Game of the Year 2004 Awards: Biggest Disappointment
Myrthos, 2005-02-22

The last couple of weeks you could vote for the best RPGs and MMORPGs that have been released in 2004. Not us but you the player decide who receives the RPGDot 2004 Awards in the various categories. We thank all those who entered their votes and helped us in making it possible to select the best games of 2004.

Biggest Disappointment RPG
Somehow you expected a game to be better in more than one way. The game that ends up in the biggest disappointment RPG category.

The winner: Deus Ex 2 - Invisible War
One of the cruelest jokes ever perpetrated on a devoted community of gamers, Deus Ex: Invisible War basically took everything good about the first (and beloved) Deus Ex and stripped it out in a desperate attempt to increase the game's appeal. While this made sense in marketing terms, it had the unfortunate side effect of making the game, well… incredibly boring. For a game that supposedly emphasized player choice and alternate paths, Deus Ex: Invisible War had precious little of either, and the questionable design choices turned the game into little more than a tightly railed shooter. Sour taste in my mouth, thy name is Deus Ex: Invisible War.

(Limesix)

Runner Up: Beyond Divinity
While Beyond Divinity won a place in one of our other categories, many other players were disappointed with Larian's follow-up to Divine Divinity. There are likely two main tales to this story - the first is overwhelmingly one that players really wanted more Divine Divinity - or at least the elements that made the original Divinity stand out. For many, Divinity's greatest strength - a large, open gameworld and a reasonable degree of non-linearity - was lost with Beyond Divinity's smaller, linear Acts and tighter storyline. In addition, many players probably missed the world of Rivellon, which managed to find a balance between familiar fantasy elements and its own identity. The second tale is one of a developer listening too closely to the fans: after heeding the calls from some vocal fans for party-based combat, many discovered to their dismay that it simply didn't suit the action combat model espoused in Larian's games

(Dhruin)

Second Runner Up: Vampire - Bloodlines
Ah, the annual conundrum when a game is similarly represented in the Best, Biggest Surprise and Most Disappointing categories. In the case of Vampire: Bloodlines, however, the reason is abundantly clear: for all of those players drawn in by the brilliant writing and immersive atmosphere, others were mired in bugs, poor performance that reduced some areas to slide-shows, linear structure and depressing combat sequences at the end. For those whom these issues became overwhelming, it's likely some relatively minor issues started to grow in proportion, such as some poor textures, repeated models and empty locations - apart from that ubiquitous dentist chair, of course.

(Dhruin)

The Numbers
To make it complete we now give you the top 10 as voted by our visitors:

And 18% of the voters didn't have a clue about what to select.

The team members list shows something completely different:

List of the awards
Awards on RPGDot:
Best graphics
Best Sound and Music
Biggest Surprise
Biggest Disappointment
Most Anticipated
Dream Game
Best Console RPG
Best Non-RPG
Best RPG

Awards on MMORPGDot:
Best graphics
Best Sound and Music
Biggest Surprise
Biggest Disappointment
Most Anticipated
Dream Game
Best Expansion MMORPG
Best MMORPG

Note that percentages are rounded to the nearest number.