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Special Delivery!
Everyone likes to downplay the importance of looks in favor of personality, but when a non-talent like Paris Hilton is wildly rich and famous, we beg to differ. Sad truth or fact of life, looks mean a lot, and any gamer who tells you otherwise is an admirable filthy liar.
But unlike our youth-obsessed culture, 2005's prettiest faces came equally from its peppy upstarts and its aging stars. Though going big was all the rage, we watched with astonishment as visually stunning current-gen titles went about hamstringing the crystal clear giants like so many dead pixels.
 We're talking about the Xbox 360, of course, and its HDTV support. Indeed, the few who dropped roughly two grand to buy the rig, the TV and the games enjoyed some absolutely gorgeous games. The PC sports graphics to rival the 360's in games like F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2, but both of those titles require monster rigs, potentially costing as much as a 360 and HDTV to see in all their violent glory.
The Sony PSP costs considerably less than a PC or 360, but is still twice the price of the Nintendo DS - a system that has lately been outstripping Sony's viewtiful gizmo with several compelling games, none of which look too shabby.
But when it comes to the handy bang-for-buck ratio, 2005 didn't get any fairer than the startling number of pretty current-gen games. The brightest, shiniest stars of the current generation all came out in 2005, including God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Far Cry: Instincts, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and dozens of others that pushed their generation's graphical envelopes to new and wonderful levels of visual sweetness. Horsepower means little next to programming familiarity, it seems.
Console and handheld graphical bars were undoubtedly raised this year, and took the prices along with them. If you have a ton of money or are willing to mortgage your house, you too can bask in the ethereal glory of the year's alien screens. But if you don't, you can still enjoy the sexiest, most cinematic games yet on your current-gen consoles. Here's lookin' at you, PS2.
The Verdict?
Clearly, 2005 was another big year for gaming, but considering how much happened, very little actually changed. We're hoping for improvements in next year's version of this year, perhaps with more creative games and some serious next-gen competition. The coffee, though, probably can't get any hotter, Jack Thompson can't get any lamer, the sequels can't get any more sequential and the industry probably won't get any smaller. Those obsessed with owning every year out there shouldn't be afraid to plunk down cash for 2005, but we can't deny the wisdom in saving for '06.
+ Three new systems!
- One of them was the Game Boy Micro
+ Plenty of cool games
- Most of which were sequels
+ The next-gen arrived
- And it costs too much
- And it's not much better than the current gen
+ But here's to hoping that changes soon
+ Excellent scandals
+/- Featuring Jack Thompson
- EA owns the world
+ But not Bioware or Blizzard
+ We relaunched GR
- But it's full of bugs
+/- None of us really care anyway
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