Mark's Pick: Beachhead 2000
 I
know Beachhead 2000 is an odd choice, but I was truly disappointed
in this game. It was a refit of an old C64 classic and it really
had a chance to be a hardcore gamer’s version of Deer Hunter,
a dumb, simple game that is accessible, fun to play, and can be
had for under $20 brand new and mewling out of the shrinkwrap. Most
of us don’t want to hunt deer in a PC game, but give us a machine
gun bunker and let us mow down waves of advancing enemy soldiers,
planes, and ships, and we’ll see you in a couple of hours.
That’s fun. That’s a roll of quarters and an evening of
sweaty hands in an arcade. So how did they screw up? For some inexplicable
reason they made the gun hard to control. It’s frustrating.
It’s REALLY FRUSTATING! We’re going to lose at some point
anyway, but don’t make us lose because we can’t aim the
freaking gun! This is one of those games that makes you wonder,
“Did anyone even playtest this?”
Tom's Pick: Crimson Skies
 Great
shell, great concepts, great artwork, threadbare gameplay. Not to
mention a slipshod job on the technical side that gave us a slow
and buggy game. In the past Microsoft has been great about delivering
stable final products -- their betas were more polished than many
finished games. They finally get a game driven by a powerful concept
and they neglect to run it through QA? This was, to me, a retread
of I-76, in which an intriguing idea can't make up for shallow gameplay
or technical booger-ups. It was also a rip off of Rowan's 1996 Air
Power, but no one remebers that one so it doesn't matter.
Most Disappointing Game
of 2000, First Runner Up
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