Your OWN recap of 2006[games]

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-12-22 10:54am

So what do you label as the best games of the year? Genre, no genre, your choice. And what do you think is the best and worst trend of the year?

salm · Post by **salm** » 2006-12-22 11:50am

I haven´t nearly finished it but i think Zelda for the Wii is my favorite. I believe that Fear is a great game but i´m unable to play it because the sound doesn´t work properly.
Was Condemned this year? I think so. I´d easily count it in.

The best trend are the new motion sensor controling devices.
Worst trend, like always, the fact that many games are released totally buggy and therefore unplayable.

Biggest disappointment was Oblivion. It started out really nice and fun but it got boring after a week.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-22 12:41pm

Oblivion is game I keep coming back to, mainly because of mod community's content, and the open-end gameplay. But yeah, the main quest sucked.

Titan's Quest and Battlefield 2142 (what? Don't look at me like that!) also sucked away a lot of my time, and Medieval 2 and Company Heros round out my top games of the year.

I have to say NWN2 didn't suck me like I expected, but I can't really put my finger on why. Dark Messiah is my biggest disappointed; killing wave after wave of the same type of enemy no longer cuts it. At least DM came free in a bundle.

The best trend is multicore CPUs and devs using them to enhance AI and gameplay. After seeing the Alan Wake demo on Intel quad core, I'm pretty stoked.

Worst trend is without a doubt episodic content and pay-for-mods. I paid for some of this content, such as SiN and some of Bethseda's official Oblivion mods, and its just not worth it.

Looking forward to next year (and even into 2008), I'm eagerly awaiting Supreme Commander, BioShock, Crysis, Dragon Age and Alan Wake. Vista's release and first DX10 games will definitely make next year an interesting one.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-12-22 01:08pm

Best game of 2006 would probably be Neverwinter Nights 2, I think. The module-making is just getting off the ground, and hasn't really offered anything groundbreaking yet, but the main campaign is very fun and engaging to make up for it. Also Space Empires V, despite its rocky start, has given me lots of enjoyment. Dead Rising and Guitar Hero 2 are also runners up. I did enjoy Oblivion, but it got old after a while. I got my $40 worth of enjoyment out of it, so I wouldn't call it a disappointment, but then I knew going in that I wouldn't be engaged for hundreds of hours.

The biggest disappointment of 2006 were all the games that were supposed to come out this year and didn't. Bioshock, Mass Effect, Supreme Commander to name a few. In fact, Gamespot's 2007 list looks a lot like their 2006 list. Really, there weren't a lot of good games this year, and when they did came out, it was all in the same month. January - August of this year was a fucking wasteland.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2006-12-22 04:16pm

I really, truely, enjoy Bully very much. Since it's one of only two games I got this year (the other being LCS on PS2, which is good, especially for 20 bucks, but Bully was better), I suppose my sample size is a little on the low side...

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-12-22 08:02pm

It really has been the year of the Xbox 360. Starting with the early games like Kameo and Dead or Alive 4 (and replaying them in HD), Chromehounds over the summer, and then Gears of War and Rainbow Six to keep me warm in the winter.

Biggest disappointment was the new Sonic game. I really wanted them to get it right, and there are things that really are good ideas in there, but it's let down by shit level design, inconsistent movement physics (particularly for Sonic, but also for Tails and Omega when flying) and some plain bad control decisions (Sonic Team have yet to realise that there are more than two face buttons on a pad)

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2006-12-22 08:50pm

Company of Heroes, hands down. Followed shortly by Dark Crusade.

Darth Quorthon · Post by **Darth Quorthon** » 2006-12-22 08:56pm

All PC Games
Games I enjoyed:

Oblivion - I thought it got a bit tedious after awhile, but overall it was worth it. Great graphics, plenty of quests, massive mods.

Neverwinter Nights 2 - Not as pretty as Oblivion in IMHO, but more open-ended with a pretty involving story.

Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars - An engaging RTS/RPG hybrid with a somewhat generic story that has some interesting twists. Taking town a massive fortress with an army of Orcs and Trolls was pretty fun.

Battle for Middle Earth 2 and The Rise of the Witch-King - Enough an improvement over the original, and RotWK adds some interesting fixes to the War of the Ring Mode. Not the best RTS game, but still a fun ride.

Titan Quest - A fun diablo-clone, if a bit short.

Games that Disappointed:

Gothic 3 - Excellent graphics, tons of open-ended quests and choices, great scenery, but the combat system is a bitch. A wolf can kill you by simply attacking over and over to "stun lock" you. If they can fix that, it'll be a classic.

Need For Speed: Carbon - Less races, same cars, idiotic physics, cartoonish graphics. Not horrible, but a major let-down after Most Wanted.

Mage Knight: Apocalypse - Buggy, and linear in a bad way.

Verdict's still out, need more play-time:
Medieval 2: Total War, Just Cause, Darkstar One.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2006-12-22 09:14pm

Okami was probably the best game I played all year, hands down. Twilight Princess is good, but the gameplay and puzzles are pretty standard Zelda fare.

Ravencrow · Post by **Ravencrow** » 2006-12-22 09:27pm

PS2:

There's only two games that I really enjoyed - Disgaea 2 and FFXII.

Disgaea 2 really delivered the goods. It's so much better than the first one in terms of content and ease of play. But the story is not as funny as the first.

FFXII is the first FF I've played on console. If it isn't built the way it is, I probably wouldn't have picked it up because I hate random encounters, and it's great that you can see enemies instead of having them pop out of nowhere. There are a lot of complaints about the new battle system of this current FF from some long time fans, but I think they are just old fashioned. I hope this system is here to stay.

DS:

It's a good year for the DS.

I spent a good amount of time on Harvest Moon DS. The trouble with this game I think, is that it gets too routine after a while. But this version has considerably more content that its GBA predecessors. It even has a bit of dungeon hack going on in the mines.

They've saved the best for last with Castlevania Portrait of Ruin. I'm glad they got rid of the idea of incorporating stylus play for this game -- no more drawing runes to defeat bosses.

I have mixed feeling for Elite Beat Agents. The game is fine and I like the stories, but I hated a lot of the tracks. I guess I was expecting better tracks, and I probably would have done better getting Quendan.

PSP

I can't quite remember whether the games I played this year were released last or this year.

I spent a lot of time on the bus playing Monster Hunter Freedom. I think this is one of the best games on the PSP. It's exhilarating to try to take down a dragon all by yourself. That, and the thrills of getting fireballed and running for your life. Victories were often very satisfying.

I bought quite a few of those anothology collections - Capcom Classics, Sega Genesis Collection and Activision Hits Remixed were great. The Sega collection was great value for money, since included 3 phantasy star games, Shinobi, the Golden Axe trilogy and other assorted titles. I bought Activision for River Raid -- but the great thing about this collection is the unlockables and extras, which include old commercials and original manuals.

The disappointing one was EA Replay, which included some great games that didn't quite deliver: it's quite impossible to properly enjoy Syndicate and Wing Commander on the PSP screen because everything became so small.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-12-22 10:45pm

There are other games than Zelda?

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-12-23 05:51am

I was pretty much playing games from last year. There was the occasional new game, like Call of Cthulu, Company of Heores and Football Manager 2007, but apart from FM none really held my interst for too long.

Then in November the floodgates opened and i suddenly had Medieval 2, Warhammer Mark of Chaos and DoW: Dark Crusade all at the same time and it was like "Ferrit Shock!"

Post by **Edi** » 2006-12-23 07:24am

Hmm, I haven't had time to play a lot of games yet, given how I just got the new comp in September. I had a backlog of games to play dating back to 2002 and I've gotten some of those (Unreal 2, Thief:DS) out of the way.

Haven't yet managed to even start on Morrowind, never mind Oblivion, so those are yet on the list. I do like Heroes of Might and Magic V, now that it has been patched quiite a bit, though the patching schedule for the half-finished Hammers of Fate expansion has been disappointing so far.

Then there is Dominions 3, which is proving to be just as addictive, if not more so, than its predecessor, and which is going to consume quite a bit of my time just getting the documentation done for the community. Once I manage that, there will be a real possibility of seeing something like the Dom2 CB mod and doznes of other mods which can give the game a whole new dimension of possibilities.

Edi