Game of the Year

We had KotOR II, Civ IV, Myst V and Jade Empire all released this year and you're still going for Black & White II? You have very odd tastes.
 
It's Battlefield 2 for me.

Probably would have been Black & White 2 if I hadn't gotten a near-lethal dose of the Molyneux treatment ahead of its release by religiously following the hype. After loving the first Black & White having bought it without hearing any pre-release hype, 2 let me down feeling like more of a 10-20 hour amazing experience followed by being pretty samey after you figure stuff out rather than the hundreds of hours I was expecting. The game really was pretty good though and I've picked it back up several times in the years since.

The Movies was pretty good as well, also released in 2005. If Lionhead had just gone on a slightly different path they could have made so many good games, they made good stuff... just hampered by some bad stuff as well... Now they don't exist any more, and apparently EA holds the rights to Black & White. :(

Currently playing the first Black & White due to this thread BTW, still holds up really well!
 
We had KotOR II, Civ IV, Myst V and Jade Empire all released this year and you're still going for Black & White II? You have very odd tastes.

This is Kyriakos you're talking about.
 
I'd have thought that a point-and-click aficionado would have plumped for Myst V - End of Ages, but hey, we're all different, right?
 
I'd have thought that a point-and-click aficionado would have plumped for Myst V - End of Ages, but hey, we're all different, right?

I didn't say i was voting for Black and White II, i merely noted that it is one of very few games from that year that i have even heard of...

Same goes for Myst, although i have heard of the overall franchise. :)

Btw, i am not voting for any game of this year.
 
I played the Lego Star Wars double edition on the 360 and enjoyed it a lot (I have almost all the achievements!), but given that Jade Empire, KotOR II and Civ IV came out in 2005, it barely stands a chance for me.

Shall we just move onto 2006 now?
 
Mount&Blade also came out in open beta in 2005 :p That's when I bought it for $13 USD.

It's not better than KotOR II though, or Jade Empire, but I certainly played it more than almost everything else combined.
 
WE might want to tidy up 2004 and 2005 before moving on to 2006 :-p
 
2004 is done! Sorry I went out of town for a long weekend. Pirates is going to win with 2 votes lol. Everything else had one, unless I counted wrong. I don't think I did.

But yeah civ4 should be the runaway winner, it's a civ forum! I find it really hard to believe long time posters here haven't played it much. Did you get here from civ3 and then not like 4 and jump to 5? I feel like a large majority of long time members joined during 4's hayday and then of course a ton of newbies have joined since discovering 5. While I don't find 5 engaging at all, steam platform has done wonders for its popularity and it's got to be the best selling civ game ever.

Civ4 though, where to begin? If I was making a top ten list it would be number 1. I think it's the apex of the civ series. The way commerce works just seems so intuitive yet deep. I love how specialists work and you can manipulate your production and leverage your economy in so many ways. Ok so you have gold mines? Good, run high research. Oh you are food rich? Build libraries and run scientists. You have a lot of iron and copper production? Research alphabet and have cities build beakers. So many options. Lots of rivers? Try state property. You get the idea. I just love the flexibility. Civ5 feels like just a lot of addition of bonuses, not really choosing and switching between stuff.

The combat also works for me cus it's tactical enough without overshadowing the entire rest of the game. You know civ 1 and 2, combat was an afterthought, you won by having better tech pretty much. Civ3 added better hit points so you could win with better numbers sometimes. Civ4 pretty much fixed all of that, introduced rock paper scissors concepts so now specialized units can counter others. Tech usually wins, but not always, and if you have enough collateral damage you can beat anyone. It was amazing concept because now the AI doesn't become completely irrelevant for falling behind in tech. Montezuma and Genghis can still throw their weight around even though they are bringing catapults to a gun fight.

And then the modding! It's easy to get your own custom maps and scenarios and have a ball. I could go on and on about civ4, from how they handle religion to trade to diplomacy, all sorts of things. Easily my favorite 2005 game, probably my favorite game ever, even though I have more time on Wow and Dota. Civ4 was equally addicting and still is from time to time.

Other than that I'm not seeing a lot of games I played from 2005. I see a lot of notable ones I haven't played like:

Shadow of the Colossus
Age of Empires 3
Pyschonauts
Call of Duty 2
Jade Empire


Lego star wars was also very good. Did that launch the lego games? there's so many now. I think batman came out later, star wars might have been the first in a long franchise.
 
2004 is done! Sorry I went out of town for a long weekend. Pirates is going to win with 2 votes lol. Everything else had one, unless I counted wrong. I don't think I did.

That's not a win: it's an accident.
 
That's not a win: it's an accident.

I can't really help it if no one wants to vote. Like we said, casual thread, not that serious anymore (if it ever was).

I *think* we'll get more lively debate once we get to the second decade of the millennium. With steam and everything a ton more legit indie titles start popping up. The 90s were really good for voting cus there were still a lot of small pc studios putting out great games like homm series, civ, master of orion, simcity etc. But 2000 kind of saw them decline, everything moved towards triple A, and it was before internet distribution took off enough to support the new development wave.

Oh and pricing, steam and all the sales has really pushed pricing down on pc games and exposed us to a ton more titles. At least that is my experience. Going from 2000-2010 I bough on average one or two games a year. Partly cus I was playing a lot of wow, but also cus who wants to drive to the store and pay $50 for a new game? Sometimes they'd be older games. Then around 2010 I started buying older discs off amazon like mass effect 1 for $10. Then around 2012 I finally ditched dsl for cable internet and really started taking advantage of steam. Now I buy like 100 games a year and still only spend $100 or so.
 
2004 is done! Sorry I went out of town for a long weekend. Pirates is going to win with 2 votes lol. Everything else had one, unless I counted wrong. I don't think I did.

But yeah civ4 should be the runaway winner, it's a civ forum! I find it really hard to believe long time posters here haven't played it much. Did you get here from civ3 and then not like 4 and jump to 5? I feel like a large majority of long time members joined during 4's hayday and then of course a ton of newbies have joined since discovering 5. While I don't find 5 engaging at all, steam platform has done wonders for its popularity and it's got to be the best selling civ game ever.

Civ4 though, where to begin? If I was making a top ten list it would be number 1. I think it's the apex of the civ series. The way commerce works just seems so intuitive yet deep. I love how specialists work and you can manipulate your production and leverage your economy in so many ways. Ok so you have gold mines? Good, run high research. Oh you are food rich? Build libraries and run scientists. You have a lot of iron and copper production? Research alphabet and have cities build beakers. So many options. Lots of rivers? Try state property. You get the idea. I just love the flexibility. Civ5 feels like just a lot of addition of bonuses, not really choosing and switching between stuff.

The combat also works for me cus it's tactical enough without overshadowing the entire rest of the game. You know civ 1 and 2, combat was an afterthought, you won by having better tech pretty much. Civ3 added better hit points so you could win with better numbers sometimes. Civ4 pretty much fixed all of that, introduced rock paper scissors concepts so now specialized units can counter others. Tech usually wins, but not always, and if you have enough collateral damage you can beat anyone. It was amazing concept because now the AI doesn't become completely irrelevant for falling behind in tech. Montezuma and Genghis can still throw their weight around even though they are bringing catapults to a gun fight.

And then the modding! It's easy to get your own custom maps and scenarios and have a ball. I could go on and on about civ4, from how they handle religion to trade to diplomacy, all sorts of things. Easily my favorite 2005 game, probably my favorite game ever, even though I have more time on Wow and Dota. Civ4 was equally addicting and still is from time to time.

Other than that I'm not seeing a lot of games I played from 2005. I see a lot of notable ones I haven't played like:

Shadow of the Colossus
Age of Empires 3
Pyschonauts
Call of Duty 2
Jade Empire


Lego star wars was also very good. Did that launch the lego games? there's so many now. I think batman came out later, star wars might have been the first in a long franchise.

I agree with practically everything you say. For me civ i5 was a step back for the genre. It diluted too many good things like health and corruption, and of course 1upt, which is not so good imo.

However, 3 expansions later it is still a good game. So is not so bad. It is one of the few where I say voting for the expansion is acceptable over the original.
 
Well, I don't buy all that many games, but I do play a lot of indie and point/click games, so I probably have over 100 games installed right now. Counting up just the number I have between HumbleBundle, GOG, Gamer's Gate and Steam is not an exercise for the fainthearted, let alone my physical games from yesteryear.
 
I never could get into Civ3. Civ4's combat was one of the least enjoyable parts. Civ is mostly really cool... but it's too god damn gamey and they need to ditch the silly 1 type units and have some sort of actual armies. Which don't end up being obsolete by the time they reach an enemy's city.
 
Civ III was fantastic compared to Civ II, I thought.
 
Back
Top Bottom