Here are my top picks for the year of 2004, or the year of the sequels. Sure, we're already four and a half months into 2005, but most of these are half price by now, and it's not like 2005 has given us much anyway. I've got plenty to say about that, too. For now, my favorite games of the past year. I'm not saying "best games" because then everyone will whine and disagree, despite them being my favorites automatically qualifying them as "best". :shrug: C'est la vie. Because my 2004 GOTY is a game pretty much no one else on the face of the planet picked, and is from a series I love so well, I went into a bit of detail explaining my thought process. Far too much detail, actually. So without further ado, the 2004 Game of the Year:
#1 - MEGA MAN X8 (PS2)
Anyone that's ever talked to me about video games for a length of time knows that I love the Mega Man games. Classic, X, Legends, Battle Network and Zero, I have just about all of them and can pick up and play almost any of them at any time. Sadly, all good things must come to a ... well, a point of less fun. If you've followed all of the series' from their beginnings, you've probably realized that at some point, the quality starts to go downhill, and before you know it Auto has his own damn series (NOTE: Auto does not yet have his own damn series).
Almost everyone, including myself, loves Mega Man 2. That was my first Mega Man game, which probably helps, but I've also talked to people who hadn't touched a Classic series game until the recent Anniversary Collection, and 2 was among the highest on their list as well. MM3, to me, feels the most "complete" of the series, I guess you could say, due to its length, placement in the series, and introducing Rush, sliding, Proto Man, etc. A lot of people hate 4. I don't, but you'll notice that nobody can really come together on any game after or including 4, and that includes 7 (SNES) and 8 (PSX - Oh, come on, like you've played it on Saturn).
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Perhaps we can place the blame solely on the shoulders of Toad Man and Dust Man, universally agreed upon as two of the stupidest robot masters ever, and this is from a group that includes Clown Man and Plant Man. But let's take a more recent example - namely, Mega Man Battle Network 4. MMBN3 came in second only to F-Zero GX in my 2003 GOTY's, and 1) it was very close and 2) F-Zero GX quickly became one of my favorite racers ever. I thought Capcom had learned from the curse, and was greatly looking forward to part 4 this past year. By the way, if you're a Mega Man purist and have been avoiding this series because of that, you're really missing out. Like Legends, it's Mega Man in name only, despite many of the old bosses getting makeovers, but the battle system is one of the most innovative and fun to come along in years. It's too bad BN4 pissed me off so much. The new art direction I could handle, the bad translation (a Mega Man staple, though shockingly great for the first 3) I'm used to, Style Changes replaced by Soul Unisons, not as bad as I feared. Breaking the game up into a ludicrous tournament-styled fetchquest of randomness? That I minded. The aforementioned changes wore on others more than me, but I had a hard time getting past the core change of gameplay. Therein lies Capcom's, and Mega Man's greatest flaw - they want to please everyone, and can't.
Take a look at just about any recent Mega Man review. They're practically cut and paste at this point: they'll condesendingly mention the story in passing, spend most of the review pointing out how nothing has changed for the past 5/10/15 years, then close with the "for hardcore Mega Man fans only" line. Then Capcom will try something new, and are then criticized for straying from the tried and true formula, often rightfully.
The X series is no different. Some people consider X4 the best in the series. Some decry it as the day the X series jumped from 16 to 32 bit and gained some really bad cutscenes, which are indeed awful but can't touch Mega Man 8, which used the same actors. If you've played it, and look past the extracirriculars, X4 is actually really old school. Aside from the "play the game as Zero part", which is a direction the series was going in back on SNES anyway, it's a lot more straightforward than X3 was. Then came X5 and X6, which introduced time limits, armor sets, hostages, nightmare souls, generally things that overcomplicated the gameplay. Or the awful level design, which overcomplicated things in a different way, moreso in X6. Inafune (creator of Mega Man) felt the series was done at 5, but Capcom was determined to press on.
The gaming landscape has changed. The most successful games, Zero and Battle Network, are flourishing on the SNES-like Game Boy Advance. The Classic series is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Network Transmission, a GameCube spinoff of the Battle Network series, hardly made a blip on the radar (I liked it!). Legends, the most removed from "true" Mega Man, was more of a short-lived (but still high quality) curiosity. The X series is really the only one left that's traversed multiple generations and is still going. In 2003, it crossed another one, and X7 came out for PS2.
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When X7 ventures into new territory and starts tinkering with the tried-and-true Mega Man formula, things start to go wrong. GameSpot's X7 review can tell you more. The reviewer in this instance, for the most part, praises the parts of the game that "stick to the formula", and comes out against the new stuff. Can't blame him. X7 moves X and his pals (yes, pals - new character Axl is a whole other story) into 3D. Legends did 3D well. X did not. It was there just for the sake of putting "3D!" on the box. Then, back in glorious 2D, Zero's once-speedy sabre moves like a cold knife through butter, the auto-targeting system changes one of the very facets of classic X gameplay, and did I mention that when you start the game, you can't play as X? There are minor quibbles like the cel-shading, complete abandoning of the previous X story arc, etc., but all in all the game was very ... un-X-like. The game was not well-received by fans or critics, and it looked like it might be the end of the series.
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I was anticipating Mega Man X8 with a lot of trepidation. As it turns out, X8 is the game X7 should have been. Are there flaws? Certainly. The biggest one is the fact that two of the main eight stages are 3D "vehicle" stages, one of which is very average, the other atrocious. But for every "chase Gigabolt Man-O-War through the neon city of billboards" stage, there's a new armor system that goes back to basics, allowing you to equip a part as soon as you get it, and also improves, letting you mix and match armor sets to create new sets of powers. The most important thing is that they fixed the glaring errors. Complete 2D aside from the aforementioned two stages and the combo attacks (a brief cutscene). Zero getting his 3-swipe sabre back, Axl turning into a decent character to play thanks to 8-way fire replacing auto-target, and X being, well, X. Not the giant pussy backburner character with his lame armor and dull play, but the X we know and love, with all the tricked-out gadgetry. The game is challenging, many but not too many extras, great music worthy of the X series (Mega Man music is underrated across the board, except at Overclocked), and Sigma ... isn't the final boss?! Most of all, it's fun. Fun like an X game.
Yes, that's really in the game. So, why was Mega Man X8 my favorite game of the year? Because in 15 years, this to me was by far Capcom's best effort to innovate, correct their mistakes, and improve one of their series' after what many considered a stark depreciation. Whether or not you have love for Mavericks named Bamboo Pandamonium and Optic Sunflower (and I certainly do. Pandamonium! It's genius!), I heartily recommend this game to any X fan that was lost along the way. Sure, Capcom's gotten more and more spike-happy over the years, and the "fortress" stages seem to get shorter and shorter, though if I were Sigma, my heart wouldn't really be in it at this point either. These are things, among others mentioned, that can be improved upon, and hopefully X9 (?) will continue the upward shift. For now, X8 serves as a game that does 2D Mega Man justice and then some in a 3D era.
In closing, let's compare some reviews.
X7 - Gamespot: 6.5, IGN: 6.7
Now, a look at the user reviews:
X7 - Gamespot: 7.1, IGN: 7.3
The people who care about these games are the ones who approve of X8, and that's really all that matters ... at least until Zero 4 and Battle Network 5 come out later this year. Godspeed, little sequels. 4-5 is never an easy age.
Here is a fine review that I generally agree with and nicely goes over the finer points of the game that I'm too lazy to.
Despite dropping the ball on the X8 review, the Mega Man Home Page is one of the most enduring and complete Mega Man database sites on the web, and is where I grabbed most of these screens, so you should go there.
#2 - PAPER MARIO: THE THOUSAND YEAR DOOR (GC)
For a long time, this game was a small blip on the radar. Some thought it was a remake, other doubted it would even come out on the Cube. It turned out to be a terrific game, perhaps even better than the original, which was a blast. Like the aforementioned Battle Network games, this is an RPG for people who don't really like RPG's. Basic RPG elements combined with the type of gameplay you'd expect from a Mario game is a formula you really don't need to mess with too much. It's almost as embarrassingly easy as the first one, but this doesn't matter since you're too busy enjoying clearing out enemy rooms with a hammer and fighting pro wrestling-like arena battles under the moniker "Great Gonzales". Oh yes. Hopefully no relation to
Giant Gonzales.
If you liked the first one, you'll like this one. The badge system, star pieces, surprisingly clever dialogue, all back. The battle system is largely the same with some notable additions, like a cheering audience that gives you star power for doing extra flips. I wonder if that's the type of thing that in 10 years, will have as much place here as "WILL HELP YOU!" working as a game intro. How times have changed.
TIE #3 - MORTAL KOMBAT DECEPTION/KATAMARI DAMACY (PS2)
The main reason these two are tied is because they look so funny together. Aside from that, they couldn't be more different. One is the latest addition to my favorite fighting series. Yeah, I know, "broken fighting system" this, "reliant on gore" that, I've heard it all. Tekken and Virtua Fighter do nothing for me. For my complex fighting, give me the Capcom or the Guilty Gear and keep it in 2D. MK is and always has been about mindless fighting and trash talking, and this is one of the only fighting games I can routinely play with my friends. Helping with that are the additions of Chess and Puzzle modes, the latter of which features midget MK warriors with large heads. Not very substantial, but a fun distraction from the fighting. Add in a half-assed Konquest adventure mode, which isn't as horrible as some reviews would have you think, it's just a pain that it's the only way to unlock just about everything. All in all, Deception takes the base of 2002 GOTY Deadly Alliance (damn I was MK-starved at that point) and builds upon it to create a wholly fun experience.
Katamari Damacy. Of all the whackball games that never make it out of Japan, I'm sure glad this one did. I actually got it the same week as Deception, and didn't think it would live up to all the underground hype it was getting. I'm glad I was wrong, because let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've pushed a giant ball around the Earth wadding up anything not nailed down, followed by everything nailed down, to the quirkiest soundtrack in recent memory, and that's not just limited to video games. None of the face buttons are even used, it's mainly the two analogs. It's short, but there are things to do after you beat it, and it has to be experienced to be truly appreciated. This is what developers should be shooting for rather than photorealistic graphics and mass market appeal. Well, not from a business standpoint, but you know what I mean. As the man known only as Stitchy once said, "This game is a one trick pony, but this pony is wearing a rainbow wig, ruby-studded tapdancing shoes, and can nod it's head to the rhythm of "One More Time" by Daft Punk." That about sums it up.
PREVIOUS GOTY WINNERS
1999-2000: Shadow Man (N64, DC)
NEXT TIME: 2005, and why it sucks!
X8 - Gamespot: 6.3, IGN: 7.3
X8 - Gamespot: 8.5, IGN: 8.4
2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC)
2002: Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance (PS2)
2003: F-Zero GX (GC)
