IGN has announced its games of the year, and the PC choices aren’t full of surprises. Most reasonable people can agree on what a good game is. Plus, their ultimate choice of Civilization IV as their Game of the Year is in sync with mine.
But a few little things bother me.
How the hell is Empire Earth II anybody’s runner-up for strategy game of the year? As much as Age of Empires III annoys me with its familiarity, it is at least an enjoyable little formula. Act of War is better than both of them. Yeah, PCGamer liked Empire Earth II, too. A lot of people did. But very, very few rated it higher than both those other games.
“Best game no one played” goes one better and picks two duds – the impenetrably dull Gary Grigsby’s World at War and the mediocre Imperial Glory. No sign of Psychonauts. Or Darwinia. Or Space Rangers 2. Insanity.
Not sure that Civ IV, a game that almost everyone I know plays solo, is anyone’s pick for best online game – besides IGN. Their runner-up (Battlefield 2) is a more logical choice, but I’ll give IGN credit for going against the grain there, at least.
It’s easy to pick on IGN, for some reason. You can fisk their articles for vagueness or errors, mock their choices for columnists, or simply note that many of their scores seemed to be pulled out of a hat.
But rest assured that Gamespy will get examined in this space soon.
As for Space Rangers 2 not showing up in ‘games not played’, I hope that is remedied in the spring when it gets a US release. As for Psychonauts, it is too bad that once again a really cool but quirky game goes unplayed, and is hard to even find in stores anymore.