14 DAY TRIAL // 
For me, 2005 was the year of small disappointments. Why am I saying that? Almost every game that came out was sub par. They simple produced too much hype before the launch and when they finally hit the computers, most players were unhappy.
There are two major problems in the gaming industry today.
One is the involvement of publishers in the work of developers. They don't intervene just in modifying the release schedule; they even have a word in the development process, so the finished product is more commercial and less fun.
The other is the publishers' financial interest of porting the games from one platform to another instead of building separate games for each one, hence the crappy looking titles.
As you can see, publishers are now the boogie-man of the industry. They are evil because they are no longer game players; they are just a bunch of accountants looking to do a quick buck on the back of naive gamers who desperately hope that the old days will return. Well boys and girls, that isn't going to happen.
To prove my point I'm going to take some examples from the year that just passed by. Don't get me wrong, we had some good games, but most of them where sold just because of their name and reputation. Let's take a look!
RPG: We only had a few important games from this category and I'm going to name three:
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords This title benefited from an excellent story, which is a rare resource in these perilous times for PC games. With a huge variety of items, armors and weapons, it kept any fan stuck to the monitor for days and days. The down side is that the graphics engine didn't suffer any major modifications so it practically looked exactly like the first in the series which was released in 2003. The reason? It had to appear on a console so any major modification for the PC could have led to a significant extra work and money.
Dungeon Siege 2 Chris Taylor worked at this game, but his name on the cover is not enough. When you use the same engine, concept and even items from a game that was released three years ago, it can't be good. Although it should have been a beautiful and innovative game, it was just a boring disappointment. Next?
Fable: The Lost Chapters Even if it had a third person view (most of the time) I've decided to include it here because of the game mechanics that make the game an RPG. We know it had a great success on the Xbox so the natural course of nature is to port it to the PC. You are part of a guild of heroes and the concept of mission distribution is really interesting, even if the levels are quite linear, but was the farting really necessary? Did I mention that Peter Molineax is the god of this game? It should make sense now. A combination of life sim with a medieval RPG in third person? Nope? skipping.
FPS This should be interesting since there was an abundance of important games launched.
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and Brothers in Arms: Earned In Blood The first one was interesting with a good story and innovative gameplay. The Unreal Engine did it job and gave us a game to remember. The second one isn't a second one. Except for the voice and the new face of the character, the developers got bored in introducing new features and just did a remake-like game. It was the same only it had different sizes. And guess what? It's on the consoles too?
Star Wars: Republic Commando Just another franchise mediocrity? Actually no, this was a well built title, with a lot of fun and a ton of cool gameplay features never seen before. What ruined its way to the top of the 2005 games was the unequal difficulty, sometimes too easy, sometimes too hard and the textures that screamed PS2 and Xbox at every step.
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil You could call it Resurection of the Four Headed Hydra, it doesn't matter, people will buy Doom. But just buy, because is no better than Doom 3 even with all the new features (like the take-box-from-floor-and-throw-it-at-the-enemy manipulator they stole from Gordon Freeman while he was resting for the next game).
SWAT 4 The first mission I played was cool, but then came the second and the third. You start to think that the AI is ? stupid? The more you played the stupider they become. It was like a stupid time machine. I rest my case.
Quake 4 It has a 4.0 L, 3000 cubic centimeter and 8V cylinder engine from Doom 3. It will bring your computer to his knees. It had fun gameplay, poor AI, short and uninteresting story. Good for weekends - will not last in the memory of the collective.
F.E.A.R First Encounter Assault Recon is the name of the FPS of the year. You couldn't find a better atmosphere anywhere, creepy and yet familiar. This is the work of Monolith, the ones who are believed to have developed what is considered to be, even today, the most scariest game of all times, Aliens vs. Predator. There is no surprise in FEAR being such a good game, even if the level design was totally unprofessional.
Call of Duty 2 I saved this one for the last because if someone would ask me this is the title I would choose for the game of the year. Just exquisite.
THIRD PERSON SHOOTER I have two good and two bad.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory The best of the series, it has probably the greatest looking engine out there. Beautifully rendered levels, perfect gameplay? just a small problem, the AI: too scripted and works exactly like the enemies from the Commandos series. No brain what so ever, just ears, a pair of eyes and a line of sight.
Price of Persia: The Two Thrones This game has a beautiful story and a great ending for a saga that's been going on for years. The Prince has more moves, more agility and bigger boss battles. What is doesn't have is a proper engine. Even though it uses the same one from over three years ago, with no improvements, it's still one of my favorites this year. But let's not forget the reason for such crappy 2005 graphics; you guessed it? consoles!
Stolen Many of you don't really remember Stolen. You start to remember games when you play them, but when you can't even move through the first level because the framerate is worse than running Doom 3 on a GeForce 2 card, you just want to forget.
Driver 3 What driver? Just drive out of here! This game is so bad I can't even find the words to describe it.
RTS Not what they used to be? or should I say, exactly what they used to be.
Age of Empires 3 This is exactly what it says, an Age of Empires game but with the number changed. Nothing really new, except for some beautiful graphics that weren't enough to make it worth while. I am really getting tired of peasants in RTS games
Black and White 2 Yes, this is a different game from the first one, but not in a good way. From a beautiful and mysterious game, it's transformed into an Excel sheet, with numbers and calculations. A mathematic failure.
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident This is by far the best strategy game of the year. It rules at graphics, gameplay and even has a challenging story. If you put the action on a TV set you could swear it's a SF movie night. For some strange reason this game remained unknown to the general public.
OTHER CATEGORIES
We have to mention a single RACING GAME and that's Need for Speed Most Wanted. This arcade style title captured a lot of kids with its looks and cars. But you have to wonder: is this the best game we can get? Is this the best the industry has to offer? If so, we really have a problem.
In the QUEST section there is also a single really good title and that's Fahrenheit. A weird and yet interesting game with one of the best stories of the year makes this the ultimate quest in 2005 and even makes it the One and only. All others are just some attempts with no real chance.
The last on our list is the sole important TBS representative: Civilisation IV. This Sid Meyer game is probably the single one that really rose to the expectation of the general public. It is just a near perfect game. The only problem is the memory leaks that have plagued the game prior to the patch.
CONCLUSION And that's about it. I'm not sure if this was a good year for the game industry even if we had a lot of titles released, because most of them didn't have the value we wanted. I tried to gather in this list the best and some of the worst games that came out in 2005. I also tried to show you that the publishers' involvement in the developing process only makes everything worse. I would like to sum up with this phrase (a small modification of a Murphy's law): "The games are multiplying every year but the quality remains the same".
