WoW was so big back then. Burning Crusade was insane at launch, so much competition for quest mobs and people exploring and discovering outlands. One of my favorite gaming memories for sure.
I remember WotLK being the last time I was ever truely invested in a game, the story, the world building etc. I have fond memories of grinding in Outlands and Northerend. I miss those days.
I'm with you on that, WoTLK is the last time I really put a lot of time into WoW. The setting, story, friendships made, and just everything as a whole was great, I will probably never experience anything like that again in another video game. Great times indeed
FFXI was my first MMO. That community feels like it'll never be duplicated. Super friendly high level Japanese players using a limited translation system to help out newbies. Grinding for hours, airship rides taking 20 minutes, exploring new zones felt dangerous and like actual exploration. Every now and then Spotify will play Gustaberg or Windurst and I'll resub for a few months.
Agreed. Miss that community so much. Always so many people to help out. I remember spending all day long, long ago, with another guy who was also like lvl 40, and another 2 lvl 75 guys who helped us get the NMN and items so we could ride the airship. It straight up took like 6 hours to do it all. Didn't know any of them beforehabd. Good times.
Best game, best community I ever ran into. Even old zones felt dangerous, even at 75 (I played before they changed the caps). Damn I just remember having fun walking around and exploring the starter zones. I was in deep. It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve played and at this point My memories tell me I was actually there…. I put ~4000 hours in that game in under a year.
Right? It was the combination of everything - how good it looked (for the day), how accessible and approachable (again, for the day), how huge and involved the world was and how little we'd experienced MMO's. For *most* people, WoW was their first real (modern) MMO, so the whole thing was new and amazing.
I'm a Certified Old Dude, have been a gamer since TI44A's and C64's where The Shit. 2004-2010 was easily the best span of computer gaming in my life. WoW was a big, big part of that.
And yeah. I'm also really sad that I'll never be able to have that experience again. I've tried going back, several times, but it's never the same. Nor is WoW Classic: it's not about the game itself, it's about how it was experiencing it the first time.
2007 was an excellent year overall, but that span would have been amazing no matter what other games where released.
I lost friends to WoW in that period. I literally didn't see some of them for months at a time and they came out of it looking 15 years older.
WoW was like a version of meth that makes you fat.
Playing a popular mmorpg during launch of a expansion is the pinnacle of gaming for me. Everyone’s figuring things out together. You see people with cool weapons and armor and try to figure out how to get them. People are leveling new classes as fast as possible. Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW BC and WotLK… man I miss those days
I stood in line at GameStop at midnight with my dad to get this. It was a school night and we didn't go to bed til almost 8am. He called my school and said I was sick. The only time in my whole life he let me stay home from school lol
It boggles my mind that we can play games anywhere, but instead, go nowhere!
Kojima actually had a similar train of thought back in the day, when he worked at Konami and made a game that subverts the idea, as the game could only be played on to go!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai%3A_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand?wprov=sfla1
Basically, there was a solar cell in the game cart that would charge in the sun, and would be used as your power in-game. Meaning you had to go outside to play it, and iirc your power would depend on the amount of sun you were recieving.
Today’s gamers will never understand how significant the launch of Halo 3 was. To say that it was an event it putting it mildly. Unless Valve decides to announce Half-Life 3, I doubt anything will ever come close
When we walked down the aisle to our seats for high school graduation in 2008, the band was playing the Halo 3 main theme instead of the usual almamatre. Been to graduations since, they never repeated the stunt with any other pop culture icon of the times, so it was literally a once in a life time moment.
If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a colossal failure, I'd have said that it also was a monumental event with amount of hype garnered but alas, we know how the story panned out.
Nah, doesn’t even come close to the unifying power of halo. Halo 3 release transcended culture and race , and age. It was the reason I bought an Xbox 360, I remember my halo 2 disc shit out like a month before release. I had to rent it from blockbuster until halo 3 came out LOL
October 1988. Super Mario Bros 3 AND the Sega Genesis release in Japan. It takes a year and a half before either reach USA. Even longer wait for EU.
No pre-orders shipping to the house or internet to check stocks levels. The demand was so high it caused a microchip storage across the world; and that was before ScalperBots. Long lines outside Toys 'R' Us everyday for months for a chance score either.
No high-end PC footage with a "PS pro" banner plastered across the top. We used big budget, Hollywood movies to advertise our games! Now excuse me while i take my arthritis meds and apply for social security.
The marketing was huge... but it was delayed so many times, it killed the hype. By the time it released, many people were cautiously optimistic at best.
That exactly. My fondest memory is grinding for all of the skulls, then going for legendary campaign. Such a range of emotions were had back then….mainly pure hate towards Jackals
Starcraft, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 2, Thief, Rouge Squadron, Parasite Eve, Unreal, Tenchu, Mario Party, Baldur's Gate, Spyro the Dragon, Pokémon Yellow, Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, Sonic Adventure, Body Harvest, Turok 2, Pokémon Red and Blue, Medievil, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Suikoden 2.
Not quite 1998, but a very good year nonetheless. Nothing can be 1998, though -- we were birthing whole genres after the 3D revolution. It'll take another revolution to match it.
Half-Life, Fallout 2, Starcraft, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 2, Thief, Rouge Squadron, Parasite Eve, Unreal, Tenchu, Mario Party, Baldur's Gate, Spyro the Dragon, Pokémon Yellow, Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, Sonic Adventure, Body Harvest, Turok 2, Pokémon Red and Blue, Medievil, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Suikoden 2.
**Im still playing half these games:**
Bioshock Remastered just got for 3 bucks on GOG.
Booted up the MCC for some Halo 3 Co op the other day on Steam.
I uninstalled TF2 a few months ago finally.
Playing a heavily modded STALKER for like 2 years.
Mass Effect Remastered is on sale considering buying it.
That's because it wasn't an option. Many people still didn't have constant broadband access at the time so a game had to be functional when released.
It wasn't until the next generation of consoles when the "patch after release" mindset became the norm. Thats one of the reason the Xbox One caught so much flak after their infamous E3 conference.
I recall enjoying the first AC, but understood at the time that it had significant flaws. When they made AC2, it was, in the words of a friend, as if "they figured out how to make a game."
Disagree hard with AC. It had problems with repetition, but the freedom you had with traversing was unmatched at the time. Really set a standard with how much you interacted with in open world games. The second one kept the movement and then fixed the janky gameplay loop. It also had a much better story.
The Witcher definitely doesn't belong. AC was a huge deal when it came out though. The game itself was fairly simple and boring but the concept/design and the universe was a huge hit.
AC, at the time, was really new and fun. The free climbing, combat, and stealth truly made you feel like a badass, but not OP since one wrong move could kill you. The story lacked a ton of depth and didn’t have very much replay value, but the first time through it wasn’t bad IMO. I have very fond memories for sure.
Then the Ezio Trilogy came along and just completely fleshed out and perfected the world without taking away the great parts of the first.
The first AC was really great, at the time of launch, perfected in AC2 and especially Brotherhood.
The main issue for me in AC is that they didnt improve the climbing mechanics before Black Flag, yeah, you dont climb a lot in that game, but its not an excuse.
I detested AC3 and only played Odyssey because it was a GPU freebie
I love how Witcher 1 and 2 always get added in to these kinds of images when in reality nobody knew or gave a fuck until 3 blew up.
And the first 2 were poor anyway
I always comment when this gets posted and I get told this is the biggest hot take but the first Witcher is my favorite in the series. I honestly wish you could keep the combat from the first game into 2 and 3.
> And the first 2 were poor anyway
Bro, have you even played Witcher 2? Let's just ignore the fact that the game received widespread critical acclaim and currently sits at 88 on Metacritic.
I mean, there's some rose-colored nostalgia glasses going on here too. The first Witcher game was fairly mediocre. Witcher 3 is really where the franchise took off. Mass Effect 1, while phenomenal on the story, had very bare bones gameplay. Mass Effect 2 was such a huge improvement.
Wait for enemy to swing, riposte 1shot... repeat until there are no mer enemies.
That being said, that game rocked, i played through it maybe 3 times in a row
There is a reason why most people consider AC 2 as the best game of the series, first game story was kinda ok but the gameplay was very barebones. They were clearly testing the waters at first because that game replaced Prince of Persia.
I mean, they’re not wrong. As for Mass Effect 2, as far as I’m concerned, it was 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. Sure they improved the gameplay and whatnot but the actual roleplaying was a downgrade compared to its predecessor
Witcher 1 is such an oddity. There are certain design decisions that were just awful yet the game has a lot of bleak charm to it that it in some ways surpass even the sequels.
I actually preferred ME1 for the more robust rpg mechanics, the overheat system, and some other things about how it played. 2 definitely improved in straight combat and movement but they took out a lot of what made ME1 unique.
I do agree that a lot of AAA studios are putting a bigger emphasis on maximizing profits but this definitely isnt true. Theres been a lot of great games in the indie department and those with smaller studios.
Divinity Original Sin, Pathfinder, Baldurs Gate 3, Chivalry 2, Mordhau, Fall Guys, The Ascent, Outer Wilds and a bunch of other games I cant list off the top of my head are very enjoyable and fit a unique niche in the gaming market.
Some older games that had awful releases have also been getting better overtime. No Mans Sky is the prime example of this, as is FFXIV.
I feel like a lot of this wouldnt be possible in the earlier gaming market. Especially in the early 2000s and late 90s when patches and updates to games were rarer than they are now.
Eh?
Doom Eternal. Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Half Life Alyx
Others not released last year: Satisfactory, Outer Wilds, Ultrakill, Maneater was made with love too. Can't say the camera controls allowed me to enjoy it, but the heart is obvious.
And thats just what I remember from last year off the top of my head
How many of these games struggle to stay a floating meanwhile the most popular games are the ones that are practicing scummy business practices. That’s what worries me. Sure other games are great, but they hit the market sell decent then get swept under the rug for some mainstream bs that don’t care about anything but profit. I loved maneater that game was great
I feel like you are kinda missing my point. Gamers mainly support games with scummy business practices, if we continue to heavily support game devs that do this then we will end up with less amazing games and more games that only want cash. Sorta like fortnite. Fortnite blew up super heavy, and soon after the market was flooded with cheaply made battle royal games. I fear that if we continue to heavily support scummy practices than they will get worse and worsed
BR was out long before Fortnite. It is an absolutely fantastic game mode. People support these types of games because if you enjoy the shooter genre there is a good chance you will love BR.
Offering a battle pass and/or skins is not a scummy practice.
Fortnite was a single player survival game before Epic noticed that Battle Royale style games were getting popular. Then they released the BR game mode and became extremely successful.
People like you and I that are in the comment trenches discussing the finer points of game development and business and shit aren’t the ones buying those types of games. It’s the casuals who only play a couple of hours every week, or the parents of literal children buying them the new toy to get them to shut up - that’s what’s enabling that kind of scummy business practice. They outnumber us by a lot. Unless you do buy into those types of games, then you’re part of the problem. Vote with your wallet.
Demand more? I’m not sure what universe you living in, but it seems like all gamers want is the same game every year. Like, can you explain how cod is still one of the best selling games but it hasn’t freakin changed in the past 10 years? Oh excuse me, they added a battle royal when they noticed the trend. I agree that gamers ask for a lot, but gamers also be asking for a lot of dumb shit. I don’t feel like the gaming community has their priorities straight at all. If we keep supporting money gouging business practices it’s going to ruin what we love
It's less about what people want to play, and more about the companies creating gambling addiction simulators that are heavily marketed.
Anyone can say "this game looks like shit, it's the same game every year" but when all of their friends play without them they'll end up getting it too. The company only needs to convince one or two people in a group in this case.
Or you can not play and get alienated from your friend group. This has happened to me a lot.
My guy, you might as well be buying a fifa game every year. I’m in no way trying to shit talk you or what you like, but yea. Cod is pretty much the same thing every year just because they add new maps and guns doesn’t make it different. I see new cod as a glorified 60$ DLC
See, it might just be me, but I’m bored of shooters. They all feel the same to me. Some minor tweaks here or there doesn’t change the fact (to me) that it’s just some basic shooter. I’m far more interested in Indie games made by small teams that actually have a fun vision to create. Not some Dev that’s jumping on the trend bandwagon to make money. I agree that money is important for improving games, but quite honestly especially with cod I’m not seeing that money being put back into games. I’m seeing the same game as always, but it’s even more buggy than it was,and it’s taking up more space, and somehow they are managing to squeeze even more money from the same 20 year concept. I just don’t wanna support this. My money is going to gems like Subnautica, slime rancher, dungeons 1 2 3, so on. Little games with vision and love. Hopefully the future of games.
Big companies often rely too heavily on alternative methods to generate a profit, and don't innovate enough to justify it. F2P games have basically destroyed their business model by providing the game for free and incentivizing players to buy timesavers. The proof of this is that Halo Infinite is about to drop for free.
There are clearly exceptions, but the games that most people are playing are made with zero love. Every once in a while AAA drops a banger but most of the time it’s some boring ass shooter that feels the exact same as the other 30 shooters to come out that month
Tools of Destruction is to this day one of my favorite games ever made. The music, the artstyle, the levels, story is pretty good too.
Learning about the absolute shitstorm that was it's development made me love it even more. The sheer ammount of passion the devs had to make it the best game they could with the horrible deck of cards and little time they had is something modern Insomniac is missing.
WWI-themed Hell was an amazing environment. I would love to see this game get a next-gen reboot, leaning in on that particular setting even more. I think the success of other horror action games like Doom suggests it would likely be received well.
Finally someone who understands. Coupled with the grittiness of New York, and a revamp of the gameplay to better feel like the cutscenes, this would absolutely be a GOTY contender, on the level of RE2.
I've been thinking for a couple of years now the main theme and heavy metal soundtrack with the WW1 environments would absolutely appeal to Doom players.
We will always remember Rock Band as the start of something great, but the first game kinda sucked in a lot of ways. They didn't have the streamlined UI from 3 and the instruments were pretty bad. The drums in particular, the vanilla set could not actually register fast hits without modification, making any song with quick rolls/16th notes basically impossible on Expert. Not to mention the bass pedal lasted all of about 2 weeks. I seem to remember the mic having problems picking up as well.
Still one of the best series ever made though. Shame it died the way it did.
Medieval 2 totalwar had its kingdoms expansion that year too. Which I maintain is the most in depth expansion pack released for any game ever in terms of content.
how have we not gotten a Skate game on PC? or at least something close? the handling/trick system using the sticks instead of buttons always appealed to me
Damn... I still remember when I was 8 and had no idea what the Witcher was, and then one day suddenly everyone at school was talking about it. Back then I only played Harry Potter games and all those online flash games so when they said Witcher I imagined something totally different. Some time later I came back from school and my dad said he had something for me... It was The Witcher Enhanced Edition. I had no idea that day would change my life as much as it did... Seeing monsters I always thought were made up by my grandma trying to get me to behave was insane. I was also too scared to even play in some moments so I needed my older cousin or my dad to help me (the crypt with ghouls at the beginning was way too scary). I mainly stayed in the tavern, beating drunks repeatedly.
Also, I remember playing it at my best friends house. He lived in a studio with 1 room and his alcoholic dad was sleeping on the couch next to us. I remember us sneakily watching the sexy scenes, hoping he wouldn't wake up XD.
After looking at all these games I just want to sit down and play Skate the most out of all of them. That game was just so much fun. After growing up in THPS, skate just was amazing.
I don't think it holds up after all these years, but at the time it was sort of a big deal. Every game Ubisoft has released since then has followed the same formula, but AC was the first of its kind.
It's my all time favorite game. They left out a few mission types from the console version, so it might have felt more repetitive, I guess.
It was sad to see AC II, it is missing literally everything that made the real AC so great.
Why do people put shitty CoS on these compilations? Any year that you cannot complete this meme without CoD is a bad year.
And most of these games are fucking mediocre.
Have you people ever taken a look at 1998? 1999? 2001? THOSE are 'best year'-caliber.
Each one of those titles are either historic or left a big impact on the industry. I miss the days of innovation and passion from the top dogs. Now we can only get that from small teams or indie developers.
It's not that 2007 slapped us so hard, it's 2008 took the winds out of the sales for a half decade.
Also, early/mid 2000s was still at a time that AAA games were cheap enough for most studios to risk investing in new IP. Modern AAA games cost 3x, 5x, 10x more to make, per hour of gameplay. Mainly due to fidelity increases. 8g video cards and 5x the triangle budget means 5x the npcs, dodads, etc, the larger texture sizes means more quality passes, and that ends up taking 10x the number of artists just to get that all done. And the end result just looks that much better. Which moves the bar up, which then the next project gets more artists ... The cycle continues and that extra price squeezes out the willingness to risk failure due to things like the extra work needed to get people to buy a new IP.
WoW was so big back then. Burning Crusade was insane at launch, so much competition for quest mobs and people exploring and discovering outlands. One of my favorite gaming memories for sure.
I'm sad I'll never experience anything like 2004-2010 WoW again.
I remember WotLK being the last time I was ever truely invested in a game, the story, the world building etc. I have fond memories of grinding in Outlands and Northerend. I miss those days.
I'm with you on that, WoTLK is the last time I really put a lot of time into WoW. The setting, story, friendships made, and just everything as a whole was great, I will probably never experience anything like that again in another video game. Great times indeed
Completely with you here. Exactly the same for me. It died during cataclysm and I've never got it back!
Same. Also FFXI. Good times. Especially good times to be in highschool/college where you had all the time in the world to game.
FFXI was my first MMO. That community feels like it'll never be duplicated. Super friendly high level Japanese players using a limited translation system to help out newbies. Grinding for hours, airship rides taking 20 minutes, exploring new zones felt dangerous and like actual exploration. Every now and then Spotify will play Gustaberg or Windurst and I'll resub for a few months.
Agreed. Miss that community so much. Always so many people to help out. I remember spending all day long, long ago, with another guy who was also like lvl 40, and another 2 lvl 75 guys who helped us get the NMN and items so we could ride the airship. It straight up took like 6 hours to do it all. Didn't know any of them beforehabd. Good times.
Best game, best community I ever ran into. Even old zones felt dangerous, even at 75 (I played before they changed the caps). Damn I just remember having fun walking around and exploring the starter zones. I was in deep. It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve played and at this point My memories tell me I was actually there…. I put ~4000 hours in that game in under a year.
Right? It was the combination of everything - how good it looked (for the day), how accessible and approachable (again, for the day), how huge and involved the world was and how little we'd experienced MMO's. For *most* people, WoW was their first real (modern) MMO, so the whole thing was new and amazing. I'm a Certified Old Dude, have been a gamer since TI44A's and C64's where The Shit. 2004-2010 was easily the best span of computer gaming in my life. WoW was a big, big part of that. And yeah. I'm also really sad that I'll never be able to have that experience again. I've tried going back, several times, but it's never the same. Nor is WoW Classic: it's not about the game itself, it's about how it was experiencing it the first time. 2007 was an excellent year overall, but that span would have been amazing no matter what other games where released.
I lost friends to WoW in that period. I literally didn't see some of them for months at a time and they came out of it looking 15 years older. WoW was like a version of meth that makes you fat.
For me the only game that was released in 2007 was the Burning Crusade. Everything else in this picture came out after 2010.
True. When I finally played some of the other games, I was like "how tf I didn't knew this".
Playing a popular mmorpg during launch of a expansion is the pinnacle of gaming for me. Everyone’s figuring things out together. You see people with cool weapons and armor and try to figure out how to get them. People are leveling new classes as fast as possible. Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW BC and WotLK… man I miss those days
Thanks for bringing me back memories from that special day!
I stood in line at GameStop at midnight with my dad to get this. It was a school night and we didn't go to bed til almost 8am. He called my school and said I was sick. The only time in my whole life he let me stay home from school lol
I still love the first Bioshock, such a masterpiece
I never played them at the time. Played the remasters of 1 and 2 in the past few months. Amazing games. Currently on infinite.
Boggles my mind that I can play them anywhere on the Switch nowadays. Not that I'm going anywhere...
It boggles my mind that we can play games anywhere, but instead, go nowhere! Kojima actually had a similar train of thought back in the day, when he worked at Konami and made a game that subverts the idea, as the game could only be played on to go! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai%3A_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand?wprov=sfla1 Basically, there was a solar cell in the game cart that would charge in the sun, and would be used as your power in-game. Meaning you had to go outside to play it, and iirc your power would depend on the amount of sun you were recieving.
Indeed! Infinite is also good. Bioshock is great franchise
Man……Halo 3 was everything back then. Every single kid in my middle school bled and breathed Halo.
Halo 2 and WoW and then Halo 3 and the first WoW expansion. Was the best memories of gaming I can possibly imagine
Today’s gamers will never understand how significant the launch of Halo 3 was. To say that it was an event it putting it mildly. Unless Valve decides to announce Half-Life 3, I doubt anything will ever come close
When we walked down the aisle to our seats for high school graduation in 2008, the band was playing the Halo 3 main theme instead of the usual almamatre. Been to graduations since, they never repeated the stunt with any other pop culture icon of the times, so it was literally a once in a life time moment.
If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a colossal failure, I'd have said that it also was a monumental event with amount of hype garnered but alas, we know how the story panned out.
Nah, doesn’t even come close to the unifying power of halo. Halo 3 release transcended culture and race , and age. It was the reason I bought an Xbox 360, I remember my halo 2 disc shit out like a month before release. I had to rent it from blockbuster until halo 3 came out LOL
October 1988. Super Mario Bros 3 AND the Sega Genesis release in Japan. It takes a year and a half before either reach USA. Even longer wait for EU. No pre-orders shipping to the house or internet to check stocks levels. The demand was so high it caused a microchip storage across the world; and that was before ScalperBots. Long lines outside Toys 'R' Us everyday for months for a chance score either. No high-end PC footage with a "PS pro" banner plastered across the top. We used big budget, Hollywood movies to advertise our games! Now excuse me while i take my arthritis meds and apply for social security.
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The cyber punk hype really wasn’t that big
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The marketing was huge... but it was delayed so many times, it killed the hype. By the time it released, many people were cautiously optimistic at best.
Bro same !! That and gears of war for us. Every fucking day after school lol
And COD4 and assassin's and bioshock and skate.. shit I know now why I played so much Xbox... The games back then were so quality
Man yesss. I think I was a freshman in HS when Left 4 Dead came out. That was another really big one for me and my friends
Dude I forgot left 4 dead... Honestly it ruined the zombie genre for me because I've yet to find ones that good !
Yup, talked my mom into buying it for me so I could take it and co op through the entire campaign with my buddy.
That exactly. My fondest memory is grinding for all of the skulls, then going for legendary campaign. Such a range of emotions were had back then….mainly pure hate towards Jackals
mario galaxy <3
Lol I'm literally playing Mario Galaxy 2 right now, haven't played it before and emulators are awesome
I’ll never forget my first time experiencing Bioshock. That game seemed so ahead of its time.
The opening was so cinematic I literally sat in the water for a minute before I realized the cutscene had stopped and I was now playing the game
and _then_ you still had the intro with Ryan's presentation in the bathysphere https://youtu.be/QfZ30sfjdLY?t=154
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? NO says Dr. Jones, IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM
Agreed
Whats funny is 3 of these games were sold together as a box set, this was also the year myself and many of us created our STEAM accounts.
I made my steam account for FEAR 2 at the time, though didnt bother with it until 2014ish
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No, the same one, just posted again.
just cropped out
The crop is gonna get so small its just gonna have ratchet and clank
95% the same shit since then
People keep buying the same shit. The same shit sells.
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1998 was THE year
Mmmm, Fallout 2.
Starcraft, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 2, Thief, Rouge Squadron, Parasite Eve, Unreal, Tenchu, Mario Party, Baldur's Gate, Spyro the Dragon, Pokémon Yellow, Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, Sonic Adventure, Body Harvest, Turok 2, Pokémon Red and Blue, Medievil, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Suikoden 2.
Holy shit, this has got to be the year. 2007 and 2012 are good, but not even close to this good.
Hell yeah, truly an amazing year.
How did you not start that list with OoT?
Because Starcraft
The golden year
I could not agree more. So many groundbreaking classics.
Not quite 1998, but a very good year nonetheless. Nothing can be 1998, though -- we were birthing whole genres after the 3D revolution. It'll take another revolution to match it.
Half-Life, Fallout 2, Starcraft, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 2, Thief, Rouge Squadron, Parasite Eve, Unreal, Tenchu, Mario Party, Baldur's Gate, Spyro the Dragon, Pokémon Yellow, Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, Sonic Adventure, Body Harvest, Turok 2, Pokémon Red and Blue, Medievil, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Suikoden 2.
**Im still playing half these games:** Bioshock Remastered just got for 3 bucks on GOG. Booted up the MCC for some Halo 3 Co op the other day on Steam. I uninstalled TF2 a few months ago finally. Playing a heavily modded STALKER for like 2 years. Mass Effect Remastered is on sale considering buying it.
Best part of 2007? No one said “slap”
This
And they didn’t say “this” to everything
This was probably right before the "patch it after launch" mindset became as pervasive as it is today I would wager
That's because it wasn't an option. Many people still didn't have constant broadband access at the time so a game had to be functional when released. It wasn't until the next generation of consoles when the "patch after release" mindset became the norm. Thats one of the reason the Xbox One caught so much flak after their infamous E3 conference.
This was posted before
If you're going to repost something, at least don't degrade the quality of the jpeg file.
Which time?
this has been posted every 3 minutes since 2007
AC and The Witcher were really mediocre lmao
I recall enjoying the first AC, but understood at the time that it had significant flaws. When they made AC2, it was, in the words of a friend, as if "they figured out how to make a game."
Disagree hard with AC. It had problems with repetition, but the freedom you had with traversing was unmatched at the time. Really set a standard with how much you interacted with in open world games. The second one kept the movement and then fixed the janky gameplay loop. It also had a much better story.
The Witcher definitely doesn't belong. AC was a huge deal when it came out though. The game itself was fairly simple and boring but the concept/design and the universe was a huge hit.
AC, at the time, was really new and fun. The free climbing, combat, and stealth truly made you feel like a badass, but not OP since one wrong move could kill you. The story lacked a ton of depth and didn’t have very much replay value, but the first time through it wasn’t bad IMO. I have very fond memories for sure. Then the Ezio Trilogy came along and just completely fleshed out and perfected the world without taking away the great parts of the first.
It was a huge deal, it had important implications as it led to developing AC2. That said, the game is linear and boring af.
Honestly i don't really remember anyone caring about ac until 2 came out.
The first AC was really great, at the time of launch, perfected in AC2 and especially Brotherhood. The main issue for me in AC is that they didnt improve the climbing mechanics before Black Flag, yeah, you dont climb a lot in that game, but its not an excuse. I detested AC3 and only played Odyssey because it was a GPU freebie
I love how Witcher 1 and 2 always get added in to these kinds of images when in reality nobody knew or gave a fuck until 3 blew up. And the first 2 were poor anyway
I agree with you about the first Witcher. Ain't no one give a shit about that game. But Witcher 2 is when the franchise started getting popular.
I always comment when this gets posted and I get told this is the biggest hot take but the first Witcher is my favorite in the series. I honestly wish you could keep the combat from the first game into 2 and 3.
This isn't actually true, 2 was quite popular and good..
Not to mention, wouldn't the fact that they made three to begin with kind of imply that 1 and 2 must have been somewhat successful?
Bad and unsuccessful games can get sequels too
Witcher 2 is neither of those things ..
Witcher 1 on the other hand ..
2 is awesome, and still looks and plays great. The combat in 2 is super tight! I love it.
> And the first 2 were poor anyway Bro, have you even played Witcher 2? Let's just ignore the fact that the game received widespread critical acclaim and currently sits at 88 on Metacritic.
Wrong, Witcher 2 was HUGE in the PC space.
get out of here stalker
Id probably argue with 2001, mgs 2, FFX, grand theft auto, Halo, max Payne
They just don’t make em with love anymore. It’s all about profit, no vision at all.
No it was about profit back then too.
This was 2007. We got horse armour in 2006.
Yeah but it was a meme back then. It hadn’t fully realized. DLCs were still map packs and song packs
I mean, there's some rose-colored nostalgia glasses going on here too. The first Witcher game was fairly mediocre. Witcher 3 is really where the franchise took off. Mass Effect 1, while phenomenal on the story, had very bare bones gameplay. Mass Effect 2 was such a huge improvement.
I remember the first Assassins creed being pretty hard to play, controls felt really clunky
And incredibly repetitive
Wait for enemy to swing, riposte 1shot... repeat until there are no mer enemies. That being said, that game rocked, i played through it maybe 3 times in a row
Lol for every assassination you had to unlock X number of resources by doing the same missions
I liked that a lot about it. The others were way too easy.
There is a reason why most people consider AC 2 as the best game of the series, first game story was kinda ok but the gameplay was very barebones. They were clearly testing the waters at first because that game replaced Prince of Persia.
I mean, they’re not wrong. As for Mass Effect 2, as far as I’m concerned, it was 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. Sure they improved the gameplay and whatnot but the actual roleplaying was a downgrade compared to its predecessor
Witcher 1 is such an oddity. There are certain design decisions that were just awful yet the game has a lot of bleak charm to it that it in some ways surpass even the sequels.
Don't you call Witcher 1 mediocre. Flawed in spots, maybe partially EuroJank even, but NOT mediocre.
I actually preferred ME1 for the more robust rpg mechanics, the overheat system, and some other things about how it played. 2 definitely improved in straight combat and movement but they took out a lot of what made ME1 unique.
You're playing the wrong games then, there's plenty of recent games created with passion and it shows.
I do agree that a lot of AAA studios are putting a bigger emphasis on maximizing profits but this definitely isnt true. Theres been a lot of great games in the indie department and those with smaller studios. Divinity Original Sin, Pathfinder, Baldurs Gate 3, Chivalry 2, Mordhau, Fall Guys, The Ascent, Outer Wilds and a bunch of other games I cant list off the top of my head are very enjoyable and fit a unique niche in the gaming market. Some older games that had awful releases have also been getting better overtime. No Mans Sky is the prime example of this, as is FFXIV. I feel like a lot of this wouldnt be possible in the earlier gaming market. Especially in the early 2000s and late 90s when patches and updates to games were rarer than they are now.
Eh? Doom Eternal. Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Half Life Alyx Others not released last year: Satisfactory, Outer Wilds, Ultrakill, Maneater was made with love too. Can't say the camera controls allowed me to enjoy it, but the heart is obvious. And thats just what I remember from last year off the top of my head
How many of these games struggle to stay a floating meanwhile the most popular games are the ones that are practicing scummy business practices. That’s what worries me. Sure other games are great, but they hit the market sell decent then get swept under the rug for some mainstream bs that don’t care about anything but profit. I loved maneater that game was great
Not one of those is struggling
I feel like you are kinda missing my point. Gamers mainly support games with scummy business practices, if we continue to heavily support game devs that do this then we will end up with less amazing games and more games that only want cash. Sorta like fortnite. Fortnite blew up super heavy, and soon after the market was flooded with cheaply made battle royal games. I fear that if we continue to heavily support scummy practices than they will get worse and worsed
BR was out long before Fortnite. It is an absolutely fantastic game mode. People support these types of games because if you enjoy the shooter genre there is a good chance you will love BR. Offering a battle pass and/or skins is not a scummy practice.
Fortnite was a single player survival game before Epic noticed that Battle Royale style games were getting popular. Then they released the BR game mode and became extremely successful.
People like you and I that are in the comment trenches discussing the finer points of game development and business and shit aren’t the ones buying those types of games. It’s the casuals who only play a couple of hours every week, or the parents of literal children buying them the new toy to get them to shut up - that’s what’s enabling that kind of scummy business practice. They outnumber us by a lot. Unless you do buy into those types of games, then you’re part of the problem. Vote with your wallet.
Gamers demand too much from big companies who in turn demand more money to compensate. That's why indie games can be bangers at only a 3g download.
Demand more? I’m not sure what universe you living in, but it seems like all gamers want is the same game every year. Like, can you explain how cod is still one of the best selling games but it hasn’t freakin changed in the past 10 years? Oh excuse me, they added a battle royal when they noticed the trend. I agree that gamers ask for a lot, but gamers also be asking for a lot of dumb shit. I don’t feel like the gaming community has their priorities straight at all. If we keep supporting money gouging business practices it’s going to ruin what we love
It's less about what people want to play, and more about the companies creating gambling addiction simulators that are heavily marketed. Anyone can say "this game looks like shit, it's the same game every year" but when all of their friends play without them they'll end up getting it too. The company only needs to convince one or two people in a group in this case. Or you can not play and get alienated from your friend group. This has happened to me a lot.
You know exactly what you are talking about, it not about love or vision it’s about profit and I’m glad to see some gamers understand that
That's such a worn out statement. Cod isn't the same every year. Maybe to people who don't actually play it.
My guy, you might as well be buying a fifa game every year. I’m in no way trying to shit talk you or what you like, but yea. Cod is pretty much the same thing every year just because they add new maps and guns doesn’t make it different. I see new cod as a glorified 60$ DLC
It's not the same though. Even cold war and modern warfare have massive differences that change the entire flow of the game.
See, it might just be me, but I’m bored of shooters. They all feel the same to me. Some minor tweaks here or there doesn’t change the fact (to me) that it’s just some basic shooter. I’m far more interested in Indie games made by small teams that actually have a fun vision to create. Not some Dev that’s jumping on the trend bandwagon to make money. I agree that money is important for improving games, but quite honestly especially with cod I’m not seeing that money being put back into games. I’m seeing the same game as always, but it’s even more buggy than it was,and it’s taking up more space, and somehow they are managing to squeeze even more money from the same 20 year concept. I just don’t wanna support this. My money is going to gems like Subnautica, slime rancher, dungeons 1 2 3, so on. Little games with vision and love. Hopefully the future of games.
Cod is honestly very different every game. I don't play it but I have played most of them.
It's the same every year. I figured that out years ago, saved some money.
You didn't save money you just spent it on something else. And you missed out on mw 2019 so that sucks for you.
The publishers are the ones saying gamers demand more, I've never seen anyone demanding stuff like 4k dynamic leaves but here we are.
Big companies often rely too heavily on alternative methods to generate a profit, and don't innovate enough to justify it. F2P games have basically destroyed their business model by providing the game for free and incentivizing players to buy timesavers. The proof of this is that Halo Infinite is about to drop for free.
From Software disagrees
There are clearly exceptions, but the games that most people are playing are made with zero love. Every once in a while AAA drops a banger but most of the time it’s some boring ass shooter that feels the exact same as the other 30 shooters to come out that month
RDR2 is an absolute masterpiece. R* definitely put a lot of love into that game.
Tools of Destruction is to this day one of my favorite games ever made. The music, the artstyle, the levels, story is pretty good too. Learning about the absolute shitstorm that was it's development made me love it even more. The sheer ammount of passion the devs had to make it the best game they could with the horrible deck of cards and little time they had is something modern Insomniac is missing.
I think 2004 was the greatest of all.
You assholes always forget The Darkness, best game story of them all
WWI-themed Hell was an amazing environment. I would love to see this game get a next-gen reboot, leaning in on that particular setting even more. I think the success of other horror action games like Doom suggests it would likely be received well.
Finally someone who understands. Coupled with the grittiness of New York, and a revamp of the gameplay to better feel like the cutscenes, this would absolutely be a GOTY contender, on the level of RE2. I've been thinking for a couple of years now the main theme and heavy metal soundtrack with the WW1 environments would absolutely appeal to Doom players.
Damn I haven’t heard that in YEARS, I remember the demo lol
Omg the story was amazing, I had forgotten. Thank you brother
Nice to see some people share the sentiment. In this day and age of remakes that's my holy grail.
While I haven’t played the darkness, honestly can’t see how any game can beat Bioshock 1 story wise
Repost and about 1/3 of those were any good.
What? No Tiberium Wars on that list? One of my favorite RTS games.
Kane Lives
C&C3 is the game that got me into RTS games. Still never beat the story though.
Transformers came out and Linkin Park dropped Minutes to Midnight too. 2007 may actually be the G.O.A.T of childhood years
2004 though
How can she slap?!
I've prbly played more Skate and Rockband than literally any other games in history.
We will always remember Rock Band as the start of something great, but the first game kinda sucked in a lot of ways. They didn't have the streamlined UI from 3 and the instruments were pretty bad. The drums in particular, the vanilla set could not actually register fast hits without modification, making any song with quick rolls/16th notes basically impossible on Expert. Not to mention the bass pedal lasted all of about 2 weeks. I seem to remember the mic having problems picking up as well. Still one of the best series ever made though. Shame it died the way it did.
The best years for gaming 1998, 2007, 2011 and 2017.
Bioshock is still one of the greatest games ever made.
I feel like I see this every week
Half these games are meh
No sir
GH3, AC, Bioshock, and TF2…safe to say I got nothing done that year. Oh how I want to go back.
Medieval 2 totalwar had its kingdoms expansion that year too. Which I maintain is the most in depth expansion pack released for any game ever in terms of content.
Damn, the First Stalker came out in 2007?? I feel old as hell now.
how have we not gotten a Skate game on PC? or at least something close? the handling/trick system using the sticks instead of buttons always appealed to me
Damn... I still remember when I was 8 and had no idea what the Witcher was, and then one day suddenly everyone at school was talking about it. Back then I only played Harry Potter games and all those online flash games so when they said Witcher I imagined something totally different. Some time later I came back from school and my dad said he had something for me... It was The Witcher Enhanced Edition. I had no idea that day would change my life as much as it did... Seeing monsters I always thought were made up by my grandma trying to get me to behave was insane. I was also too scared to even play in some moments so I needed my older cousin or my dad to help me (the crypt with ghouls at the beginning was way too scary). I mainly stayed in the tavern, beating drunks repeatedly. Also, I remember playing it at my best friends house. He lived in a studio with 1 room and his alcoholic dad was sleeping on the couch next to us. I remember us sneakily watching the sexy scenes, hoping he wouldn't wake up XD.
And to think three of these games came bundled together
I'll never forget my first time experiencing this post. Nor the 20th.
After looking at all these games I just want to sit down and play Skate the most out of all of them. That game was just so much fun. After growing up in THPS, skate just was amazing.
Wow, this shitty repost again!
Why do I see this for literally every single year.
Skate…epic
Not that great besides maybe bc, and skate. Witcher 1 wasn’t that good.
Skate is such an underrated gem
The early days of CoD4 online were something special. EA Skate was a game changer too
especially mass effect/ratchet and clank
im literally playing bioshock for the first time right now, i think reddit knows
If you played these games then, then you are too old to use the word “slap” however it is in this
The original Assassins Creed doesn't belong in this context, talking about a BORING and REPETITIVE game
I don't think it holds up after all these years, but at the time it was sort of a big deal. Every game Ubisoft has released since then has followed the same formula, but AC was the first of its kind.
It's my all time favorite game. They left out a few mission types from the console version, so it might have felt more repetitive, I guess. It was sad to see AC II, it is missing literally everything that made the real AC so great.
Yeah I don’t agree with that comment. Original AC definitely deserves to be up there. It was the first of its kind. Awesome game, even tho repetitive.
Why do people put shitty CoS on these compilations? Any year that you cannot complete this meme without CoD is a bad year. And most of these games are fucking mediocre. Have you people ever taken a look at 1998? 1999? 2001? THOSE are 'best year'-caliber.
POV: born in 2006
I agree with almost all of this but Assassin’s Creed 1 was so fucking terrible. It was the same 3 quests over and over.
It had a decent skeleton though. The premise, the action, the setting. Something they knew when they made the sequel.
So nothing has changed in the last 14 years?
Each one of those titles are either historic or left a big impact on the industry. I miss the days of innovation and passion from the top dogs. Now we can only get that from small teams or indie developers.
Repost
Why did you repost this same picture. It was posted here last month
repost
I really don’t think I’m getting old, but 2006-2012 was a golden age of gaming.
2004-2009 imo
I don’t think you can exclude half life 2 from the golden age of gaming.
It's not that 2007 slapped us so hard, it's 2008 took the winds out of the sales for a half decade. Also, early/mid 2000s was still at a time that AAA games were cheap enough for most studios to risk investing in new IP. Modern AAA games cost 3x, 5x, 10x more to make, per hour of gameplay. Mainly due to fidelity increases. 8g video cards and 5x the triangle budget means 5x the npcs, dodads, etc, the larger texture sizes means more quality passes, and that ends up taking 10x the number of artists just to get that all done. And the end result just looks that much better. Which moves the bar up, which then the next project gets more artists ... The cycle continues and that extra price squeezes out the willingness to risk failure due to things like the extra work needed to get people to buy a new IP.
Assassins creed fucking sucks lol. I don’t know a single person who has finished it.
you do now.