2004, Runoff for Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 2004 Game of the Year is Half-Life 2.
The runner up is World of Warcraft.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

It's time for a Runoff vote to determine the Game of the Year for 2004.  Three games in the original poll made the cut.  A lot of games were mentioned from "Other" votes, but only one game got more than one vote.  Here are the current choices:

 

Half-Life 2 (PC)
The sequel to the original Half-Life did not disappoint.  It sold over 12 million copies, received a 96 on Metacritic and won 39 Game of the Year awards. 

 

 

World of Warcraft (PC)
During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s many companies were trying to get a piece of the huge cash cow that was the MMORPG industry.  The big ones at the time like EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI had a peak of around 500k subscribers, and FFXI was Square-Enix’s most profitable game up to that point with that level of subscribers.  Then Blizzard comes along with their MMO and blows all of that away.  At its peak World of Warcraft managed to have a mind boggling 12 million subscribers.  It also set a new standard for MMO’s and every MMO game that followed would try to be the “MMO that would kill WoW”.

South Park on WoW:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBmG7eRjZ2g

 

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube)
The GameCube needed a second Metroid game to make up for the N64 having zero.  This sequel would get a 92 score on Metacritic and sell over 1.1 million copies on the GameCube alone.

 

Here is the new game added based on "Other" votes:

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GameCube)
This whimsical RPG is perhaps the most beloved in the Paper Mario series.  It scored an 89 on Metacritic and sold over 1.9 million copies on the GameCube.

The runoff vote for 2004 Game of the Year will end on Tuesday, Nov 7 at 11:59 PM, EST.

Games that didn't make the cut:

Rome: Total War (PC)
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)
Spider-Man 2 (PS2/XBox/GameCube/PC/Mac/GBA/DS/N-Gage)
Halo 2 (XBox)

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 08 November 2023