Game Awards 2004; And the winner is...

tman

First off, i'd like to thank everybody who has helped me out throughout the course of these awards. Mostly Moriarty and weemcd. thanks lads.
Thanks to everybody who suggested games for the polls, and to anybody who took time to vote in said polls.

Overall Game of the Year - Half-Life 2

"Best Games Ever"
Best Ever Strategy - The Civilisation series
Best Ever FPS - The Half-Life series
Best Ever <Everything Else> - The Zelda series

Platform specific awards
PC Game of the Year - Half-Life 2
PS2 Game of the Year - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Gamecube Game of the Year - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
XBox Game of the Year - Halo 2
Handheld Game of the Year - Legend of Zelda; The Minish Cap

Genres
FPS - Half-Life 2
Strategy - Rome Total War
Sports - Pro Evolution Soccer 4
RPG - Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door*
Racing - Burnout 3: Takedown
Action-Adventure - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Characters
Best Character - Gordon Freeman (Half-Life 2)
Best Bad Guy - G-Man (Half-Life 2)
Hottest Female - Alyx (Half-Life 2)

Misc
Best Soundtrack - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Best Story - Half-Life 2
Dissapointment of the Year - Doom3
Addon or Expansion of the Year - Call of Duty: United Offensive

*KOTOR won this poll, but has been disqualified due to it being released last year.

super_furry

Those crazy kids love their Half-Life 2.

tman

aye.
i'm fairly pissed off that it beat Metroid Prime 2 in the Soundtrack poll
(and even more pissed off that San Andreas' bland selection managed to beat both)

here's the final results for every category

kaimera

gah, halo2 ost > GTA: SA.

Pugsley

G-Man, a Bad Guy? no one really knows if he is not, shouldnt really be in the bad guy catagory at all tbh.

Tusky

tman wrote:

First off, i'd like to thank everybody who has helped me out throughout the course of these awards. Mostly Moriarty and weemcd. thanks lads.
Thanks to everybody who suggested games for the polls, and to anybody who took time to vote in said polls.

Overall Game of the Year - Half-Life 2

"Best Games Ever"
Best Ever Strategy - The Civilisation series
Best Ever FPS - The Half-Life series
Best Ever <Everything Else> - The Zelda series

Platform specific awards
PC Game of the Year - Half-Life 2
PS2 Game of the Year - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Gamecube Game of the Year - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
XBox Game of the Year - Halo 2
Handheld Game of the Year - Legend of Zelda; The Minish Cap

Genres
FPS - Half-Life 2
Strategy - Rome Total War
Sports - Pro Evolution Soccer 4
RPG - Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door*
Racing - Burnout 3: Takedown
Action-Adventure - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Characters
Best Character - Gordon Freeman (Half-Life 2)
Best Bad Guy - G-Man (Half-Life 2)
Hottest Female - Alyx (Half-Life 2)

Misc
Best Soundtrack - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Best Story - Half-Life 2
Dissapointment of the Year - Doom3
Addon or Expansion of the Year - Call of Duty: United Offensive

*KOTOR won this poll, but has been disqualified due to it being released last year.

How did Half Life 2 win best story ffs ? There is no story...

super_furry

Tusky wrote:

How did Half Life 2 win best story ffs ? There is no story...

Same with Gordan winning best character - did he even speak?

dregin

Pugsley wrote:

G-Man, a Bad Guy? no one really knows if he is not, shouldnt really be in the bad guy catagory at all tbh.

Yeah I agree. Is Freeman not working for G-man?

monument

Yeah, he is - like a slave - when ever he is needed. Although it might be just used for forces of 'good'. Maybe when he is not saving the world for G-man’s bosses he has a house with a picket fence, a wife, a few young ones, and a dog. Who knows? Valve? – Probably not.

There is no story...

Even Doom had a story!


You made the news Tman - http://gamire.com/gamire/newsitem?id=631 [posting any more smiles here would be just weird]

Steven

Not all of the awards went to the most deserving of candidates, but I was surprised by the complete absence of terrible games in the awards (even in the "biggest disappointment" award ). All in all, a successful sojourn into the filthy world of public-vote-based award giving. Three cheers for Tman and all others involved.

Hip-Hip hooray! Hip.....

Meh, I had only one in me.

Peteee

Aye, Halo 2 far superior to GTA:SA soundtrack.

Glad to see HL2 sweeping the board... although to be fair Favourite Character : Gordon Freeman is a tad suspect, I reckon people love themselves too much!

Retr0gamer

These polls prove that the public is stupid!

Steven

Retr0gamer wrote:

These polls prove that the public is stupid!

You say this as if it required further proof?
Gradius forever!

d22ontour

the publics opinion is what its all about, if we didnt have opinion we would probably be living in a dictatorship or worse a ff/pd coalition

amp

Pugsley wrote:

G-Man, a Bad Guy? no one really knows if he is not, shouldnt really be in the bad guy catagory at all tbh.

Seemed pretty evil to me. But then I've always thought that people ssssay their s's sssssomewhat ssssscary to be evil. It mussssst be ssssomething to do with the Wanderly Wagon.

Well done to tman and co for organising all the pollsssss. I was one of those that voted for Half-Life when it was in any poll because I liked it that damned much.

Crucifix

Peteee wrote:

...although to be fair Favourite Character : Gordon Freeman is a tad suspect, I reckon people love themselves too much!

lol, that's what I thought aswell.

Pugsley

pam wrote:

Seemed pretty evil to me. But then I've always thought that people ssssay their s's sssssomewhat ssssscary to be evil. It mussssst be ssssomething to do with the Wanderly Wagon.

But you see him talking to the resistance several times, on a couple of occasions the resistance member he talked to will then talk to you and give you advice, if you look in the distance he appears a good dozen times with members of the resistance helping them out it appears aswell, so as far as I can tell he seems to be a good guy.

Retr0gamer

Come on, Dark Samus was also a drug, I mean phazon addict to boot.

po0k

But she lacked Bouncing Gelatinous Breast Physics EngineWare 2.0

And Freeman wins best character because YOU are Freeman, and everyone loves themselves*.



* I know this applies to every FPS ever, but the number of times I've imposed my personality by crowbarring NPCs to death and then smearing their bloody gibs across the level are too numerous to recount here

projectmayhem

it never would have happened but as a first-time outing i think guerilla games should get some claps and pats on the back for killzone...

po0k

It looks like an average console FPS, with some Nazi-esque motifs taken from Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

*sigh*

Ignore me, I'm just biased because the tv ad campaign pissed me off when they didn't show the name of the game in the initial teasers.

Stormfox1020

Playing Killzone was as enjoyable as catching the plague.

Retr0gamer

It was their first game, wupty do!

Remember PoP sands of time was ubisoft montreals first game, Half-Life was Valves first game and Metroid Prime was Retro Studies first game. It doesn't excuse them from making an average game that borrows heavily from much better games.

Steven

At least with the plague you have the sweet release of death and when you're dead you don't remember having the plague. When killzone is over (or thrown away) you still have to carry the burden of knowing around with you.

ViperVenoM

why oh why did HL2 practically clear up...its good but not THAT good...and yeh what story

i_am_dogboy

ViperVenoM wrote:

why oh why did HL2 practically clear up...its good but not THAT good...and yeh what story

This annoys me, half life 2 had a story, a great story. A story consists of the events that happen in the game, right? Just like a novel or a film tells the story of a series of events. Sure enough the whole "planet needs a hero" thing is incredibly clichéd, but it's the way this story is told that makes the game so special. Can you think of anything quite as memorable as the big strider fights in the streets, the ant lions or the big chimney that falls in the boat section? These things make up the story in half life 2 and that's what got to people, at least that's what I think.
Just because a game doesn't have big cut scenes, dialogue like fallout, characters like beyond good and evil doesn't mean it can't have an engrossing series of events....think of pikmin and you'll know what I mean.

Oh and by the way, I voted for broken sword, so this isn't a half life nut ranting....

humanji

i_am_dogboy wrote:

This annoys me, half life 2 had a story, a great story.

Did you play the same game as the rest of us? HL2 had no story! You were rushed from one point to the next, without knowing why. You were never told what happened before or what is happening during the game.There were hundreds of loose ends that they never even tried to explain. In fact, if you change the characters names, the game didn't even have to be the sequel to HL, it had nothing to do with the first one!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing it for a while, but it just got on my nerves. The whole thing was to showcase the physics engine and it's just sad that a game that took so long to come out, felt so rushed! (And don't get me started on that bloody Steam system!).

koneko

jomanji wrote:

Did you play the same game as the rest of us? HL2 had no story! You were rushed from one point to the next, without knowing why. You were never told what happened before or what is happening during the game.

You're playing it from Gordon's POV, you ARE Gordon when you're playing. He doesn't know all the ins and outs of what's happening, and isn't lucky enough to get to see cutscenes showing him everything that's happening when he isn't present.

I don't think it's the best story in a game this year, but it did have a story, it just wasn't presented in a standard format.

humanji

The original HL did the same thing, showing the story from one point of view, but in this one, you're not told anything. Each NPC simply tells you where to go next, but refrain from telling you why. That's not a story, it's direction. In HL1 you were told why things are happening, and that's what's missing from this.

monument

So, you missed the whole earth surrendered, Gordon brought back to work by his employers, the résistance trying to take Earth back, the portals, escaping one part of the city because the bad guys are looking for you, going to place A because it's a résistance base, the being told your going to place B to rescue Mr X, going down a long road because that how you get to place A or B or C or D, the "dog" being in place C because he was looking for his owner, the being told your going to place D to stop the mad man who’s helping the aliens? Right that is interesting.

humanji

monument wrote:

So, you missed the whole earth surrendered, Gordon brought back to work by his employers, the résistance trying to take Earth back, the portals, escaping one part of the city because the bad guys are looking for you, going to place A because it's a résistance base, the being told your going to place B to rescue Mr X, going down a long road because that how you get to place A or B or C or D, the "dog" being in place C because he was looking for his owner, the being told your going to place D to stop the mad man who’s helping the aliens? Right that is interesting.

spoilers:

Not being told why you were brought back!
Not being told who the combine are!
Not being told why they are after you!
Not being told why the people you have to save are so important!
Not being told what you are meant to do in A, B, C, D, E ,F and onwards!
Not being told why some of the aliens are now friendly!
Not being told what the story is with all the time travel!
and although it looked damn cool in slow motion,
Not being told what the F was going on at the end when G-man whisks you away!

There are way to many questions to ask about the game to say it has a great story. It just seems like a segue to Half-Life 3.