What a stellar year.

Or perhaps month - that being November 2004, and it will go down in the books as the month with the hype and the games that delivered. Really, take a look at this.

Halo 2. This one doesn't need much explanation. Just a great, great game. The single player trumps Halo 1's by ten and the multiplayer is unprecedented.

Half-Life 2. If ever a sequel to a six year old classic delivered exactly the same feeling of thrills and chills as the original, while pushing the genre - nay, the entire gaming technology world - ahead, well, this is it.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It's not stale, it's not pretentious, and no, it doesn't have Raiden either, so take a breather if you were a hater. The sixties setting is fabulous and not only makes the game feel fresh, it has more stealth gameplay than Splinter Cell can even fathom without ever getting frustrating, hard-to-see, or downright annoying. The colors, Duke, the colors!

Metroid Prime: Echoes. Admittedly, I'm not too geared up for it - I think by the time of Metroid Prime I was rather burnt out on Retro's take on Metroid in 3D - but fans of the first contest that this game is a dream come true. Forgettable multiplayer, sure, but I'm beginning to think I'll have to pick it up rather soon.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Yet another that little me hasn't played yet but will in due time, no one seems to be let down by this massive, dozens-upon-dozens of hours-long sequel. It's on my to-get list, and it's high up.

Katamari Damacy. This may have been technically October - I can't quite recall - but what a cool, original, innovative fun little romp that'll only run you twenty bones. We need more games like this.

Nintendo DS. Alright, so maybe the hype hasn't totally been justified, but I still feel a great future for this; the force is strong in this one. It's fairly comfy, nicely sized, the stylus works great and offers up loads of potential, and the microphone is...well... there. It's a shame the launch lineup is so "Ehhhh": A beefed up port of Mario 64 (a game that, as Sunshine notes, was only fun because of the play control behind it eight years ago), a fun-but-shortlived Sonic Team outing Feel The Magic, and... well... yeah. Where's Wario Ware, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime Hunters, and The New Mario Bros.? January? What the hell? I love the handheld, but the games are downright disappointing so far.

The great thing about Half-Life 2...

Is that it completely recaptures the feelings you got when you played through the original Half-Life.

Seriously. The game is not so revolutionary in it's technicalities as it is in its execution. What did Half-Life do for the FPS genre, anyway? Sure, I could list a few things, but compared to Wolfenstein 3D or hell, Quake, it didn't actually offer up so much NEW stuff as it did GREAT stuff.

And Half-Life 2's kind of the same way. We've seen some physics in games, we've seen total first-person control with absolutely no breaks before (actually, probably only in Half-Life 1, but Deus Ex came close, too), we've seen vehicle segments break up running-and-gunning (see Halo or maybe Perfect Dark), and we've seen some great animation (Wind Waker, Beyond Good & Evil...).

But no game melds all these aspects - better than they've ever been before and quite probably the best that we'll see in gaming until, well, Half-Life 3 - like this one. The physics are not only there, they're prominently there. You can pick up damn near anything you'd expect a normal human to be able to and throw it a logical distance... and when you get the gravity gun, you can pick up pretty much anything and launch it with a surprising but totally believable force. The character models are unbelievable - it seriously takes some convincing to tell yourself that these are not just ones and zeros in a line of code. Everything from their facial expressions to the realistic voicework would have you believe that this is as real as people get. And, well, the vehicles are at least as interesting as in Halo because you drive them all from a first-, not a third-person perspective. You literally never leave Gordon Freeman's point of view, just as in the first, and that adds a tremendous amount of... magic, or something.

Anyway, yes. It's bigger, it's badder, it's better, it's not perfect. It makes me happy just like Half-Life, it's addictive like Half-Life, and yes, Counter-Strike still manages to be peculiarly fun despite its simplicity. In many ways it's just like Half-Life, but that's also because it is extremely ambitious, innovative, and pulls it all off without a hitch.

Somehow, it all works, and it's all great.

To Be Continued...

I really liked Halo 2's ending. Which isn't THAT surprising, considering all the commotion about it being "different" and "bad" and "cliffhangery." In many ways it's a LOT like The Empire Strikes Back, and a few years later after Halo 3 is completed we'll look back and see just how damn good Halo 2's plot was. Because it IS damn good. There's just a lot of unknowns, and a lot that hasn't happened yet - and a lot of room for really interesting speculation.

Can you imagine how frustrating it must have been to realize that The Empire Strikes Back had a huge cliffhanger ending back when it came out? I mean, I'm sure some people loved it, but I would wager a lot of people really found it difficult to enjoy due to that. Now look, though - massive amounts of people, myself included, would consider it the best entry in the series. In part because of it's ending.

Just my little rant. What a great game; it truly surpassed my expectations as far as both single- and multi-player go. It's exponentially better than the great-but-overrated Halo 1, and actually reserves the ridiculous hype and incredible sales - assuming, of course, you can appreciate a well told story and maybe have a broadband connection.

How dumb.

I really hate certain things about Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. Now I haven't played the first, but wow. Talk about a really, really LAME plot, really poor cutscenes, some of the most awful voice acting I've heard in my life, and this notion that it's sort of cartoony and kids would eat it up. If I were a kid I would HATE this shit. It's like that Nickelodeon cartoon that plays at 7 PM and you only watch it because it's the only cartoon on TV... but it sucks. BADLY.

In other news, the game is actually quite fun. Love the power behind the guns.

I didn't get the shiny tin...

But no matter. Halo 2 rules. Since I felt like sharing my thoughts, here they are.

Halo 2 online is just awesome. Let's not beat around the bush: it's damn near perfect. No more worrying about get removed from your friends with the new party system - or for that matter, none of this "Pop into a single match and be done with it" crap that I've seen in some Live games. The lobby is great - the essentials are listed in a way that makes sense, with half the screen showing all playing party members, and the other half showing useful information about the match in one corner ("Team Slayer on Zanzibar", "Five Kill Limit", etc.) and useful information about the players in the other corner ("Waiting for Dreammastah to start the match", "Press X to delay the countdown"). The list of members is perfect with everyone's team color being the background color behind their name and a little symbol lighting up besides whoever's talking. I'm sure you really don't care about all this.

And then there are icons. What a simple but incredibly effective addition to the game. Everyone gets to create an icon of their own, with their own color choices and a symbol to their liking and so forth. This is pretty much displayed on every Friends list and so forth (and the fact that you can look at your Friends/Clan list ANY TIME while you are playing Halo 2 rocks) but is more useful than just that. During gameplay all of your teammates have their icons above their heads, which makes for easy recognition of enemies or friends from a distance, as well as simply knowing who is where. And since you can see icons even if you can't see the actual player, you can gain a lot of info without a lot of needless explanation. For example, if someone's shooting at them, their icon is highlighted red - leaving only "GUYS HELP!" from the previous "It's me, DX, I'm getting shot at and I'm in the sniping tower, GUYS HELP!" statement. It really just makes things flow a lot more smoothly.

Oh, and did I mention there's no lag AT ALL? Seriously, I haven't run into even a hint of it. It feels like an offline game, even with sixteen people from all over the world on a huge map. And I am not exaggerating even a little.

The only slight nag I have with the online mode is the proximity voice chat. It's a cool idea but it feels a bit too limiting; basically, you can only hear other people if you are within a certain distance from them. This does help alleviate confusing messages like "Go left, go left!" from your buddy who may be on the other side of the map entirely, but it also makes things a little more solitary on larger maps. By pressing the white button you CAN talk to your entire team from anywhere, but you can only talk to your team. If they would have included the option to talk to everyone, as well, or toggle off proximity talking, I would be a happy man. Alas, it's hardly a diminishing feature, and if it would mean sacrificing the incredible lag-free experience, then I would just say screw it.

Yeah, the offline mode is nice, too.