The Crypto Guy
Registered User
- Jun 26, 2017
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HF Retro Game of the Year - 2004 - San Andreas Wins!
- Thread starter SniperHF
- Start date
pretty good list, couple darkhorse, maybe soul calibur 2, Simpsons hit and run, ssx3 just looking at the list.
Advance wars 2 is another great GBA game.
But for games people will vote for I think that's a pretty good list.
Edit: woops, soulcalibur 2 is on the list.
It won't win, but F-zero GX is much better than Mario Kart.
Mount Suribachi
Registered User
I remember Galactic Civilizations being a pretty popular game at the time.
Victoria was also released in 2003 (I know we have some Paradox GSG fans on here)
MayDay
Registered User
Another dormant franchise that I really miss.
F-Zero and Unreal Tournament.
Wish I could go back to the late 90s / early 2000s.
KingBran
Three Eyed Raven
- Apr 24, 2014
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Final Fantasy XI came out in 2002. I assume you meant Final Fantasy X-2?
Beyond Good and Evil and Manhunt are two cult classics that came out in 2003 that were pretty good.
Good list though. I expect KOTOR or Zelda: WW to take this one. Possibly PoP as a darkhorse? Not sure which one I will vote for here.
NyQuil
Big F$&*in Q
Freelancer! You can actually get Freelancer for free and it's still playable.
I played it again about a month or two ago, and it's essentially the inspiration for Star Citizen (also Chris Roberts).
The models/textures are a little dated but the space combat and visuals are still very good, the story and factions are interesting and it's probably still the benchmark for creating a space opera universe that appears lifelike and "lived in". Ships go about their trading routes, docking, pirates attack, police conduct sweeps.
There are actually some user-created multiplayer universes out there that are heavily modded and still entertaining.
However, for the vote, I'd probably have to go KOTOR.
The story and characters are every bit as good as the original films are - in a way, they make it even more depressing to watch the prequels and sequels.
I also played a ton of Call of Duty.
Interesting year.
I played it again about a month or two ago, and it's essentially the inspiration for Star Citizen (also Chris Roberts).
The models/textures are a little dated but the space combat and visuals are still very good, the story and factions are interesting and it's probably still the benchmark for creating a space opera universe that appears lifelike and "lived in". Ships go about their trading routes, docking, pirates attack, police conduct sweeps.
There are actually some user-created multiplayer universes out there that are heavily modded and still entertaining.
However, for the vote, I'd probably have to go KOTOR.
The story and characters are every bit as good as the original films are - in a way, they make it even more depressing to watch the prequels and sequels.
I also played a ton of Call of Duty.
Interesting year.
Well, I'll be damned....
The original "Far Cry" came out in '04 and it didn't even make this poll.
Interesting.
The original "Far Cry" came out in '04 and it didn't even make this poll.
Interesting.
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
Viewtiful Joe is another one, I wouldn’t vote for it but it’s one of the few games from back then that I remember fondly enough to recall. Kind of a weak year for depth.
In the context of reviews, three years is forever. Halo 2 was a loveless port full of technical issues. Combined that with it being basically the same game as the 2004 version, you get bad reviews.
And user reviews are an atrocious way measuring reception or quality (especially back in the mid-2000s, where games for first or second party devs got review bombed simply for being made by either Sony or Microsoft). Mass Effect 3 is the best in the series and has by far the worst user scores.
In the context of reviews, three years is forever. Halo 2 was a loveless port full of technical issues. Combined that with it being basically the same game as the 2004 version, you get bad reviews.
And user reviews are an atrocious way measuring reception or quality (especially back in the mid-2000s, where games for first or second party devs got review bombed simply for being made by either Sony or Microsoft). Mass Effect 3 is the best in the series and has by far the worst user scores.
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KingBran
Three Eyed Raven
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But all of the bolded is opinion no?
A few examples. I think Mass Effect is leagues better than 2 or 3.
Also, The Last Jedi movie. Amazing professional reviews but the actual fans of SW and general public was VERY split on if they thought the movie was good or not.
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
I'll accede that some don't think ME3 is the best one, but if you judge solely by review scores, you would come to the conclusion that not only is there not an argument, but that it is clearly inferior and a bad game. All because of review bombs from people who decided to judge a game on it's last 15 minutes (and in the six years since, opinions have considerably softened on the ending).
Movies are different than games. While you still get "review bombing", audience scores tend to be more representative of the aggregate viewer than video game user scores, which are exclusively hardcore gamers, and many of them from sub-cultures responsible for the hate and bullying groups like Anonymous and GamerGate. I don't think critics are perfect whatsoever, their reviews tend to be elastic in response to gut reactions from the internet (case in point, ME:A's mock reviews, which have proven to be very accurate, suggested ME:A should have had a metacritic score in the low 80s, but after the debacle that was early release, actual reviews ended up being much lower). But film critics are everything people complain about video game critics, magnified to the power of ten. From the major publications (with some exceptions), they overwhelmingly tend to act more like art critics, and instead of reviewing for how the target audience of the film would enjoy it, they review based on whether the film corresponds to their belief systems.
The Last Jedi (and TFA before it) conformed to Hollywood's vision of what a great Star Wars movie was supposed to be, even if the audience disagreed. Another example is Bright, which almost certainly was prejudged for it's genre (fantasy setting in modern times). A slightly different example is Altered Carbon, a show with generally good reception (and very good audience scores), but with certain negative reviews that attacked the show for not conforming to the reviews belief system. The show was criticized mostly for violence against women and it's nudity scenes, and if you look at the negative reviews, 9/10 of them are from female critics, most of whom would self-identify as feminists, and of course they won't like a show where many plot points surround significant violence against women. They weren't judging the show on it's own merits, and let their bias impact their judgement. The reverse happens as well, with traditional male critics being unable to accurately judge a film that revolves around female themes and that challenges traditional gender norms. In general, film critics are glorified art critics who can't check their bias at the door, while video game critics tend to more closely (but not perfectly) compare to the average consumer for the game being reviewed.
KingBran
Three Eyed Raven
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I mean I can think of tons of examples for all the situations are shown. Like you said though, especially with Bright, people cannot leave their personal political and social views out. Which leads me to a whole other discussion we could have about The Last Jedi but I don't want to get into it.
In the end, they are all opinions. General consensus can say what game is more popular or "better" when compared to similar games as believed by the masses but in the end each person has (or should have) their own opinion. I hated ME3. Yes, the ending ruined it for me. It would be like eating an amazing meal at a restaurant that you say is pretty comparable or better than the last one you were at and when you get the bill there is a cockroach crawling around on it. Boom. Suddenly that meal is gross and you will never go back. The last 15 minutes of such an epic game absolutely can ruin a series / game. That doesn't mean until that point people weren't having fun or loving what was going on. It just means it soured the experience.
For me, ME1 was so superior in music, writing, plot and atmosphere that it outweighed the better gameplay 2 and 3 had. ME1 left me wanting so much more and I actually replayed it 3 times. I never replayed 2 or 3.
The Crypto Guy
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Not you obviously.
Still, the original Far Cry looked beautiful on PC at the time.
By the convention we've been using of ignoring Japanese release dates it's an '03 game, as its first NA release was 2003, at least according to Wikipedia.
I had it on my preliminary list but it was not received well
Osprey
Registered User
- Feb 18, 2005
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You disturb me, Metalhead
.I don't agree. User reviews are a great way to measure reception. We shouldn't confuse it with quality. Many of the greatest artists and writers in history (ex. Van Gogh, Monet) were not received well during their lifetimes, but the quality of their works were recognized decades or centuries later. A masterpiece of a game could still initially be received poorly for any number of reasons (price, poor timing, poor performance, bugs, DRM, DLC/microtransaction practices, etc.). As such, a user score of 0 doesn't hold much value when it comes to the quality of a game, but it shouldn't be dismissed when it comes to its reception, since the low score is a reflection of how upset the gamer was (i.e. how poorly he received it).
You disturb me, Metalhead
Why?? Postal 2 is great mindless fun. It's so off the wall and non-PC with great humour.
Plus you can do a few errands "law abidingly" if you wanna.
Goatlender
Goat in the water
- Jan 27, 2016
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Eh fair enough. You might be giving the reviewers a bit too much credit though, given how bad the gaming industry has become in terms of professionalism and impartiality for reviews.
Goatlender
Goat in the water
- Jan 27, 2016
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Looks like KOTOR will run away with this one. Wind Waker and CoD are good contenders as well. SOCOM 2 and Mario Kart fall into the next tier IMO.
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
And that's an illogical position, and helps explain why user reviews are not good. You had a gut reaction, and for people who have revisited the ending, the initial reaction was an overreaction. There's a reason that people had significantly different views after Extended Cut, which adds a cut scene which shores up a plot hole (how your teammates were saved at the end), and epilogue slides which explain what happened after. The ending is more or less the same. You have a situation where people go, "yeah, the gameplay is the best in the series, the multiplayer is strangely addicting, and I actually really like the characters and overall sense of urgency and dread. But I hated the ending so 2/10 what a trash game the developers should go kill themselves" (there were plenty of comments pretty close to this after ME3 came out).
They're statistically not a good way to measure reception. We know that surveys which rely on self-reporting/volunteering to gain respondents are inherently flawed, because the people who are most likely to respond ones who feel most strongly about something, and those who feel strongly about something are more likely to be angry people. In particular, the hardcore PC gaming crowd tends to get very angry about certain issues. This was even worse in the mid-2000s when PC gaming was declining significantly in sales. Halo 2's PC reception really has nothing to do with how good the game is and everything to do with how it wasn't a good port technically, and how MS was using it to encourage switch over to Vista among gamers.
Games do have fluid receptions that change over time, but that doesn't make the old reception valid.
Big McLargehuge
Fragile Traveler
I didn't play a lot of games in 2003, I was too busy trying to read any and everything I could get my hands on at the time.
SimCity 4 & Rise of Nations dominated the year for me, gaming-wise.
I never played it, but Beyond Good & Evil most definitely deserves to be an option.
SimCity 4 & Rise of Nations dominated the year for me, gaming-wise.
I never played it, but Beyond Good & Evil most definitely deserves to be an option.
The Nuge
Some say…
I’d say add Tony Hawk’s Underground. Best skateboarding game of all time, and one of the few games I liked in 03
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
Really? All the Tony Hawk's after THPS3 couldn't live up to how good it was. Skate 2 is the only skateboarding game in the same ballpark as THPS3 to me.
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