2005, Game of the Year

[S.Peelman]

This is where gaming took a nosedive for me, accelerating from last year's downturn. At the start of the year, there was still the PC release of Knights of the Old Republic II at least. This was the version I played and like I already said it was pretty great. Then though, there wasn't much that enticed me enough to play. Like the previous year I wasn't motivated at this time to try anything new anymore because I had little faith left. I was interested in SoulCalibur III, but for some reason that was only on PS2 for example. Console gaming had disappointed me, things I was anticipating were cancelled and PC gaming began to spiral downwards as well. I stuck to franchises that were already familiar to me, if anything new in those even released, and mostly continued playing older games.

From the list, I played Mario Kart DS, Call of Duty 2 and from the 'others' list I only played Star Wars Battlefront II. I wouldn't play Mario Kart DS for a few more years however so I can't really count it for this year, but this game was a good improvement over the mediocre GBA entry with some good tracks and solid gameplay. Call of Duty 2 was great, almost as great as the original, and I probably would have felt it was, if it wasn't for the novelty of the original. Battlefront II was fun, a bit like the first game was and the space battles were interesting, but at the end of the day not really special.

During this year I continued to play on my cousin's XBox every once in a while, and this year Fifa Street came out for it which I played, but beyond that it's barely worth mentioning. This year was however also the year of Star Wars Republic Commando and that was a pleasant surprise. I loved the squad dynamic and it worked very well. The game ends on a cliffhanger, yet a second game never came.

So this year for me was basically Call of Duty 2 and three Star Wars games, one of which, easily the best one, was actually a 2004 game. One of the worst years. Because of its refinement of an already great shooter, I'll give my vote to Call of Duty 2.