Joshic

World of Warcraft. No other game even comes close to it IMHO. And I own all 3 consoles and a GBA SP too.

edstein

Halo 2

RVP

No love for knight of the Old Republic 2?

sfsdfd

UT2004 kept me up many, many late nights with awesome Onslaught matches.

I've gotten incredibly sick of "cinematic" games, where you spend 30 hours playing through them once and then never play them again. My time is limited - if I dump 30 hours into a game, I want it to pay off. Halo (the original) did. Few other FPSes do - including Half-Life 2, from what I've seen so far.

The gameplay usually isn't even fun - the action is an annoying prerequisite to advancing the cinematic story. It's all about preserving health and ammo. The worst part is this: You can't easily revisit the memorable parts. If you remember one really great setpiece in such a game, and want to revisit it, you have to spend 10 hours getting back there. (Unless you've saved your savegames, in which case you are an uber-d0rk.)

UT2004 gets it right where these others failed: it focuses on the instant-action aspect. You fire up the game, and you start playing. There's no work involved. And the game is incredibly fun - their play balance is exquisite.

- David Stein

Josh H

A sequel must improve on the original to warrant consideration. General consensus is that KOTOR II did not.

Flay

It's silly to pick one game above all others, imo.

My favorite games of last year:

City of Heroes
Halo 2
Metroid Prime 2
GTA: SA
Kotor II
Chronicles of Riddick
Half Life II
WoW
Splinter Cell: PT

Dutin

No doubt! HALO 2

Xander

My experience was limited to console games this year. And going by the one that I have played the most, and keep on playing, to the exclusion of all my other games languishing away, I pick Halo 2. Just can't stay away.

shizawn

Though I spend a crapload of time playing City of Heroes, I would say Half Life 2 is the best game of the year.

daniel18

Halo 2

RVP

While it didn't get as high of rating as the original, I felt it did improve in a few areas : the use of fighting\force forms, the ability to influence party members, being able to reach a level of 30, and the ability to choose an advanced class later in the game.
Personally I felt it was one of the best games I played last year.

Josh H

I actually haven't picked it up yet, but I'm 100% sure I won't like it as well.

95% of the reason I liked the first one was for the story, and everything thing I've read said the story is no where near on par with the first.

I thought the gameplay in KOTOR was ok at best. I just much prefer japanese style, menu drive RPG battles to the more active auto-pause stuff in KOTOR and other american style RPGs.

Ergyu

Half Life 2. Unbelievable game, probably my pick for the best game I've ever played. As for consoles though, my pick goes to MGS3. And just in case anyone is keeping track, my most overrated game of the year would be Far Cry. Graphics are great, but the game was boring as hell.

Flay

The story is a continuation of the first. If you don't like the story in Kotor II, then you didn't like the first. I've read that some people don't care for the unresolved ending, but that's common in the second part of most trilogies.

Kotor 1 barely scratched the surface of Revan's true abilities. Kotor II builds on Revan's story with the path of another jedi. I'm guessing paths will collide in Kotor III and some crazy jedi shit will go down.

RVP

I hope you are right. Iwonder if they will have a 3rd one in the fall?

Jam Master Jay

I voted for Halo 2, with GTA:SA coming in right behind it. Both were amazing games, but Halo 2 kicks ass multiplayer and as a result ended up being played more for me.

Burnout 3 was alot of fun, but I really haven't played it much lately. I played the crap out of it for a good couple of weeks though.

SuprVgeta

Hmm... it would be no contest Halo 2 imo if the ending didn't completely blow. I'll say Halo 2 and GTA: SA were about even for me.

AGuyNamedMike

Hey David, what's your UT handle? I play mostly AS vehicle servers lately. My handle is Village_Idiot.

Josh H

Cool, like I said I was just going by reviews and impressions which all said the story was lame compared to the first, no big plot twists or surprises, etc. only gets interesting toward the end then the game's over and so on.

wlj

I just completed KOTOR 2 this past weekend. I have to say that I had just as much fun with the sequel as I did with the first one. I have heard alot about part 2 being "glitchy". I did not run into any glitches that I can remember. I may have been lucky and have a "glitch free" copy. As far as the story goes....I think it kicks arse. The main reason...I think...that people don't like this story is that it doesn't have that "Oh My God...I didn't see this coming" plot twist. Part Two also has more force powers and you can use the force from the very beginning...which makes the game alot more fun. By the end of the game you will have one very powerful Jedi...which is very fun especially playing the Darkside. One other small thing I really like about the sequel is the better looking robes. You will be surprised how much this adds to the experience...to be a Sith Lord and have a very cool robe on.

So I will give my vote for KOTOR 2....probably the best game I have played all year besides KOTOR 1(which was not released this year). I had more fun with KOTOR 2 than Halo 2 that is for sure.


Bring on KOTOR 3!!!!



wlj

SuprVgeta

I liked KOTOR a lot better than the first. KOTOR II was still a great game, but it was very glitchy. The minor improvements didn't make up for all of the glitches in my opinion. The fact that some missions could not be completed was incredibly frustrating, the story was not as good as the first, when getting into fights the graphics got very jumpy and the frame-rate dropped considerably quite often, and I'm going to be brutally honest... all of the load time was a bitch.

wlj

Load times?? I heard alot about load time issues...but they didn't really seem that much worse that than KOTOR1. I have a newer Xbox...I just got it a couple of months ago....do you think that is why KOTOR2 runs better for me??? I mean I didn't run into any of these issues that everyone is talking about. Not that I can remember...but I haven't done 100% of everything with the game.


wlj

gorgo99

Half-Life 2.

DaveNinja

Easily World of Warcraft. I havent been this into a game since RBI Baseball or Ultima on NES.

hardcore

As much as I love Halo 2, my addictive personality is making me vote World of Warcraft...