting a well deserved sequel, but on the other hand part of the coolness of the game was its utter uniqueness.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
This vid for Alien Hominid makes it look pretty fun:
t ml
http://www.alienhominid.com.nyud.net:8090/video.h
Sounds like the devs are good folks too.
Katamari Damacy - just in case ever wanted to visualize a slashdotting.
Anyone know if there's a gamecube release of KD planned? It seems like a natural Nintendo game, when I first saw it I assumed it was actually on the cube.
Read Pynchon.
"Karaoke Revolution - unique gameplay accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike. Fun to play and fun to watch, proves that playing games can be a sociable activity."
"Singstar is also another groundbreaking creative breakthrough. The idea of combining karaoke with actual gameplay (being rated on your performance) is simply brilliant, and deserves to go down in gaming history.
- Soeren Lund, Deadline Games"
"EyeToy is equally another game/gadget that open up new avenues of interaction with games. Unfortunately, no-one has come up with the perfect game to exploit the device, but I'm sure it will come.
- Soeren Lund, Deadline Games"
First off, addressing the karaoke games. It looks like Soeren Lund is not all too familiar with the world of Karaoke or for that matter outside of Denmark. Karaoke machines had this "creative" brand of gameplay built into the damn machines since the early 90s.
The people that find karaoke on a console creative, do you find watching DVDs on a console creative?
Poor Lundie gets the double "Doh!" treatment by following up Singstar with the Eye Toy, and the Eye Toy suite of games which have been around since 1996, released onto the PC as something for early adopters of webcams to use to convince their friends that they weren't going to molest children on AOL with them.
Anyone ever hear of Deadline Games? Probably a reason for that.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
..if it were released in 2004. But it wasn't, it was released in 2003.
Its cultural. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese don't get many sports themed games, while games like Madden 200* are bestsellers in the US. Unfortunately most publishers are going for big blockbuster sales, which means less thinking "outside the box."
"Katamari Damacy, hands down. Unique concept. Unique gameplay. Solid execution. And most important of all, it was _fun_."
So the most important thing in the most creative game of the year was fun, not uniqueness?
Doesn't that make it meta-trolling? Receiving a Troll mod (despite no trollish content in the post -- it was a wry comment on the state of games that would, minus the label, otherwise be accepted as "Funny" or "Insightful") for a post labelled as a troll seems to bear that out.
Mods, YHBT. You moderated a non-troll post in a knee-jerk reaction. Gratz.
The version that won this particular award was the English translation version, which was not released in 2003.
I mean, it's a good game. But it seems that people have been waving it recently as the flagship of underplayed games. Why didn't this happen when...say....Rez was released a few years ago.
Just sayin...
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
First of all, originality is in my opinion the only way to be heard above the noise, with virtually everyone doing free or shareware games, most of them of excellent quality, this year, it seems like.
:P .. and also what knobs to tweak to increase difficulty progressively.
Then of course when you're original, people don't know that they need or want your game, so you may not have many players even though the game is fun once you actually try it!
Gameplay for a very original game is even harder, you have no reference point. The gameplay for my debut game as an indie, Garden War is good but I've learned a lot for my next game.. Notably, how to reward the player more often, instead of only when you finish a level, etc., otherwise people rightfully feel that the game is slower paced than, say, arkanoid 30000