AIAS Finalists Announced

The 2005 finalists for the Annual Interactive Achievement Awards have been announced, Gamespot reports. The event, sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, will announce winners on the evening of January 9th. From the article: "Leading the nominees this year was GameSpot's 2005 PlayStation 2 Game of the Year, God of War. Developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), the game got a whopping 11 nominations, including Overall Game of the Year, Action/Adventure Game of the Year, and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming. The game's number of nominations ties last year's AIAS Game of the Year winner, Half-Life 2."

God of War = Innovative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I am loving this game, but it is not exactly innovative. Extremely well done and polished, pushing the PS2 to extremes, definitely. But no particular element in it stands out as remarkably new or original to me.

RE4 was much more innovative in my opinion. It completely eschewed existing game grammar (clear room, collect treasure, advance) in favor of "run like hell or you die in a really scary way". The high level of interaction and beautiful levels really set it apart from anything t

Re:God of War = Innovative?

[fishybell]

I agree. Having just started playing the game Saturday night I can say it's a damn fine game, but nothing terribly new.

From what I can tell it's essentially ICO with a better battle system and without the ghost girl. Solve a puzzle, beat up baddies. It is Zelda (the original 2d top down ones) in 3d.

That all said, I loved ICO and I loved the Zelda games. I love God of War for the same reasons. It's an extremely fun game, with great visuals to boot. The story is so so, the puzzles are relatively simple, b

Re:God of War = Innovative?

[Red Flayer]

"RE4 was much more innovative in my opinion. It completely eschewed existing game grammar (clear room, collect treasure, advance) in favor of 'run like hell or you die in a really scary way'."

Innovative? That's rogue-likes in a nutshell. I'd like to see more of it in 3D games though...

On the notably missing games...

[Bagels]

In the article, the AIAS stated that Majesco's Psychonauts and Capcom's RE4 weren't up for consideration because those two companies didn't join the AIAS (and took a jab at Majesco's financial difficulties, stating that they didn't have the resources to join anyhow). If two of the best games of the year are eliminated simply because the higher-ups didn't pay some extortionary membership fee, I can't see why the awards themselve should be taken seriously. It's clear that money is an all-too-important factor in the AIAS awards deliberations.

Re:On the notably missing games...

[easychord]

Three of the best games if you include Killer 7. I can't make a case for it as overall or platform specific game of the year but it deserves to be on some of the other category lists like sound and character/story.