There were a number of games that came very close to making my list this year and that I think are well worth checking out:

Bully:  Fantastic combination of GTA gameplay sensibilities with an interesting setting -- school.  Great writing and memorable characters.  Really only held back by being on the PS2.

Company of Heroes: The best attempt yet to merge RTS sensibilities with WW2 tactical gameplay.  Very nice use of environment, but suffers from the mismatch of tactical control and intense real time pressure.

Spellforce 2: A fun RPG / RTS hybrid game.  Horrible writing but there is something fun about the basic formula of mixing those two genres that someone will have a breakout hit with someday.

GTA Vice City Stories: Another game I'd love to play on a real platform instead of the PSP, but it's the only GTA one can really get in 2006 so it'll have to tide me over.  Like Liberty City Stories, it's definitely a "real" GTA game, just on a junky platform.

Titan Quest: Best Diablo-style game since Diablo.

Lego Star Wars 2:  The genius of the first LSW, but now with Achievements and a set of movies I care a lot more about.

Okami: Best use of style to actually mean something for the core game experience.

Scarface: Another game I would have enjoyed a lot more on the 360.  Despite some pure goofiness based on the license, there's a pretty fun core game there.

I'm sure I've missed a bunch too.  Really a bumper year for games, and I look forward to 2007 being just as packed!

 

Drumroll please... my top game of 2006 was:

#1. Dead Rising

One of the things I value most in a game is a sense of "place", of really being in the world of the game.  Some of my favorites through the years, Star Control 2, Ultima 7, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas really excelled at this, and now they have company in the form of the fantastically executed Dead Rising.  One of the things we tried to do on System Shock and Ultima Underworld was try to really create these spaces and populate them as completely as possible -- ideally anything you could have done in the "real" Citadel Station you'd be able to do in the game.  Dead Rising follows a similar aesthetic, and the Willamette Mall is as fully realized a place as any game I've played in the past few years.

Not to be too pointy-headed about it... chopping up zombies with a chainsaw or putting traffic cones on their head has inherent value.  The replay-oriented game mechanics of Dead Rising have fantastic synergy with the tense time limit, sense of isolation, resource constraints, and the way they structured the Achievements.  On top of all that, the game really uses next-gen power to do something new, in the vast hordes of zombies on screen.  Sure, the cutscenes aren't up to par with the rest of the game visually (though they make up for it in over-the-top-ness), the story is a bit goofy, and it could have really used a "suspend" save game slot.  But those are minor nit-picks on what is to me, clearly the best game of the year despite some amazing competition.

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Here's some slight consolation for #2 game, Saints Row, in the form of a musical theater piece!  Admittedly, its one celebrating the bugs but you're doing something right if even your bugs can inspire someone...  :)

 

And the list continues...

4. Elite Beat Agents -- I loved this game to death when it was released as Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan! in Japan.  I feared that the US conversion (not just a port, but a re-envisioning) would destroy it, but boy was I wrong.  EBA is actually better than Ouendan, much to my surprise.  This game manages to bring a dumb grin to my face every time I play, and amazingly the bizarre stories are just as good when you can actually read the text.

3. Final Fantasy XII -- No surprise that a Final Fantasy game cracks my top 3.  This is another game with some very odd decisions to me, like the real-time combat and the decision to make AI programming a key gameplay feature.  But in the end it works, as a kind of FFXI solo mode style game.  While I find it the weakest of the PS2 FF games, that's very high bar to be compared to.  The game is gorgeous, with an intricate plot and memorable characters, and has me drooling at the prospect of what the FF series will bring on current-generation hardware.  Oh, and Balthier is probably one of my favorite video game characters, period, based almost solely on his dialogue.

2. Saints Row -- At last, someone manages to capture the core mechanics that make GTA work.  Stilwater may not quite have the personality of Vice City or San Andreas, but it sure has the looks.  The core combat mechanic is quite fun, and Volition found some key ways of actually improving on the formula while being true to the spirit of GTA, and matching it with quality execution.  None of the other so-called GTA "clones" even come close.  It may not be GTA IV, but if Rockstar wants to leave the market open, I'm glad Saints Row is there to step in.

Tomorrow... my #1 game! 

BTW, picked up a copy of Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation today on a tip from QT3.  Very cool anime-mechs meets Fire Emblem style gameplay.  I'm totally digging it, and can't believe I missed it.  The sequel is already out but I'm told the story tightly carries over from 1 to 2, so I'm playing them in order.  You have to have a high tolerance for goofy anime cliches and SD mechs though...

7. Viva Pinata -- Okay, the opening experience is pretty rough, the interface clunky, and the choice of your avatar being a disembodied cursor is bizarre to me in a kids game.  But what an addictive game it is!  I'm breeding Raisants and farming Buzzlegums and evolving Redhotts and planting Gem Trees and in general having the best strategy / resource management experience I've ever had on a console.  Rare really delivered on this one, and I expect it to be a "slow burn" game with long legs at retail.

6. Magic Online: Time Spiral -- Magic Online continues to take more money from me each year than any game I play (aside, perhaps from Craps).  Time Spiral is a fantastic followup, a great way of showing how Magic re-invents itself each year and constantly impresses with it's ability to feel "fresh".  Having timeshifted cards from old sets (that really look like old-design Magic cards!) is a brilliant touch.

5. Oblivion -- I admit the previous Elder Scrolls games never quite captured my interest despite a love of the huge epic feel and open world they focus on.  But Oblivion finally got the formula right for me.  Sure I would have loved to see some of the bugs fixed and the awful auto-balancing dealt with more gracefully, but still Oblivion was a fantastic world I couldn't wait to explore.

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Man, picking just 10 is so hard... 

That time of year again, end of the year 'best of' lists... well, this year is no exception for me.  I've gone back and forth on a lot of things on my list.  Some things (like Zelda) are probably getting short shrift by virtue of me simply having not played them yet, but I am an imperfect creature. 

So for the next few days I'll cover my top 10 bests of 2006.  A year full of incredible games...

10.  Civ City: Rome -- Winner of the 3-way "Roman City Builders of Summer" competition.  Of the three (against rivals Glory of the Roman Empire and Caesar IV) this was the only one I really found compelling enough to finish.  Caesar IV was more polished, but ultimately CCR had the Firefly magic that made it hard for me to put down despite its flaws.

9. Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday -- Ok, most of what I find so compelling about this game is the same core Hearts of Iron goodness that I enjoyed last year.  But the expansion does add some nice improvements and got me re-addicted to the grand strategy of WW2 again.

8. Gears of War -- An incredibly gorgeous and stylized game, with very solid multiplayer and fun, visceral gameplay.  Despite being "just" a shooter it innovated on some core gameplay and a few just plain nice touches (y-button to look at cool things going on).  This would've rated higher in a year not so chock full of awesomeness.

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Tomorrow I'll continue the list.  As for today's list... I know, Gears of War at merely #8 is heretical.  What can I say, there's just a ton of good games this year.

Yes, as if no one had ever made a Wii wordplay joke before.  :)

After a chaotic few days we had an even more chaotic family christmas here at Chez Fermier... 5 grandparents, an aunt, an uncle, and our two boys, all bouncing around the house at top speed.  2 robot tarantulas, a crazy road rage figurine, a Wii, a small warehouse of Lego Star Wars toys, and tons of other stuff later, we were left with merely 2 boys bouncing around the house at top speed.  All in all a great day.  This was the first Christmas that the boys really got into the whole presents thing, and it took a little restraining to convince them to only "help" other people open their presents.

Fun, but tiring.  But now I have a Wii to play around with... I've barely done more than poke around in Wii Sports with the family (turns out half my family has the Wii Bowling gene, but I, alas, do not), and a little Trauma Center.

Just got back from a multi-day business trip up in Redmond.  The demo and presentation of our game went quite well, despite some last minute panics when the hardware we had waiting for us was not working properly.  We got it all sorted out in the end and it was quite satisfying to see it all come together. 

Redmond was still a bit of a mess from all the storms.  Lots of people there were talking about their power still being out, and more than one friend of mine in the industry has had huge trees fall on their house!  Texas has it's share of natural disasters, but the risk of 150' trees falling over and smashing my house is not among them. 

My 5-yr old son Xavier and I spent a while playing Assault Heroes, the latest game on Xbox Live Arcade.  It's a neat little top-down vehicle shooter, with tons of interesting little mechanics.  Fun game, though a little simple.  It clearly pushed all the "coolest thing in the world" buttons on my son though, with giant robot spiders and tanks and lots of stuff blowing up.  The fact that it is co-op is fantastic... there really is proving to be a weatlh of co-op games coming out (even if I have to wait a few more years before Gears of War or Resistance are really appropriate to play with my kids).

So many good games, so little time...

Ugh, fighting off some illness.  They always know when to strike, right before important business travel and stressful meetings.  Hopefully nothing some Dayquil and chicken soup won't fix but it meant last night was nothing but collapsing on the couch and minimally playing Viva Pinata with the boys.  On the upside, I now have a Cinnamonkey, Doenut, and Sherbat in my garden!

We're putting together a presentation with a lot of data for an internal "project review", where we meet with various people in the organization, present a status update, etc.  As part of that our concept artists do some drawings to reinforce or illustrate some of the concepts that are only presented as words (typically for new features or significant unit lines coming up).  Sometimes we get in a kind of cycle where they are doing sketches and we're giving feedback and they send updated sketches in near realtime. 

I can't draw to save my life, and it just blows me away what these guys can do.  I wish I could share some of them with everyone here (someday!) ... but watching them just bring these images to life and change them around so quickly is just awe-inspiring.  It really is one of the purest expressions of the creative form, making something from nothing.  That's something I enjoy a lot when programming but it's so abstract compared to what our artists do.