Half-Life 2 Sweeps Bafta Games Awards 40
Ford Prefect writes "The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, or Baftas, are frequently considered Britain's equivalent of the Oscars. The winners of the second annual games awards were announced last night, and according to the BBC Half-Life 2 won six awards, including best game and best online game. No Katamari Damacy mentioned, Burnout 3 won three awards, and some plucky little upstart called 'Halo 2' won the prize for best Xbox game."
Game Awards? (Score:4, Interesting)
I ain't goin'...
Re:Katamari Damacy... (Score:1)
However, sometimes these tastes do diverge - I LOVED MTG: Battlegrounds. [gamerankings.com]
Re:Losers, all of them. (Score:1, Insightful)
How can it be the correct spelling? The people hired to translate the game's title into English chose to spell it out as damacy. If the game was entitled Katamari Damashii, you'd be correct, but it's Katamari Damacy, so by no means is damashii the "correct" spelling. That's not the name of the fucking game.
Re:Losers, all of them. (Score:2, Insightful)
Romanization rules are frequently nebulous, and for good reason. Seoul, for instance, is often pronounced like "soul" in English, because people looking at the romanization don't realize that there are actually two syllables in the city's name.
Re:Losers, all of them. (Score:2)
I'm 99% sure that the reason is a bad Japanese tendency to romanize "shi" as "si". The Japanese alphabet is a bit weird in what sounds it contai
Bah... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, two derivative first-person shooters and a driving game - all sequels, mind you, however good they may be - beat out a wholly original, innovative, and fun concept in Katamari Damacy. I don't know what I can really take from this, except to say that gaming sure has changed a lot since I was a k
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bah... (Score:1)
Re:Bah... (Score:4, Interesting)
Half Life redefined first person shooters back in 1998. It and some choice others, like Deus Ex, chose to make the genre more than just lugging around strange weaponry and blowing away aliens. They gave story, scope, style, amazing graphics, and a sense of actually being in the game.
Half Life presented itself as a constant flow of gameplay, giving you story and immersion. Now, because of that, you end up actually liking and caring about Gordon, the character you control. People may not want to admit it, but if Valve wants to make another game that uses those exact elements to play off of, they're perfectly free to do so. It was their idea in the first place. Who are we to say that they shouldn't continue refining it?
Half Life 2 is the continuation of a great concept in gaming. I'm tired of people discounting it just because it isn't "wholly original."
Re:Bah... (Score:2)
However, I completely agree with the parent.
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Interesting)
However.
Half Life 2 doesn't do anything new in a PC game that hasn't been done before to death, from physics engine, graphics, sound, gameplay, even scripted events.
Half Life 2 derives these elements of gameplay and plot from the original Half Life and from other FPS games in the genre.
Therefore, Half Life 2 is a derivative work.
I won't discount Half Life 2 because it's derivative. I'll discount it because of Steam, because Valve deliberately rigged the game engi
Re:Bah... (Score:1)
Contrast that to Far Cry. It had the usual FPS objectives (get from a to b) but you could approach them from multiple ways. When talking to my friends on how we beat a level someone always did it diffent than others. I was expect
Re:Bah... (Score:2)
When I get more familiar with HL2 mapping, I'm going to be doing plenty of experimentation. It's definitely not an engine limitation...
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Katamari Damacy is an original game.
3. Half-Life 2 is still a better game than Katamari Damacy, insofar as they are comparable. It's also more ambitious in scope, more accomplished in design, implementation and artistry, and has a broader appeal.
Originality isn't a silver bullet.
Re:Bah... (Score:2)
Everyone's opinions are different, and should never be presented as facts. I'm a hard-core PC gamer, and entirely uninterested in Half-Life 2 (tried the demo, uninstalled the demo), but I love Katamari Damacy.
I bet Doom3 won... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Best online game? (Score:1)
KD not available in Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes sense to only reward games that are available in your area. If a publisher decides not to release a game in your area, don't reward them with an award.
Whew (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Whew (Score:2)
Sorry - I was trying to pre-empt the inevitable 'why wasn't KD mentioned? Waah!' posts. I've never played the game, and while it does sound like fun it doesn't sound as if it would be quite worth importing a suitable PS2 and whatever to play it...
It was nice, however, to see another low-budget, high-concept, word-of-mouth success being rewarded, that being Halo 2. Zonk perhaps understandably edited what
HL2 (Score:2)
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
I'm a modder, and my experiences with Source so far have been great. See my signature - so far I've built the geometry for a large, complex island map in just a few weeks of free time, starting from no knowledge of HL2 mapping whatsoever. I'm currently populating it with gameplay, and the new Hammer is far, far more stream
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
Doom 3 is fairly easy to mod, the code is mostly clean and simple and the art pipeline is straight forward (except maybe for the Walk IK and AF stuff but setting up IK is never trivial).
Clueless. (Score:1)
Re:Clueless. (Score:2)
Prince of Persia 2 is on my list for being one of the worst games of the year.
Steam (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
HL2 best online game... (Score:3, Interesting)