Half-Life 2 any other choice would be uncivilized.
My list then goes:
Far Cry – best stealth in a true shooter plus giagantic amazing levels only knock is the ending levels.
Halo 2 – single player that is fun but too short and seemed to be ready to take it up a notch when it ended abruptly. Multiplayer is also fun.
Doom 3 and Painkiller – Painkiller was like a bag of chips, you can just keep eating them but ultimately it doesn’t fully satisfy you. Doom 3 was like a vat of chocolate moose, incredibly rich but you can only eat so much before you can’t eat anymore or want something different.
While the gameplay in Painkiller is rock solid, and I never got tired of impaling things to a wall with a big wood spike, I’ve noticed in the many impassioned defenses of this (overlooked?) game is the complete absence of the discussion of its “story.” I don’t remember the exact details other than the fact that I was giggling at a proud graduate of the Todd MacFarlane school of moronic cosmologies. The central premise of some heartbroken badass enlisted by someone untrustworthy go-between in an ultimate battle out of the book of revelations is right out of the execrable Spawn fiction. And the silly plot twists involving Eve and the pudgy demon who may not be what he seems didn’t really elevate the rather ordinary CG cutscenes.
By contrast, Half-Life 2’s story is vastly superior, with interesting reversals, returns, redemptions, runners, and other staples of good videogame writing (including the rarest of all videogame characters: realistic women in sensible clothing). There have been dozens of posts in other threads about the story, and while there have been some fair criticisms, I think most people found the story compelling enough to investigate it outside the gameplay experience. Can anyone say the same about Painkiller?
If the poll is about best FPS gameplay, I still think Half-Life 2’s is better and more varied, but if it includes the complete experience – including production value, music, multiplayer, story, etc. – then I feel Half-Life 2 is much better than the very good Painkiller, and much better than anything else this year.
Actually, omitting UT2004 and Battlefield Vietnam is a pretty good slip-up considering they both shipped on the same day.
I figured I’d leave out the MP only games. So no BF: Vietnam, UT2004 or Joint Operation. I also leftf Vampire: Bloodlines off the list since I’m not sure if its a FPS or an RPG?
Painkiller does the frantic action much better than Half-life, but Half-life has some set-piece battles that are just awesome. In the end I feel that Half-life 2’s gameplay suffers a bit from the storytelling. There’s a bit too much downtime. As an overall game Half-life just blows Painkiller away in the production, but at the core I enjoy Painkiller more.
…which leads us straight to the problem with polls such as this. Nearly all of the people voting didn’t play all of the games and thus can’t really make an informed decision.
I mean, you can say, of games X, Y and Z I played Y and liked it very much, so Y is the best of them. But it’s still entirely possible that had you played game X you had enjoyed it more.
Ah, to hell with me. I’m probably just still grumpy because of the Shadow Magic vs. Dom2 poll. :)
I’d guess the sample will be large enough to ignore that, none of these are really the indie title DOM was.
My vote was for Far Cry. I thought it did the most to expand the single player game, large levels that allowed for several methods of completion. Half Life was my disappointment, rail shooters are losing my interest.
While HL2’s rails are feeling quite constricting after FC’s openness, they’re still very fine rails. The world is also far more interesting than the generic monster island … I’m playing as much to see what happens next as for the entertaining gameplay. Plus, well, gravity gun. :) HL2 gets my vote.
