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[theBishop]

Hopefully, the last "Best-Of 2006" list we see, the webmaster of a gaming newsblog that will remain nameless (hint: it rhymes with "Cotaku") has announced the Golden Crecentes awards.

Here they are:

Game of the year
Gears of War (Xbox 360): Gears of War strives not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to perfect it. While this shooter may not be perfect, it certainly delivers an experience unrivaled by any other shooter to land on a console or PC this year.

Gears changes the way shooters look, shifting the focus to close combat and raising the value of story in a genre that, with some amazing exceptions, is often bereft of plot.
From the gritty, frenetic look of the game and its jouncing camera-angles, to the emphasis on small-team tactics, Gears is bound to have a lasting impact on both the genre and the industry.

RUNNERS-UP
Okami (PS2): Combining paint strokes with a fighting action title, this game has you guiding a white wolf through Japanese mythos as you use your controller to paint solutions to problems and create powerful attacks.

Dead Rising (Xbox 360): A reimagining of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, this game puts you in the role of a photographer stuck in a mall and forced to use anything he can find to kill off the swarm of zombies.

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS): Tapping into the fears of millions of aging Baby Boomers, this game promises to flex and hone your mental acuity with short brain teasers, memory tests, Sudoko problems and math quizzes.

Sequel of the year
Guitar Hero 2 (PS2): Packed with a controller designed to look like a Gibson, this game brings music to your air-guitar antics. Gamers play their way through the game’s impressive set list, pressing colored fret buttons and strumming a plastic dongle as they learn to master hammer-ons and pull-offs, creative use of the whammy bar and how to energize the crowd with a few guitar tosses and twirls.

This latest version brings a bass line duet to the multiplayer mix, improves on some of the mechanics and pays off gamers who beat the game with a chance to wail to Freebird.

RUNNERS-UP
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (all but DS version): Play through the best three movies in the Star Wars franchise lovingly recreated with Legos as you pop-off the plastic arms of Stormtroopers as Chewbacca or create your own heroes with spare parts.

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (Wii): Nintendo’s never-ending story continues, this time with motion controlled fishing, swordplay and slingshots.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360): The first real role-playing game to hit the Xbox 360, this game comes packed with at least a week’s worth of single-player gaming and the ability to buy add-on missions online.

Best driving game
Burnout Revenge (Xbox 360): This sequel to the smash-and-crash racer Burnout franchise eliminates the need to avoid most other traffic — including the vehicles heading straight at you — to create a faster paced, and much more explosive title.

While getting across the finish line in the urban races is sometimes the goal, often the objection is more about getting back at those that smashed your ride and making sure they can’t cross any sort of line.

RUNNERS-UP
Excite Truck (Wii): The merely adequate graphics are easy to overlook once you start using the motion sensing Wii remote to drive mud-slinging trucks around the morphing racetracks

Full Auto 2: Battlelines (Xbox 360, PS3): Partially destructible environments meet weapon-laden vehicles in this bullets and nitro racer.

Ridge Racer 7 (PS3): Improved drifting, high-definition graphics and motion control brings an appreciated level of polish to this much-loved arcade racer.

Best fighting game
God Hand (PS2): This misunderstood and under-appreciated 3-D brawler shines more for its darkly humorous adult storyline, absurdist character design and colorful art direction than it does from its comparatively staid gameplay mechanics.

You control a hero endowed with the hand — specifically the fist — of a god, capable of launching people into orbit with a single blow, or delivering a blur of spankings to naughty, leather-clad demonesses. It’s a must play for anyone who appreciates a little naughty with their nice.

RUNNERS-UP
Tekken Dark Resurrection (PSP): Not only is this the best old-school fighter (and one of the best games) to hit the PlayStation Portable last year, it’s also one of the best titles to hit the gaming scene. The developers managed to maintain the complex combos, slick graphics and liquid-fast action of the franchise on a portable.

Dead or Alive IV (Xbox 360): This early addition to the Xbox 360 stable was the first to show us just how beautiful and complex a fighter can be on a next-gen system.

Best indie game
Everday Shooter (PC): Feveloper Jonathon Mak looked to an eclectic mix of influences to create this old-school Asteroids-like shooter.

Some of the levels were inspired by other, similar games, others by film or music and one by his childhood memories of worms emerging from the earth during a steady rain.

What ties it all together is Mak’s strong design voice and decision to tie the music to either the game’s current actions or the players. If there is one indie game you check out this year, it should be Everyday Shooter.

RUNNERS-UP
Roboblitz (Xbox 360’s Live Marketplace): You control a roving robot as it takes on space pirates and other bots with inventive weapons in a physics-based action game. In other words, lots of stuff is going to be flying all over the place.

Armadillo Run (PC): You build structures under a budget and influenced by real-world physics in an attempt to move a balled-up armadillo from one side of the screen to the other.

Samorost 2 (PC): This title features a captivating plot and graphics that has you mousing around the screen in search of a way to solve a problem with what inevitably becomes a Rube Goldberg Machine.

Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game (PC): While the subject matter is painful and perhaps inappropriate and the message the developer hoped to deliver is muddled, this game shows that a serious subject matter need not be the sole purview of films.

Best portable game
New Super Mario Bros. (DS): I haven’t had this much fun with a game since the first Super Mario Bros hit the old Nintendo Entertainment system.

The portable version of one of gaming’s greatest franchises manages to both harken back to the classic look and feel of the old Super Mario Bros. games and lend enough of a twist to make the game fun and hard to put down.

A collection of unlockable mini-games adds to the length of the game, but not enough to take the sting away from such a short bit of fun.

RUNNERS-UP
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP): While several other titles have attempted to deliver the Metal Gear Solid experience to the PlayStation Portable, this is the first that succeeds. You can play through both a game reminiscent of the stealth action title or go online to play against other gamers in a twist of the genre.

Tetris DS (DS): Nothing beats Tetris besides, perhaps, Tetris played on two crisp screens against an opponent. Add a Mario-theme and you’ve got a wonderful puzzler that's hard to put down.

LocoRoco (PSP): Gaming boiled down to its essence, this title gives you control of a planet instead of the globular main characters that live on it, shifting the landscape to bump and roll the cute, singing creatures through a collection of fantastic landscapes.

Best rhythm game
Electroplankton (DS): Calling Electroplankton a rhythm game is a bit of a misnomer, since it’s not really a game and it doesn’t require rhythm to play.

Instead, this exercise in gameplay and music experimentation is more toy or virtual synthesizer. There’s no real gameplay limitations, objective, winning or losing. Instead you play with a collection of tiny protozoa, using your stylus or the DS’s built-in microphone to manipulate the six varieties of creatures and, in turn, the music they produce.

RUNNERS-UP
Elite Beat Agents (DS): Sort of like a handheld version of Dance Dance Revolution this game has you tapping out the beat to popular songs on a touchpad with your stylus instead of a multi-colored dance floor with your feet.

Guitar Hero 2 (PS2): Yeah, it’s essentially the same as the original Guitar Hero. But with beefier multiplayer and a better set-list, it would have taken this category too.

SingStar Rocks! (PS2): This refined karaoke game precisely judges your sense of tone and tempo as you try to sing on your own or as part of a duet to popular songs.

Best strategy game
Company of Heroes (PC): World War II has been frequent fodder for gaming, but no title has so aptly captured the ferocity of the battles that shaped the war to end all wars quite like Company of Heroes.

Company of Heroes zeroes in on this war and its ground units, delivering an amazingly detailed and strategically challenging experience. Everything from the destructible environment to a unit’s use of cover and ability to pin down or flank an enemy makes this game infinitely playable.

RUNNERS-UP
Medieval 2: Total War (PC): Part turn-based strategy, part real-time strategy, this medieval military simulator has you thinking big picture while commanding your pieces across a 3-D board while in charge of the real-time battles.

Star Wars Empire at War (PC): This real-time strategy lets you take command of the light side or the dark in the galactic struggle to topple the other side. The subject matter is what makes this game, though the ability to play on a galactic level and then drop down to the planetary battles is pretty cool too.

Field Commander (PSP): One of the best games to hit the PlayStation Portable, this title comes with a robust single player campaign and intelligent virtual opponents. The addition of online multiplayer, turn-based games pushes this title over the top and makes it a must-have for anyone with a PSP.

Best shooter
Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3): On its surface, Resistance looks like any other shooter, but it doesn’t take long to notice the game’s devilish attention to detail. Startled pigeons can be shot from the sky, hedgehog grenades fill the screen with lovingly detailed steel quills and the battle between computer controlled good guys and bad ones rages on with or without you.

By far the most amazing thing about this game is its ability to support up to 40 players in one online match, the largest of any console shooter.

RUNNERS-UP
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360): This shooter successfully combines fast-paced urban combat with futuristic, but still realistic military operations and introduces real-time picture-in-picture video that lets you see what your teammates are seeing.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas (Xbox 360): Vegas lets you work the subtleties of covert ops: rappelling, sticking to cover and blind-firing. This is also the first 360 title to let you map your real face to a playable character using the Vision Camera.

Battlefield 2142 (PC): Endless rolling combat set in a futuristic world of customizable grunts, jet helicopters and walking tanks. Strategy meets shooter in this visually amazing game.

Best action
Dead Rising (Xbox 360): There’s no nice way to put this: The thing that makes Dead Rising such a blast is the plentiful ways in which you can kill what is already dead. I spent hours trying to decimate the hundreds of zombies shuffling toward me in the mall with golf balls, mannequin torsos, lawn mowers, CDs, potted plants, shopping carts, toy guns, Frisbees, baseball bats, chainsaws ...

I spent just as much time trying to dress them up in silly costumes without getting nabbed by their outstretched hands or snapping teeth and then taking pictures of the unsettling results.
I believe there may have been a plot in here as well, but I never really got around to that.

RUNNERS-UP
Bully (PS2): Nevermind the hoopla; this is essentially Rockstar’s attempt to recapturing its collective misspent high school years. But this time, you actually get a chance to kiss that cheerleader or stand up to that bully.

Okami (PS2): It’s hard to categorize what makes this game so original and amazing to play. Perhaps its use of traditional Japanese single-stroke brush painting makes its sublime content more worthy of an award in art direction or design.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii): This is an amazing GameCube game, but that level of splendor doesn’t quite carry through on the Wii port, where developers essentially tacked on motion controls to a game that didn’t need it.

Best sports game
Table Tennis (Xbox 360): With no successful model to follow, the Rockstar team looked toward fighting games for inspiration. While that may not make sense, play the game for a while and you’ll recognize the back-and-forth, the defend-and-attack model of most good fighting games peeking its way around the spin of the ball and the placement of your character.

Rockstar so perfectly balanced the game that it transcends both the sport and the console, becoming a game that is essentially only about timing and distance, the essence of all sports.

RUNNERS-UP
Madden NFL 07 (Wii): The careful use of motion control, blended with the Madden franchise’s obsession with realism and detail make for a football game that is enjoyable for everyone, fan or not of the real sport.

Fight Night 3 (PS3, Xbox 360): Fight Night removes all distractions from its already honed and intuitive fighting controls, making players watch and listen for cues like the ring of a bell or the torpidity of a swing to determine how much time is left in a round or how well a fighter is doing.

Best party game
Wii Sports (Wii): This Wii freebie makes up for its light plot and less-than-intricate play mechanics by inspiring gamers to get physical. Players got so into the game they were actually breaking televisions, lamps, and each other's faces.

RUNNERS-UP
Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii): This pack of motion-controlled party games gets gamers up and out of their seats as they compete to see who can throw the cow furthest, or shoot the most bunnies with plungers.

Guitar Hero 2 (PS2): Freebird! Freebird! Freebird!

Super Monkey Ball Touch and Roll (DS): While the main game is more of the same, rolling a ball-encased monkey around sloped fields in an attempt to gather bananas, the mini-games are inspired.

Best platformer
LocoRoco (PS2): The first game that feels like it was designed to be played on the PlayStation Portable and only the PSP. You use the right and left triggers to rotate the world side-to-side, and roll the gelatinous heroes of the game around, over and through the world in a quest to find their siblings. The only thing I like more about LocoRoco than the controls are the addictive music written in the game’s nonsense language.

RUNNERS-UP
Daxter (PSP): Finally, Jak’s mouthy sidekick gets his own game, and it’s a doozy. Packed with plenty of jumping, exploring and fly swatting, this slick platformer owes much of its success to its faithful adherence to the genre’s roots.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS): Packed with plenty of role-playing elements and a deep storyline, this lengthy throwback to the Castlevanias of old lets you switch characters on the fly in your quest to defeat Dracula.

Ultimate Ghosts N Goblins (PSP): The only game I’ve played that made me want to throw the PlayStation Portable across the room in one instant and forgo sleep to keep playing in the other. Ultimate Ghosts N Goblins adds 3-D graphics to the side-scroller gameplay, but still has you playing as an armor-shedding knight out to rid the world of demons.

http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/freePlay/2007/01/golden_crecentes_games_of_the.html#more

Actually, this is one of the best lists i've seen for 2006.

Discuss away (or lock)