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The best (and worst) PC games of 2002
November 27th 2002, 12:08 CET by Creole Ned Recent reports indicate that the year will be record-setting for consoles and there's little to suggest that PC gaming won't be the same. There have been a wide variety of quality releases in 2002, so with the last few weeks of the year winding down, chime in with your thoughts on the best PC games of the year. Conversely, feel free to comment on those titles you felt disappointed or downright stunk. Here's a quick look at some of the major titles released, categorized roughly by genre: RPG fans had an unusually rich selection of games to choose from, ranging from the sprawling, single-player epic (of walking!) Morrowind, to the action-oriented Dungeon Siege, which sought to out-Diablo Diablo. Straddling a middle ground was the long-awaited Neverwinter Nights, the first RPG to fully incorporate the 3rd Edition D&D rules. All three games included editors and toolsets or had them available as downloads, further seeking to extend the longevity of each. Other RPG's of note were Divine Divinity, Gothic (technically a 2001 release) and Arx Fatalis. Strategy fans had an assortment of sequels to choose from. New World Computing released Heroes of Might & Magic IV. Qualifying as a sleeper hit was the hard-to-find Moonbase Commander. On the real-time front, Blizzard finally released Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Ensemble followed up Age of Kings with the fully 3D Age of Mythology. Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 saw the venerable series updated (if modestly). Will the soon-to-be released Master of Orion 3 also be a worthy candidate? And has Irrational Games' comic book-themed Freedom Force been overshadowed by the big boys? On the persistent world, pay-to-play front we saw the release of Asheron's Call 2 and Neocron. Can either game stand out in an increasingly crowded market, one that will see even more titles come out in 2003? Fans of first person shooters faced an unusually high number of releases. Primary among them is Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, a perennial bestseller and winner of many rave reviews. It's also proven to be the most consistently popular shooter online after the 800 pound gorilla known as Counter-Strike. Competing with itself, EA also published Battlefield 1942, a sprawling multiplayer game with a focus on vehicles -- air, ground and sea. Rounding out the World War II theme was 2001's late entry, the occult-laced Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Raven dealt out a double dose of sequels with Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix. Monolith successfully returned with No One Lives Forever 2. Epic took the reins from DE to finish up and release Unreal Tournament 2003. Not to be outdone, 4D Rulers also released one of the other few old school shooters of 2002, Gore. Ahem. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter offered a better dose of "beauty without brains". Westwood proved that the Command & Conquer series may not work in an FPS format with the tepidly-received Renegade -- but is it an overlooked winner? Eschewing the first person perspective, Hitman 2 generated good sales along with controversy over its subject matter. Defying genres were Derek "Smartpants" Smart's latest opus, Battlecruiser Millenium, Rockstar's PC port of Grand Theft Auto 3 and, of course, what may be the true winner of 2002, Sponge Bob Square Pants: Operation Krabby Patty! Naturally, many titles are missing from the above list, including entire generes (sports, for example). What are your picks for the best PC games of 2002? |
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Topic: The best (and worst) PC games of 2002
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Bailey-- Are you going to be in the mystical Orient for an extended period of time, rather than a vacation? |
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Are you looking forward to Star Wars Galaxies? Morn, is SWG going to turn out like AO turned out for you? Cause everyone here felt it for months! "This is planetcrap, where we nuke everything from orbit." - Bailey
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Oh, good Lord no... PLEASE! |
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Charles: They did. The patch that is out right now lowers the difficulty of boss monsters to a non-impossible level. Yeah, I put the patch down before I started playing. My issue wasn't with boss monsters. It was with monsters like the Giant Orc that are next to impossible for the level that I'm on. Very annoying, since they are currently impeding the quest I'm currently on. But I've got other games to play, so it isn't a big deal. |
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Wow... likes Jedi Knight II and doesn't like Opposing Force. Mcorleone, I respect your recommendations about music, but I must regretfully shy away from any game buying tips you have. My PC GOTY is GTA3. My console GOTY is Metroid Prime. -chris |
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Ergo 1-2 years, minimum. Then likely Thailand and Japan over the next two years. Then maybe Cuba, for the delightful quality cigars and $25-50 CND a month expense for comfortable living. I'm declaring non-residency of Canada, to put it bluntly. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Staying in, watching a movie, working on some code. You forgot whacking it to Bea Arthur |
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Metroid: Prime: Scan Everything: Rune Hunt Xtreme is GOTY? Chris, you deserve little more than death by telephone pole rape. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Greg: I know exactly the point you are talking about, and it's possible to just skirt around those guys and complete the objectives anyway. I agree though, there were some difficulty balance issues. I didn't actually finish the game, because I got to the last dungeons and all the bosses hand me my ass. So I got someone to just tell me the ending. Hooray for the internet. |
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I'm trying to think of a console game I can endorse for game of the year, but I can't think of any. If you include the GBA in the console definition, then it is a tie between Metroid Fusion and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Metroid Prime was good and fun, but there was enough annoyance and frustration that I can't possibly call it a favorite. |
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What was annoying about it? There are only 10 types of people in the world - those that understand binary and those that don't.
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I'd play GBA games more if I didn't go blind trying to see anything. Any recommendations where I could send mine for an Afterburner upgrade? I'm too much of a mechanical retard to do the mod myself. |
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I modded my GBA with an afterburner just last weekend. It wasn't that difficult, and my only experience with that kind of thing was modding my PSX years ago. I got a bit of dust trapped in the screen unfortunately, but I wasn't exactly going out of my way to be careful. Plus I didn't have any canned air to blow dust off like the instructions recommended. |
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If you want a good Metroid game, Metroid Fusion was a great title, as it just delivered what fans came to expect from previous iterations. If it ain't broken and all that. It's like that flying car they're trying to market to rich Californian yuppies. Adding in a third dimension is just going to get us a bunch of yuppies crashing into buildings, trees, bridges. Adding a third dimension to Metroid just got us ass. And not the good kind, let me tell you. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Bailey - What has impressed me so much about Metroid Prime so far is that I'm never at a loss for what to do next. Every time I get to a point where I've explored everywhere I can explore, I am immediately given a new item or weapon that opens up new areas. It's like the level-up system in Fallout... you were always at the exact level you needed to be to complete the area you were in. Perfect. Add in the fact that it has the least annoying controls of any first-person console game ever, that it's graphics are pretty extraordinary, that it's puzzles generally don't annoy me (I agree, the rune hunts are a bit iffy), that it doesn't recycle the same meshes over and over, that it has the best 3D mapping system seen in a game to date, etc... etc... etc... It's a lot of little touches that add up to an impressive whole. But let me check - are we talking about our personal games of the year, or "the game I would most recommend to the general populace"? Because Prime wins the latter, but not the former. My personal console GOTY is Resident Evil Zero. GTA3 remains my personal and "for the people" PC GOTY. -chris |
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One caveat about the afterburner: While it does light everything up nicely, it also washes out all the color. Nothing that can't be fixed by just holding the GBA under a light, but it's still kinda assy. I wouldn't call the afterburner an optimal solution. It's just a stand in until nintendo does it themselves. Re: Metroid Prime I didn't have a problem with the 3d at any time except in boss fights. Then it became pretty apparent that A) You don't switch to and from the morph ball fast enough, B) you shouldn't have to charge up the sprint ball, C) The target lock should have locked better, since I found myself having to manually aim to get a lock far too often, D) the weapon switch happened WAY TOO FUCKING SLOW. Especially in situations where you had to change around a lot. On top of that there were things like the colored pirates taking far too long to kill, making going through the phazon mines absurdly tedious. The infrared visor was cool for finding hidden conduits and such, but having areas that were dark so that you HAD to use the visor to get through them was more annoying than cool. The x-ray visor seemed like more of a gimmick, since there were only two places where you HAD to use it (not to mention that it had almost no range, meaning you had to walk around every wall to actually find secrets). The limit on the number of super bombs you could carry caused me to spend lots of extra time killing enemies just praying for a super bomb so that I could get to the next area (which in effect caused me to NEVER use them except for getting through blocked walls). Oh, and artificially extending the gameplay towards the end by forcing you to run around the entire game to collect chozo artifacts was extremely weak. Oh, and the shitty ending with lack of any kind of story. I was hoping after reading chozo runes the entire game, and pirate logs, that there would be some kind of neat and tidy story wrap up at the end, but NOPE! You get credits. Weak. Don't get me wrong though, I liked more about Metroid Prime than I disliked. |
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Chris, What the hell are you talking about? There were a couple times in Fallout & Fallout 2 that I was totally under-equipped for a level, and either had to save-reload my way through or give up and come back later. Were you following a walkthrough or something? Ergo, Regarding getting an Afterburner installed, just do a search on Google. There are all sorts of places that specialize in exactly that. Or you can wait a couple weeks till the non-invasive-surgery backlight comes out, which I think will be called a "halo light". It's like the afterburner, but you plug it into the expansion port and it replaces the screen cover. I think it's supposed to come out either next week or the week after, so by the time Christmas is past there should be enough reviews floating around to tell you whether it's crap or not. |
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Shadarr - I'm not talking about Fallout 2, only Fallout, and no I never followed a walkthrough. I've played through the game probably six times, at this point. If I was someplace where I was too weak to survive, I went someplace else, and did the stuff there. You could *get* to places in Fallout where you were underleveled, sure... but if you followed the story arc, it worked out flawlessly. Least... it did for me. -chris |
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crash old boy, did you ever finish that PC module for NwN I booked my seat on months ago? Ds Trust me, Im a professional.
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The infrared visor was cool for finding hidden conduits and such, but having areas that were dark so that you HAD to use the visor to get through them was more annoying than cool. The x-ray visor seemed like more of a gimmick, since there were only two places where you HAD to use it (not to mention that it had almost no range, meaning you had to walk around every wall to actually find secrets). Um what? Needing to use the infrared = annoying and yet having the x-ray visor and not needing to use it makes it a gimmick. |
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Okay, so you went places, couldn't get through and went somewhere else. That's what I did too. Nothing to see here. |
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Heh. It's the same with Metroid... There are plenty of places in the game that I can see on my map, but that I can't get to (or, like with the magmoor caverns pre-varia-suit, that were too powerful). What I'm saying is that I've yet to encounter a time in Metroid where I was just going "okay, I have no place to go" for more than about five minutes... and I'm always wrong when I'm saying that, and the thing I'm overlooking is almost always frightfully obvious. It was the same deal with Fallout. -chris |
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Okay None, to make you feel better, they were both annoying and/or gimmicky. Happy? |
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2001 was an ass year for PC games. 2002 had very good games throughout. Nothing that grabbed me like DX or GTA3 (PS2 version) did, but a lot of good games. This year I picked up MOH, FF, UT2k3, H2, NOLF2, DS, NWN, JK2, and Mafia (maybe forgot some). I don't know what my GOTY is though. I've not re-played any yet and games I really think of GOTY's I replay (got through DX 4 times). If I had to pick one it would be JK2, once you got the lightsaber. |
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Getting the lightsaber in JK2 didn't change the fact that the level design was some of the worst in the history of FPS games. It just made that slightly more tolerable. -chris |
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That's the mark of a good game. Nothing pisses me off more than wandering around looking for something to do to advance the story... talking to the same people over and over to see if they've changed what they say, trying new keys on the same locked doors... if it lasts longer than a few minutes it usually leads to me looking at a walkthrough or uninstalling. |
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Chris, you didn't like JK2? Okay, that's n in the "for" column and 1 in the "against". Imagine the world in a bottle. We take that bottle, smash it, and open your throat with it. I warn you, we are murderous - COIL
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Looking back, I realize just what a disappointment NWN was. Not that it was a bad game by any means, but I spent all that time waiting for the Holy Grail just to discover that it was filled with stale Coors Lite. I will second the votes for BF1942, AoMyth, and of course GTA/VC. On a personal level, I have realized that this year I probably spent more time playing games that I warezed (Morrowwind, Dungeon Siege, WC3) then the ones that I paid for (NWN, UT2k3, 1942, Madden2k3). Is it one of those cases of "The more you know, the more you realize how little you know"? Or is it possible that I'm just not as smart as I thought I was? Naw... I owe me nothing.
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chris Add in the fact that it has the least annoying controls of any first-person console game ever, Ugh. No. If I can't look up and down while moving, it's shitty control. Having to stand still, hold down R, and then flailing about with the movement stick, I'm sorry, that's awful design. What's wrong with that little yellow stick? Can't it make me look around? What, was Samus too good for that? Did you ever play Turok for the N64? Brilliant control scheme: four buttons control forward, backward, and strafing, control stick affects view, Z button fires the weapon and something else cycled the weapons. Very basic, very user-friendly. Why don't console games today use that sort of interface? They all blow, by and large. Mouse and keyboard makes any console control look like a spastic circle-jerk. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Agreed. I have NEVER been able to become fully accustomed to FPS controls on a console, which is why I usually play them only on PCs. Console control of an FPS is herky-jerky at best. |
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I'd love to say BF1942 is one of the top games, but considering that my machine--which runs about every other game that has come out perfectly--stutters like a retarded chimp attempting English, I can't say I like it. I shouldn't have to spend so much fucking time attempting to tweak a goddamn game. I might check it out when they put out the patch. Any faith I had in humanity has taken a train to Monte Carlo and spent the last of my savings on roulette.
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I liked metroid prime's control a lot. Could have used some tweaking, but I wish more games would use that scheme for first person. |
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I loathe your input. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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The last FPS I played on a console was TimeSplitters 2 on the PS2. I really want to rent it again, because I thought the controls weren't too bad, and I never did beat it. Any faith I had in humanity has taken a train to Monte Carlo and spent the last of my savings on roulette.
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Speaking of console FPSs, when I was browsing EB I saw that there's a Gameboy version of Doom. I'm tempted to buy it just to see how badly it sucks first hand. |
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Delightful. Personalization technology gone awry: "Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."... "The problem was, I overcompensated. It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich." Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Shadarr Speaking of console FPSs, when I was browsing EB I saw that there's a Gameboy version of Doom. I'm tempted to buy it just to see how badly it sucks first hand. I picked that up before E3 last year in hopes of passing time on the trip there. Unless you want to explore new levels of pain and irritation, don't bother. It's not just that the controls suck, but the screen is so damn small you can't tell what's happening most of the time. "Quit whining you haven't done anything wrong because, frankly, you haven't done much of anything."
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The BF1942 patch was released today. |
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Warren, Okay, I was kinda lying when I said I was tempted (kinda as in totally). Mostly I was just looking for a chance to mock the idea of a FPS with four buttons and no 3D rendering (and to be fair to ID, Duke Nukem was ported to the Gameboy Color). I bought the GBA to play Mario games and 2D RPGs. It should be quite a while before I extend beyond that. |
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Golden Sun blows. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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Bailey: Did you ever play Turok for the N64? Brilliant control scheme: four buttons control forward, backward, and strafing, control stick affects view, Z button fires the weapon and something else cycled the weapons. Very basic, very user-friendly. Turok was the reason I started using mouselook over PageUp and PageDown in games like Quake and Unreal. It was the first time I was forced to use that kind of control, and I haven't looked back. Luckily, most new FPS games take advantage of the fact new consoles include dual analog sticks. Why Metroid didn't employ such a scheme I'm not sure. My guess would be that it would make it more difficult to enable all the features without going to some sort of secondary screen. But Super Metroid had a secondary screen, so who knows... |
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Golden Sun blows. Care to elaborate? |
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MCorleone - Don't get me wrong, the lightsaber and force powers are LOTS of fun. But the level design... oh, woe is me, the level design. Worst EVAR! It had everything I could possibly hate... puzzles with no indication of how to solve them (and no indication when they were solved), absurdly repetetive texture useage, switches that didn't look like switches, "stealth" missions (which we all know the Q3A engine can't handle), opponents sniping your from a hundred thousand miles away, massive areas that all looked the same combined with confusing layouts that made it difficult to tell where you had and hadn't been... hell, I even found several parts in the game where you could get to areas in the level that were strictly decorative, and couldn't be escaped from (usually by surviving falls you weren't supposed to be able to survive). oy vey! I seriously cannot think of an FPS title whose level design I was less impressed with. And I'm including gems like Blood 2 in that statement. I don't blame Raven. I blame LucasArts for giving them 12 months on the game. I'm amazed it was playable at all, given that timeframe. Bailey - Yeh, I've played Turok, and I've played Goldeneye, and Deus Ex on the PS2, and Halo, and blah blah blah. What I like about Metroid's controls is that I don't have to worry about moving and looking at the same time, because you almost never need to. FPS games do not belong on consoles, so I like the fact that Metroid isn't an FPS. It's a first-person adventure. I'd love the game even more if it were third-person, but as far as first-person control-schemes on game-pads go, Metroid is the one I hate the least. -chris |
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Shadarr Care to elaborate? The on-switch should technically be referred to as the blow-switch when the Golden Sun cartridge is in the GBA. chris Yeh, I've played Turok, and I've played Goldeneye, and Deus Ex on the PS2, and Halo, and blah blah blah. What I like about Metroid's controls is that I don't have to worry about moving and looking at the same time, because you almost never need to. What, did you play on some sort of god mode feature I didn't notice? Hell, the parasite queen: but for one part of the battle zone, you have to stop, look up, and L-click to target her weak point. The first Tallon IV boss: stop, look up, and L-click. It's ricockulous and gets you whalloped half the time. Alright, fine, it's fairly hard to impossible to die in the early half or so of the game, but regardless, it's sloppy and annoying. Why should I take damage for the programmers' lack of utilizing the GC controller to its full potential? As for JKII, while the SP was everything and more of what you described, you can't tell me some of the MP maps weren't complete gems. Particularly that corusant-esque level of CTF. Delightful. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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And it's a first-person adventure that involves non-stop shooting. Interesting definition of style. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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The on-switch should technically be referred to as the blow-switch when the Golden Sun cartridge is in the GBA. I'll take that as a "no". Anyone else have constructive advice on the relative merits of buying Golden Sun? |
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Blockbuster rents GBA titles these days. Quite a useful service to the handheld community. Sometimes the porn gets in my face and says "Don't delete me, I'm jerkable." At which point I ask "Yes, but will you be jerkable in three weeks?" And the porn is silent.
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I haven't found it to require all that much shooting, really. You enter a room, tap the targetting button a few times while hitting the fire key. Room's clear. Explore all you want. Hell, you can skip killing a good 50% of the creatures in any given room. Regarding the bosses you mentioned - I didn't find the lack of simultaneous moving and looking to be an issue. I had slight problems with the plant with the sunlight reflectors, but only until I figured out what I was supposed to do. Then you just back up, hit the targetting button, and circle around. I never played MP JKII, so I really can't comment on that aspect of it. As we all should know by now, I don't really like multiplayer games, so that aspect rarely factors into my evaluation of a title unless it has to. It does seem, though, that Raven's multiplayer tends to outshine its single-player in just about every game they've made in the past three years. -chris |
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Thanks Bailey! I haven't owned a console in so long, I forgot all about rentals. |
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I totally agree with you chris, I can't stand typical first person controls on console games, but I like metroids. It is the best 1st person control scheme I've ever experienced on a console. I occasionaly found looking to get a lock on a bit troublesome, but all in all it's been far better than always have to look around everywhere. Bailey, you're favourite everything blows, you obviously didn't play metroid for more than a few minutes. She has a 286, Windows Millenium Edition, 2 gig. I think that is all I really need to go on, right?
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