2004, Runoff for Game of the Year

[S.Peelman]

This is when things go downhill a little for me. The amount of games I would end up really enjoying would decline year after year, and this also didn't have much that would resonate with me.

From the poll I've only played a single game. The rest was either on a console while my interest had moved away from there, were sequels in series I wasn't invested in or didn't interest me in general. Like the year's big game World of Warcraft. I already didn't really like most games in multiplayer, and especially online except some shooters, and this game took the world of an rts I liked into a genre I wasn't interested in and took it online while looking ridiculously complicated with about a billion buttons in the HUD and loads of numbers on the screen. This was very unappealing and not for me. The game did basically end my cousin's career as a gamer though, because he wouldn't ever play anything else ever again. And when he finally stopped with this game, he wouldn't game at all anymore.

From the 'others' list, there were actually a few games I would play, and some would end being mild favourites. These were mostly PC games. On the console side, I would only play Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The Sacred Stones I would only play a decade later however, when it came to 3DS. I liked it very much, and it made me realise there were still some things I missed after I had basically swore off console games, both home and handheld.

The Minish Cap I also played much later than 2004, when I was hunting down the Zelda games I missed, like I played the Oracle games much later as well. The Minish Cap however, would confirm my reservations. I didn't like it very much, I would actually say it is bad at being a Zelda game. I didn't like its look, I didn't like the world, the dungeons were too easy, too short and too few, I didn't like the story and its wider implications to the lore which I thought didn't make sense. I didn't like the cap guide character, the soundtrack and the main collect-a-thon sidequest. I also felt the main gimmick didn't add anything towards the actual gameplay. It is the definition of 'gimmick'. For example, sometimes there's a small hole in a wall which you can only go through when small, but then there's a spot to shrink very nearby and when you go through you can grow to normal size again quickly as well. Might just have been a normal door. There are also sections when you shrink down, but the viewpoint shrinks down with you and nothing changes, so these might just as well have been normal sections altogether. All in all it is one of least favourite Zelda games.

Other games I played were RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which couldn't hold a candle to the original and RCT2; The Sims 2, which was more of the same; Star Wars Battlefront, which was good fun and clean Star Wars action; Unreal Tournament 2004, which was a great shooter and became a short multiplayer staple among my family and of course Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II. This game delivered, and it was absolutely great. It has an extremely strong opening, great characters and storylines and remains immersive throughout. It does however begin to suffer more and more towards the end because the game was rushed to release, and it clearly misses content that had to be cut which hurts the total experience. There is a great mod, 'The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod', which remedies much of this. Possibly the best mod ever made, at least as far as I have played, and I wouldn't play the game anymore without it. Very recommendable. The game is a favourite of mine despite this, but the issues with its unfinished state, my preference for a more black/white storyline that felt more 'Star Wars' and because of the novelty an original has, I would never rate this one higher that the original Knights of the Old Republic.

Next to these this year was also the year of the Call of Duty expansion United Offensive, which I played quite a bit and was a great way to get more of a great game. One of my cousins (another one than the WoW one) also had an XBox at this point, and I would play it some when I came over. I remember playing Def Jam Fight for NY, which was hilarious. I hated hiphop music so beating up rap icons was a joyful thing. Still, it was also actually a decent game besides that. My mother also got me The Lord of the Rings The Third Age, which we would play in co-op. This was a decent enough game. Though I wouldn't play it for a while, this was also the year of the initial release of the DS and the remake of Mario 64, so I can mention it now. Super Mario 64 is one of my favourite games ever, and the DS remake was still exceptional because of it. It also added a lot of good content. The touchscreen control scheme though proved inferior to the regular N64 control, and I would actually opt to use the D-pad instead of the touchscreen controls.

However, like I said I played one game from the main poll. This game would change my preference from rts to turn based strategy within the wider strategy genre and it would introduce me to one of my favourite series. This game is of course Rome: Total War. I already had great interest in the Roman era, and with this game I loved the way you had to manage your empire, build your cities and your armies, do the politics and conquer region after region to become the dominant power in the Roman world, and the rest of it. The slower nature of the campaign map, where time only advances when you tell it to, felt comfortable to me. While the game, and others in the series, or most often advertised with epic battles, the battle mode would actually be the least interesting to me. I would play some every once in a while, but my draw was towards the campaign map portion of the game. In more recent games, I would actually hardly ever play a battle. This game would stay with me, and I still play it from time to time, if I'm not playing any of the great sequels.

This post has become a lot longer than I thought it would given the years become less interesting to me, but the winner is Rome: Total War.

I'm the first one to vote for it? For shame.