Game of the Year

[Evie]

A paucity of titles? Really? I haven't played them all, but there's a good number of noteworthy titles that jump out at me this year :

-Eve Online
-Galactic Civilization
-Zelda: Wind Waker
-Knights of the Old Republic
-Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
-Sim City 4

(You could even mention Defense of the Ancients, which, though a game mod, has to deserves at least an honorary mention for how influential it has been)

There are some A+++ grade titles on that list, starting with KOTOR and continuing with Sim City 4, which many still hold as the gold standard for city builders thirteen years later (the rest having only recently defected to Cities: Skylines)

But still, KOTOR is KOTOR, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is where my vote goes.

 

[sherbz]

Maybe it's the style of games. I was never a massive KOTOR fan. And I have never played the rest. It might be due to the fact I was at university at the time and was poor. So I didn't buy games that much, and my computer was pants so I usually ended up playing a lot of civ 3 and MOO2.

 

[Arakhor]

My computer was really naff too (it was a Celeron 400 with a 1 Mb graphics card), so I ended up playing a lot of the Baldur's Gate series (when it wasn't crashing due to low specs), Diablo II and Might & Magic VI & VII. MoO2 was awesome though.

 

[sophie]

2003:

EVE Online
SimCity 4
Devil May Cry 2
.hack//Infection Part 1
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Master of Orion III
Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire
Amplitude
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Dynasty Warriors 4
Galactic Civilizations
Rise of Nations
Wario World
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Silent Hill 3
Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution
Soul Calibur II
Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII
Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Viewtiful Joe
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
SSX 3
Tony Hawk's Underground
Call of Duty
Civilization III: Conquests
SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Mario Kart: Double Dash!
Final Fantasy X-2
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun
Beyond Good & Evil
Deus X: Invisible War
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

Quite the list there. To my mind it's between Zelda, KOTOR, and Prince of Persia, and I'm taking Zelda.

 

[Synobun]

Hard choice... These are my top selections, numbered in no particular order:

SimCity 4
Rise of Nations
KOTOR
Soul Calibur 2
Jedi Academy
Civ 3: Conquests
Victoria

I'm probably leaning towards KOTOR or Civ 3 though since I poured the most hours into those two.

 

[sophie]

Sorry for the double post, but seriously guys, don't sleep on this list. This is a really good year. I kinda wish KOTOR/Zelda/PoP didn't come out this year, because then you have some really interesting choices:

EVE Online is still played to this day
SimCity 4 is arguably the best in that franchise. Although the fact that game is still being played today comes just as much from the mods as the game itself so :shrug:
Rise of Nations is a suuuuuper underrated RTS, but that was the spiritual successor to AoE2 in my mind.
Viewtiful Joe is fantastic
.hack was a really neat concept, and I think the first MMO released to a console?
Splinter Cell was a groundbreaker in the stealth genre
I would consider Dynasty Warriors 4 to be the best entry in that franchise.
SSX 3 was the best entry in that franchise
Mario Kart: Double Dash! was classic Nintendo polish, great, tight responsive controls, fun levels, and just the ultimate party game. A gamecube staple
Fatal Frame II was a really interesting take on the horror genre. Super scary game.
Beyond Good and Evil is a game that almost always floats to the top of best games ever released on gen4.

Also Pokemon gen3 is the most underrated gen in the franchise. Everybody hates it...for some reason, when it's really the best game.

 

[civvver]

2002 is done but it's a tie! WC3 and Morrowind with 4 votes each!

We can move to '03.

2003:

Master of Orion III

I thought this was a game of the year thread, not worst game of the year thread.

2003 is hard just cus I haven't played many. I'd vote for defense of the ancients but think it goes against the spirit of the thread. Same with frozen throne as it's an expansion. I never played kotor but it's influence isn't lost on me, I'm sure we wouldn't have dragon age series without it.

I'm voting for SimCity 4 as it's the only 2003 game I have much time on and it's probably the best sim city game out there since the new ~2014 simcity blows apparently.

 

[Evie]

Also Pokemon gen3 is the most underrated gen in the franchise. Everybody hates it...for some reason, when it's really the best game.

Plenty of reasons to dislike them.

The chief at the time was pretty simple: only about a quarter of the Gen I-II Pokémon actually were available at all in RS when they came out (67 available to 184 unavailable). The other three-quarters were completely unavailable, since they weren't in the game, and it wasn't possible to trade with earlier versions. Since a lot of that quarter was wasted on some of the most annoying hated Pokémon (Tentacool line, Geodude line, Zubat line), on the highly unpopular baby Pokémon from Gen II (Pichu, Igglybuff, etc), a massive amount of fan-favorites were left completely out of the game. Add in that many of the new Pokémon were obvious attempts at replacing old ones (not to mention the universally loathed Neo-Pikachu 1 and 2, Plusle and Minun), and you've already

No trade was unavoidable, but deciding on a severely restricted old monsters pool on a generation that couldn't handle trade with previous games crippled RS.

Add in trying at the same time to replace the tried, true and very much beloved vilains of the first two games (the Rockets) with the lackluster Aqua and Magma whose entire evil plot collapsed if you look at it more than a quarter-second (I mean, really? "Animals will have more room to live so removing water is good for life in the world!" I'm fine with extremist environmentalists vilains, but not fine with vilains who fail the most elementary elements of biology).

Plus contests were shoved down people's throats a little too much.

And, of course, too much water.

That's about the long and short of it.

Some of these could be done right, or fixed. Black and White pulled an even more extreme version of "limited monster pool" (no previous monster at all before you beat the game) ; it's considered a high point in the franchise's history (it helps, of course, that Black and White had plentiful trade options). ORAS was largely the same game, but again with plentiful trade options and with some fixes to make Aqua and Magma less unbearable ; they're solid games.

Ruby and Sapphire had a lot of good to them (and ORAS tapped much of that), but they were crippled by a combination of timing/technological restrictions and design decisions that made the game very hard to connect to for much of the established fanbase (a fanbase already dwindling because the fad was on its way out).

 

[trader/warrior]

It's down to Sim City 4 vs Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun for me.

The thing about SC4 is that it honestly wasn't that good and had a lot of issues even well after the Rush Hour expansion, I remember going back to SC3k and having a much better time. It took years of community additions and fine-tuning to make it finally fulfill its potential as probably the best city-builder. And it still has some fundamental limitations like the infinite commuter loop sticking around.

Vicky 1 meanwhile, probably had even more technical issues of course, being early Paradox, but it was the first Paradox game that I got super into both at release and years later with mods and updates, and it might actually still be my most played Paradox game so it has a special nostalgia value to me.

Vote Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun

 

[civvver]

Probably helps then that I played simcity4 in like 2012 on steam then not on release.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe Age of Wonders II or Seven Kingdoms II is of that year? (likely not, though)

 

[Evie]

2002 (AOW II) and 1999 (SK II)

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (not sure if 2002 or 2003)
If not Homeworld 2.

 

[Evie]

Vice City is 2002

Also, man have we got a duel of the titans coming up for 2004 (GTA:San Andreas vs World of Warcraft, with R:TW being another credible winner).

 

[Kyriakos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_in_video_gaming

@2003: How about Rise of Nations?

I actually played that game for a while...

 

[civvver]

Well I didn't give much time for 2003 but it's kind of a dull year. So making the executive decision to call KOTOR the winner and move on! It was only title that got more than one vote.


2004 is going to be a lot more lively I'm sure of it!

*Farcry
Fable
*Warhammer 40k Dawn of War
*Star Wars: Battlefront (the first time around)
Rome: Total War
*Everquest II
*Halo II
*Half-Life 2
KOTOR 2
Sid Meier's Pirates 2004 version

But of course we cannot ignore the juggernaut, behemoth elephant, more like woolly mammoth of gigantic proportions in the room: World of Warcraft

Wow gets my vote. When I think of "best" game in regards to design, graphics, gameplay, story, fun, wow kind of falls short of a lot of other titles for me. The graphics really weren't any good even for 2004, the story was like non existent but hey it's an mmo, the mechanics and gameplay have gone from holy crap this is stupid and arcane to holy crap this is too streamlined and simplistic button mashing. But despite it's flaws, no game has entertained me for more hours than wow. Some of my fondest gaming memories were on that game.

Priates is an extremely close second. I played the crap out of the original one on dos and the remake is better in almost every regard. Only thing I hate about it is the mini game to get into cities and the dancing is kind of stupid.



* I didn't actually play these just listing them for consideration

 

[Arakhor]

I played Fable and enjoyed it, but the only other game on Civvver's list I played was KotOR II, so it'll have to be that one.

(The Sims 2 came out then too, of which I played a ridiculous amount, but still, KotOR II for the win.)

 

[Mitchum]

The only game I played on civver's is actually Pirates. I hadn't played any of the Pirate games back in the day but I did play this one about two years ago when I got it as part of a Sid Meier's Humble Bundle purchase.

I have to say, the game has aged well and it captured my attention for several weeks as I sailed the Caribbean looking for treasure, sinking Spanish treasure ships, fencing, dancing my way to a marriage proposal and trying to kill the bad guy (can't remember his name).

I tried to play a few other games in the Pirates series but they were pretty unplayable in my opinion. I guess people who played them as kids still rave about them though.

My vote has to go to Pirates even though I have heard a lot of good things about almost every game on the list. I expect to be the only one who casts a vote for this game though...

 

[Evie]

I think I'll actually rally to Pirates, on the same "game I actually played that really held my attention for a while, that I fondly remember, and that I still occasionally go back to" metric.

WOW was by any metric far more influential, but it never managed to hook me, and in fact rather managed to bore me. GTA:SA is comparable to WOW in influence, but again, not a game I got into.

 

[Mitchum]

Oda Nobunaga Mitchum

My reverse psychology is working.