Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[Martell Spy]

Xbox Moving 'Full Speed Ahead' on Next Gen Console
Looking to the future (and past).

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-moving-full-speed-ahead-on-next-gen-console

Quote

 

Microsoft is moving "full speed ahead" on its next generation console, an internal email from Xbox president Sarah Bond has revealed.

The email, obtained by Windows Central and verified to be genuine by Microsoft, also announced the formation of a game preservation team at Xbox.

"We are moving full speed ahead on our next generation hardware, focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation," Bond said, reiterating comments made in February when the console's existence was officially announced.

 

 

[polishgenius]

35 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation,

 

Do (enough) people want that though? What does that even really mean at this stage? And can they do whatever it is at a price people actually want to pay?

[Poobah]

Some people I know were picking out favourite game releases of each year of their lives (I didn't quite go back all the way though, had nothing for the first few years), it was pretty fun to research though I'm sure there were many more that weren't included in the various lists and wikipedia articles as they get increasingly barebones as they go back. Interesting how packed some years are (I had to pare down the list of honourable mentioned in some years a whole bunch) where in others I struggled to even find one game that I'd played and enjoyed enough to consider. Anyway I thought I would share it here for ya'll to judge and perhaps inspire some discussion/consideration of your own.

The rules I went by were that I had to have played it, and I would use the date that a game hit 1.0 if it was an early access style title, I would consider the games "as finished" in the case of games that got expansions/dlc/patches, and in the awkward transitional period where I was old enough to be buying my own games but where we still had these staggered regional releases I decided to use the UK date since that'd be when I actually got my hands on the game. Honourable mentions/runners up in brackets.

1991: Civilization (Sonic the Hedgehog)
1992: Ecco the Dolphin
1993: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the version I played was the GBC re-release but I decided to put it here (Doom)
1994: Final Fantasy VI
1995: Dark Forces (Rayman, Command & Conquer, Phantom 2040, Comix Zone)
1996: Quake (Super Mario 64 wins if I hadn't gone Uk release dates)
1997: Goldeneye 64 - a hell of a tough year but I played many of these later on whereas I don't think anything came close to the excitement I had at getting my N64 and Goldeneye which was quite close to when they actually came out (Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Final Fantasy VII, Ultima Online, Super Mario 64, Blast Corps, a bunch more)
1998: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Half-Life, Banjo-Kazooie)
1999: Pokemon Red & Blue (X:Beyond the Frontier Rollercoaster Tycoon, Rogue Squadron)
2000: Diablo II (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Dragon Warrior Monsters, Pokemon Snap)
2001: Halo: Combat Evolved (FF IX, Max Payne, Pokemon Gold/Silver, Banjo-Tooie)
2002: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Neverwinter Nights, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 & quite a few others, what a year.)
2003: Metroid Prime (Wind Waker, Knights of the Old Republic, Max Payne 2)
2004: Half Life 2 (Halo 2)
2005: Guild Wars
2006: Nothing I like enough to include, Oblivion if I have to name something I guess
2007: Portal
2008: X3:Terran Conflict
2009: Borderlands (Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, Braid, Torchlight)
2010: Civilization V (Mass Effect 2, VVVVVV, Starcraft 2, Super Meat Boy)
2011: Minecraft (Portal 2, Skyrim, Bastion, Terraria)
2012: Guild Wars 2 (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Thomas Was Alone, Borderlands 2, FTL:Faster Than Light)
2013: Path of Exile (Paper Please, Rogue Legacy, The Stanley Parable)
2014: Transistor (Divinity: Original Sin)
2015: Undertale. (Ori & The Blind Forest)
2016: XCOM2 & Stellaris tied (DOOM, Enter The Gungeon)
2017: Divinity: Original Sin 2 (Slime Rancher, Hollow Knight)
2018: Celeste (Into The Breach)
2019: Slay The Spire (Disco Elysium)
2020: Hades (Monster Train, Doom Eternal)
2021:  Lots on the "to play" list but nothing yet good enough that I've played
2022: Same as 2021
2023: Baldur's Gate 3

It's interesting how while my tastes have changed over time in some ways, they have stayed relatively the same in others, and while some of these picks are retrospective it's still possible to see a bit of a progression. I enjoyed shooty games a lot more when I was younger, but the seeds of my enjoyment of strategy and management games were sown early, and over time I've grown more and more interested in indie games and spurned AAA developers, as well as console gaming in general. I was mostly a Nintendo kid, though I had a Playstation and later got an XBox too as we can see with the inclusion of the first two Halo games as well as the two good (great!) Max Payne games in the honourable mentions.

[Heartofice]

Baldur's Gate 3 dev calls industry layoffs an "avoidable f*ck up"
 

Quote

"I remember I was talking to someone earlier about this really important nuance: Predictability is the only reason large companies can operate. Everything's planned out. Everything's predicted, [with] incredibly intelligent people working within those margins of error," Douse said. "In video games, it's very difficult to predict anything. And so, what is the fallout? Well, essentially, very long story short, it's all of these layoffs, because it's too hard to say: This is what we need. This is what we need it for. And this is what our reserves are. "

"But to prevent these giant operational failures that we call layoffs…they are an avoidable f*ck-up. That's really all they are. That's why you see one after the other. Because companies are going: ‘Well, finally. Now we can, too. We've wanted to do it for ages. Everyone else is. So why don't we?' That's really kind of sick."

Seems relevant to someone like Sega basically gutting their business, based heavily on betting on future trends that didn't come to pass. Seems insane the way Hyenas was handled, and we are seeing the outcome of that now. 

 

Quote

"There are cases where that may be true. But, no, they don't have to. None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders. And that's fine. That's how they work. The function of a public company is to create growth for its shareholders. That is the function, right? It's not to make a happy climate for the employees."

This is similar to what I was saying earlier, but what if you can't get any more growth, because there is none to be had, well then if you want to satisfy the shareholders you need to cut costs to make things look better. 

[Darryk]

On 4/9/2024 at 2:41 AM, Poobah said:

Some people I know were picking out favourite game releases of each year of their lives (I didn't quite go back all the way though, had nothing for the first few years), it was pretty fun to research though I'm sure there were many more that weren't included in the various lists and wikipedia articles as they get increasingly barebones as they go back. Interesting how packed some years are (I had to pare down the list of honourable mentioned in some years a whole bunch) where in others I struggled to even find one game that I'd played and enjoyed enough to consider. Anyway I thought I would share it here for ya'll to judge and perhaps inspire some discussion/consideration of your own.

The rules I went by were that I had to have played it, and I would use the date that a game hit 1.0 if it was an early access style title, I would consider the games "as finished" in the case of games that got expansions/dlc/patches, and in the awkward transitional period where I was old enough to be buying my own games but where we still had these staggered regional releases I decided to use the UK date since that'd be when I actually got my hands on the game. Honourable mentions/runners up in brackets.

1991: Civilization (Sonic the Hedgehog)
1992: Ecco the Dolphin
1993: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the version I played was the GBC re-release but I decided to put it here (Doom)
1994: Final Fantasy VI
1995: Dark Forces (Rayman, Command & Conquer, Phantom 2040, Comix Zone)
1996: Quake (Super Mario 64 wins if I hadn't gone Uk release dates)
1997: Goldeneye 64 - a hell of a tough year but I played many of these later on whereas I don't think anything came close to the excitement I had at getting my N64 and Goldeneye which was quite close to when they actually came out (Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Final Fantasy VII, Ultima Online, Super Mario 64, Blast Corps, a bunch more)
1998: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Half-Life, Banjo-Kazooie)
1999: Pokemon Red & Blue (X:Beyond the Frontier Rollercoaster Tycoon, Rogue Squadron)
2000: Diablo II (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Dragon Warrior Monsters, Pokemon Snap)
2001: Halo: Combat Evolved (FF IX, Max Payne, Pokemon Gold/Silver, Banjo-Tooie)
2002: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Neverwinter Nights, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 & quite a few others, what a year.)
2003: Metroid Prime (Wind Waker, Knights of the Old Republic, Max Payne 2)
2004: Half Life 2 (Halo 2)
2005: Guild Wars
2006: Nothing I like enough to include, Oblivion if I have to name something I guess
2007: Portal
2008: X3:Terran Conflict
2009: Borderlands (Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, Braid, Torchlight)
2010: Civilization V (Mass Effect 2, VVVVVV, Starcraft 2, Super Meat Boy)
2011: Minecraft (Portal 2, Skyrim, Bastion, Terraria)
2012: Guild Wars 2 (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Thomas Was Alone, Borderlands 2, FTL:Faster Than Light)
2013: Path of Exile (Paper Please, Rogue Legacy, The Stanley Parable)
2014: Transistor (Divinity: Original Sin)
2015: Undertale. (Ori & The Blind Forest)
2016: XCOM2 & Stellaris tied (DOOM, Enter The Gungeon)
2017: Divinity: Original Sin 2 (Slime Rancher, Hollow Knight)
2018: Celeste (Into The Breach)
2019: Slay The Spire (Disco Elysium)
2020: Hades (Monster Train, Doom Eternal)
2021:  Lots on the "to play" list but nothing yet good enough that I've played
2022: Same as 2021
2023: Baldur's Gate 3

It's interesting how while my tastes have changed over time in some ways, they have stayed relatively the same in others, and while some of these picks are retrospective it's still possible to see a bit of a progression. I enjoyed shooty games a lot more when I was younger, but the seeds of my enjoyment of strategy and management games were sown early, and over time I've grown more and more interested in indie games and spurned AAA developers, as well as console gaming in general. I was mostly a Nintendo kid, though I had a Playstation and later got an XBox too as we can see with the inclusion of the first two Halo games as well as the two good (great!) Max Payne games in the honourable mentions.

1995: Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness

1996: Mario 64

1997: Goldeneye

1998: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
(This was an absolute banger of a year, probably on of the best in the history of gaming)

2000: Baldurs Gate II: Shadows of Amn

2001: Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

2002: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

2003: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

2004: Half-life 2

2005: Civilization IV

2006: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

2007: Mass Effect

2008: Far Cry 2

2009: Dragon Age: Origins

2010: Mass Effect 2 (very close between this and StarCraft 2)

2011: Elder Scrolls Skyrim

2012: Dishonored

2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition

2015: The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

2016: Dishonored 2

 

Nothing really stands out for me after these years.

Edited April 10 by Darryk

[Heartofice]

My list of top games over the past 20 years would just various versions of Football Manager, Civilisation and Total War and nothing else.

[Ran]

Jeesh, favorite releases over my lifetime...

 

1978: Air-Sea War - Battle (played on the Atari 2600 at least 6 or 7 years after the fact; 1984 to 1986, thereabouts)

1979: Space Invaders (ditto)

1980: Star Raiders (ditto)

1981: Jupiter Lander (Played some years after release on a Commodore VIC-20)

1982: Tough year, with Dig Dug, Pitfall!, and Q*bert all in the same year. And Zaxxon, too. I'm thinking most of these were in the arcade when I played them (years after their releases, of course) so I'll go with Pitfall! which we had on the Atari a few years later.

1983: The old Star Wars arcade game with its vector graphics for the assault of the Death Star. 

1984: 1942. (Didn't play until we got an NES in 1988-1989.

1985: Super Mario Bros.. (Ditto)

1986: Metroid (Ditto)

1987: Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! (Ditto)

1988: Super Mario Bros. 3 with an honorable mention to Tetris  which properly released on the NES the next year.

1989: Strider

1990: Wing Commander with a bullet, honorable mention to Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. Oh, and Super Mario World, though I wouldn't have an SNES at the time -- think we got in in 1992. 

1991: Wing Commander II and Street Fighter II. WC2 was sort of the pinnacle of space sims for me for a long time, but as SFII went from arcade to SNES, I probably ended up playing it a lot more.

1992: Wolfenstein 3D and King's Quest VI with its fully-voiced CD-ROM. Bonus nod to Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant.

1993: Doom, Star Wars: X-Wing, Frontier: Elite II, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Merchant Prince, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, Star Fox, Master of Orion, Sim City 2000... yeesh, what a year. I've fond memories of all of them, but I'm going to go with Master of Orion.

1994: Star Wars: TIE Fighter or X-COM... yeesh. TIE Fighter I suppose, I went through so many cheap joysticks thanks to space and flight sims. I also played Hammer of the Gods a lot.

1995: Interesting year, not a lot leaping out at me that I really played with any great intensity. Maybe Heroes of Might and Magic?

1996: Civilization II and Quake,  but more the former than the latter. That was my first Civ game. It ate way too many of my study hours when I started university. After this year, I never played a console again, and 99% of gaming was on PC (the other 1% being arcade games like Virtua Fighter). A more obscure game I'll add is Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, a sadly rather forgotten voxel-based game from the late, great LookingGlass Technologies. It's a first person tactical shooter where you play a power-armored soldier in a squad sent on missions. Some really memorable times playing that game.

1997: SubSpace, my first foray into competitive multiplayer games. It's kind of like a multi-player Asteroids, but you attack one another or try to capture the flag, etc. Lots of different modes. This was  the point in time where I start to play video games a lot less often, so there may be some year-skipping going on soon.

1998: Soulcalibur at the university's student union arcade.

1999: The Longest Journey, one of the great point-and-click adventures, and kind of a last gasp for the genre in a lot of ways. Honorable mention to FreeSpace 2 and The King of Dragon Pass, a narrative strategy game set on Glorantha in the Runequest tabletop RPG universe.

2000: I missed a lot of the games that year, but I did play Ground Control.

2002: Freedom Force, absolutely fantastic super hero RPG that captured the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby silver age. Also, Medieval: Total War. 

2003: Freelancer

2004:  Rome: Total War and Sid Meier's Pirates!... I'd go with the latter over the former, played it I don't know how many times.

2006: Medieval II: Total War and the sequel to The Longest Journey, Dreamfall.

2007: Team Fortress 2 is one of the games I've spent the most time playing in a long while. I still pop in on occasion, despite the hackers, just for the sake of nostalgia and some easy fun.

2008: Mirror's Edge, classic parkour first person.

2009: Braid, Machinarium, and the renaissance for indie games about to begin.

2011: Bastion from Supergiant games, who'd go on to make a number of great games, including the awesome Hades.

2012: Crusader Kings II was my first introduction to Paradox's grand strategy games, and I made my first foray into Far Cry with the 3rd entry in the game. Also, the terrific Sleeping Dogs:

But the true winner is the MMO The Secret World from Funcom, led by Ragnar Tornquist of The Longest Journey. We didn't play it that first year or two, but it was the first MMO Linda and I ever played, and we went deeeeep into it, hooking up with a cabal of mostly-Scandinavian players (plus the odd Brit and German). It ate up waaaay too much time until the game started to collapse on itself, and the revamp to Secret World Legends in 2017 kind of took the luster off of it and we stopped, alas. We miss it sometimes.

After that it gets very tough to find anything. TSW kept me going until 2017, with the occasional foray into TF2 when I felt like it, but otherwise...

ETA: 2018: Hades, although that was the early access release whereas I started playing it  in 2020. It was a nice lead-up to the next game on the list..

2020: Cyberpunk 2077, followed by the 2023 release of its expansion Phantom Liberty, possibly the best game and certainly the best expansion to a game I've ever played. I could easily do another run of that game. Outside of TSW and maybe TF2 (and Street Fighter 2 and its variants back in the day), it may be my single most-played game.

 

Edited April 9 by Ran

[Werthead]

Star Wars: Outlaws launches on 30 August. Looks fun, though I worry about it being Ubisoft-style generic. Hopefully it's good, and the ground-space transitions are interesting.

 

[Gorn]

I'll give it a try from the years when I first got into gaming. Had to use Wikipedia, skipped the years where nothing stands out. Used the PC release years. Looking at this, I really need to start playing some newer games.

1996: Command and Conquer: Red Alert

1997: GoldenEye 007

1998: Half-Life (tough choice, a lot of great games)

1999: Age of Empires II

2000: Baldur's Gate II

2001: Europa Universalis II

2002: Morrowind

2003: Star Wars KotOR

2004: Rome Total War

2005: GTA: San Andreas

2006: Oblivion

2008: Assassin's Creed

2009: Dragon Age Origins

2010: Fallout New Vegas (tough choice, great year)

2011: Skyrim

2012: Crusader Kings II

2013: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

2015: Witcher 3

2016: Hearts of Iron IV

2017: Divinity: Original Sin II

2018: Pillars of Eternity II

2020: Crusader Kings III

2021: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

[Werthead]

Hmm.

• 1979: Asteroids
• 1980: Pac-Man
• 1981: Donkey Kong
• 1982: Zaxxon
• 1983: Star Wars
• 1984: Elite
• 1985 (the year I started playing video games, on the BBC Micro): Tetris
• 1986: Rampage
• 1987: Dungeon Master
• 1988: Carrier Command
• 1989 (the year I acquired a Commodore Amiga 500): Populous
• 1990: The Secret of Monkey Island
• 1991: Lemmings
• 1992: Flashback (after a furious charge by two great Dune games)
• 1993: Syndicate
• 1994: TIE Fighter
• 1995: Command & Conquer
• 1996: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
• 1997: Final Fantasy VII
• 1998 (the year I got my first PC): Half-Life (by far the toughest year, with StarCraft and Baldur's Gate also seriously in the conversation)
• 1999: Homeworld
• 2000: Ground Control
• 2001: Anachronox (after a fierce bullet-time shoot-out with Max Payne and Hostile Waters)
• 2002 (the year of my second PC): Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• 2003: Max Payne II: The Fall of Max Payne
• 2004: Rome: Total War (another very tough year, with Half-Life 2, Dawn of War and Far Cry in the conversation)
• 2005: FEAR
• 2006 (third PC): Company of Heroes
• 2007: Portal
• 2008: Fallout 3
• 2009: Batman: Arkham Asylum
• 2010: Mass Effect 2
• 2011 (fourth PC): Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• 2012: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (after a very harsh showdown with Dishonored)
• 2013: Metro: Last Light
• 2014: The Banner Saga
• 2015: The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
• 2016: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
• 2017 (fifth PC): Horizon Zero Dawn (Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock also having a word)
• 2018: BattleTech (a most worthy challenge from Subnautica) 
• 2019: Death Stranding
• 2020: Cyberpunk 2077
• 2021: Microsoft Flight Simulator
• 2022: Grounded
• 2023 (sixth PC): Alan Wake II (after a furious headlock with Baldur's Gate III)

By far the hardest years to pick were 1998, 2004 and 2023 for having too much stuff, and 2013 and 2021 for having too little stuff. 

[Fez]

Hmm, interesting. Generally I've gone with what my favorite release at the time was, rather than retrospectively what I like the most now. Though that isn't possible for the first 5 years or so.

1987: Sid Meier's Pirates

1988: Super Mario Bros 3 

1989: SimCity 

1990: Super Mario World

1991: Civilization

1992: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

1993: NBA Jam

1994: Final Fantasy VI

1995: Chrono Trigger

1996: Civilization II

1997: Final Fantasy Tactics

1998: Xenogears

1999: Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri... I guess. This is kind of an impossible year

2000: Final Fantasy IX... maybe? Another impossible year. Going back, I'd only want to play Baldur's Gate 2. But, in the moment, I played a crazy amount of FFIX and loved all of it. But also the Tony Hawk games (1 and 2 both came out) and a ton of others.

2001: Final Fantasy X

2002: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

2003: Dynasty Warriors 4...I suppose. I kinda didn't play most games from this year.

2004: World of Warcraft

2005: Civilization IV

2006: Gears of War...sorta by default. Another year I mostly skipped.

2007: Mass Effect

2008: Saints Row II

2009: Dragon Age: Origins

2010: Mass Effect 2

2011: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2012: Mass Effect 3... but only barely. So many awesome games.

2013: Bioshock Infinite

2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition

2015: The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

2016: Overwatch... incredible how much the game/sequel has fallen in my opinion

2017: Hollow Knight

2018: Pathfinder: Kingmaker

2019: Disco Elysium

2020: Hades

2021: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

2022: Elden Ring

2023: Immortality... for the very specific reason that it was one of the few games I've been able to play together with my girlfriend. And we had a great time. More traditionally, it'd be Baldur's Gate III.

 

It's interesting to see how much my tastes changed over time. When I was younger I loved JRPGs and strategy games and now it's very rare I'd go to those genres. And after 2015, I almost totally disengaged from the AAA space. There have been a handful I played and enjoyed beyond Elden Ring and BG3, most notably Control and Cyberpunk. But vast majority I ignore because I know I'll be disappointed.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

993: Doom, Star Wars: X-Wing, Frontier: Elite II, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Merchant Prince, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, Star Fox, Master of Orion, Sim City 2000... yeesh, what a year. I've fond memories of all of them, but I'm going to go with Master of Orion.

Yeah, that damn game, Master of Orion, I couldn't stop playing it long after it was horribly outdated. It was my secondary game for decades. It took Stellaris to finally break the habit and that's replaced it. Sorely tempted to fire it up though and take over the galaxy with mass-producing eco-terrorist frog people.

 

[Ran]

Jeez, how could I forget Hades? It's the other game I played heavily in 2020, although technically its release date for early access makes it 2018.

[Darryk]

Have any of the PS5 owners played Stellar Blade yet? There's a lot of talk about how...well drawn the main character is.

[Poobah]

Slay the Spire 2 announced:

I do wonder what they've got to follow up such a beloved hit. We'll have to wait and see how and if they iterate on their formula. 

Also while I'm here Planet Crafter had its 1.0 patch launch today. It's a game I quickly grew to love, and it's made by a teeny tiny team so to achieve something like this is truly impressive and I really want to sing its praises.

Edited April 10 by Poobah

[Clueless Northman]

Curse, I thought I wasn't going to play since I rarely know the year of release of a game, so I just spent one full hour trying to make a list.

So here's my list, with often honorable mentions. Like others, games were mostly played later than release year. It would be easier for me to make a top 10 favourite games, or a 10 most played games, or even a "best game I played this year". So here it is - as you'll see, not much recent games, though I have some and/or plan to play them, like AC Odyssey, Control, RDR2, Last of Us, Cyberpunk. A couple of times, I wasn't even sure if I had played any good game from that year. Another couple of times, it's so close it actually was a tie. And a few times, it was a really hard decision. Last but not least, some years, specially before the late 90s, it wasn't always an objectively great game (and honorable mentions were OK games who I liked nearly as well as the winner when I played them decades ago)

 

1979 - Space Invaders

1980 - Pacman

1981 - Popeye  (Donkey Kong)

1982 - Zaxxon

1983 - Lode Runner  (PitStop)

1984 - Strategic Conquest  (Impossible Mission - Lazy Jones - Bruce Lee)

1985 - Tetris  (Saboteur - Robin of the Wood)

1986 - Leader Board  (Dark Castle)

1987 - Pirates!  (Test Drive)

1988 - Grand Prix Circuit

1989 - Sim City

1990 - Angband (SimEarth)

1991 - Civilization

1992 - Wolfenstein 3D

1993 - Sim City 2000  (Syndicate)

1994 - Realmz

1995 - Exile

1996 - Exile 2

1997 - Blades of Exile  (Age of Empires)

1998 - Starcraft  (Baldur's Gate 1 - Age of Empires 2 - Colin McRae Rally)

1999 - Planescape Torment  (Dungeon Keeper 2)

2000 - Deus Ex  /  Baldur's Gate 2  (Thief 2 - Shogun Total War - Diablo 2)

2001 - Europa Universalis 2  (Max Payne 1)

2002 - Morrowind  (Warcraft 3)

2003 - Max Payne 2  (KOTOR)

2004 - WOW  (Rome Total War)

2005 - Civ 4

2006 - Oblivion  (Dwarf Fortress)

2007 - Europa Universalis 3  (Mass Effect 1 - Bioshock 1)

2009 - Asasssin's Creed 2  (Hearts of Iron 3)

2010 - Mass Effect 2  (Amnesia)

2011 - Skyrim  (Witcher 2 - Minecraft - Deus Ex Human Revolution - Portal 2)

2012 - Crusader Kings 2  /  Dishonored

2013 - Bioshock Infinite  (Tomb Raider)

2014 - Banner Saga

2015 - Witcher 3  (Age of Decadence - Soma)

2016 - Stellaris  (Tyranny)

2018 - Subnautica

2019 - Disco Elysium  (Plague Tale Innocence)

[Durckad]

Hmmmm...

1986 - The Legend of Zelda

1987 - Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

1988 - Super Mario Brothers II

1989 - hmm, fuck, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Game is the only game I have really fond memories of here

1990 - Super Mario World

1991 - Final Fantasy IV

1992 -  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Ultima Underworld)

1993 - Doom (Sim City 2000)

1994 - Final Fantasy VI (X-Com: UFO Defense)

1995 - Chrono Trigger (Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness)

1996 - Mario Kart 64

1997 - Goldeneye 007 (Fallout/Diablo)

1998 - Half-Life (StarCraft/Baldur's Gate/The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Thief: The Dark Project, jesus fuck 1998 was a great year for gaming, holy shit)

1999 - Planescape: Torment (Age of Empires II/Unreal Tournament/Super Smash Brothers/Alpha Centauri/Homeworld, another insanely good year)

2000 - Baldur's Gate II (Deus Ex/Diablo II, BGII and Deus Ex were very, very close, Diablo II was a distant 3rd but I played the absolute hell out of Diablo II back in the day)

2001 - Halo: Combat Evolved (Super Smash Brothers Melee)

2002 - Warcraft II: Reign of Chaos (Morrowind)

2003 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

2004 - Half-Life 2 (World of Warcraft/Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines/Rome: Total War)

2005 - F.E.A.R. (Civilization IV)

2006 - Warhammer: Dawn of War (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess/Guitar Hero II)

2007 - Mass Effect (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare/Bioshock/Rock Band)

2008 - Fallout 3 (World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, kind of a shit year for me, to be honest...)

2009 - Dragon Age: Origins

2010 - Mass Effect 2 (Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty/Bioshock II/Fallout: New Vegas)

2011 - Skyrim (Deus Ex: Human Revolution)

2012 - X-Com : Enemy Unknown (Dishonored/Mass Effect 3/Legend of Grimrock)

2013 - Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (Bioshock: Infinite)

2014 - Shovel Knight (Wolfenstein: The New Order/Wasteland II)

2015 - Cities: Skylines (This War of Mine/Axiom Verge)

2016 - Stellaris (Civilization VI/Total War: Warhammer)

2017 - Prey (Hollow Knight)

2018 - Surviving Mars

2019 - Disco Elysium (The Outer Worlds)

2023 - Baldur's Gate III

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

BG3 is not just game of 2023 but also the best RPG ever made from a genre perspective (TW3 has better writing overall tho) 

Edited April 11 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

BG3 is not just game of 2023 but also the best RPG ever made from a genre perspective (TW3 has better writing overall tho) 

As one of my friends recently said: "Woah there, zoomer!"

[Ran]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

As one of my friends recently said: "Woah there, zoomer!"

The recency bias is strong.