Tom's Pick: Force Commander
What a noble company is here o'erthrown. What has become of Lucasarts? Just because Phantom Menace was a pile of digital garbage shouldn't mean LucasArts has to start churning out digital garbage (to their credit, they only published Force Commander, which was actually created by Ronin). Force Commander has an awful engine, awful camera controls, awful gameplay mechanics, and an awful interface. And what's with all these tanks? I don't recall seeing a single tank in the Star Wars movies. And I sure as hell don't recall this jiggy John Williams remix, which ranks about three notches above Will Smith's Wild Wild West remix on the scale of Music that Makes Me Want to Pour Concrete into My Ears. At this rate, I would have been happy if LucasArts had released X-Wing: Alliance, said 'that's all folks!', and shut the doors. Instead, we're left with stuff like Force Commander and fond memories of the greatness that was once LucasArts.

Mark's Pick: Starlancer
Why was this game a disappointment? It wasn’t that it was horrible, but that it was so horribly average. This was the new franchise being kick-started from the Wing Commander boys, Chris and Erin Roberts, a couple of Austin gunslingers with some impressive notches on their game development belts. Starlancer was the launch of a new series, the new “Wing Commander” really. This was supposed to be that game that would show us just how foolish Origin was to let this talent get away. Instead of new glory, though, we got a game that could have been any one of the five or six previous space sims released before it. I hate to say it, but the space sim genre is old and tired. We needed Starlancer to generate some electricity for a genre that’s in danger of flatlining. Instead we got a game that was about as exciting as rerun of Lawrence Welk.

The Most Disappointing Game of 2000