98 has some of my favorite games to ever come out, like:
- Marvel vs. Capcom
- 1080 Snowboarding
- NFS3 Hot Pursuit
- Tekken 3
- Starcraft + Brood wars
- Commandos
- Fifa 99
- Pokemon
- Fallout 2
- Half Life
- Ocarina of Time
- Baldur’s Gate
And many more
Did a quick search because I don’t remember what year games came out. Lol.
Turns out IMDB had a decent list and 2004 was a fantastic year.
1.Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
2.Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
3.Yume Nikki
4.Half-Life 2
5.Silent Hill 4
6.Cave Story
7.Katamari Damacy
8.Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
2008 for me.
Fallout 3 GTA IV Burnout Paradise FarCry 2 Little Big Planet Dead Space Smash Bros Brawl Left 4 Dead Fable 2 Gears of War 2 Mario Kart Wii Star Wars: Force Unleashed Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Rock Band 2 Civilization Revolution Tomb Raider: Underworld Call of Duty: World at War
98 was incredible, besides all the ones OP mentioned they missed:
- Metal Gear Solid
- Sonic Adventure
- Resident Evil 2
- Sonic Adventure
- Grim Fandango
- Caesar III
- Unreal
Surely one of the best years, only possibly beaten by 2004:
- Half Life 2
- MGS3
- GTA: San Andreas
- Ninja Gaiden
- Halo 2
- World of Warcraft
- Doom 3
- Killzone
- Fable
- Burnout 3: Takedown
- Lumines
- Far Cry
So many amazing games!
Not going to lie, it feels like games have just gotten significantly worse, and less frequent, since then. I don’t think we’ve seen 2004’s quantity of good games since 2004. The best games since then, in my opinion, would be:
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Sid Meier’s Civilization V
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (RIP Elder Scrolls thanks to the Xbox acquisition of Bethesda, btw. Shoutout to a fucking useless FTC.)
- Grand Theft Auto V (honestly, was this really any better than its predecessors?)
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Elden Ring
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
So…yeah 2004 had in one year more high quality games than have released since then.
I think expectations have grown astronomically since 2004, budgets have ballooned, graphical fidelity and animation quality has skyrocketed, development team headcounts have gone through the roof and many games just have more systems than they did before.
Games are less frequent because they take a lot longer to make, I read the other day that Halo 2 was apparently churned out in 10 months, these days even games building on other games foundations such as Tears of the Kingdom can take 5 years to come out.
Tears of the Kingdom taking five years actually kind of shocks me, because it doesn’t play that much different from a re-skinned version of its predecessor.
What is an FTC?
If you’re being serious, that’s the US Federal Trade Commission, which is the agency in charge of regulating US markets, and suing to block mergers and other anti-competitive behaviour.
Yeah, not American, I was serious thank you for the info. (edit: forgot to say thanks)
2001 - SSX Tricky was released. I played the hell out of that game. Still would today honestly, it had such satisfying trick mechanics.
The actually best year is always a personal point of view not because the titles but because the age. It is usual relate the best year of gaming to when younger you pick up the controller for the first times, and even some malicious titles are remember as good ones. Like Jurassick Park for PS1 I will remember it as epic even if isn’t a big deal compared. As adult I feel time for gaming have stopped, gaming now is mostly behind microtransation and high prices.
2011 hits hard.
- Portal 2
- Skyrim
- Dark Souls
- Crysis 2
- Arkham city
Parasite Eve, Unreal, Shogo, RE2, SiN, Thief: The Dark Project, etc. Certainly an amazing year in gaming.
Ooh I forgot about SiN! I’ve played that demo a million times when I was a kid haha
