CCIV: Game of the Year 1999 Round Six

[Neon Ignition]

We're ploughing into the second half of the years releases and it still feels pretty open as to what might be the ultimate prize taker.


Which of the above games are amongst the best of 1999 and why?

[QualityChimp]

Never played that Neon Genesis Evangelion game, but I imagine it's like this:

PRESS X TO GET IN THE MECH
Kenji: "No"

[Mr Ono]

We are about to enter Dreamcast years.

[Cepp]

Hell yeah we are. Mr Driller was amazing, loved playing it on my DC.

[Neon Ignition]

Nothing for me yet again except a side note that sports fans circa 2000 should be ashamed of supporting the blatant shill that was going on by developers

[Asura]

Two there.

Omega Boost; fantastic third-person anime robot shooter, which has a few elements similar to Panzer Dragoon and takes the form of a "boss rush", a bit like Alien Soldier, made by Polyphony Digital. Often forgotten about today because of Zone of Enders, with which it has some superficial similarities (but on a raw gameplay level, I think Omega Boost is a bit "purer", with great score-based gameplay and not an ounce of fat in its design).

The Nomad Soul, from back when Quantic Dream used to make videogames, and not interactive movies. The only videogame to star David Bowie (as far as I'm aware). Kinda like a lower budget, jankier Shenmue; it was an adventure game with third-person action, first-person shooting, side-on 3D fighting, driving, open-world stuff... Honestly it was pretty great. It failed to deliver in just about every area (the FPS was simplistic, the fighting game parts were naff, the adventure didn't look good - Bowie was great though?) but it was the vision of trying to make this game with so much crammed into it that made it worth playing despite all that.

[Tobal]

NFL Blitz 2000, one of the best sports games ever made, after college was done, it was 1v1's and 2v2 for hours on the dreamcast port, the midway password system to put to excellent use so we all had our stats and head to heads on the games many top 10 tables. Everything from the tight gameplay, sound effects and announcer, the graphics, the animations for the big hits and wrestling moves tackles, the after play shenanigans hitting each other, using the VMU to hide your play selection and pick it using it. Sadly i think this much like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 will fly under the radar, 2 of the best games ever made came out in 99 and nobody UK cares. If there is any justice in this world, please place a vote for Blitz and then go get yourself the dreamcast port.

other votes for me are Nomad Soul, as a big Bowie fan i still have my huge ass PC box and the dreamcast port, it was a strange game Quantic Dream made and would featured tons of mechanics that never quite gelled together and would be seen till GTA3, and stuff still not seen today like being able to kill off your own main character and continue the story as new npc.

And Outcast, i could barely get it to run on my PC at the time due to all the crashes, but the voxel look as the kids say has 'Soul'.

[Asura]

And Outcast, i could barely get it to run on my PC at the time due to all the crashes, but the voxel look as the kids say has 'Soul'.

Outcast ran terribly on everyone's computer; that was its biggest problem.

It shared that problem with some of NovaLogic's games at the time which also used old-school voxels (different to the Minecraft stuff that gets called voxels today). The complex maths behind that were pretty distinct from normal videogame rendering, so 3D cards couldn't do much to help. Some of those games at least would let the 3D card render characters, vehicles and such, but the terrain was such a big part of those games that they always ran poorly.

Apparently it's great to go back to, now that modern computers can brute-force a good framerate out of it.