CCIV: Game of the Year 2003 - Round 01

[Neon Ignition]

We enter 2003, a year when the battle for scraps from the PS2 table was at its most feverish.


As the first round opens, which of the above games were among the best of the year and why?

[fuse]

Incredibly strong first set for me - Astro Boy is Treasure brilliance, Beyond Good & Evil still has people desperately pleading for the sequel despite their better natures for a reason, and IIDX 9th had a great song list and is one of the points in the series where the UI makes a huge leap forward.

I've not played the second Advance Wars game but would expect that to also be excellent, and I get that Amplitude is a big deal for some folks too.

[Asura]

Two fantastic games there.

Amped 2 is highly underrated, but I believe it's the best snowboarding game ever made. Took the original, which was already great, and elevated it with tons of content and a robust asynchronous multiplayer mode provided by the now-defunct XSN Sports system, which offered an online experience similar in scope to something modern like Street Fighter 6. Honestly, amazing fun, with a fantastic grinding system based on dual-analog control. I played this for months.

Beyond Good & Evil is the other. It has, sadly, aged a bit. I tried it recently and time has not been kind to it (I mean, it has a Matrix homage with a bullet time sequence) but it was a fantastic set of ideas tethered to an amazing central concept:

->Open Spoiler<-

That one photo, taken at the right time, can change the world.

It's just a shame that the sequel has become such a mess.

[wakka]

Beyond Good & Evil was my only vote here.

I really loved that game. It had such a unique feel and a genuinely enjoyable story.

Jade was an unusual protagonist, too, being first of all a woman who wasn't played up as sexy, and secondly a photojournalist (a career underrepresented in gaming to say the least).

[egparadigm]

Just realized I missed Billy Hatcher. That game is one of the best 3D platformers… until you get to the last level or so, when it turns a bit crap. But up to that point it’s awesome,