PixlBit

2004 was a rough year for me. This was my freshman year of high school and the promise of change was quickly and repeatedly met with disappointment. I still count it as one of the worse years for me, personally, along with 2013 and 2016. 

So hey, games!

Metroid: Zero Mission honestly felt just as linear as Metroid Fusion to me, but with less story, so I've never understood why folks love it so much more than Fusion. Actually, it has less story and dialogue, so I just answered my own question.

Anyway, this was a MUCH easier game than the original 1987 enemies-follow-you-through-doors Metroid on NES, with an extra stealth mission added on the end for good measure. I consider it a pretty standard 2D Metroid, but I still played it plenty and being a standard 2D Metroid isn't a bad thing. I just don't love it as much as other people, but then that goes for most of this franchise.

I think these games are less mindblowing than they are addictive, as repeatedly getting the items in multiple playthroughs is kind of hypnotic and takes my mind off things for a while. 

I never cared about Steel Batallion, but I do remember images of that giant controller in Electronic Gaming Monthly. 

Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes  was awesome, because I didn't have to sneak around anyone to play it. I guess I prefer stealth in gaming to doing it in real life. I'm also much better at it in games, since the AI isn't quite so dumb in reality. 

I remember no one liking that they allowed you to go into first-person during the Ocelot fight, but thinking it was a nice change in every other scenario. I know there were other changes besides updated cutscenes (and I think they removed a woman's armpit hair?), but that's the one I remember cause I remember my brother coming in the room to say that defeated the purpose of that boss fight. 

Supposedly, Kojima was a huge Nintendo fan and that's how this got made. I noticed the Silicon Knights logo on the box cover as well, meaning I must have missed Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem somehow. Dammit. 

Sonic Heroes is one I rented with low expectations given the mediocre EGM reviews. But I figured Sonic Adventure 2: Battle wasn't all that well-received either and I still like that game, so why not give this a shot. 

All I can remember about it is the team gimmick getting in its own way by making controls confusing. At least this one focused on Sonic-style levels instead of forcing you to hunt for crystals with certain characters, but Sonic games' rosters should still be limited to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, maybe Shadow and Amy in my opinion. 

I remember Hitman being controversial and Chronicles of Riddick on XBOX being praised for its graphics and stealth gameplay, but I won't post pictures since I never actually played those. I also remember Driver 3 being called "Drive Threer" by EGM due to its logo (DRIV3R). 

Wikipedia is only mentioning Spider-Man 2 releasing on Windows this year, but I'm pretty sure it released to all consoles as well this year, so I'm putting it here. 

It's probably too repetitive now, but at the time the swinging mechanics were incredibly fun and really added weight to the game. Also, the Spidey Sense mechanic during fights preceded what Batman does in the Rocksteady games by a few years, so I don't know why people say the new Spider-Man game looks like it's ripping Arkham's combat. Sure, Arkham games perfected it, but it's not like the concept wasn't around before then. 

Anyway, the new SPider-Man trailer looks like it took the swinging mechanics from 2, so that's honestly what I'm most excited about it for. 

I also want to point out that the movies were a HUGE deal at the time and no one said a bad word about them until recently. It's fine if you like Homecoming better than the Raimi Spider-Mans, but don't act like you were the one person who saw through these and was just sooo far ahead of the crowd in what you were wanting from a Spider-Man movie. You liked these at the time. Shut up and accept it. 

Sly 2: Band of Thieves allowed you to play as the turtle and hippo more often than in the original and featured larger stages. Pretty much everyone considers it an improvement on the original. I didn't like it as much at the time, but have come around on it. 

I have yet to play the other Sly games.

I wasn't entirely sure if I'd rented Tony Hawk Underground 2 or not around this time, but I looked it up and

Oh yeah. I remember it. I think it must have been Underground 3 where I completely lost interest in the series, then. Even though I probably rented that too.

Killzone was meant as a challenge to the Halo series ... so that didn't pan out.

But lo and behold, I actually enjoyed an XBOX game when Halo 2 released and I started hanging out with some of the "bad" kids, doing better than I thought in multiplayer matches after going to downtown Dallas to watch local bands and drink alcohol underaged. 

Funny how well this summarizes 14-year-old me. Man, did I suck.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was a game whose presentation I thought was great. For me, the story seemed more compelling than the original and I've always liked dark mirror enemies like the evil Samus in this game. 

It's just too bad they limited your ammo and made you hide in bubbles whenever you were in the dark world. I don't know if it was ever as "hard" as people make it out to be, but it was certainly more tedious than necessary. 

There was also the penis monster, Amorbis. 

Spider-Man 2 also saw a DS release that was vastly different from the console game. I own it and actually like it fine, despite terrible reviews. I did get annoyed by the stupid Doc Ock level with all the equipment though.

There was nothing particularly unique or great about it, but it rarely made me upset and I didn't think it was nearly as bad as some of the scores for it would have you believe. Then again, I get why those bad reviews existed, since it is pretty damn generic. Still, it never bothered me that much and I've beaten it a handful of times. 

The DS also came with a demo of Metroid Prime: Hunters called Metroid Prime: First Hunt. It was a demo. That's all I can say.

Then we have Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

in which the guy on the left calls the woman on the right a bitch within the first ten minutes of gameplay and everything looks like a muddy Mortal Kombat stage and I just ... immediately lose interest. Not my Prince of Persia. 

It should be noted that this sequel outsold the original reboot by quite a few copies, so my interest in what other humans thought also began to wane around this year.

But hey, the Red Sox won the World Series this year ... which I was rooting for cause I figured if pigs could fly, I could get my personal life in better shape. That second thing did not happen. 

I know it's a shock to all of you I was a depressed teenager. I mean how on Earth could you have guessed. It's draining to talk about now. 

Here's a panda: