Game of the Year

[Lohrenswald]

Most things with the benefit of five and a half years of technology and experience are better than their predecessors.

Maybe it's an unfair comparison, but the previously mentioned twillight princess I feel holds up in a way oblivion doesn't, despite being released in the same year.

And I was actually reccomended Oblivion in late 2013, so I dunno

 

[Arakhor]

Oblivion has some fairly large negatives, but then so does Morrowind, yet the earlier game has a much larger cult following. Oblivion is still much easier to get into than Morrowind, especially for a "modern" audience.

 

[Lohrenswald]

"cult following" has never been my thing or anything I've even understood

 

[Maniacal]

A lot of Morrowind's flaws are either made up for by stuff it does well, or are products of the time, many of Oblivion's problems were things other games were already doing a better job of (or games that soon would), including games from the 1990s...

It was still fun to play largely because there just wasn't anything else like it aside from Morrowind for quite some time, most other open world RPGs since either just aren't good games in the first place, are very dated, or weren't really moddable. A trend that sadly still continues... at least CD PR is doing a good job for the most part.

Despite the benefit of 5 and a half years of technology Skyrim was still pretty poor. Definitely improved well in some areas for sure (faces! The faces are excellent!) but good god WTH goes on at Bethesda?

 

[trader/warrior]

I liked Oblivion, it didn't have the staying power I was expecting though. Played maybe 3 decently long lived characters and then finished the main quest and didn't play it very much after when I was expecting something more like Morrowind where I got it in 2002 and finished the main quest only last year and still regularly pick it up.

Really this whole era of gaming in the mid 2000's was a time where I had to slowly realize that just because something was in a series I loved and looked awesome from pre-release stuff didn't mean it was going to be any more than average or could even be really bad, or I could just not end up being that into it any more. This time also seems to have been when console dominance was at it's highest and people were doomsaying and talking about having to bring back shareware for PC gaming to even survive.

A lot of pre-release stuff was also even more misrepresentative than it is today, hyping "radiant AI" for oblivion being a nice example. I was expecting so much from that to give the game life only to find the exact same NPC's they had shown "dynamically interacting" performing the exact same scripted actions over and over again that they had shown in the pre-release video, and basically only these specific NPC's for showcasing had even that amount of effort put into scripting their daily life in the entire game. The game had very good quest lines (or at least that were varied and kept your interest, not counting oblivion gates ofc) that quickly ran out in a dead lifeless world when I was expecting something more like the opposite. Morrowind managed to feel full of life for me by just sheer volume of flavor and lore even though it's much more static.

Really our age of LetsPlays and livestreaming is pretty good at combating this practice compared to when it was mostly the back of the box and maybe a trailer or two to go by.

Still think I have to go for Oblivion for my GOTY though. Hard choice between it and M2:TW but at the time I was pretty burned out on TW so I never ended up playing it that much until much later.

 

[Evie]

Oblivion vs Skyrim also has the fundamental issue that in Oblivion, the "plot interruptions" (eg, those random moment in the story that reminds you you haven't finished the main plot and the threat is sitll out there) took a long time to fix each with an annoying dungeon crawl, and weren't particularly inspiring.

In Skyrim, of course, the plot interruptions involve a usually fairly brief, but almost always epic fight with the single most iconic symbol of fantasy.

That made Skyrim so much more enjoyable right off the bat

 

[Arakhor]

You didn't actually need to enter the Oblivion gates if you simply wanted to leave it as an impromptu daedra fight and a new icon on your map. As a side-effect, given that I was using Alien Slof's vampire mod, which makes vampirism much more like the Morrowind experience (and much better for it!), my vampire assassin would actively travel near Oblivion gates because the daedric weather blocked out the sunlight and allowed him to travel unhurt during the day.

Dragon fights in Skyrim were usually memorable, I agree, but I would never say brief.

 

[Evie]

Compared to crawling through an oblivion gate, they were .

 

[civvver]

After playing Skyrim I decided to pick up Oblivion. And, I think, objectively speaking it is a pretty awful game. I get that its a sand box, but honestly i dont see why that is supposed to make it good. I think Bethesda get an unfair reputation as the best the genre has to offer. Their only game i have really really enjoyed was Skyrim. Fallout 3 was totally awful. In fact, i have not really enjoyed fallout since fallout 2. A good sandbox game IMO is Grand theft Auto. Its not a true sandbox, in the sense that you can see all characters all the time. But it is infinitely more believable than the cardboard characters and poor story lines that Bethesda churn out year on year. The only reason i think their reputation is so high is because modders basically fix most of their nonsense and thus improve the game and give it lasting appeal. Oblivion looks passable if you can be bothered to spend 4 hours trying to mod it.

Well said

And that doesn't even touch on their stupid leveling mechanics.

I just got Skyrim last year and played it. It's the only Bethesda game I've played. So is it worth picking up Oblivion now at this late hour?

No, it's just a far worse skyrim imo.


Can someone give me a side by side comparison of morrowwind vs oblivion? I hear a lot of how morrowwind was better, had better storylines etc, but what exactly is better? Is the world just bigger, more open? Are the gameplay mechanics that different?

Cus for me I can definitely say in skyrim the level is still bad but at least passable where in oblivion is was atrocious. Perks/skills better. The items were better. 3rd person perspective tons better. Gameplay still pretty similar but story just more appealing imo.

 

[Arakhor]

In my opinion, nearly everything about Morrowind was better than Oblivion, other than the graphics, the stealth, the combat and a lot of the magic. Unfortunately, it's those four that everyone experiences first.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Thanks, all. I'll keep an eye open for sales and maybe pick it up cheap.

Dragon fights in Skyrim were usually memorable, I agree, but I would never say brief.

At least not until later on when Dragonrend and the legendary two-handed Painhammer are unleashed!

 

[civvver]

Is 2006 about wrapped up? I think we've had two days and a clear winner.

 

[CivCube]

I nominate Mother 3.

 

[Maniacal]

Dragon fights in Skyrim wore thing pretty quickly, they just got kind of annoying, caused a lot of problems, and weren't really that fun. The finishing animation for killing dragons in melee was also quite poorly done.

If it wasn't for this one mod I'd probably just remove them entirely.

Link to video.

2007 had a bunch of great games, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl came out, so did EUIII, The Witcher, Overlord, Portal and Rock Band, but the clear winner for 2007 would be Team Fortress 2. I don't think there are many posting in AoG who haven't played it and some of us put hundreds of hours into it... or more. It was a pretty good FPS that did something different, had a lot of character and Valve kept growing and builoding upon the game (mostly for the better, but not always).

 

[Arakhor]

2007 is ridiculously tough. That's the year Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect first came out, the Shivering Isles expansion came out for TES IV: Oblivion, which is probably the best Bethesda DLC ever, as well as Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the Witcher and Europa Universalis III.

For me, I think it has to be Mass Effect - I spent 100 hours just playing my Soldier character, as well as playing with almost all the classes and getting all the Xbox 360 achievements (including completing the game on Insanity difficulty). Honourable mention has to go to EU III though, given how long I spent playing that game. After all, it is probably almost single-handedly responsible for my knowledge of Eastern Europe and it sparked my interest in both the Habsburgs and the Byzantine Empire.

As an aside, I have never played any incarnation of Team Fortress, but then I'm not an FPS fan by a very long chalk.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

2007 is ridiculously tough. That's the year Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect first came out, the Shivering Isles expansion came out for TES IV: Oblivion, which is probably the best Bethesda DLC ever, as well as Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the Witcher and Europa Universalis III.

You're 100% correct; 2007 was a beast. In addition to those titles, there was BioShock, God of War 2, Crackdown, Crysis, Halo 3, Rock Band & Guitar Hero 2, The Orange Box, and BTS for Civ 4. I loved God of War 2 (which I borrowed my buddy's PS2 to play), and BioShock was a whole new type of FPS. Unfortunately I missed out on Mass Effect.

My pick though, and probably not a popular one here at CFC, was unquestionably Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I did not play many video games in the 2000s, and my last console had been an N64. Apart from occasionally playing games at other people's houses, I figured that I was done with consoles. But Modern Warfare was a watershed game. The controls were tight, the graphics were fantastic for its time, and the gameplay was so smooth and breakneck that every round of play was nerve-wracking. I had never seen such a blistering pace in a multiplayer shooter. The modern setting and weapons hit home for me, much more than WW2 or sci-fi did. Plus, it actually had an inventive and engaging single player campaign, before the endless sequels turned into cookie cutter schlock. I had to get a 360 and an internet connection just to play it, and ended up back in the console world.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I'mma vote Europa Universalis III for 2007

I've played that game more than any other game ever

 

[Maniacal]

CoD4 was fun but it was pretty much heralding the beginning of CoD just being a game where you run and gun around in circles on small maps (or camp in corners). Kill streaks were cool but the novelty wore off rather quickly when teams were unbalanced and it just rewarded players who were already better than the others with even more easier kills. The SP was fantastic though for sure. I forgot it came out that year.

I tried playing it on a friend's 360 once... horrible. Just horrible. I have no idea how FPS games are so popular on them, I really don't.

 

[Evie]

There's only one of these game I was an active modder for (and enough of an active modder to eventually get my name in the credits for the sequel ).

Europa Universalis III has my unquestionned vote.

(You MIGHT be able to divine from this what 2013 game will have my vote)

 

[cardgame]

I have no real opinion for 06. 07 is definitely tough, but I'm going to have to side with TF2 as well though I haven't really played it for about two years.

@Maniacal I prefer the Fluttershy dragon mod if we're being whimsical.