2006 Games Poll (poll is up - see link)

[Vicious Love]

Saber Cherry said:
GameRankings.com might give Grand Theft Auto a 95% average and Resident Evil 4 a stunning 96% average, but I'd never consider buying either game, and the opinions of Shrapnel fans would be much more useful.

Y'know, I've yet to read a single remotely persuasive non-indie game review. The norm seems to be for reviewers to have absolutely nothing to say, but persist in blathering on for pages on end about all sorts of revolutionary, never-before-seen features like, y'know, elves, potions, graphics, keyboards, mice. From a recent Gamespy preview of TeS IV: Oblivion -

"There's definitely a lot to like about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but one element stands out more than anything else. This is truly a sandbox game, where every action will result in some sort of reaction. During the demo, our hero accidentally set an innocent villager on fire, prompting a local guard to rush up to us. Our demoer said that he usually paid the requested fine, but he actually listened to me when I said, "Screw that guy, kill him!" After battling for a few moments, we ducked into the local mage's union. According to the guy manning the controller, in every previous demo, the hero was able to join the union.

This time, however, the union's leader refused to let us join because our hero was now "a wanted criminal." Even better, the guard miraculously didn't forget about our trangressions, actually following us into the building, slashing at us until we killed him. This turn of events caused the demoer to proclaim, "Oh wow, I've never seen that happen" a number of times, which is always a good sign that a game will have a lot of surprises (and even better, replay value) for those players who enjoy unpredictability. After seeing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in action, we want it more than ever."

A criminal flag, and triggers conditioned on that flag. Wow. Whatever will they think of next? Some sorta non-boolean criminal status indicator, possibly a numerical one? These are the days of miracle and wonder.

Getting back on topic, I've also already purchased Civ IV and, for my part, don't regret it in the slightest. Sure, certain aspects of the game were rushed, but a few major issues have already been patched, and the end product is still nothing short of sublime.

I've also very recently already registered Escape Velocity Nova, and already regret it. My instinctive urge to support indie and semi-indie developers got the better of me. Fine, all the flavor text in the game is exceedingly well-written, and the main plotlines, although irredeemably cliched, are actually fairly compelling, but the gameplay is dull, dull, dull. Then again, that might just be my abhorrence of repetition and compulsive leveling. If you could tolerate the mere mention of Dungeon Siege, you'll love EV Nova.

The only other game I've been considering which isn't already on the list is Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, and it'll likely end up being another mindless, soulless, pointless by-the-numbers RTS. I miss Shadow of the Horned Rat.

Galactic Civilizations 2 - home

Speaking of soulless...

Armed Assault developer

Wait, so Armed Assault and OFP 2 are both back in BIS' hands? Purchased. I might bother to read a review or two beforehand, but nothing short of a half-dozen game-stopping bugs will deter me.

Jagged Alliance 3/3D/Disciples III (same sketchy-seeming developer) - developer screenshots

There's going to be a JA III?! Oh please, please, please let it not be yet another MoO III.

Supreme Commander (Total Annihilation sequel) - preview home

Can you imagine it? The elimination of micromanagement in our lifetime. A game that actually lets you focus on what interests you and/or demands creative thought, and handles the rest for you. Also, big 'splosions. I'm hanging all my hopes on this one.

Sword of the Stars wiki

Looking forwards to this, as well.

Dragon Quest VIII - gamerankings review

Steering clear of this one. I buy RPGs for one of two reasons:
A) A proper, non-linear, interactive storyline
B) A really compellingly told, original, linear storyline

Dragon Quest 8 seems to have neither, and endless levelling can only tide me over for so long.

Incidentally, if you haven't picked up Planescape: Torment yet, do so. I can't stress this enough.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - home MUST-SEE TRAILERS media

No real progress since Daggerfall, but I'll gladly settle for more of the same. Still, it would be nice to see some genuine innovation.

Gothic III - home preview media

Ditto, replacing "Daggerfall" with "Gothic".

The Guild II - home

Ooh. Didn't realize they were making a sequel. The original seemed a tad one-sided, though. One way or another, unless you made some truly monumental errors, you would eventually win, if only by sheer XP(well, AP)-induced inertia.

The Witcher - preview

Darklands 3D, eh? Promising...

Lugaru (indy) home gamerankings

Huh... Well, that's unusual. Worth a look.

Roma Victor (MMORPG) home

Realism is nice, but an MMORPG is still an MMORPG. So far, I've only seen two MMOGs with proper, engaging gameplay, beyond the leveling treadmill. I'm pretty sure both are defunct, probably as a result of crippling latency issues. Did JumpGate even make it past the beta phase?

Spore home

Ah, Spore. In all likelihood, it'll just be a design tool disguised as a game. But what a design tool! It'll take some truly catastrophic design decisions to dissuade me from picking this thing up. The Movies-style catastrophic design decisions.

[Ed Kolis]

Megaman X Collection
Gotta love the super fighting robot who is fighting to save the world for everlasting peace

[djo]

I'm looking forward to Combat Mission: Shock Force (battlefront.com; no page yet, just a forum), due spring 2006. It's a rewrite of the engine for the Combat Mission WWII tactical game, with this first release being set in the near future Middle East.

[B0rsuk]

Enemy Territory:Quake Wars
The quake part may sound repulsive, but the game is said to be very tactical, with emphasis on teamplay, and will look like this: (modified Doom3 engine) http://www.etqw.at/images/quakewars/...review_006.jpg
http://www.splashdamage.com/images/image_01.jpg
It's a multiplayer-only PC-only game. The people who are developing it have a great record of making really playable games: Quake 3 Fortress mod, Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory (not just free - remarkable for it's innovative features and unprecedensed level of teamplay), and now this. One last thing: games based on ID Software's engines are known for their multiplatform support.

Neverwinter Nights 2
Very nice rpg game. One of biggest advantages is that multiplayer is geared towards small amount of players (parties; no massive thingy) and has support for Game Masters. That and very good modding tools. There are many player-made modules made for Nwn1 already and they are said to work in nwn2, too. The way multiplayer is made is (nwn1) the reason why it's still one of most popular multiplayer games.
NWN1 has been known as pretty much only real commercial RPG game for linux. Unfortunately, so far only DirectX9 version of Nwn2 is confirmed. While publisher and developer (forum moderators) say there's a possibility of linux and mac ports (they were very popular for NWN1), and there's a biig petition for nwn2 multiplatform support, we can never be sure.

DROD:TCB (Deadly Rooms Of Death: The City Beneath)
3.0 version of DROD, arguably the best puzzle game ever created. Drod 2.0 already has cult-like following and lots of high quality usermade levels.
DROD 2.0 (JTRH) is available for Linux, Mac, Windows, and apparently FreeBSD, too. Other than official level set and extra graphics, demo has full functionality, including ability to fool around with level editor.
http://caravelgames.com

Prey (2006)
Another game on Doom3 engine. It's being made by Human Head - people who made Rune (kicks ***). It it doesn't ring any bells for you, they're also the people that made Heretic/Hexen serries and left Raven Software around release of Soldier of Fortune2.
Prey will be a story-centered action game, and there are some really crazy things going on. See for yourself (gameplay video): http://www.prey.com/movies-view.html
It will be mostly a single player game.
What's more, if Prey is at least moderately successful profit-wise, Human Head people will get funding for Rune2. And B0rsuk really loved the original Rune ! Not to mention it worked on Linux, too.

I'd rather stay away from Witcher. It's based on serries of polish fantasy novels. They're very popular here in Poland, but the movie is a disaster.
My observations about The Witcher (game):
- uses new Aurora engine, the one Neverwinter Nights will use
- will be most probably single player only game. Not only that, but it looks to me like just another hack&slash game with fancy graphics. (at least graphics are quite realistic, even if models are somewhat lacking). Dialogue found on some of screenshots only strenghten the impresion. You meet a king's concubine and can choose from 2 dialogue options:
- where's the king
- time to die.
It may seem unpatriotic of me, but Poland has very few successful games which become known outside the country. Last such a game in several years (!) is Painkiller. I hope it makes it clear that CD Projekt (I think they're the developers) are not known for successful releases.
=================================
Something very on topic
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/07/th...me_journalism/

To Be Edited

[Vicious Love]

B0rsuk said:
I'd rather stay away from Witcher. It's based on serries of polish fantasy novels. They're very popular here in Poland, but the movie is a disaster.

Bah, figures. To be honest, the first thing that came to mind upon reading the game's description was Rutger Hauer walking around delivering wooden dialogue and fighting topless witches with bad makeup and huge, fake hair. Or possibly Christopher Lambert. That paragraph can be interpreted several ways, and I wholly endorse all of them.

[Morkilus]

Dominions 3 and... that's about it, though I'm insanely curious about CivIV, I'm afraid my dinosaur can't cut it, especially with the performance issues.

[PashaDawg]

djo said:
I'm looking forward to Combat Mission: Shock Force (battlefront.com; no page yet, just a forum), due spring 2006. It's a rewrite of the engine for the Combat Mission WWII tactical game, with this first release being set in the near future Middle East.

Do you know if they will be available for Mac? You got a Mac, right Djo?

[djo]

PashaDawg said:

Do you know if they will be available for Mac? You got a Mac, right Djo?

I do have a Mac. Battlefront has been very careful about announcing Mac support. They very much want to (the devs use Macs), but they are afraid the Mac to Intel chip transition may screw them if Apple changes key APIs or something. Apparently something of that kind happened during the OS 9 to OS X transition, which is why no Combat Mission 1 for OS X. However, they seem very optimistic; various posts in the forum seem to have almost all but announced Mac support. One wonders if announcements at this week's Macworld Expo may clarify the situation enough to make an official announcement possible.

[Boron]

Battle for Middleearth 2 might also be cool.
BfME 1 was very good, i liked it almost as much as Starcraft.
BfME 2 could very well become the king of RTS