What is YOUR game of the year..?!

[CAL4M1TY]

GOTY is a pretty tough choice for me, but in no particular order:

SMG - Considering it injected new life into the dying genre it deserves to be up there. it was also a great game that blew most of my expectations. Also, taking into account that you collect all 120 stars, this is a long game (especially by today's standards) and the difficulty for 60 stars is pathetic, 120 stars its a little more credible.

Bioshock - This is one of the few game worlds that I honestly felt was alive, that was how good the artistic style, voice acting and sound effects were.

CoD4 - Infinity Ward gets big kudos from me just for leaping into the modern day, it just shows a company that listens to it's consumers and isn't bleeding the cash cow. Single Player, while short-ish, was epic, I was never bored with it, each and every scenario was unique and interesting to play. The lack of vehicle play was weird (I thought) but I didn't miss it. I've yet to play multiplayer (I will soon) but I heard it's a blast as well.

Halo 3 - This one's a bit weird, it was one of my biggest disappoints yet it lands itself as one of my GOTY games. Here's why:

- It was epic, despite the fact that the arbiter's story fell off (which I thought was lame), no one could deny the scale of what Halo 3 was trying to accomplish. The story wasn't as well told as it could have been, and the characters weren't as deep as they could have been, but it was enough for me that when the credits rolled to feel like I had accomplished something pretty special (taking into account I had completed Halo 1 and 2). People complain that it is too short, to Halo 1 and 2 standards yes, but people forget that, that is one of the biggest flaws of HD, high production costs force games to be shorter now, even then Halo 3 SP campaign was in fact longer then CoD4, Gears, Heavenly Sword and host of other games.

- Graphics. Yes I hear people say "it's Halo 2 in HD", that's a very harsh call to make. Armour reflected light sources, water reflected light sources and wet surfaces did as well. The artistic style also gets a mention as well, from the combat armour of the brutes and soldiers to the environments (except maybe the bland flood segments). Another thing that needs to be pointed out is the fact that the entire game was being saved on video and could be rewatched from ANYWHERE at ANYPOINT, that's something that not many games have done and the fact that it all consistently looked good (for 90% of the ride) deserved props.

- Gameplay. I'm not sure what people were expecting, but I got exactly what I wanted. Cool new weapons (Spikers, gravity hammer etc), new equipment, new vehicles, the same tight controls that made the world swoon for the first 2 games. I'm not sure what more people could have wanted (perhaps tri-wielding weapons? because I don't know if there was a bigger leap possible after Halo 2 introduced Dual Wielding). Enemy AI was good, wasn't perfect, but when you made your move in any area, they knew it and they reacted.

- Multiplayer. Still as frantic as it was in Halo 2 and Halo, I'm a little disappointed that there was no major additions (other than the video recording which is found in SP) but like many other things in life "if it ain't broke..".

Now, why was it a disappointment to me? because my expectations were so high, but after I completed the game and looked back, I knew that it was a great game, certainly not as good as Halo 2, but better than the original. That was enough for it to be up there with the rest of my GOTY list.