Game Of The Year Picks: Midway's Alexander Brandon

As part of Gamasutra's end of year round-up, we've asked our readers to submit their choices for top three games of 2005, which we will publish over the next few days alongside picks from the Gamasutra staff. Today's first picks come from Midway's audio manager Alexander Brandon, the 'Aural Fixation' audio columnist for Game Developer magazine, whose top titles are as follows: "Darwinia combines the best of Molyneux (Populous) with the best of Bostic and Powell (Dune II, the first major RTS). It does this in a new kind of world and art style that gives it a feeling of uniqueness unrivaled in games today. God of War introduced, or at least revolutionized button mini-games within an action adventure experience that is unparalleled cinematically. It also is the ultimate realization of the age old cult hit Rygar, which is a triumph of uber-geeky proportions. Blitz: The League brought back what made Midway great in the 90s: take a genre and turn it on it's frickin' ear. NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat - even Pigskin 621 AD all are family to Blitz in this way... games provide a way of taking the user out of reality, or even creating a "super" reality, and Blitz took full advantage of this." Anyone else interested in answering this question should use the official Question Of The Week page until January 2, 2006. Respondents should ideally keep their answers under 500 words.