Best Massive Multiplayer Online Game - City of Heroes
Coming from NCSoft, this masterpiece promises to make you a hero. You’ll create your character with millions of possible costume figurations, backgrounds, and powers and then start fighting crime. As a low level character, you’ll be foiling purse snatchings, muggings and the occasional gang fight. As you progress and get stronger, you’ll refine your powers and gain access to new ones, as well as develop your own personalized storyline. As you fight against a particular criminal organization more and more, your storyline will lead down the path of an eventual showdown between you and the criminal mastermind.
In other words, you make the hero that you want. You raise him up from the streets and you make your own comic book plot to follow. And yes, you can do it with your friends. It’s entirely online in a persistent world. Initially, you will only have the choice to be the hero, but as the game gets established and there’s enough of a player base, they do plan on allowing player villains to be created. Truly one of the best ideas to come to the MMORPG scene.
Best Strategy - Neighbors from Hell
Coming straight out of left field in Jowood studios, this game puts you in the shoes of a loveable cartoon character tasked with vengeance upon his neighbor in this spoof of reality TV. This game has to be one of the most hilarious game concepts. Your job as the player is to play a series of pranks on your neighbor. If you manage to string several pranks together, the laugh track of the audience will roar appropriately and your ratings will soar. Screw up and your neighbor will beat the crap out of you.
Pranks range from the simple (sneaking a whoopee cushion into his chair), to the devious (stuffing a mousetrap into his mailbox), to the downright diabolical (stripping wires and then putting them in a pool of standing water to electrocute him). It may be a little too focused on evil to be a true family game, but if you like cartoon violence (and who doesn’t?) this game will have you laughing out loud for awhile.
Neighbors From Hell - JoWood Productions
Best First Person Shooter - Call of the Cthulhu
Based off the books from HP Lovecraft and the pencil and paper RPG from Chaosim, this game is reinventing horror and first person shooters. With a powerful physics engine and a sanity system, this game pushes the genre farther than it’s been pushed in awhile. The sanity system combines a variety of concepts, such as vision blurring, vertigo, auditory and visual hallucinations, to fully immerse you in the game. Add to that the complete lack of a HUD and broken bones, bleeding, realistic aiming (looking down the sights) and hideous creatures, the likes of which the world has never seen, and you have one the best concepts for a game ever created.
Best MMORPG Expansion - Anarchy Online : Shadowlands
Funcom's award-winning massively multiplayer online game, Anarchy Online, moves forward with a new expansion pack called Shadowlands. In the Shadowlands, the laws of physics no longer will apply and nothing will be as it seems. The mysterious and unnatural come together for an almost horrific environment, let alone science fiction. Shadowlands tells the story of the eternal struggle between the concept of light and dark, or good and evil. There will be floating cities, underwater realms and playfields of fire and ice. Fantastic playfields to unlock will be broken up into seven themes based on the Devine Comedy. You’ll never know if the land beneath your feet will disappear, leaving you to fall into oblivion. Also, in order to open up these new playfields,
you will have to complete quest dungeons instead of random missions. Each player will role-play through the Shadowlands with a clear direction of what they need to accomplish next, unlike the original game which had a lot less structure. Shadowlands will also be better suited to the experience Anarchy Online player, due to the level of mobs and the dangerous terrain. Players will also compliment each other’s professions, with focus teaming more important than ever before. 1500 new monsters have been added and the amount of content in the expansion will be equivalent to the entire amount of Anarchy Online content at present. The graphic engine has been upgraded as well. Serious thought and development has been put into the creation of incredible landscape and monsters and character role-play possibilities.
Best Adventure - Mysterious Journey 2: Chameleon
The sequel to amazing Schizm sets you in a beautiful world, again in a first person perspective, but this time around, it’s one that you really feel more like you’re really there. The puzzles are at the same level, as far as ingenuity goes, but a touch easier than they were in Schizm, which shows that Dreamcatcher and their sister company, the Adventure Company are paying attention to their players. The story takes place as you wake up in a derelict space station orbiting a strange planet with two warring factions. In addition to solving the more mechanical puzzles, you’ll be solving social puzzles as you use your “chameleon” technology to infiltrate their societies and learn more about these groups, discover who you are and
how to get the two groups to co-exist peacefully.
Mysterious Journey : Chameleon - Adventure Company
Best Action - Prince of Persia 3
Yeah, you read that right. After a leave of absence longer than Bill Gate’s conscience, the Prince is back. He’s running on walls, he’s fighting off demons with acrobatic combat moves that make you say, “Neo, who?” All of the class and fun of the first two games is back in a beautifully rendered game, with outstanding graphics, sound and action. The game gets high marks for nostalgia factor and for amazing style. This game stands among the best games of the E3 and if what we’ve seen of it so far is any indicator, it could be the best action game this year.
Best Racing - Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Get ready to have oodles of fun with as many as three other players as you race through the Mushroom Kingdom. The newest element of the game is ability to have two characters on each Kart, one driving and one mischievous friend in the back seat that wrecks havoc on other players to slow them down. At any point along the race, your two characters can switch places for double the fun. This game was so much fun that most people had to be pried out from the seats and probably had the longest line of any game at E3. The controls are very simple and easy to learn. Veterans of the game will quickly adapt to the new controls and find themselves immersed into the game quickly. The exciting cast of characters include the likes of Luigi, Peach, Baby Mario, Baby
Luigi, Wario, Bowser, Koopa and more.
Mario Kart: Double Dash - Nintendo
Best Role Playing Game - Fable
Everyone loves a hero and in Fable you can choose just what type of hero you will become. Fable is a new RPG is about to be released by Big Blue Box Studios that’s been all the buzz and long awaited. Fable boasts the concept of truly choosing your quest and you characters path, following quests of your choosing. Recently, Big Blue Box stated that the game will also include multi-player elements, allowing up to four players to play in the same game.
The most intriguing aspect of this game is your character’s development. If you stay in the sun too long, you will tan and eventually gain wrinkles. You will grow stronger, taller, and yes, you will even watch yourself grow and eventually become old. If you happen to get into a bad fight you will leave with scars that will stay with your character for the rest of his life.
Reputation is also weighed strongly in this game as opposed to most current day RPGs. If your character goes on a killing spree in one town and leaves, only to come back 5 or maybe 10 years later you will find that you are not the most welcomed guest. If you perform heroic deeds, people will learn to praise you. Women will find you attractive. Shopkeepers will give a special discount. Children will even cut their hair and dress like you.
The combat system is in real time and very much action and combo oriented. Unlike most RPGs where a character automatically knows how to cast the next strongest spell or perform the newest damage dealing sword technique, your character will actually have to learn in order to use a spell or move. Want to learn how to do a spinning blade strike, watch another adventurer do it and add it to your action list. The learning system is not just limited to spells and combat though. If you walk into a bar your character can very well learn how to belch just by observing someone. If you do not own an Xbox, but love RPGs this game is your reason to go and get one.
Best Sports - Tony Hawk Underground
The Tony Hawk skating series has always been a blast, but THUG stands to put all the rest of the series to shame as you make your own skater and then raise him up from a hungry street skater to a world renowned pro. You’ll be able to get off your board and travel on foot, by car, whatever happens to be there for you. You’ll be able to create your own tricks and put them to the test through 9 massive play areas or own of your own as you design not just a small skate park, as in previous version, but your own entire level, complete with all the tasks that you want there to be. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to get into the Tony Hawk series, THUG is going to be just what you’ve been waiting for.