Re: Year in Review: 2004

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

* Half Life 2
    Honestly, "Half Life 2" left me underwhelmed - both in 2004
    and to this day. I know it's well renowned, as far as I was
    concerned it didn't really do anything in FPS games I hadn't
    seen before. Sure, it was done with more polished than a
    lot of other games, but it felt too tightly scripted, its
    gormless hero was dull as dishwater, and it had a lot
    of uninteresting segments. Sure, the gravity gun and
    Ravenholm were neat... but they couldn't carry the game
    by itself. IMHO.

This I remember but played it late so probably not 2004. Didn't really
know what the what was and I thought it was because I never got into the
original Half Life. Kinda understood later my confusion was normal. Good
shooting, big set pieces, memorably difficult fight in the DLC with
lobbing sticky bombs with the gravity gun.

* Doom 3
    This game similarly left me unexcited on its release,
    although I've come to appreciate the game more as the years
    have gone by. But sure it didn't feel like the earlier Doom
    games we knew and loved, and that annoyed me terribly. But
    even after I warmed up to it, the game's flaws - most
    notably its monster closets and the infamous darkness -
    keep it from being as good as it could have been.

I mostly remember the Userfriendly strips about this, along the lines of
"did you really get a kickass GPU to run a game that mostly displays a
black screen?" Oh, and the clunky flashlight thingy.

* Farcry
    Not just "Half Life 2" and "Doom 3", but "Farcry" also
    came out in 2004. I told you this was a year of note!
    Sure, the latter half of the game faltered after the
    introduction of the mutants, but between the solid
    first half fighting mercenaries and the awesome visuals
    and giant, detailed open-world, "Farcry" was a fun game
    and a great technology demo.

Don't remember much. Jungle warfare. I think people were raving about
the physics, corpses and guns sliding down hills was a big thing.

* Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
    A "Homeworld" clone, featuring battling starships in 3D
    space. It had a solid story and was, generally, a fun game,
    but a lot of my interest drained away about a third of
    the way into the game, when the hero gained super-science
    gravitic drives that let them replace their rockets and
    spaceships with rotating rings for gravity. I really
    loved the 'realistic' aspect of the game, but it became a
    bit too sci-fi later on for my taste.

I remember I played this a little, there may have been a demo? Not
sure. Didn't really get into it I think.

* Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic 2
    Not quite the game its predecessor was, KOTOR2 was another
    overly-ambitious title let down by its rushed development
    schedule. Its grey-on-grey morality tale was interesting,
    but (IMHO) a poor fit for the Star Wars universe, and the
    clunky combat of the original - and less interesting maps -
    made for a poor experience. Still, more Star Wars was
    always welcome.

This I remember. I think I crammed something like 30 hours of game time
on this into a weekend. So it was captivating but I remember some parts
were kind of confusing along the lines of "why am I doing this here
now?" There was a sequence of controlling some unarmed flying drone and
just avoiding other armed drones since you had no guns... Somehow that
stands out in my mind as a non-connected part of the game.

And don't really remember much else. I think the fights went to munchkin
when you had "force storm" or something like that which usually took out
most of any mob attacking you. I actually remember at least the
highlights of the original KOTOR's plot but KOTOR2 is pretty much
faded. And I think I completely missed the mechanic where you could turn
some of your team members into Jedi and then found out mid game and then
had to walk some of those guys to their specific Jedi conversion trigger
spots.

So many noteworthy games! I told you 2004 was a year worth reviewing!
>
How many did you play? Did I miss any you feel deserve to be
remembered as some of the great games from a year filled with great
games? Do you have any memories about specific games?

I do wonder what I played in 2004. Sure I played the games mentioned
above but was it in 2004 or later, no idea.