Many attendants felt that this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo was the best to date since E3 started seven years ago. Besides the presence of so many great games at E3 2001, there was something different about it: There was less nonsense--fewer actors and actresses hired to hawk wares they'd never even heard of, and many more playable games on the show floor. To say the least, this was a positive development for the industry. Moreover, all the various great-looking games that were on display at E3 are a great sign of things to come. The sheer volume of impressive games at E3 made it challenging for GameSpot's editors to select the best of the best. But we have, and we present them in this, our annual Top Games of E3 awards feature.
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GameSpot reported live from
E3 2001, May 17-19. |
Previously we've chosen our top games of E3 by genre--we've selected the best strategy games, the best sports games, the best simulations, and so on. This year, we didn't want to restrict ourselves to following tradition or to confine ourselves to specific categories, as the various games present at the show were clearly skewed toward just a handful of specific gaming genres. Thus, you'll find that the 20 games we've selected reflect the most common genres on the PC. Yet we didn't select these games because of their genres--we selected them because they were the most impressive games at the show. These games collectively guarantee that PC gaming will be more exciting than ever in the months to come.
In choosing the top 20 games of E3, the criteria we considered included the game's existing achievements, its most promising elements, and of course, its original design. We also account for the ambitions and track records of the games' designers. We describe all these things in the following pages--and we also point out some of the challenges that each of these games will face during the remainder of their development cycles.
Though 20 games have been selected overall, at the end of this feature you'll also find that we've declared one of these the overall best game of E3--the game that's the single most promising of them all. And we've also selected a first runner-up and a second runner-up for the same reasons. Of course, all of these games deserve your attention. Without further ado, we present, in alphabetical order, GameSpot's top 20 PC games of E3 2001.
