Best Of 2003
Mark Asher - Features - Comments - 05/31/04
4. Dominions II
Strategy gaming's best kept secret
Tom: It's a shame this is likely to be one of strategy gaming's best kept secret. I've never seen so much personality in a game with so little flash. If you were ever capable of playing board games where your imagination supplied the graphics, this is as good as it gets for the computer. With multiplayer support and a staggering amount of variety, this is an epic fantasy game with long lithe legs. It belongs on every strategy gamer's hard drive for years to come. After all, this is how long it will take to figure out Dominions II, given its steep learning curve, largely due to horrible documentation. But this is also how long it will keep surprising you with new ways to play, new spells to discover, new items to forge, new combinations of units and dominions and gods and their tactics. Dominions II is one of those dizzying achievements that'll have you thinking 'okay, this is all the game I need anymore'.
Mark: A game so complicated only Bruce Geryk could play it, so he had to write a walkthrough just to get others to play against. Now if only Bruce would write a walkthrough for his walkthrough.
3. Knights of the Old Republic
Un-fucking Star Wars
Tom: You all know how good Knights of the Old Republic is by now, so there's no point preaching to the choir (in fact, you all know it well enough that I'm going to start calling it KOE-torr). Suffice to say it has the best characters and writing of any RPG since Planescape: Torment. That the combat is great is just a bonus. Then there's the sound and music. And the environments. KOE-torr is so good that we can forgive Bioware some egregious Q&A lapses. This is an RPG that captures what was great about the original Star Wars back when it was a picaresque galaxy-trotting space opera instead of the soulless digital fart of crass commercialism it has since become. As the best thing for the franchise since Larry Holland's X-Wing games, I'm going to grandfather clause KOE-torr into my pre-"Fuck Star Wars" canon.
Mark: A game so good I actually bought the console version. Yuck.
2. Vietcong
Call of duty to the battlefield's medal of honor
Tom: Vietcong is perhaps the most innovative first person shooter since Half-Life. It's a reinterpretation of how shooters work in terms of its interface, AI, and pacing. The interface feels more like shooting a gun and interacting with the environment than any other first person shooter. The AI is complex, dynamic, and -- most important of all -- convincing. And the pacing isn't just balls-out action a la Call of Duty. It takes the axiom that war is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror and manages to work it into gameplay. We've seen plenty of first person shooters about war movies. Here at last is a first person shooter whose primarly concern isn't being merely cinematic. Also, I'd like to point out it was created by Pterodon, the folks who made a little game called Flying Heroes (click here and scroll down past all the stuff where I'm burbling on about Sacrifice again).
Mark: Oddly, this game seems to have disappeared from the scene. Apparently we still don't want to talk about Vietnam. I guess we're doomed to repeat the past, which in this case means playing WWII game after WWII game.
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