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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."
I think its more that mainstream industry PC gaming sucks lately, there's been a lot of cool indie stuff coming out this year. Defcon (a minimalist RTS by the makers of Darwinia) looks awesome. Lots of other stuff by Garage Games, Big Fish Studios, Introversion Software, etc.
I don't think Edge is very popular in the US. It's more of a Brit thing. Not to sound negative or anything.
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.
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Most surprising game: Trigger Heart Exelica, by Warashi. Makes you go "WTF, they still make Dreamcast games?!"
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.