HF Retro Game of the Year - 2004 - San Andreas Wins!

[SniperHF]

Shouldn't have even been a thread for this year. The answer is WoW. Most popular/played game of all time?

Probably League.

It's certainly the most important game released in 04 anyway.

 

[RandV]

Shouldn't have even been a thread for this year. The answer is WoW. Most popular/played game of all time? Easily set the mark for MMORPG games. Can't say any other games listed did that in their class.

WoW is polarizing. For the 15 million or so people it sucked in it's perhaps the best game ever, but for the rest of us it held little to no appeal yet there was no escaping its influence, it was such a black hole that you can only view it negatively.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I never touched wow but I did love the original guild wars

 

[RandV]

I never touched wow but I did love the original guild wars

Same here, though if I recall the demo for Guild Wars game out in 2004, the game was probably next year.

And thinking about WoW some more I've never really been able to articulate my dislike for it well, but I think I have the perfect analogy for it now. While like Half Life 2 or Halo 2 it was a well polished game that set a number of industry norms for the next generation, it just never relinquished it's place for a good 10 (?) years.

So basically, it's the Walder Frey of video games. Was a promising house but the old man never let go and held the rule far too long, spawning a 100 children who never amounted to anything while living under his shadow.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Also I don't know if wow had this, but Guild Wars had a 4 vs 4 PvP that let you create as many max level characters as you wanted which was great.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Rome Total War AINEC

RTW was the game that began the series decline from a strategy game into a good looking but shallow mosh fest. Give me the 2D sprites and strategic battles of the original Shogun and Medieval any day.

For all its flaws I voted for KOTOR 2, just ahead of HL2

 

[Commander Clueless]

WoW is polarizing. For the 15 million or so people it sucked in it's perhaps the best game ever, but for the rest of us it held little to no appeal yet there was no escaping its influence, it was such a black hole that you can only view it negatively.

That's really interesting. I didn't realize a lot of people held it in a negative regard.

To me, the only really negative thing about it was the absolute tidal wave of crappy clones it spawned after it became successful (and yes just in case someone was about to say it, I know WoW is not an original concept).


WoW changed how I played games. It and KOTOR got me into RPGs after mostly playing strategy games up to that point (Warcraft connection got me in). I still have friends today that I met well over a decade ago on the game. It wasn't the perfect game by any means, but it's a legend in my books.

 

[KingBran]

THANK YOU for putting VTM:B in there!!! I don't have to cry now lol.

Glad someone else voted for it too! Fantastic!

 

[KingBran]

I never touched wow but I did love the original guild wars

I did the trial for WoW but MMO's just aren't my thing. However, for some reason Guild Wars got me. I put well over 100 hours into the first one and probably 50 or so into the 2nd one. Great games.

 

[KingBran]

It's *VERY* similar in that way, though the general tone of the game is quite a bit different just due to the setting. More dark humor and humor in general, some zany characters. It put me off for quite a while. Vampires? Meh.

The the factional intrigue and plot is really well done. Ending in terms of the story gets mixed reviews, I liked it but there are different endings so maybe some are better than others .

Like this? lol.
I was in love with Janette from this game.


And if you picked to play as a Malkavian there are some great quotes such as:
Malkavian: Your logic his hokey, I am not here. (when asked who they are by the biker guy behind the bar)

Malkavian: You look familiar. Were you ever on a milk carton? (When asked if you could help with finding a lost item)

Beckett: [On how to open the Ankaran Sarcophagus] In the last few seconds, I've had very few epiphanies. I may be old, but I didn't build it. How knowledgeable are you on ancient Assyrian funerary constructs?
Malkavian: "TNT" and "key" have the same amount of letters.
Beckett: Ugh! Yes, how foolish of me, that would be the sound, reasonable course of action. A priceless piece of history - by all means run out and pick up some TNT.

Heather: While you were gone, I tapped my foot over three thousand times. I-I don't know why I counted... huh.
Malkavian: Now we know how many foot taps it takes to make me appear. Wonderful.

 

[Commander Clueless]

My friend always told me to play Bloodlines but I always figured it was just his love of vampire stuff.

Now I'm interested....

 

[542365]

GTA.

 

[KingBran]

My friend always told me to play Bloodlines but I always figured it was just his love of vampire stuff.

Now I'm interested....

If you do (you can usually find it pretty dang cheap on Steam, currently its $19.99 so that tells you its still relevant but I got it on sale once for $7 not too long ago) my biggest recommendation is to really pay attention to what type of vampire you decide to play as, of course you can just play the first little bit with each but Nosferatu are darn near impossible to play as. At least they were for me. Malkavians are super fun but getting information and not making the wrong people angry is hard to do because sometimes you have no option to say anything normal haha. I always played as Toreador which are seen as the most human-like vampires.

Heres a wiki if you care to look more into it.
Clan

 

[Blender]

World of War craft. It changed the gaming industry.

 

[Pilky01]

San Andreas is the GOAT GTA.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

WoW is polarizing. For the 15 million or so people it sucked in it's perhaps the best game ever, but for the rest of us it held little to no appeal yet there was no escaping its influence, it was such a black hole that you can only view it negatively.

I'll never hate a game that never even attempted to appeal to me so much as I abhor WoW for stealing all of my damn friends.

 

[Painful Quandary]

Honestly, I only played one of these games since I was sucked into Morrowind until Oblivion came out, then after Oblivion, Civ4 took up my gaming time.

 

[McRpro]

I was torn between WoW and GTA: SA.

Had to go with the most influential game. Which is obviously WoW.

 

[Pilky01]

I recognize WoW as having the biggest impact of the list, but I never have played it and probably never will, so i can't vote for it.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Halo 2's popularity remains mind blowing to me. It took a PC concept and made it 100 times worse and people call it revolutionary.

I'm guessing you never played many console games online prior to Halo 2. It was pretty groundbreaking (even just the infrastructure of the matchmaking and party systems).

 

[Aladyyn]

I'm guessing you never played many console games online prior to Halo 2. It was pretty groundbreaking (even just the infrastructure of the matchmaking and party systems).

Console FPS games sucked before Halo 2 and they still suck now.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Console FPS games sucked before Halo 2 and they still suck now.

You're missing the point entirely. I'm literally just talking about the way the game works online. As in the matchmaking system, parties, playlists, etc. These were all innovative features that Halo 2 helped pioneer.

I'm not going to go into the merits of the actual gameplay as that is subjective and appears to be a colossal waste of time with PC Master Race posters.

 

[crowi]

You're missing the point entirely. I'm literally just talking about the way the game works online. As in the matchmaking system, parties, playlists, etc. These were all innovative features that Halo 2 helped pioneer.

I'm not going to go into the merits of the actual gameplay as that is subjective and appears to be a colossal waste of time with PC Master Race posters.

To me Halo 2 is (and Halo 1) about making an FPS work with a pad. I respect that, even though I hate using a pad to do anything precise.

After playing Quake for nearly a decade, using a pad is worse than hell.

 

[The Nuge]

That's really interesting. I didn't realize a lot of people held it in a negative regard.

It’s a game where it seems like for every person who loves it, there’s 2 or 3 who hate it. I don’t actually know anyone who’s neutral on it. I’m in the hate it camp. Maybe it’s just that I tried playing it after everyone hyped it up beyond belief, but it was a serious letdown for me, and just flat out not enjoyable.

As for the vote, there’s lots of great games there, but San Andreas is in a league of its own.

 

[syz]

You're missing the point entirely. I'm literally just talking about the way the game works online. As in the matchmaking system, parties, playlists, etc. These were all innovative features that Halo 2 helped pioneer.

I'm not going to go into the merits of the actual gameplay as that is subjective and appears to be a colossal waste of time with PC Master Race posters.

None of those things were impressive to me, though. The beginnings of Xbox Live just made me wish Heat.net was still alive, and Heat.net wasn't very good.

Games like Halo 2 and platforms like Xbox Live set online shooters back for everybody who had already been playing them on PC. Even just sticking to "the way the game works online," the players lost a lot of control in XBL's system. Modding was gone, server admin was gone, server quality went down, etc. Like, it's good that consoles got online, but it clearly came at a cost.