The Top Games of E3 2001
And Now, The Best Games of E3

Now that you've seen our 20 top games of the show, we're proud to present to you the three games we selected as the very best of them all. Like all the others, these games were selected for their innovation, their design, and their likelihood to be successful. We also gave priority to those games that were recently unveiled, yet have already shown tremendous progress. In the end, even more so than the 17 other games mentioned in this feature, the following three games seem virtually guaranteed to be monumental achievements once they're finally finished. If only because their respective designers are well aware of the high stakes of these projects, we feel that the following three games are especially worth looking forward to. We now present them in order of second runner-up, first runner-up, and finally, the best overall game of the show.

Second Runner-Up (Silver)
Age of Mythology

In terms of a combination of inventive game design, technical excellence, attention to detail, and attention to audience, we found no better example at E3 2001 than Age of Mythology, Ensemble Studios' follow-up to its highly acclaimed real-time strategy game, Age of Empires II. First shown at E3 2001, Age of Mythology already looks spectacular. It draws many tried-and-true design elements from its predecessor, including some of its historical context, only it melds these elements with an instantly familiar fantasy theme, taken from countless classic myths and legends that remain culturally significant many thousands of years after they originated.

As with many great games in the making, Age of Mythology is equal parts innovation and the result of its developers' painstaking attention to delivering exactly what its fans want. The designers are concentrating both on the single-player and multiplayer aspects of Age of Mythology, and the results should prove to be as surprising as they are impressive.

First Runner-Up (Gold)
The Sims Online

No other game at E3 2001 seemed as guaranteed to be a surefire hit as The Sims Online, the forthcoming massively multiplayer version of Will Wright's incredibly popular people simulator. The game takes the strongest elements of The Sims--namely, that game's social interaction features--and greatly expands upon them. You might first assume that The Sims Online lacks the same sort of creative spark that made The Sims seem so original--after all, The Sims Online is clearly derivative of its namesake. And yet the design decisions in the making of The Sims Online are every bit as ingenious as those that made the original game so remarkably successful.

Already, online games have clearly established themselves as being essential to the PC gaming market. But it'll take a game like The Sims Online, which will be extremely easy to play yet also very versatile and appealing, to make online gaming transcend its current boundaries to become the way in which a majority of people will prefer to play games.

The Best Game of E3 2001 (Platinum)
Star Wars Galaxies

Of all the games shown at E3 2001, Star Wars Galaxies is absolutely the most ambitious game of them all. The small audience that witnessed the unveiling of the game quickly fell into a hushed silence when the game was finally shown--silence that was only interrupted by the occasional gasp of amazement. Word quickly spread about Star Wars Galaxies, thanks to these astonished spectators, and skeptics, most of whom didn't actually see the presentation, were quick to try to undermine the excitement by noting that for all of Star Wars Galaxies' promises, very little of the actual gameplay was shown during the presentation.

This is true. However, between the obvious technical brilliance of the game engine, the sheer experience of the designers, the cleverness in many of the design concepts, and the ambition of LucasArts to make Galaxies its flagship product, we felt that all the intense excitement over the unveiling of Galaxies was justified. We're proud to declare it the best game of E3 2001, and we hope to bring you much more information on this important project in the months to come.
 

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