Fragland Crew & Community Choice Awards 2004: “Platform”

Posted May 22, 2012 by Leentjes - 0 comments

In our previous Fragland Crew Awards 2004 you could check out which games received the special and genre awards from the crew but in this third and last part we announce which games are the best sorted by platform and which game is thé best of 2004!

Next to that you also get to read which games you, the visitors of our forums, have elected for the Fragland Community Choice Awards as the best of the best of the unforgettable year twothousand and four!

We’ll start with the XBox and end with the all platform winner.

Best Xbox game

Winner Crew Award: Halo 2
Winner Community Choice: Halo 2

The start is good as both the crew and our visitors found the sequel to the best selling XBox game ever the deserved winner. Although Chronicles of Riddick and Burnout 3 were nifty competition the Master Chief went home with the medal.

The crew of course finds that our visitors are big “connaisseurs” since they too agreed that Bungie delivered a pearl. Even the huge hype surrounding the game was found. Though the singleplayer (especially the story and the ending) disappointed some people we still can’t deny this game is great: graphics, sound, gameplay, enough innovations like dual wielding and vehicle jacking, the unprecedented co-op play and the A.I. from the opponents create a package no other XBox game can compete with.

Add to that the best XBox Live options and possibilities ever (I stil haven’t tried them all) and a truly fantastic support from Bungie and even the biggest Microsoft hater will have to admit this game is an example for other developers. Also the accompanying website with details of each finger movement during the game, each kill, each clan war, each medal, is now a standard every future online game (not only on console) will have to match.

Best GC game

Winner Crew Award: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Winner Community Choice: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Again both the crew and the community vote alike! Either you are truly brilliant or we know our community inside and out. Another explanation, which I personally believe most, can of course also be that this game has all the strong points of the Gamecube in it (like originality, atmosphere, creativity) and combines this with a (over here) less known franchise.

MP2 may be a sequel but one that has an appealing game character that hasn’t been over-used by Nintendo. The latter is what the Gamecube suffered from this year, and although this strategy delivered some beautiful games (think Paper Mario 2) I can imagine a lot of cube owners are urging for some new faces and worlds.

Yet another explanation is that our winner delivers beautiful gameplay with excellent graphics and thanks to the new light/dark elements has enough innovation on top of the perfectioning of the elements of its predecessor. On top of that it also helps that the main character is played by Samus Aran, a tougher, more beautiful and cooler babe than Lara ever was. We want more of the girl!

Best PS2 game

Winner Crew Award: GTA: San Andreas
Winner Community Choice: GTA: San Andreas

It’s getting boring a bit: also this time your choice is the same as ours! To be honest, on the PS2 we had expected this. Who would have dared to put their money on anything else than the new GTA ? For months the hype couldn’t get any bigger and the PS2 fanboys only talked in slang, preparing for new cool adventures with CJ (euhm, and HL2 didn’t get hyped or anything ? – Zwan)

It must be said: Rockstar didn’t disappoint. They’ve cramped out of the PS2 what can be cramped out, and that was quite a lot. An immense game world, lifelike characters with top voice-acting by great actors like Samuel L. Jackson, a gripping storyline and of course unprecedented freedom. On top of that they understand as no other developer the art to make a game with “attitude”.

Oh well, this game is just complete and it’s the well-deserved winner on this console. On top of that it will probably become the most talked about game in real-life court rooms. Maybe we should think of an award for that for next year!

Best PC game

Winner Crew Award: Half-Life 2
Winner Community Choice: Half-Life 2

Almost every newsposter and reviewer from our crew is a PC gamer amongst others. It need to surprise that the discussion for this award resulted in a nice round of furious boxing. The final winner however is less surprising that the fact that Frofro is no longer in elementary school: Half-Life 2 is a monument amongst FPS games. You obviously thought the same as again both opinions are equal.

Should I elaborate on this game? There’s so many virtual ink already spilled on it that even people who have never checked out Gordon Freeman can perfectly tell you how the game is, how divine the gameplay is, how fantastic the physics have been implemented in the puzzles and weapons (with Gravity Gun as ultimate digital orgasm for the physics freak), how life-like the characters act and talk and how subtle the storyline is brought forward. Despite the bumpy development cycle and some Steam server crashes during the launch you can’t but acknowledge this game is more than worth its money, if only for the singleplayer already.

Now about everyone has seen the campaign and probably has played it for the second time it’s waiting for the numerous mods that no doubt will come popping up all over. We can only hope that there will be some great ones like with Half-Life 1 (think Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress). FPS games were king in PC-land in 2004 and even World of Warcraft will not be able to change that in 2005.

Best game of 2004

And then it is now the time for the most important Award of them all: thé best game of 2004 across all platforms.
For the crew this was an immensely hard nut to crack, especially because two competitors, Half-Life 2 and GTA: San Andreas, both deserved the price for us. The talks about this even resulted in such an endless discussion that my dictatorial decisions didn’t get accepted and we had to go to a vote!
For the first time in the history of Fragland the enlightened desptism wasn’t able to call the chaotic bunch of irregulars (that we call “crew”) to order, and after yours truly had punched Zwan’s corner tooth out of the poor blokes mouth, a poll was started and then the overdeserved victory went to GTA: San Andreas from Rockstar Games! (that b|0-0|n had gotten a severe shoulder fracture after the fight with me he doesn’t tell you. I gladly gave my tooth for that! – Zwan)

Our visitors, whose IQ must be infinitely higher than, let’s say Zwan (Hey, that’s below the belly! Oh well, you like it there hey, especially with DoubleD – Zwan.), chose for the PC- and FPS-game of the year, Half-Life 2 (Valve – VU Games) as best allround game of 2004. And who are we to contradict the people ?

A well-meant and big congratulations to all our winners and nominated games! Thanks to them this was no doubt a great year for us, gamers, and we hope that the developers will bring us an equally strong lineup in 2005 while still continue to support the communities of the games from this year.

GG all!

Crew Award Best Game of 2004: GTA: San Andreas
Community Choice Award Best Game of 2004: Half-Life 2

Aggressivity and games Interview with Tim LeTourneau