2006 Edge Awards

As Famitsu is to Japan, Edge is to the U.S. and Britain. The much-respected games magazine has released their surprisingly short list of awards, for the 'best of' 2006. The winners are: "Best Game - Final Fantasy XII. Best Innovation - Nintendo Wii. Best Visual Design - Okami. Best Audio Design - Dragon Quest: The Journey Of The Cursed Kin. Best Developer - Nintendo. Best Publisher - Take Two. Best Online Experience - Test Drive Unlimited. Best Hardware - Nintendo DS."

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[couch_potato]

I browse at -1 so I don't miss out on quality comments like that one.

Cool links. [blogspot.com]

Console Centric?

[Jonah Hex]

Of course everyone has a "Best of..." list, but this doesn't exactly help me decide what to get for my kid's DS Lite or PS2, and even less so for my WinXP machine.

Jonah HEX

Re:Console Centric?

[Cadallin]

I think its more that mainstream industry PC gaming sucks lately, there's been a lot of cool indie stuff coming out this year. Defcon (a minimalist RTS by the makers of Darwinia) looks awesome. Lots of other stuff by Garage Games, Big Fish Studios, Introversion Software, etc.

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[dj961]

Sorry but this year the only good game that came out for the PC was Company of Heroes, and it's not exactly kid friendly. This year has been abysmal(for PC gaming).

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[k_187]

Umm, Oblivion? its not everybody's cup of tea, but it is very good.

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[dj961]

Umm, No. Try morrowind for a slightly less harrowing experience.

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[Rifter13]

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is also good. I would say Battle for Middle Earth II, as well (though, not 100% sure if it came out this year). Dark Messiah: Might and Magic is fun, as is Battlefield 2142. If you have a PC that can handle it, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is a really good game. Rainbow Six: Vegas is good, though it has high system requirements. Half-Life: episode 1, I think also came out this year. Someone pointed out Defcon, which is another good game. Neverwinter Nights 2. Not amazin

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[Rifter13]

Oh, and I forgot Galactic Civ II, from Stardock.

Uh, it's not a "best of" list

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a set of awards, specifically for this year (2006). So no, it won't help you pick between a DS Lite or PS2, any moreso than this years Oscar's will tell you whether to rent Lord of the Rings or Forrest Gump.

Now I still think awards like this are mostly crap, but I have to admit their choices aren't too terrible.

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[joe_cot]

For your Desktop? Neverwinter Nights 2
For your PS2? Bully (I have no idea how old your kids are)
For your DS Lite? Something cute and useless. Animal Crossing, perhaps?

Not sure what to get for your DS, PS2, or PC? Don't like the current titles? Well, the good news is that you have a back catalog of 2 years (not including 5 years old GBA titles) for the DS, 6 years for the PS2 (11 for the playstation), and around 20 years (of modern games) for the PC. Have your kids played Grim Fandango? Tropico? Worms Ar

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[Guppy06]

"and around 20 years (of modern games) for the PC."

Ehh... anything much beyond 10 will require some goofy application to slow down your CPU. And even then, it seems you're far more likely to find used console games from that period than used PC games, unless you want to go the warez route.

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[Jackmn]

Ehh... anything much beyond 10 will require some goofy application to slow down your CPU.

If they're DOS based then why not just use DOSBox?

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[Jackmn]

Even so, most of the tittles 10 years ago and beyond, do not control timing at all. If you run them in "fast" computers (more than 60Mhz) they will go crazy. Ah... what a pity for my Caesar and Theme Park :(

I'm reasonably certain you can fiddle with the 'cycles' setting of DOSBox in order to control how quickly it emulates the game. If the game is running too fast, try lowering 'cycles'.

A link for you [sourceforge.net] if you haven't heard of DOSBox (and you thought I was referring to 'a DOS box' rather than 'DOSBox').

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[isaac]

Get your kids Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Easily the best PS2 game of 2006. (Just don't get the DS version - I hear it's not complete.)

-Isaac

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[Jare]

Wonderful game, for anyone who loved and laughed with the original trilogy as a kid, and for anyone who just enjoys a great game by itself.

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[deadstatue]

no question.the ds. unless youre into overpriced systems,proprietary technology, and a real lack of good games.ive had a ds for over 2 years and wouldnt give it up for the entire psp library

As Famitsu is to Japan, Edge is to the U.S. and UK

[ApacheVE]

I don't think Edge is very popular in the US. It's more of a Brit thing. Not to sound negative or anything.

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[ShakaUVM]

Really? The Penny Arcade article today says something different:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/12/18 [penny-arcade.com]

Scroll down to Gabe's post.

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[iainl]

Next Generation is certainly the closest US-based equivalent to Edge, not least because they used to regularly share feature articles. I don't believe it happens any more, however, because Edge is starting to make a push for the US market; they've not been able to move there in the past, because there is another magazine title with the same name (about tattooing or somesuch, if memory serves; Not games, anyway.)

Re:As Famitsu is to Japan, Edge is to the U.S. and

[Doom bucket]

Agreed. I know it exists but I've never seen it in the USA, and it's reputation among UK gamers is dubious as far as I know. The USA equivelent to Famitsu would be EGM, in terms of readership and "prestige".

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[Nfinit]

I don't think there really is a US equivalent to Famitsu-- No one has taken EGM seriously, Game Informer is so horrid they have to give away subscriptions, and Play readily gives out 7/8/9's to any dreck even remotely Japanese in nature. Edge is easily the English-language equivalent to Famitsu, if not in popularity at least in quality. It isn't so much that they're all that terrific-- it's just that gaming journalism is so abhorrent that it manages to rise above everything else by succeeding at being c

Final Fantasy XII

[brkello]

FFXII is a very good game. It is what happens when someone takes ideas from another genre (in this case, MMORPGs) and applies them to their own game. Most of it is very good...I wish I had more power with the Gambits (sort of if-then statements that you use to control your characters basic functionality) but I think with time we will see that system be more fleshed out.

What really concerns me about this game, though, is that it takes some ideas from MMORPGs too far (or so I thought at first). For example, some treasure chests have a chance to drop really good loot. This sounds really good, but it isn't. Early on in the game you encounter an optional boss. If you choose to defeat this very tough boss, you are rewarded with access to a treasure. The problem with the treasure is that it has something like a 30% chance to drop a really good sword or a 70% chance to drop garbage. This makes getting it a pain as you need to save your game and try a few times before you get it.

I at first thought this was just an MMORPG concept that went too far. But after thinking about this, and finding out some other things about the game (e.g. that to get the best spear you have to not open 4 treasure chests in the game) is that this has nothing to do with MMORPGs. This has to do with selling strategy guides. There is no way you would even know to do a lot of these things without a guide or by going on gamefaqs. And this really bothers me. It's fine if you have some secrets in the game. But there should be some in-game hints that will lead you down that path. Making a game have secrets that you can only find out by forcing a player to buy a guide is wrong.

Other that that, I really don't have any complaints. It is a great game that I am enjoying. It is just slightly diminished because I know I am missing content that there is no way to know unless I rely on external sources.

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[namco]

But after thinking about this, and finding out some other things about the game (e.g. that to get the best spear you have to not open 4 treasure chests in the game)

WHAT???? Talk about real bad game design, how on earth is ANYONE going to know not to open 4 treasure chests for the best spear in the game (presumably, and knowing the final fantasy series, only used by one character!). If I would have played it and then read about the chests, trying to figure why I couldn't find an item that is usually found in chests at near the end of the story or fighting one of the almost end of story bosses, I would have felt really cheated and enormously annoyed at Square, they sho

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[brkello]

In FFXI you can build all your characters any way you want with the license board. It is like a chess board but there are two boards and they are oddly shaped. You can unlock the squares next to licenses you already obtained. So if I really liked spears, all my characters could be built to use spears (though for various reasons its optimal to build each character out in a different direction).

But yeah, I do feel a little cheated. If there was someone in game that hinted about the spear and to not touch

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[bskin]

On the one hand, yeah it's a little lame that they did this. On the other hand...there's absolutely no reason you need this item. This is an item that only exists for the kinds of people who are going to have ~200hrs of gameplay on their game clocks by the time they finish. A normal person will go through the normal story, maybe do a few of the side quests (the mark hunting makes a nice distraction, and it's available all along), and about when they get to the point in the game where it says 'Great! Now

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[Nfinit]

It's not like this is something Square just now started doing this, there were arbitrarily hidden sidequests and weapons dating back at least as far as FFVI (and probably earlier.) This is just something Square does, it's not intended to drive strat guide sales, it's there to provide the illusion of depth. Besides, the Zodiac Spear isn't that great a weapon. You can do more damage with easier to obtain weapons that strike more per round-- the Zodiac Spear is the hardest hitter in a single swipe, but it

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[Dev59]

I think the Wyrmhero blade is even more powerful per hit, but hits even slower. While its' listed attack bonus is lower, Wyrmhero casts both Bravery and Faith on its' wielder.

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[Astarica]

All the games since about the PSX era has been about selling strategy guides. Some just do it more blatantly than others. For example, you need to get to the last dungeon in under 12 hours to get Excalibur 2. There is no reason anyone would ever attempt something like this without knowing there's a reward, unless you're in some contest to see how fast you can beat the game. There's plenty of analogous examples in all genres of gaming. FF12 is a pretty good example of shameless strategy guide selling, b

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[Astarica]

Oops, Excalibur 2 is from FF9. I go through RPG very fast and you'd not even come close to hitting the required time in anything that remotely resembles normal play. I believe you'd have to do things like opening the PSX up to skip CG movies because you'll lose an hour of time if you actually have to watch all of them.

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[Guppy06]

"Oops, Excalibur 2 is from FF9. I go through RPG very fast and you'd not even come close to hitting the required time in anything that remotely resembles normal play."

Except that, well... have you seen the official (North American) guide for FFIX? Visit PlayOnline.com [square-enix-usa.com] and enter "YGAWDY" to learn more about it!

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[ShakaUVM]

It only matters if you're someone that has to hit 100% completion of everything.

For me, at some point I realized I had a light (mage) armor that was better than any of the full plate I had, so my black mage became my tank. I don't know where I got it from, but I think it was a rare drop steal off some random monster (my gambits are set to automatically steal so I don't pay a lot of attention to it). I like the fact that my game will be different from other people's. I quite intentionally don't read the stra

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[Sciros]

Considering how much content the game has overall, the fact that there are a few extra bonuses for having the player's guide actually makes sense to me. There are so many items to get already that if they got rid of the ones that you *need* the guide for, nobody would really have noticed or complained about a lack of weapons/armor/etc. So that Zodiac Spear, who really cares? It's a single-player game so it's not like the designers screw anyone over. Plus you gotta be a big fan of spears considering somethin

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[MWoody]

I wholeheartedly agree. I got about 90 hours into the game, and enjoyed it mostly (though the game is simply too long - I'd long since forgotten, going into the last few areas, why I was doing anything from a story standpoint), but this strategy guide concept sickens me to no end. As I approached the final area, I decided to take my first glance at a FAQ to see if, in my extensive searches, I'd missed any major loot. I then read on in horror to discover I'd missed an incredibly large number of major item

Exsqueeze me?

[Guppy06]

"As Famitsu is to Japan, Edge is to the U.S. and Britain."

Except that:

1. I've known of Famitsu for years, but have never heard of Edge, and
2. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] they're not published in the UK and the US, but the UK and Spain. Some of its content was carried in a US magazine that went defunct four years ago.

Really, the fact that you feel the need to make an analogy to try to show that something is well-known should itself demonstrate that it's not well-known.

On a tangent, I can't think of any gaming magazines available in the US worth paying money for.

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[avalys]

PCGamer used to be pretty good - compared to the competition, anyway. I don't know what they're like now.

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[NeutronCowboy]

Edge used to have a sister magazine in the US, which was called Next Generation. It was the only magazine to which I ever bought a subscription: quality news, interviews, articles and game reviews. It wasn't condescending, had no fanboy tones, and was just a great resource for all kinds of info on games and the industry. Then it went downhill, and the relationship must have been severed a couple of years ago.

So yes, Edge/Next Generation was present in the US as well, and it was THE Game Magazine. The fact t

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[brkello]

I enjoy Game Informer. I have been going through a lot of their highly rated games and so far I have enjoyed each one. They have a decent sense of humor and tend to rate games pretty well. They are really cheap too, so I can't complain.

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[Lobo42]

Perhaps the original poster didn't mean Edge was comparable to Famitsu in popularity, but in quality? This would be supported by the fact that the next sentence begins "The much-respected games magazine...," as well as by the generally sophisticated quality of the writing witnessed in the magazine by myself.

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[KDR_11k]

There's a German version as well though I think it comes out a month later every time (costs only 4€, though).

I'd add...

[Stormwatch]

Most surprising game: Trigger Heart Exelica, by Warashi. Makes you go "WTF, they still make Dreamcast games?!"

Nice list...

[7Prime]

Holy shit, I like these guys' picks! It's nice to see Okami get some more recognition, that game deserves a lot more accolades than it has. The only thing is that I would have given Game of the Year to Twilight Princess (which is currently in the running for "best game of all time" on my list), but FF12 is a damn fine game too. I think Zelda was bound to be highly scrutinized, even more than FF12, since it A) had an entire console launch riding on it, B) is a lot easier to compare to the rest of it's series than FF games are to each other, C) was specifically created to go up against the "best game of all time" (Ocarina of Time, on pretty much all major game ranking sites), while there are no particular "expectations" for FF12, other than "to be good." Either way, both games deserve emmense accolades.

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[LKM]

I agree. The list is good, but Twiglight Princess should have won instead of FF. Also, there's no better online experience than Test Drive? That's interesting.

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[iainl]

Reading the full article (there's a subscriber copy here), their argument was that Test Drive was a really nice, as well as innovative, use of online in a console title - the MMO feeling that there were other drivers on the road who were about their own idle business, and that you _could_ stop, chat, race against them, but equally could just nod and carry on. Normally, you're in a racing game to race, and those people are purely your opposition; the casual nature of encounters in TD:U is pretty refreshing,

Why everybody quit at Edge?

[Adam Hazzlebank]

Slightly offtopic, but a while ago (couple of years?) almost all the staff at Edge quit, because they got annoyed with the management. Does anybody know what the story was? What did management do exactly?

Not Fanboys?

[Gnostic Ronin]

I dunno if I agree with this list entirely. And as for Nonfanboyism -- if this magazine is so nonbiased, why are the winners (other than Okami) pretty much the most hyped video game products available?

Final Fantasy, let's face facts, it won because it's Final Fantasy. No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII" or anything else that didn't say Final Fantasy. Going by PLAYER reviews on Gamefaq, most people seem to be bored silly by the gambits and lack of story. Se

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[the_ed_dawg]

Final Fantasy, let's face facts, it won because it's Final Fantasy. No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII" or anything else that didn't say Final Fantasy. Going by PLAYER reviews on Gamefaq, most people seem to be bored silly by the gambits and lack of story.

Personally, I really like FFXII. Once you get past the suspension of disbelief about magic and crystals, it doesn't require a large stretch of the imagination. Certainly better than a 6 year old summone

Re:Not Fanboys? (ORLY)

[TypeC]

No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII"

Does anyone have a link to this game? Sounds....interesting.

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[KDR_11k]

And as for Nonfanboyism -- if this magazine is so nonbiased, why are the winners (other than Okami) pretty much the most hyped video game products available?

Because most good games have hype and the best games often have the most hype? These are gaming awards, not non-conformist awards so the presence of hype shouldn't prevent a game from receiving an award.