The 1up network has announced its nominees for Games of the Year. You can find a handy flash-free list over at Gamasutra. Readers will have till the end of the year to vote on their favorites, and winners will be announced in February.
The strategy nominees are:
World in Conflict (PC; Sierra)
Overlord (360; Codemasters)
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC; THQ)
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (PC; 2K Games)
Medieval II: Total War—Kingdoms (PC; Sega)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii; Nintendo)
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties (PC; Microsoft)
The Eye of Judgement (PS3; Sony)
Worms: Open Warfare 2 (DS, PSP; THQ)
Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (PC; Stardock)
Glory Days 2 (DS; Eidos)
Europa Universalis III (PC; Paradox Interactive)
Supreme Commander (PC; THQ)
Universe at War: Earth Assault (PC; Sega)
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (PC, 360; EA)
Front Mission (DS; Square Enix)
Titles in bold are games I’ve played final versions of.
Note the dominance of franchises and expansions? That alone keeps me from calling this a great year for AAA strategy even though there are some really great games on that list.
Note the prevalence of consoles? If you miss turn based strategy, that’s the place to be. Interesting that Overlord is billed as a strategy game and not an action/puzzle game.
World in Conflict also gets nominations as best multiplayer game and overall Game of the Year.
At least it’s a much better list than BAFTA.
I don’t know why they don’t have two groups, one for consoles and one for PCs. Seems a lot of folks are lumping everything together nowadays.
And while we’re at it, is it too much to ask that these awards start to include indie games? True, that would mean mainstream sites would have to *gasp* review indie games, but when you consider how many IGF entries there was this year it should be fairly obvious that indie gaming isn’t just a fad.
Well, you have GalCiv 2, but Stardock is at the top tier of independent developers. Otherwise, yeah, it’s depressing how many really good smaller games get missed every year. We had Defcon last year, largely because Introversion seeks out friendly media and promotes itself relentlessly. Few other indie developers have that mountain-to-Mohammed mentality.
On the strategy side, I’d personally put American Civil War, Armageddon Empires and maybe Guns of August in my top ten for the year; top five if I had to leave out expansion packs. Di Luo had a column on Guns of August but that’s it for indie coverage at 1up/GfW, and Bruce Geryk usually highlights an indie wargame in that spot. But then, most wargames are indies now.
I hate to dwell on the past, but that was part of what made CGM so special. The editor was very open to pitches on marginal titles for full reviews. Of course, you can fit in a lot of text when you make the screenshots really small.
As for the platform split, I don’t see why console and PC games should be split, especially when you have a shortlist of a dozen games. Most gamers now have a PC and a console of one sort or another, and the game is the thing.
Looking back at the full list the lack of indie gaming is even more aggravating when they have a category dedicated to console downloadable content.
Couple of other things I noticed today. Why no Panzer Tactics DS? And should expansion packs compete against full games, or should they have their own category?
Very true about CGM.
I think it’s probably more of the shortlist factor you mention than the game being the thing, since one could argue that gamers have slightly different experiences from the same title depending on the platform. For example, Command and Conquer 3 is much easier to handle on a PC, but there’s also more competition against it on the PC than a console.
But the shortlist you talk about can’t be looked at in any other way. Taking in the full list you get the sense that no one even plays games on PCs anymore except for shooters and strategy titles. PC gaming is about one step away from being its own category it would appear.