(Warning, there are some minor spoilers within)

Biggest Letdown – Empire: Total War, Creative Assembly

Now don’t get me wrong, Empire isn’t a terrible game and certainly isn’t the worst game to come out this year nor is it the worst game I’ve played this year but given the standard of the previous Total War games, Empire just didn’t live up to expectations. The Total War series is one of my favorite series of all time, ever since the original Shogun: Total War and Empire promised all that was in previous installations plus a larger world map, a more recent time period, multiplayer campaigns and naval combat.

Really, only two of those really impact the gameplay; multiplayer campaigns which didn’t make it into the final release and are only being patched in now and naval combat which makes the only real bright spot in this installment. While the time period is interesting and fairly unique in the realm of video games, and although mainly my fault for failing to research the game properly, I was expecting Empire to heavily involve the Napoleonic era (an era which they announced recently will be the focus of the next Total War game in 2010) and was quite disappointed when it failed to do so.

That being said, Empire would still be a good game if not for the multitude of bugs and issues that crippled the game to the point it was nearly unplayable; the largest issue being in the case of the AI which was too stupid and buggy to provide any sort of interesting challenge (and given the removal of multiplayer campaigns, the AI was the only challenge in the campaign) which effectively killed the game.

While I haven’t venture back into the game since about a week after I bought it, I’ve heard much of the issues and bugs have since been corrected and as mentioned above, Creative Assembly have finally gotten around to implementing multiplayer campaigns, but the disappointment of the game’s initial release has left too sour a taste for me to get back into the game.

So now that Creative Assembly have worked the kinks out and fixed the issues I eagerly await Napoleon: Total War, hoping that it becomes the game I expected Empire to be (though I’ll probably hold off from buying it on opening day this time).

Overshadowed/Poorly Timed Game of the Year – Assassins Creed 2, Ubisoft Montreal

What do I mean by overshadowed/Poorly Timed? Well, this goes to games that would be game of the year contenders if not for a better game or games in a similar style being released before, or around the same time of, that game. In this case, Assassins Creed 2 is a great game, but my GOTY runner up not only did everything Assassins Creed 2 does (and in most cases, does them better) but was also released 4 months earlier.

As anyone who played the original Assassins Creed can attest, the core mechanics not involving combat were generally well designed and combined well with the level design of the medieval holy lands to provide a great gameplay experience… for a couple of hours. Unfortunately after a couple of hours, you’ve played all the game has to offer and the story wasn’t interesting enough on its own merits to compel people to continue playing the game.

Thankfully, Ubisoft recognized most of their faults from the first game and even more importantly, they actively set about fixing most of them. First, and most importantly, Assassins Creed 2 is far, far less repetitive than its predecessor (though much of the side-quest stuff is still annoyingly repetitive – but unfortunately this is the case with most games where side quests and collectable items are often thrown in as an afterthought, rather than creatively challenging the player in unusual ways not suited to the main quests) and as I found out, you can actually play through the entire game without boring yourself to death.

Breaking up the mindless repetition alone, while a huge step in the right direction, is not the only improvement on the first game; the combat system has also received a nice upgrade, with each weapon in Ezio’s arsenal not only having its own strengths and weaknesses, but also varying in use and strength depending on the opponent and although such a weapon hierarchy certainly isn’t new ground for video games; it makes a huge difference to what was a very bland and uninspired combat system in the original. The story is also a lot more interesting this time around, and more fluidly integrated between the “current day” of Desmond and Ezio’s time, rather than the Desmond scenes thrown in randomly as what seemed to be the case in the first Assassins Creed.

Unfortunately,  the often lauded free-running mechanics still maintain a strange ability to be both completely perfect, and absolute rubbish depending on the circumstances and whether you have to think about them or not. It is easy to flawlessly run a mile across the top of numerous buildings in pursuit of a thief as your mind is focused on not losing them. However, the times the game are most infuriating and needlessly frustrating are when Ubisoft has relied solely on these mechanics for game progression, making the game feel like a poorly constructed platformer rather than a well constructed action-rpg.

Ultimately though, Assassins Creed 2 is still one of the best games to come out this year and would be my runner up for game of the year if Rocksteady hadn’t beaten them to punch with a noticeably superior game, in a similar style to AC2 , and released months earlier.

Runner Up Game of the Year – Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady Studios

Arkham Asylum is one of those games that come along every now and then and really have no business being blockbuster titles; a licensed title developed by a no-name studio whose only previous release was, by all accounts, an instantly forgettable and rather generic first person shooter and yet it turns out to be the second greatest game this year.

First and foremost, the combat system is so amazingly fluid and as strange as it sounds; it really feels like you flow through the melee, leaving a trail of broken and battered henchman in your wake and Rocksteady have done a brilliant job of making the combat simple yet engaging and barely repetitive. Furthermore, you really feel like Batman rather than the Superman who typically inhabits these types of games; bullets actually hurt you and standing in front of an armed goon will quickly result in a dead Batman.

That’s not to say the game is based purely on the combat, in fact much of the game is sneaking around and exploring the game environments via Batman’s arsenal of tools such as the grappling hook and line gun, solving the Riddler’s hidden puzzles and brain teasers as you go along. In fact, much of the more interesting sections of the game involve little to no combat, especially much of the Scarecrow and medical facility sections.

Which brings me to another highlight; the use of the Batman license, especially Arkham Asylum itself and the villains incarcerated there, are so well fleshed out and developed throughout the game. Events such as the aforementioned Riddler’s gradual mental breakdown as you solve his riddles, to the freaky 4^th-wall breaking scenes with the Scarecrow are brilliantly brought to life and highlight how well the Batman license can be applied to a game as opposed to other mediums. Oh, and also my favorite portrayal of the Joker ever (sorry Heath). Even with the wealth of development through the game’s storyline there is even more in extra unlockables/collectables ranging from tapes of psychiatric evaluation of the main villains to profiles and trivia on characters that don’t even appear in the game itself.

It’s also worth noting how well stealth aspects are implemented in Arkham Asylum; most noticeably the sneaking around on high catwalks and gargoyle statues as well as the hit and run attacks that make Batman who he is. While the game does occasionally abuse these mechanics to construct boss-like challenges, even these segments are usually well implemented with only one such moment I can remember as being exceptionally frustrating.

All in all, Arkham Asylum is one of the greatest games of all time and arguably the greatest licensed game not involving Riddick for a long time, lets hope Rocksteady can further develop and improve on what they’ve done here with its recently announced sequel.

Game of the Year – Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware

So… where to begin? Well, Dragon Age is far and away the best game to come out this year and easily one of the top games to be released this decade. Billed as the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate games (2 of my favorite games of all time), and over 5 years in the making, Dragon Age had huge standards to live up to. Thankfully, Bioware have kept their streak of 0 bad games alive as Dragon Age has live up to those standards at its worst, and far exceeded them at its best.

The best place to start I guess would be the immense volume of content available inside the game – I’ve spent the better part of 60 hours in Ferelden (finishing the main story just once) and feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the world. As always, Bioware have just done a superb job of bringing the world to life, not only the major characters and areas but even areas so minor they don’t even appear in the game are so well realized with more backstory than many games put into their main characters.

Backstory is nice, but backstory alone is meaningless without development and that’s always been where Bioware has set themselves apart from other developers with similar games and rich backstories; their character development. Very few games do a good job of naturally evolving and developing their characters; usually you can really notice that they’re way too rigid and structured rather than feeling natural and fluid. Furthermore, the interaction between all of your supporting characters actually has a huge impact on the gameplay as well as the story; disappointing or feuding with another party member can cause them to leave you or even have them try and kill you, whereas encouraging and being friendly to them can lead to strong friendships, or even relationships.

Still, all this story and character development wouldn’t produce a Game of the Year if not supported by the strong, though uninspired, combat of Dragon Age. The influences of past Bioware RPGs such Knights of the Old Republic and the Baldur’s Gate series are clear and anyone familiar with any of these games quickly find themselves at home, as little has changed over time. Far and away the largest change is the addition of a FFXII-like system of managing your party member’s actions when you’re not controlling as you can set abilities for them to do depending on certain parameters/circumstances (i.e. healing anyone whose HP drops below 25%) which, although I’d prefer a decent AI system, is well implemented and fits the rest of the gameplay quite well.

In my early opinions, I was disappointed with the strange balance in the difficulty of the game; for much of the game the easy difficulty was far too easy but the “normal” difficulty was far too jumpy (i.e. one fight would be so easy you didn’t even need to be at the computer, then the next against the same opponent would be next to impossible). Thankfully, a patch was released not long after the game’s release which solves this; the normal difficulty is now very playable and less random spikes in challenge.

I could go on for ages, but I don’t want this to turn into a huge piece; the main thing to know is that Dragon Age is by far the best game to come out this year; and unless you have some deep hatred of RPGs, it’s a game no-one should miss.

Quick satire of major announcements and my thoughts on some games from E3 after the jump.

Here’s a quick wrap of each console’s major announcements (warning: snarky cynicism ahead)

Microsoft’s press conference gave us some unexpected sequels,  Old men cashing in on new media, Yet another Halo game…. oh and a device that makes people lose control and flail their bodies around madly*.

Sony followed this up by announcing another handheld to get murdered by the DS juggernaut, A mysterious new non-GTA Rockstar game, another Final Fantasy MMO (that will probably come out before FF XIII) and unveiled their response to the Wii: A motion sensing magic wand.

Nintendo finished the major conferences off by copy and pasting Mario Galaxy, unveiled a (presumably) sexier and bloodier Metroid game, a new Golden Sun game for DS (finally)…. and a new peripheral that checks your pulse (and presumably warns you if you’re dead).

Oh, and Miyamoto also announced that he isnt announing a new Zelda for Wii at E3 this year.

Ok, with that snarky cynicism out of the way.. here’s some actual thoughts about what we saw at E3 this year:

Motion Controllers

First up, what was probably the biggest surprise announcement of E3: Microsoft’s “Natal” prototype. It was pretty obvious that both Microsoft and Sony were developing their own take on the new Motion-Control craze the Wii is thriving on (and don’t get me wrong, I’m not dismissing it as a fad, its a definite step towards the future of gaming), but I, like many people, were surprised to see Microsoft’s approach to motion control, wasn’t a controller at all but rather, an upgraded version of the PlayStation Eye(toy). While the technology behind it is fascinating and its clearly quite powerful (and the tech demos they had at the show looked fun and showed off it’s power very effectively), I dont see it really being more than an upgraded version of what the Playstation Eye was/is; a fun little attachment with interesting mini-games to enjoy, but completely ignored by main stream games.

Now, that may sound harsh, but theres a good reason for this; tactile feedback (or lack thereof). The reason the Wii controller suceeds so well as a motion controller, is that the user is physically holding the controller and imitating the action you’d actually make with whatever object  it’s meant to be (your imagination can easily fill in the blank slate that is the controller with whatever object it actually is, or if you lack imagination, there are thousands of Wii accessories in the shape of bats, guns, axes, racquets etc), and just as importantly, it applies feedback to the user through rumbling.  This combination gives the user the sensation of actually feeling like they’re doing the action in question, a feat which can’t be simulated through non-physical motion capture devices such as the Playstation Eye or the “Natal”.

Strangely, for a company that this generation seems so out of touch with developers (architecture unnecesarily complicated) and players alike (new PSP that still lacks dual analogs, and priced to rip off consumers), Sony’s option, while looking like a Wii Remote bred with a Magic Wand, apears to be similar in function to the Wii Remote and should please consumers and developers alike. While not revolutionary, as long as they fix the look of it (i.e. make it not look like a magic wand) it should actually suceed (which is more than I can say about the “Natal”), mainly for the reasons I outlined earlier about motion control and feedback.

Games, Games and more Games

Plenty of games were announced and/or showed off over the conference, heres some thoughts on games that impressed me (as a lounge chair enthusiast who wasnt actually at the conference). Bare in mind that I talk more about PC, Xbox360 and Nintendo DS games as theyre the three platforms I currently own.

Modern Warfare 2 (PC/360/PS3): When Infinity Ward announced they were making MW2, I wasn’t sure how to react; while COD4 was an amazing game, I was worried they’d play it safe and just retread the same ground as MW1. Thankfully, they’ve sent a precedent as COD2 much more than a re-tread of COD1 and their showing of the game at E3 removed any doubt from my mind. The snow level they demoed looked phenomenal, especially the whole rock climbing sequence (which looks like a lot of vertigo-inducing fun), and I loved the blizzard-battered Air Base where you couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of you, making it easy to sneak around (or get snuck up on yourself). Now I cant wait for this game… thankfully its coming out this year.

Splinter Cell: Conviction (PC/360): I haven’t played a Splinter Cell game since the early games of the series, and Conviction wasn’t really on my radar coming into E3, but it came from nowhere and sucked me in. Very much story-driven, Sam Fisher is out for revenge after the death of his daugher, cutting all ties to his organsitation and laws in his pursuit of those responsible. While the game appears very action driven, stealth is still the key in the game, and a lot of little additions to the gameplay make it a lot smoother and enjoyable, most notably the addition of a shilloute to indicate where enemies last saw you. Hopefully they’ll show more of this game off over the next couple of months, as it’s another game I’m already way too excited about (and again, thankfully it comes out this year).

Forza 3 (360): Forza 2 was probably my favourite serious racing game of all time (yes, better than all the Gran Turismo games to date) and I’ve sunk countless hours into the game, so I’m understandably excited for a sequel. While the trailer they showed looked amazing, they haven’t really showed off the gameplay itself, instead focusing on the car painting and video editing features (which are cool, but don’t necessarily appeal to me that much). However, they did discuss a couple of things that got me interested again; a track editor (which I’ll reserve judgement on until I see it) and a rewind button (which could be interesting if implemented well). Mixed anticpation for this one, but it interests me far more than any other racing game at the show .

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS): Nintendo announced a follow up to what is quietly one of the best RPG’s on handheld; Pokemon… err Mario & Luigi Partners in Time. No, I’m not kidding either, PiT (love that abbreviation) was a well designed JRPG that also introduced some real time elements to the turn based combat which sound gimmiky but, when combined with the Mario universe and an ample dosing of humour, made the game extremely enjoyable. As long as Nintendo stick to that formula, this game should be another great RPG on DS.

Golden Sun DS (DS): While the Mario & Luigi RPG series is a quiet achiever, the two previous Golden Sun games are regarded by many (including myself) as the best RPG’s on the Gameboy Advance. While not a lot of the game was shown, practically everyone who played the first two have been waiting years for the next game in the series, and this is definetly one to keep an eye on if you have a DS and enjoy RPG’s.

God of War 3 (PS3): God of War 3 finally had some gameplay shown during E3 and it looked like… more God of War. As a designer, I know I should feel disappointed that (so far) they haven’t really shown much that’s pushed the design of the game forward, but I just can’t. I loved the first two games, and even if the game doesn’t do much different and just looked better and pushed the story forward, it would still be one of the few games (among the likes of MGS4 and Uncharted) that really make me wish I had a PS3.

Assassin’s Creed 2 (PC/360/PS3): The first Assassin’s Creed game, to me, was a tech demo more than anything else. The gameplay fundamentals were there and the engine powering it all was clearly well developed and powerful, it just wasn’t polished and quickly degenerated into doing the exact same things over and over again. The whole time I played the game, I was thinking of how cool the sequel would be, since they had the mechanics in the game, but hadn’t developed them into a fun experience; and here that sequel is. The gameplay demo showed that they were trying to address most of the concerns with the first game, although obviously a demo won’t show if they’ve fixed the endless repetition of the first game, as well introduced the cool new renaissance era setting (and Leonardi da Vinci making devices such as the flying machine for the hero is a cool way of introducing some wacky looking, but interesting designs). Another game that I can’t wait to see more of as the year goes on.

The Last Guardian (PS3): The latest game from the masterful Ico team really let me down ths year. Don’t get me wrong, the trailer was great and all, but it was just an extended version of a trailer that was leaked a week before the show and they had absolutely nothing else to show of the game. I was really hoping we’d see some gameplay (at least video of gameplay if not a demo), but it wasn’t to be this year. This could be the game that finally convinces me to buy a PS3 and I really want to see something more substantial.

Brutal Legend (360/PS3): I think this was a game made almost specifically for me as I love Tim Schafer and I love heavy metal. Aside from the lack of a jump button (Shafer’s reasoning being “No jump because that’s what ruined Van Halen.”), I’ve seen nothing but positive feedback from the game and although I havent had the chance to check out videos of the gameplay, from what I’ve heard it’s incredibly fun. Based on his past works alone, I’d be excited about this game, but given it’s setting and a positive showing, I want this game as soon as possible.

* No offense to Felica Day, I love her work (and I only found that video through her own twitter updates)