What Would Matt Play 2006 Edition
Welcome to the First Annual (we slack a lot, so this might be the last annual awards too) WWMP awards. Yeah, it's a horrible acronym, but you get what you pay for (I paid nothing). How does this work? I make up award categories, I either praise or whine about the game and I expect you to be interested. Seems pretty simple, no? Well, it should be pretty simple, but this year is probably one of the best, if not the best, for gaming in recent memory. So many good/great games. But I think I can manage. Oh, and I didn't do the 2006 edition until it was over. I'm so tired of seeing the this or that awards of 2006 in 2006. Bluh. So, without much further ado, lets get to the good stuff:
Game Of The Year: Company of Heroes
I'm so tired of other sites making me wait till the end or page through multiple pages to get to the GOY, so you guys get it first. And why CoH? Because it's spectacular. It's RTS done right. It's WWII done right. It's multiplayer done right. And it's gaming done right. What more can I ask for. The Relic guys Know Bo and RTS games. Runner Up: Gears of War.
Game That Didn't Suck: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
Let me be fair. Dark Crusade is fun. It's worth the purchase. And it's still installed on my HD and will be for awhile. That being said, It took the game that didn't suck award because the longer DoW is developed for, the less the races and game mechanics look like the original game. Each expansion and patch, the races move further from what they were in the original and most often lose a lot of customizability in the the process. So it's a good game, but it's not as much fun to play as it was. Each expansion while working towards some sort of balance, loses something. I don't remember Starcraft drastically altering the races with each expansion or patch.
Game I Wanted To Like But Couldn't Bring Myself To: Neverwinter Nights 2
Sweet, sweet Obsidian, my now former love (see KOTOR2, an amazing RPG if you don't count the ending), you've lost me. I was hoping for so much more from NWN2. I was hoping for AI that didn't completely suck. I was hoping for a UI that wasn't clunky and broken (in lots of cases). I was hoping for a graphics engine that didn't bring my supar gaming machine to it's knees with no visible reward (graphics aren't very good). I was hoping an Act I (the first third of the game) that wasn't so boring I wanted to off my character. I was hoping for more. Obsidian, please do me a favor. Don't be a Troika.
Game With The Best Coop Ever: Gears of War.
Gears has the best Coop of any game ever. Want to play Coop with your buddy on the same 360? Can do! Want to play Coop with your buddy across Live? Can do! Want to play single player for portions of the campaign but Coop for other portions? Can do! The rest of the game is pretty damn fun too. It had curb stomping, chainsaw guns, simple, easy to use gameplay mechanics and overall, a LOT of polish. It reeked of a Blizzard game (this is a good thing). And it was fun. A lot of it. It also had sticky grenades. If it weren't for Sticky Grenades (how easy and broken they are in multiplayer), it might have been my GoY. I know the devs are crying right now.
Game I Played A Lot But Can't Bring Myself To Play Anymore: Oblivion
Playing Oblivion is pretty damn cool until you see the guy behind the curtain and realize there is no wizard. You start out and the wizard seems pretty cool. He has cool dungeons, he has creatures that are interesting. He has multiple ways to kill things. He has character building with all kinds of options. He has what appears to be an unlimited amount of quests. But right about level 6 or so, you realize the wizard lied to you. The game actually out levels you (see award below). If you play the game as the manual and the game both tell you to do, you ruin the game for yourself and somewhere between level 4 and 10, you'll almost assuredly be stuck because the monsters level with you and you leveled (get this) too fast. Yep. Then you have to start looking behind the curtain. You have to see how the game monsters work, you have to see how the game skills work, you have to see how everything works and it just sucks the mystery out of the whole thing. Like living with a woman for a while and after finally finding out all of her secrets realizing she just isn't that great. Depressing. I just can't bring myself to play anymore.
Best Episode Of The Year: Half Life 2: Episode One
This award is a bit of a wrongness. I couldn't give Episode One my GoY year because it's pretty sort compared to other games and doesn't have much in the way replayability. That being said, it's stock full of goodness. So much goodness in such a small package that I think if you tried to fit anymore goodness in, it might ruin the whole thing. So good. Don't go changing Episode One. We love you just the way you are and more than the original. Which we also love. We just love you more.
Most Annoying Game Design Decision: Oblivions Auto Leveling Monsters
Yeah, I already harped on this a bit above, but it's so annoying and did so much to ruin what could have been a stellar game, it gets it's own award. It works like this. You create your character, select skills you want to be good at. Go about your merry way. Except, you've just fucked yourself by playing the game the way you were told to. The monsters? Well somehow they got word you were getting stronger and they went ahead and started working out and drinking their milk and getting stronger too. So what happens if you just level when the game tells you to level? The monsters get stronger than you. You will most likely come to a point somewhere between 4-8 where a fair number of the NPCs in the game become an unsurmountable task. To play the game you have to learn how the auto leveling works, you have to learn how the skills work, how you get rewards, what happens when you level, etc. Basically, you have to learn a bunch of game mechanics that really ruin the mystery and fun of the game. To play the game. The sad part? If the developers had given the game to someone outside of the developer/QA circle they would have easily realized this was a problem. I can only guess they never tested beyond their meaty little paws.
Best Strategy Game Of The Year: See Troy's List
I could do a bigger write up on Strategy games, but Troy is better at it and he agrees with me on CoH (because he's teh smartie), so I'm just going to link to his list of goodness. Oh, and as a very honorable mention, Dominions 3. The UI may blow until you take the too long tutorial, but the game is a wealth of goodness.
Best Game You Would Never Play At Work: BowMaster Prelude
It's a simple, yet addictive game that runs in your browser. It's fun, it's simple and could, though I would never suggest it, be played while on the job. Also, here's a writeup of a bunch of other games of a similar ability.
What Would Matt Do: Play a lot of games. I hear Take2 is coming out with new football game… I'm not drooling over here. Nor am I cursing Madden. I swear.