Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Stand up and be counted
Our picks for the best games of 2004
BY THE GAMING ROOM STAFF

Two thousand four turned out to be a great year for games. Whatever your preferred genre – first-person shooter, head-to-head fighter, racer, sports – you were treated to titles of the first order. This year's crop was a bit sequel-heavy, but that only meant developers were trimming the fat and refining the game experience. And since we're nearing the end of the current generation's life cycle, game-makers have learned how to max out our hardware's capabilities.

Sometimes choosing our favorite games of the year is difficult because of a dearth of contenders; this year, the trouble is deciding which great games are just a bit greater than the rest. In fact, there's only one title common to both of our lists.

Here's how our picks panned out.

Mitch Krpata's picks

1. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Nintendo GameCube)

The best games are those we recall as something we did, not something we played. Games like System Shock 2 and Half-Life have provided gamers with an indelible sense of experience, living on in the memory as something as tangible as a first kiss. To that list of vaunted titles we can now add Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, a stunning display of artistry from Nintendo.

It's hard to know where credit is due for this game. Developer Retro Studios pushed the GameCube's graphical capabilities to the limit, providing visuals on par with the best the PS2 and Xbox have to offer. But Metroid's success owes to so much more than its technical mastery – the game world is not only pretty, it's alive. Even if there were no gameplay at all, romping through a barren Light and Dark Aether would provide a more compelling experience than most games I've played. Add to that epic boss battles, new and exciting power-ups (not to mention old favorites), and a massive game world, and you have, hands down, the best game of the year.

2. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (PlayStation 2)

During the 16-bit age, we were treated to lots of anthropomorphic animals with attitude. Surly yet good-hearted bandicoots, wombats, and echidnas were all given their chances to shine, and pretty much all of them failed. Developers forgot that solid gameplay is the foundation of all games, no matter how in-your-face some obscure marsupial might be. Still bearing those scars, I was wary when Sony dropped a title called Ratchet & Clank a few years ago.

Ratchet has attitude, all right, and his physical design seems to embody just about every wacky animal given a starring role in the 1990s. But this series was founded on great platform gameplay first and foremost, and Up Your Arsenal pushes it to another level with the inclusion of killer online play. This is the first PS2 title that even has a shot at swiping some of Xbox Live's market share (not that that's going to happen, of course). More wacky weapons and gauntlet battles, like the ridiculous "Qwarktastic Battle" at Annihilation Nation, bring the frenzy of online play to the single-player campaign. This is just a great game.

3. Burnout 3: Takedown (PlayStation 2 and Xbox)

Burnout 3 is the most flat-out fun game to be released in 2004. Simply by embracing crashes instead of fighting them, developer Criterion Games has crafted an adrenaline-fueled racing experience that doesn't slow down even when it smashes into a brick wall. Steering your flaming wreck of a car into the path of oncoming racers makes crashing every bit as fun as power sliding around hairpin turns.

The breadth of the game adds to its allure. Unlocking new cars, courses, and events is as easy as winning a new race, and as time goes by one starts to wonder if there's a limit to how much game is there. Burnout 3 probably would have been great with only five tracks, but its nearly unlimited scope is matched only by its unlimited fun.

4. Halo 2 (Xbox)

I know, I know. I only gave it an 8.0. Believe me, I've heard enough about that to last a lifetime. But that speaks more to the flaws in the rating system than any in Halo 2. I'm not budging from my assertion that the single-player game is still too repetitive, or that I expected more significant improvements than the refinements Bungie gave us. There's still no denying that Halo 2 is head and shoulders above every other console FPS. This is the complete package, with great graphics, tight controls, and enemy AI that should be studied by all computer science majors.

The multiplayer is, of course, Halo 2's biggest draw. It's impossible to get tired of the Xbox Live experience with this game (and I thank you for taking time out of your busy deathmatching schedule to read this). Even if your Internet service goes out, the co-op campaign is just as good, offering combat dynamics unmatched in similar games. I still want my grievances addressed in the next installment, but I think for now Halo 2 will do just fine.

5. Madden NFL 2005 (PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube)

Does Madden even need to be included on a list like this? It's like saying The Return of the King was the best movie of 2003; everyone knows and accepts that it was, so why waste time even debating it? Madden has consistently been the best video football franchise around (except the year it didn't ship, I suppose), and Electronic Arts deserves credit for their commitment to improving the game every year. It would be easy merely to update the team rosters and call it a day. Instead, every year we get a tighter game with useful new features and smarter AI.

One's concern might be that the Madden series is due for a slide now that they've muscled the NFL license away from Sega and their ESPN series. This could be true. If you recall, Madden began a decline in the mid-'90s that only turned around when 989's Gameday franchise kicked EA right in the sales chart. If the franchise does go downhill, at least we'll always have Madden 2005.

The Sons of Liberty Award for Stupidest Creative Direction in a Sequel

This award goes to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. It's not that it's a bad game (our review will run next week), just that Ubi Soft opted to make a couple of truly bone-headed decisions. The Sands of Time was inarguably the best game of 2003, and arguably one of the best console games of all time. If it had a single flaw, it was the slightly repetitive combat system. But the gravity-defying gameplay was glorious in its intuitiveness, and the time manipulation was something I bet every game developer wishes they'd come up with.

Warrior Within has the same environmental calamities as The Sands of Time, yes, but that's where the similarities end. The Prince has a different voice and a different attitude; no longer is he the sarcastic child of privilege forced to assume the mantle of the throne, like Shakespeare's Prince Hal. Now he's a tough-as-nails assassin who mocks his opponents during combat – the excruciating, still repetitive, but now overwhelmingly convoluted combat. There was only one thing they needed to change, and they messed up. And does the world really need a game in which a Middle Eastern guy goes around chopping off heads?

page 1  page 2 

Issue Date: December 24 - 30, 2004
Back to the Gaming Room table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group