Neverwinter Nights 2 #5 for GameSpy's Game of The Year

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GameSpy has revealed the list of games for the yearly Game of the Year feature. Neverwinter Nights 2 is #5 on the general list (Company of Heroes wins it all, Oblivion is the top RPG and Guild Wars: Nightfall is the top MMORPG). Here's what it says next to the picture of that female Gith (?) with a big sword and small brassiere:

Like many lifelong devotees of the computer RPG, we here at GameSpy think back longingly to the days when games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment were plentiful. This is why we were so pleased with how Neverwinter Nights 2 turned out. It provides a single-player campaign nearly on par with the genre's hallmarks, with the added promise of infinite expandability.

Like all great RPGs, Neverwinter Nights 2 has at its core a strong story and a cast of interesting characters. Set in one of the more exciting areas of the popular Forgotten Realms campaign world, the narrative draws from some of the more exotic corners of the Dungeons & Dragons mythos, which is sure to delight fans of the venerable pen-and-paper RPG. The story travels far and wide, and as you'd expect, your humble beginnings belie the fact that your character has a grand destiny to fulfill. With the help of an unlikely group of friends -- who, with a bit of effort, you could coax into opening up some cool side-quests -- you'll learn more about your own unique heritage, eventually rising high enough in stature to occupy an enviable rung in the social ladder of the Realms: master of a fortified keep smack in the crossroads of the Sword Coast.

Also, Khelgar Ironfist from Neverwinter Nights 2 wins as the best character:

Khelgar is crazy. There's really no other way to describe him. He's an exiled member of the Ironfist clan of dwarves and he's the first character players meet in the official campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2. It's immediately obvious during the first conversation what Khelgar's role is comic relief. After all, what other role could a crazy dwarf who lives for nothing but fighting fulfill? Even better, the reason he's on the road is because he wants to become a monk. It's not that he's looking for any kind of spiritual fulfillment, it's that a monk beat the stuffing out of him in a bar fight bare-handed and he wants to learn his techniques.

Read the rest at GameSpy.

If you're interested in a different point of view, you can check out the criticism at RPG Codex. Do you think GameSpy is impartial and Codex is being malcontent, or perhaps Codex is right and GameSpy fails to keep it real?

I tend to think RPG Codex has much of a point, actually. Let's take a look at what GameSpy says about Day 1 patches:

We understand that PC games are complicated beasts and people are always going to encounter unique problems, but it's become clear that several publishers have made a quiet policy of "release now, patch immediately." When was the last Battlefield game that didn't have a Day One patch? Almost every Tom Clancy game released for PC seems to have major issues out of the box, including Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Splinter Cell Double Agent, and the just-released Rainbow Six: Vegas. These are two brands that were once cornerstones of PC gaming, and they're now shadows of their former selves. Maybe even more discouraging is the fact that we're starting to see this sloppiness creep into console titles as well. It's up to gamers to Just Say No or else this is a trend that won't end anytime soon.

They don't just describe a tendency. They give concrete titles. And they don't mention Neverwinter Nights 2, which wins #5. So?

 

looks like I'm not the only one to find it strange that in spite of a generally poor reception from the community (fanboys aside), nwn2 was almost universally praised by the gaming press
makes you wonder who they are there for doesn't it?

 

It does.