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2006 Edge Awards
As Famitsu is to Japan, Edge is to the U.S. and Britain. The much-respected games magazine has released their surprisingly short list of awards, for the 'best of' 2006. The winners are: "Best Game - Final Fantasy XII. Best Innovation - Nintendo Wii. Best Visual Design - Okami. Best Audio Design - Dragon Quest: The Journey Of The Cursed Kin. Best Developer - Nintendo. Best Publisher - Take Two. Best Online Experience - Test Drive Unlimited. Best Hardware - Nintendo DS."
Of course everyone has a "Best of..." list, but this doesn't exactly help me decide what to get for my kid's DS Lite or PS2, and even less so for my WinXP machine.
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
It's a set of awards, specifically for this year (2006). So no, it won't help you pick between a DS Lite or PS2, any moreso than this years Oscar's will tell you whether to rent Lord of the Rings or Forrest Gump.
Now I still think awards like this are mostly crap, but I have to admit their choices aren't too terrible.
I don't think Edge is very popular in the US. It's more of a Brit thing. Not to sound negative or anything.
Indeed. It's not even widely read like Famitsu - although it's scoring and editorial coverage is just as dubious! (see: http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=476 and then think about all of Edge's weird pro-Sony supplements circulated recently)
Edge's American equivalent, Next Generation, has been out of publication for years. Almost nobody here even knows that Edge magazine even exists. One only ever sees it, along with a handful of other British periodicals, at international newsstands or large chain book stores.
FFXII is a very good game. It is what happens when someone takes ideas from another genre (in this case, MMORPGs) and applies them to their own game. Most of it is very good...I wish I had more power with the Gambits (sort of if-then statements that you use to control your characters basic functionality) but I think with time we will see that system be more fleshed out.
What really concerns me about this game, though, is that it takes some ideas from MMORPGs too far (or so I thought at first). For example, some treasure chests have a chance to drop really good loot. This sounds really good, but it isn't. Early on in the game you encounter an optional boss. If you choose to defeat this very tough boss, you are rewarded with access to a treasure. The problem with the treasure is that it has something like a 30% chance to drop a really good sword or a 70% chance to drop garbage. This makes getting it a pain as you need to save your game and try a few times before you get it.
I at first thought this was just an MMORPG concept that went too far. But after thinking about this, and finding out some other things about the game (e.g. that to get the best spear you have to not open 4 treasure chests in the game) is that this has nothing to do with MMORPGs. This has to do with selling strategy guides. There is no way you would even know to do a lot of these things without a guide or by going on gamefaqs. And this really bothers me. It's fine if you have some secrets in the game. But there should be some in-game hints that will lead you down that path. Making a game have secrets that you can only find out by forcing a player to buy a guide is wrong.
Other that that, I really don't have any complaints. It is a great game that I am enjoying. It is just slightly diminished because I know I am missing content that there is no way to know unless I rely on external sources.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Except that:
- I've known of Famitsu for years, but have never heard of Edge, and
- According to Wikipedia they're not published in the UK and the US, but the UK and Spain. Some of its content was carried in a US magazine that went defunct four years ago.
Really, the fact that you feel the need to make an analogy to try to show that something is well-known should itself demonstrate that it's not well-known.On a tangent, I can't think of any gaming magazines available in the US worth paying money for.
Most surprising game: Trigger Heart Exelica, by Warashi. Makes you go "WTF, they still make Dreamcast games?!"
Circumcision is child abuse.
That is in part due to the fact that Edge is not available in the US per se. You have to get the UK subscription which they will happily ship overseas to you - for a price! The rather harsh exchange rate doesn't help things much on top of the airmail making it an $8 magazine *with subscription* by the time it gets here.
Better off getting it from the newstand at Barnes and Noble for the same price. Then you get the news stand packins and there's no chance your precious copy will get mangled or, like mine, lost entirely.
Loved Next Generation. Love Edge.
Really? The Penny Arcade article today says something different:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/12/18
Scroll down to Gabe's post.
Holy shit, I like these guys' picks! It's nice to see Okami get some more recognition, that game deserves a lot more accolades than it has. The only thing is that I would have given Game of the Year to Twilight Princess (which is currently in the running for "best game of all time" on my list), but FF12 is a damn fine game too. I think Zelda was bound to be highly scrutinized, even more than FF12, since it A) had an entire console launch riding on it, B) is a lot easier to compare to the rest of it's series than FF games are to each other, C) was specifically created to go up against the "best game of all time" (Ocarina of Time, on pretty much all major game ranking sites), while there are no particular "expectations" for FF12, other than "to be good." Either way, both games deserve emmense accolades.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Agreed. I know it exists but I've never seen it in the USA, and it's reputation among UK gamers is dubious as far as I know. The USA equivelent to Famitsu would be EGM, in terms of readership and "prestige".
I don't think there really is a US equivalent to Famitsu-- No one has taken EGM seriously, Game Informer is so horrid they have to give away subscriptions, and Play readily gives out 7/8/9's to any dreck even remotely Japanese in nature. Edge is easily the English-language equivalent to Famitsu, if not in popularity at least in quality. It isn't so much that they're all that terrific-- it's just that gaming journalism is so abhorrent that it manages to rise above everything else by succeeding at being competent.
Next Generation is certainly the closest US-based equivalent to Edge, not least because they used to regularly share feature articles. I don't believe it happens any more, however, because Edge is starting to make a push for the US market; they've not been able to move there in the past, because there is another magazine title with the same name (about tattooing or somesuch, if memory serves; Not games, anyway.)
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Slightly offtopic, but a while ago (couple of years?) almost all the staff at Edge quit, because they got annoyed with the management. Does anybody know what the story was? What did management do exactly?
The Zodiac spear is obtainable through other means, other than the "do not open these 4 chests" method. You don't have to get it that way. That way just lets you get it way, way early in the game, and gives you a ridiculously overpowered weapon for most of the mid-game.
Final Fantasy, let's face facts, it won because it's Final Fantasy. No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII" or anything else that didn't say Final Fantasy. Going by PLAYER reviews on Gamefaq, most people seem to be bored silly by the gambits and lack of story. Secondly, the exact battle system (minus gambits) was used in FFXI and was modified from Everquest and other MMOs. The Gambits only seem to be present to allow a single player to control multiple characters in psuedo-realtime.
Same for DQ8. The visual style that's "best of the year" is virtually identical to the Dragon Ball Z: Budakai series. Yet the DBZ games don't get a mention here. Once again, Edge picks a popular series even when others have already done the same thing.
Wii and DS are good systems, don't get me wrong, but they also happen to be some of the most hyped systems out there. You can't read a game magazine or watch a game related show without hearing about them. So being that they're already popular and everybody already wants one, I don't see how they can be praised for "independence" when at every turn, they pick the most popular item.
If I'd seen anything on this list that wasn't already well known, or a system that wasn't already popular, I'd give them far more credit. To my mind, you lose the right to the "nonfanboy" and "independant" labels when you give your awards to popular games and products. Where are the indie games? The game that's awesome that no one has ever heard of?
Objectivity.
I browse at -1 so I don't miss out on quality comments like that one.
Cool links.
Actual PAPER publication? No.
There is no longer a U.S. equivalent to Edge Magazine. Only industry mags and end-user rags.