2006, Game of the Year

[SvennoJ]

Oblivion was a lot of fun. The ~ command options were great lol





Good times playing with the physics engine.

Quite a pretty game too



Fun quests as well, too bad the leveling system was fundamentally broken. I waited far too long to do the story quests and all the enemies were wearing glass armor already while the allies that were supposed to help me died instantly.

Gears of War is the first game I played on my then brand new 52" 1080p LCD tv, it still works, mostly. It's now sitting in the living room next to the 4K HDR tv for playing while watching TV. Gears of War was good. I still preferred FPS over TPS but was now used to analog controls for shooters and Gears handled very well. That last fight was hard though, RAAM I think.

FF12 was a favorite even though I never got to finish it. I love the gambit system as a programmer. Creating my own AI routines and watch the party handle different fights all by itself while taking notes and further refining my gambit setups. Quite a unique way to play an RPG, hands-off battles. Why I didn't finish it? I played it on PS3 through BC. To do that the game used a virtual memory card stored on the HDD. I must have turned it off too soon after saving one day as the next day it informed me the memory card was corrupt. I lost all my saves on the way to the final sequence :( I watched the rest on you tube ugh.

On the 360 Dead Rising was a pleasant surprise. Awesome game with another unique time mechanic. Prioritizing what you can do in a single run, and what to leave for repeat runs. Mowing down zombies with a lawn mower was awesome.

I never really got into Dead Rising 2 though, one hit wonder to me.

Of course I played Twilight Princess as well. I was looking forward to it for a long time and finally my wife managed to find a Wii in all the shortages. I should have just bought it for GameCube :/ The Wii motes weren't great to play a game like this with, worse I didn't really enjoy Twilight Princess anyway. I quit, picked it up again later, quit again, never finished. The Twilight sound was so grating it made me hate the game. I didn't like those sections at all, nor got much into the story either. One of my least favorite Zelda games.

The game that surprised me the most and quickly became my goty is Okami.

Ironically this is the Zelda game I was looking for. Despite a slow long winded start, the game grew more and more on me as it kept going. And keeping going it did. What seemed like the final boss wasn't even halfway in the game. The paint mechanic was brilliant as well. Gesture control much better executed than Black & White and fun to use in combat. An epic adventure with many twists and turns with an awesome visual style.