Level of the Year -- "Titan of the Emperor" from Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -- Winter AssaultIt may seem a bit unusual to award the "Level of the Year" to what was essentially four different levels of a game, but allow us to explain. Winter Assault's campaign allows the player to control the destinies of Chaos, the Orks, the Eldar, or the game's new race, the Imperial Guard, as they battle each other on the miserable ice-world of Lorn V for a weapon of incalculable power -- a fully operational Imperial Titan war machine. Depending on which side they choose, "Chaos" or "Order," they'll get to follow the same storyline from four different perspectives as four mighty armies converge on the location of the Titan -- and there's no prize for second in this kind of race. The final mission of both campaigns -- our Level of the Year -- is a bit unusual. In the penultimate mission, the player gets to choose which race they want to reach the Titan. No matter which race they choose, the final mission is the same for each race: a challenging struggle to seize and defend the Titan from the two races from the opposite campaign, plus a special cameo by an ultra-cool enemy who hasn't yet been seen in a Dawn of War game. Although the name of the mission changes depending on which race you happen to be playing, the map is exactly the same.  This final mission is brilliant in a number of ways. First, it's a defensive mission that forces the player to rally around static points, which provides an exciting challenge in a game that usually focuses on movement and aggression. Second, this challenge quadruples once the player realizes that they'll also have to adjust their tactics as they switch from race to race. It's a little easier as the Imperial Guard, a race built more for defense than the other Warhammer 40,000 races, but to fight a defensive war as the stick-and-move Eldar, a race that tends to be a pushover in any kind of a stand-up battle, can be an incredibly hard. Kudos to Relic Entertainment, who managed to turn the final mission of Winter Assault's single-player campaign into a uniquely fun and fresh strategic challenge. Best Story -- F.E.A.R.In many games, especially first-person shooters, the story is often an afterthought. At best, you might get a few twists and turns and some interesting characters. With F.E.A.R., however, developer Monolith aimed a lot higher, and succeeded. From the very first scenes, your character is thrust into the middle of an original horror-mystery that would be hard to pull off in any other medium. As the latest addition to an elite military squad trained in dealing with the paranormal, you're sent into action to neutralize an experiment gone awry -- a psychic commander in charge of a clone army who's gone completely AWOL. Things quickly go from strange to bizarre as you begin having strange visions and cross paths with a creepy little girl as you continue on your mission. On the first pass, a lot of it doesn't make sense, and you'll often question whether the story's headed anywhere. But not only are the major questions all answered by the end, but it turns out you've been fed clues from the very beginning; visions and whispers that originally appear to be random bits of filler take on deeper, purposeful meaning upon further playthroughs.  It's often said that we're still waiting for a video-game's equivalent of Citizen Kane or Casablanca to come along. That may be true, but with F.E.A.R., we have our The Sixth Sense - a story that plays out completely different once you know all its secrets. It's rare enough that a game developer even attempts a story this ambitious, let alone succeeds to this degree - if you've only played through F.E.A.R. once, you owe it to yourself to experience the story again in an entirely new light.
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