Much Ado About Everything

My pick for the best game of 2006 is -

Final Fantasy VIII.

Yes, you read that right.  My criteria is “best game new to me that I played this year”.  Final Fantasy 8 was a great game and has left a great impression on me.  Were it the first Final Fantasy I played, it would have probably become my favourite.  As it is, that place still belongs to Final Fantasy 10.

Oh, I suppose I could spend some time debating whether to grant the title to Gears of War or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.  However, as great as production values were for these two games, they both had some rather nasty issues that severely diminished my enjoyment.  Graphics and sound alone are not enough to make a good game.  Alas, gameplay was rather problematic in both of them – I mentioned it for Oblivion before in this long post but I never talked about Gears of War.  Well, Gears of War is a great game until you let an enemy get close by.  At that point, thanks to very frustrating 3rd person camera view, you are pretty much screwed.  It will be very difficult for you to save yourself as you will be flailing your weapon and firing wildly and usually missing – because you’ll have no idea where are you aiming, exactly.  You’re probably supposed to be using the chainsaw bayonet on your rifle, but this weapon is next to useless.  I recently found out why – people say that if you get shot, it will turn off (it needs to be revved up to be useful).  Well, gee, isn’t that useful?  The enemy is rushing you, you can’t see where it is thanks to the stupid camera so you can’t shoot it back, and you hope to use the chainsaw which has a bit of homing, but – it’s shooting at you.  Duh, if the enemy is attacking by shooting as they approach, you’ll stand very little chance of getting your chainsaw ready by the time they’re close enough to go for a kill (they, not you – they tend to punch you to death).  Gee, thanks, Epic.  This fact made the game a frustration fest, especially as it was progressing.  I’m planning on replaying on easier difficulty, but the game ended up not being fun.  Yet another potentially great game screwed up by gameplay issues.  Oh well.

If I had to actually choose a game of the year, I might choose something unexpected, as there were almost no games I truly enjoyed.  I might choose… LocoRoco!!

Well, let’s try to list notable games of this year by platform:

1. PC – Oblivion, Company of Heroes, Dreamfall, Prey, Half-Life 2 Episode 1.  Company of Heroes was probably the best PC game this year, all in all.
2. PS2 – Xenosaga 3, Final Fantasy 12.  Nothing that blew me away though!
3. GameCube – none (ok, Zelda Twilight Princess, but I haven’t played it)
4. PSP – LocoRoco, Daxter (Daxter taking honours, but LocoRoco is the best game to play in transit that I’ve ever seen)
5. DS – uhm, none that blew me away.  Even Metroid Prime Hunters wasn’t amazingly good, but it was fairly decent I suppose.
6. Xbox – well, isn’t this platform dead?
7. Xbox360 – Gears of War, Oblivion – but also plenty of good games I haven’t played yet (Call of Duty 3, Dead Rising, Prey).

Overall platform of the year – Xbox360, closely followed by – PSP!  Interestingly, despite all these claims how there’s lots of great games for DS and how they’re all so cool and all, in reality DS games were only so-so.  Perhaps I’m a graphics whore, but you know what, a game like Daxter and LocoRoco show that there’s great gameplay to be found, and if it’s packaged well, so much for the better.

I was very impressed with technical aspects of Xbox360 and what Microsoft did with it.  A triple core symmetrical processor makes much more sense than an assymetrical 1+6 one, without losing any power.  A built-in scaler was a great decision, and the HD-DVD addon a very cool, must-have accessory.  One problem with their approach is that the system itself is badly engineered, in too many pieces, loud and power hungry.  I suppose this was the price to pay to bring it to market early, and as much as I don’t like practical aspects of it, I do believe they made the right choice.  However, despite pushing for media center dominance, I don’t think anyone who wants a real home theater will use their solution, for exactly those practical shortcomings.

On the other hand, PS3 was trying to do everything right, but before the technology was ready.  Therefore they are overpriced, a year late and full of glitches.  A lot of design decisions are turning out to be negatives, despite being cutting edge – no IR (Bluetooth for remote control is pointless at this time despite being the right thing to do in theory), no scaler (there’s not enough power for 1080p, not everyone has it, and allowing multiple rendering resolutions will lead to inconsistent framerates and gaming experience = bad all around), problems with Bluetooth controller connectivity, and so on.