Number 5 – S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
Platform: PC
For a game which was so massively delayed and annoyingly named though, S.T.A.L.K.E.R was fantastically enjoyable and used a surprisingly intricate plot which draws from modern Russian literature, notably Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strigatsky.
The game sets players off in the forbidden zone around the radiation-filled Chernobyl and tasks them only with the task of discovering their own identity – the main character wakes up amnesiac, only carrying a note which reads ‘Kill Strelok’.
From there, it’s a huge open-ended adventure with a dozen endings and a smoothly integrated RPG and FPS combo.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R falls down on a number of levels. The game is a little clunky to play and the story is very difficult to follow owing to translation problems and a frustrating design. Many of the available endings are disappointing and the entire RPG system is massively scaled back from the original design.
Still, when S.T.A.L.K.E.R gets it right then it does it very, very well. The combat is beautifully put together and the level of difficulty is honed to a razor edge so that although it is often frustrating and challenging, it is never unfair. Bullet physics are excellently integrated to the game and as you progress further towards the end-game and learn how to make the best use of your arsenal it becomes almost impossible not to appreciate the fine-tuning of the combat model.
To be praised for ambition and scope if nothing else, S.T.A.L.K.E.R didn’t just break the mould; it shattered it completely and sent the pieces back to its mother in hundreds of separate envelopes. There are some obvious holes in the formula and you can complete the game without ever realising that you messed up the main quest and have wasted twenty hours of your life, but as a whole S.T.A.L.K.E.R still manages to succeed thanks to a grimly realistic world which is consistently engaging and brilliant.
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Number 4 – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Call of Duty 4 was a radical departure for the series, bringing players out of the hedgerows and trenches of World War II and into the modern day. It could have gone horribly wrong and resulted in the death of the series, halting the growth of period shooter series for years.
Thankfully, it didn’t. Call of Duty 4 is arguably the best in the series to date and uses a Clancy-esque plot filled with Russian megalomaniacs and crazed terrorists as players hop about to experience the best of the action.
It kicks off to a hell of a start too. The first level sees players form part of a crack SAS squad conducting a raid on a cargo freighter to salvage a nuclear missile in the middle of a typhoon. Rain hammers down, waves crash on the deck and players silently creep from room to room, killing bad guys in their sleep. When it all goes wrong and the ship starts to sink the whole world starts to turn upside down quite literally there’s a terrifying moment when you think you might not make it back to the helicopter in time.
Then the credits roll and you realise that you’re only five minutes in and that that level was just the introduction; a sign of things to come.
From there things get better in spades and players get to experience a regime change first hand, fighting on both flanks as the battle starts to build. The singleplayer campaign isn’t massively long—in fact it’s pretty short—but at the end there’s still plenty of intelligence to track down, an arcade mode to try and, of course the glorious multiplayer which is superbly put together.
The multiplayer mode alone is plenty praiseworthy too, using ranks and levelled unlockable attacks to create a multiplayer tactical FPS game with a distinct RPG feel at times so that the game is almost universally appealing.
The game may not be everyone’s cup of tea and there are plenty of people who will argue that the Call of Duty 2 was the high point of the series, but whether that’s true or not doesn’t detract from the fact that Call of Duty 4 is still one of the most involving and dramatic war-shooters I’ve played in a long time.
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Number 3 – Crysis
Platform: PC
Crysis was almost a hype-machine unto itself this year, gathering accolades and fanboys even before the first demos and previews were out. The game tells the story of a US soldier fighting aliens and Koreans on a small island with the aid of a nanosuit which enhances his butt-kicking ability.
The first part of a trilogy, Crysis doesn’t sell on the story at all though and, to be honest, that’s a pretty good thing. It forms nothing more than a context for the violence.
What makes Crysis great though is the open design and, of course, the graphics. The bleeding-edge beauty of the game is so intense that even running the game with two top-end graphics cards at once I still couldn’t get perfect performance.
Some view that type of hardware-hogging as a bad point and to some extent they’re correct – very few people will be able to play the game as it should be played. However, it does mean that the game is going to scale very well onto future hardware, meaning that Crysis is a game for the future and one that you’ll be able to return to time and again in the years to come.
The beautiful graphics are then accentuated by the custom physics engine which lets pretty much everything be demolished. Pick up chickens and throw them around, punch your fists through walls and grab enemies or just vault yourself over tanks and minefields – Crysis is a game that lets players handle each and every battle their own way.
A disappointment to some, who expected the game to revolutionise the industry and were dismayed to find essentially a prettier version of Far Cry, Crysis is a fantastic game in its own right despite the heritage and frequent faltering of individual aspects.
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Number 2 – BioShock
Platform: PC, Xbox 360
“L-L-look at you, Hacker…” Whoops, sorry – wrong game. This isn’t the seminal System Shock 2, this is its spiritual successor, BioShock.
In development since time out of mind, BioShock was originally about exploring a Nazi bunker filled with zombies and mutants left behind from the dreadful experiments of WWII. The game would have had a firm horror feel to it and was more heavily targeted at the RPG end of the FPS/RPG genre.
My, how things changed…
BioShock ended up as something with much more of a sophisticated and unique feel. The player takes the role of an anonymous character who is aboard a plane when it crashes over th
e Atlantic. The only survivor, you swim to what you think is a lighthouse – only to find it’s actually the entrance to an extensive underwater city called Rapture, a place in dire need of a hero.
Founded by a man called Andrew Ryan, Rapture was intended to be a capitalist paradise where the best minds of the world retreated to live in harmony and peace, away from governmental pressures. Instead, Ryan dug too deep into the world and discovered a new type of animal which, when… um, processed… allowed the creation of new technology called Plasmids. The Plasmids allow genetic code of users to be re-written, granting new powers and abilities.
The Plasmids carry a high price though and drove substantial portions of Rapture to madness while, at the same time, a civil revolt was in progress against Ryan and his followers.
The story to BioShock is a rarity in itself – something dark and powerful, but also intelligent and well-presented. In a industry littered with simple run and gun shooters, BioShock stands head and shoulders above the rest, marking itself as truly the Thinking Man’s Shooter.
Rapture is a haunting, ruined city littered with audio diaries, posters and the trinkets of those now dead…or worse. It’s a gory place, splattered with blood and littered with corpses. Deformed, crazed denizens lurk in the shadows and every time you kill one you feel a pang of guilt – you know that the person you just killed may have been somebody important. For them to even be in Rapture to start with they must have been a scientist, artist or doctor. It makes every fight vaguely repugnant and uncomfortable.
At the same time though, Rapture is a beautiful place. 1950s jazz floats down the hallways and the art-deco architecture of the building means that it is staggeringly gorgeous to look at. That’s the brilliance of BioShock – the fusion of sweets and sours to form a delicious whole which is perfectly balanced.
At every point in the game there is a choice to be made, be it moral or tactical, and every time the game makes sure you know the full ramifications of your actions. In fact the only action you can be sure you’ll feel good about is actually picking BioShock up in the first place!
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Game of the Year – The Orange Box
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
It had to be, didn’t it? Whether you look at The Orange Box as one game, three games or five games – whether you’re a newcomer to the series who wants to play it in his living room on a console or a hardened fan who wants the PC experience, there’s still no faulting The Orange Box. If nothing else there’s still just an enormous feeling of value.
Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is perhaps the most perfect and appreciable of the Half-Life experience yet. The meaty part of the story, Episode 2 picks up directly after Episode 1 and sees Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman desperately trying to make it to White Forest Base to deliver a message of the utmost importance to the resistance.
The story is brilliantly told and the pace is kept fast so that players are constantly moving, barging through obstacles and knocking foes and trials aside. There is no pause, no relief save those shared between characters at pivotal moments of the plot.
There is always something to overcome and, if nothing else, Episode 2 generates a fantastic sensation of motion – of constantly striving closer to a goal. By the end you’ll be collapsed over your desk, feeling like you’ve just managed to accomplish something for the first time in your life. It always, honestly feels like the characters are real, that they depend on you and that you are Gordon Freeman, their salvation.
At times the story will move you to tears, at others to laughter but, for the vast majority of the time you won’t have time to think. You’ll be stuck on the edge of your seat like an indecisive emo on a clifftop and you’ll be concerned only with doing what you can to save the characters which have become your friends and unveil more of the slowly revealed nature of the GMan.
Then there’s Portal, which tells the story of Chell and GlaDOS – the test subject and examiner of Aperture Science respectively. Portal takes an entirely different tack, slowing players down and giving them a relaxing and oddly romantic story which ties directly in to the events of Episode 2.
Using the brand new game mechanic of the portal gun, players can progress the story at a mostly leisurely pace, savouring a truly dry sense of excellently written humour.
Then Team Fortress 2, the much delayed sequel and office multiplayer game of choice. Streamlined to perfection in a way not seen in any game before, players get a chance to frag their friends in style by hopping around in a cel-shaded arena of death.
No matter what style of play you prefer – sneaky spies, saw-toting medics or slippery scope-eyed snipers – there’s just something for everyone. And that’s what makes The Orange Box so great as a whole – there’s something for everyone and, to be honest, each and every one of the games in the box could stand to be in the top five on its own.
For the first time we don’t have one game which tries to be a jack of all trades, cramming in multiplayer modes which are clearly unsuitable or puzzles which don’t mesh with the game world at all. Instead, we have three games each of which is dedicated to a single purpose and then honed to a brilliant edge. You’ve got Episode 2 for your story-loving action heroes, Portal for your humorous case-crackers and Team Fortress 2 for when you haven’t got anybody else at all.
Put them all together and you’ve got our Game of the Year.
