Best Games of 2005?

[schild]

Geez, why is everyone saying that FFXII is gonna suck? The characters look awesome (so do the monsters) and I personally like being able to see monsters from a distance and having the choice of engaging in battle or continuing on my way to whatever I was doing. It's why Paper Mario was so good for me (among other reasons). I can't wait for it. So nyah nyah nayh on you.

Final Fantasy XII will suck ass like no final fantasy has. Noobler.

[voodoolily]

No it will not, get off the bandwagon.

[Shockeye]

No it will not, get off the bandwagon.

You need to come up with something better. How about this:

Hey schild, how's that Dead or Alive 4 for the 360?

[Strazos]

Ooooo, burn.

[voodoolily]

Everyone took to the fucking streets with pitchforks and banjo music when the screen shots for Wind Waker came out, and what happened? BEST. GAME. EVAR.

[Fabricated]

Everyone took to the fucking streets with pitchforks and banjo music when the screen shots for Wind Waker came out, and what happened? BEST. GAME. EVAR.

You must have quit playing when you got to the triforce hunt. Even the devs said it wasn't as good as it should have been, and this is "we can do no wrong" Nintendo devs talking.

[voodoolily]

I'm a completionist, so I didn't mind (I usually am one of those people who goes after every heart piece). The only part that annoyed me was the "shoot the huge birds then turn into a seagull and hit the switch to get the map to the triforce piece part".

[Velorath]

Geez, why is everyone saying that FFXII is gonna suck? The characters look awesome (so do the monsters) and I personally like being able to see monsters from a distance and having the choice of engaging in battle or continuing on my way to whatever I was doing. It's why Paper Mario was so good for me (among other reasons). I can't wait for it. So nyah nyah nayh on you.

I used to love just about every game Square released (except for those Saga Frontier games on the PS).  Kingdom Hearts though is the only Square game I've really enjoyed in the past 5 years or so.  The last game of theirs before that I liked was Vagrant Story.  They haven't done anything in the PS2 era to bring RPGs to the next level.  No company really has for that matter, leaving the RPG genre fairly stagnant right now, with the possible exception of Bioware's stuff.

[Fabricated]

I used to love just about every game Square released (except for those Saga Frontier games on the PS).  Kingdom Hearts though is the only Square game I've really enjoyed in the past 5 years or so.  The last game of theirs before that I liked was Vagrant Story.  They haven't done anything in the PS2 era to bring RPGs to the next level.  No company really has for that matter, leaving the RPG genre fairly stagnant right now, with the possible exception of Bioware's stuff.

Despite how good the dialog and stories were in most of their recent games, all of Bioware's stuff has felt like tweaked versions of Neverwinter Nights. No matter what they do to it every new game has felt like the Aurora Engine with stuff bolted on.

[Strazos]

Then look out for that good stuff they have coming down the pipe.

[Bunk]

Civ4 is great...but very difficult to play without the bottom UI. Sure, it's just the 1280x720 resolution I have to play in, but it hurts, baby. The utter lack of support knocks it out of GotY.

Can't you edit the .ini and set it to windowed mode?

my docs\my games\civ4\civilizationiv.ini

Oh boy, I'd love to see the smoke come out of my computer if I tried running Civ 4 windowed.

I'd really like to think it's a great game, but I don't know for sure as I have yet to complete one fucking game of it. I shouldn't have to play at reduced graphics, reboot every 2 hours, alt-tab every hour to correct the graphics, wait ten fucking minutes at a time while it decides to get stuck on another fucking animation, and get down on my fucking knees and give my god damned computer a blow job in a fucking desperate hope that I'll get to play past 1500AD just fucking once. GODFUCKINGPISSOFFCUNTBITCH.

Oh, and don't anyone fucking dare tell me its my machine, which is well above the specs. When I (and every other pesrson I know with the game, no exageration) have these kind of issues with only one game out of 20 or so on the system, it's the fucking game.

I think I'd been building that up for a while. Thanks.

[Merusk]

Read that mem-leak patch thread over at CivFantatic that was posted in the Civs 4 thread.  Looks good, and has some tweaks that shouldn't bork the game and uglify it while giving good performance.  I'm gonna try it tomorrow, tis late now.

[Yegolev]

Despite how good the dialog and stories were in most of their recent games, all of Bioware's stuff has felt like tweaked versions of Neverwinter Nights. No matter what they do to it every new game has felt like the Aurora Engine with stuff bolted on.

BEAN GO!  Anyone remember the text "you must gather your party before venturing forth" in KOTOR?  Huh?  Huh?  Do ya?  They even managed to make Jade Empire feel like Baldur's Gate, how the fuck do you even do that on purpose?  At the very least it was reskinned KOTOR.  I think some of the "Old Tongue" was actually just remodulated alien-talk from KOTOR.  It's just the Bioware smell, it gets into everything they do, like curry.

I am not hoping against hope that FFXII will somehow reverse the downward trend in FF games, but I figure a single-player MMOG has to be worth a whirl in the caddy.

[Paelos]

Dungeon Lords needs to be the example of how to fuck up everything in 2005. I should know. I wrote the goddamned review.

[Strazos]

BEAN GO!  Anyone remember the text "you must gather your party before venturing forth" in KOTOR?  Huh?  Huh?  Do ya?  They even managed to make Jade Empire feel like Baldur's Gate, how the fuck do you even do that on purpose?  At the very least it was reskinned KOTOR.  I think some of the "Old Tongue" was actually just remodulated alien-talk from KOTOR.  It's just the Bioware smell, it gets into everything they do, like curry.

Bolding mine.

I don't think these are neccessarily bad things.

[Yegolev]

Some people like curry.  Every day.

[Strazos]

Hey, some things can be nice to have on a daily basis, like boobies.

[Paelos]

Hey, some things can be nice to have on a daily basis, like boobies.

Hurray!

[El Gallo]

Those women look mean.  Especially the one on the left.  She'd kill you just as soon as look at you.

[Signe]

This is supposed to be a serious thread, no?  How come Paelos doesn't get yelled at for posting boobies and I get censored for Christmas furries, Hobbit pr0n and the word "first!"?

Everything is so unfair. 

[Shockeye]

That one on the left has the hands of a 60 year old. Scary.

[Signe]

And even more scary, her face looks lots younger!  I cower.

[Sky]

Sky, brother?  Cut it the fuck out, thanks.

Come on, it's not even close to every post, and it's a perfectly valid complaint that keeps it from playing properly on my monitor, thus keeps it from being a contender for my GotY. Imagine playing the otherwise great game without the UI along the bottom. This isn't 2001, there is no reason to not support widescreen, and I'm not just talking my hdtv by a long shot. Look at Dell's flatpanels flying out of the factory and the amount of widescreen laptops. Few people have hdtvs on the widescreengaming forum.

Can't you edit the .ini and set it to windowed mode?

We should discuss this in the Civ thread...but yeah, I've been all over that ini file. The game engine won't support any vertical resolution under 768 (it forces 1280x768) and my monitor is 1280x720.

[Shockeye]

The game engine won't support any vertical resolution under 768 (it forces 1280x768) and my monitor is 1280x720.

So the problem is you, then. 1080p, bitch.

[Yegolev]

It's funny that the girls' outfits say "for tuna".

[schild]

That one on the left has the hands of a 60 year old. Scary.

So does Ellen Muth. It didn't make Dead like Me suck. 60 year olds can still turn the lights off.

[Jain Zar]

Im not sure what I played that was new in 2005 that counts.

Sure Advance Wars DS is up there, but its Advance Wars, God's gift to videogaming.

That's about the only great game I could safely put on the list.

Haven't played Pathway to Glory Ikusa Islands yet but it would probably be on there (and being an N Gage game nobody would care).

I haven't made it far enough in Dragon Quest 8 to say it belongs.

Everything else I played tended to be an older game or was a late 04 release.

Or simply isn't "best of the year" material.

[pohsyb]

My favorites:

Shadow of the Colossus - Perhaps my favorite game ever.  Great pacing, epic battles, and it felt like I was participating in a work of art.

God of War - Brutal fun.

GTA:SA  - Can't say I was a big fan of thug-life, but by the end you are more like some kind of Vin Diesal XXX super-agent.  The scope and size of the world was great.

City of Villains - I'm biased

[Sky]

I was looking at CoV on the shelf while xmas shopping yesterday.

I just can't justify $50 for it, even though I know it's a fun game. It just dies at level 20, and it's CoH, musical-chair style. Fix your grind.

[Yegolev]

Re: Shadow of the Colossus... I am going to have to lean toward schild's take on it.  It is a great game, no doubt, but it is essentially a series of boss fights spread across a painting.  Not really GOTY material, in my opinion.  I think it is great, but the gameplay is rather narrow and my GOTY pick has to have some comprehensive gameplay to it.  This is one of the big reasons I rate most things against Ocarina of Time.  My personal bias with SotC is that there should be more climbing and puzzling-out the environment itself.  The few times I had to work my way into some ruins were nice, but short and simple and I wish they had put more into that aspect of it.  Plus, Arrow pisses me off.

[Shockeye]

Guitar Hero

[Llava]

RESIDENT  EVIL




FOUR

Best gaming experience I've had in a long, long time.

As much as I'm enjoying City of Villains, I don't feel it deserves a nomination.  Maybe if there's an expansion category.

[eldaec]

I struggle to think of much released this year that was any good.

Vampire and Rome:TW from last year would still pwn anything from this year. But from what we have I'd call out...

City of Villains. At the start of the year, CoH was the best/most-fun diku-mud there was. CoV is CoH only better. Ergo it is now the best diku-mud there is. If you hate/are-bored-of diku-muds do not apply. Obviously.

FEAR. This has two things going for it, first off it melts everyones PC except my shiny new machine, and so I get to show off. Secondly the AI doesn't suck; which makes it unlike EVERY OTHER FPS IN EXISTENCE. FEAR is worth playing just to support non-shitty AI.

Finally, Ravnica. Yeah, a Magic Online set. It's a turn based strategy game, you all keep telling us how there should be more turn based strategy games and enough with the real-time already; well magic is turn based, and Rav kicks all kinds of ass compared to other recent sets.

[schild]

Finally, Ravnica.

Clever girl.

[squirrel]

Guitar Hero

Have to second - or third - this. While i'm enjoying BF2 and FEAR, this is an innovative and fun game that even my mother thought was cool. Guitar Hero made me buy a console, i played it once at a buddy's and bought one the next day just for this game. Very cool, more plz. And Shadow of the Colossus gets a nod for superb art direction imo.