I've gone back and awarded Game of the Year for the past 18 years. There are some very sad omissions, but I could only choose one for each year. Sorry Kojima. 1990 Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
1991 Super Mario World
1992 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
1993 The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
1994 Final Fantasy 3/6
1995 Chrono Trigger
1996 Suikoden
1997 Castlevania: SotN
1998 Final Fantasy Tactics
1999 Tekken Tag Tournament (arcade)
2000 Diablo II
2001 Advance Wars
2002 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
2003 Dark Cloud 2
2004 Half Life 2
2005 Shadow of the Colossus
2006 Okami
2007 Portal
2008 ????
Brad
10 comments:
I'm not sure why people consider Portal the greatest game of that year. Ya it was awesome and really fun, but I beat it in a night.
Ha, that covers more than my lifetime. Good list.
Skeet Parker, the ability to beat a game in one night or not really doesn't exclude it from being a wonderful game worth of recognition and praise. I've played games over the years that took 20 or more hours to beat but the reality was the game only had about 10 minutes of gameplay with a lot of different locations basically (not that that is bad either necessarily). Length is a factor, but replayability is also a big one. The biggest factor I think is ingenuity and Portal was a rather ingenious little game.
Anyhow. . .
I may not agree on some of those games but that is because during the early years I wasn't exposed to a huge selection (I mostly got to play whatever my brother got bored with). Going back and making a personal best of the years list would be full of nostalgia for me and likely full of some really bad games that I loved (and still love) to pieces.
One thing I will stand by is my all time top game of the. . . ever is Pac-Man. Even as a little tyke I would pretend to fall asleep, wait until the wee hours of the morning and sneak out of my room to where we kept our Atari and play Pac-Man until I literally passed out from exhaustion. Fantastic times!
Well I don't know how much replayablity a puzzle game like Portal has. Once you beat it once you know how each puzzle works and can just fly through everything. I'm just saying that I don't think there was enough meat to the game for me to at least consider it the best game of that year. I'm not saying I don't think anyone should have this is there favorite game, I just don't understand why they think that.
Shit, Diablo II only came out in 2000? Having played some of it again pretty recently, it seems way older. Funny how some games age quicker in the mind than others - I could have sworn I payed FF7 (which I'm surprised, and yet somehow not surprised to find absent from this list) more recently than D2.
No need to go into too much discussion here but basically Skeet the game must not have sparked for you what it did for many people.
It isn't about being able to "fly through everything" but rather about going in and screwing around, seeing what new and creative ways you can come up with to solve the puzzles, or just what sort of wackiness you can find. Myself and many others that I have talked to enjoy loading up Portal for a few minutes at a time and just playing around. It's that ability to come back to it and just goof off and have fun that makes it so wonderful for me. Somewhere along the line a lot of people decided that length of game is what makes a good game. I strongly disagree and Portal to me is a great example of how a short game can still hold its own if not be better than the epic length games that may be out there.
1998 Final Fantasy Tactics
You sir, are 100% correct.
i didn't know you played or for that matter liked Dark Cloud 2, Brad. o__o
stupid archives lost the broadcast when you played it v__v I would have loved to see your reactions on it.
I played Dark Cloud 2 day one. 60 hours in a couple of weeks.... and then tragedy struck. The game was, and still is, one of the best games on the PS2.
Question for you, Brad, that I've been curious about since discovering you're a Diablo 2 fan.... what class did you used to play most, and what was your favorite? I have my own hunch, but I'm curious to know.
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