IMO
Demon’s Souls
Cursed Mountain
The Last Remnant
Mirror’s Edge
Saints Row 2
999
Half Minute Hero
Knights in the Nightmare
SMT : Strange Journey
SMT : Devil Survivor
Someone else would add Minecraft…
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i love giants. weird game. apparently there’s a small discord of regular players https://giantswd.org/
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A stab at Most Influportant games
World of Warcraft
Minecraft
Fortnite
Pokemon Go
Call of Duty 4
Whatever kicked off/solidified the Roguelike trend
Wii Sports
Half-Life 2
League of Legends
The Sims 2
I think it just feels like an exercise in quantifying trends
I forgot GTA
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excluding 2000 (I’d go with the first S&P otherwise):
ICO (2001)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)
Battlefield 1942 (2002)
Raw Danger (2006)
Noby Noby Boy (2009)
Demon’s Souls (2009)
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor (2009)
Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days (2010)
Dark Souls (2011)
Map Collection (2024)
but mostly wanted to say re: questions like “what is the worst/best year for games?” that…sometimes I get nostalgic for SB’s Top 64 tournament :,)
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It’s cool how many folks in this thread said Dog Days.
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Is Wii Sports notable outside of its own release? I can’t think of any follow up games that managed to replicate its success at reaching outside existing gamer spaces, and then influencing other games to do the same. Feel like that should go to Just Dance, Candy Crush, or Monopoly Go. Maybe even that Kardashian game.
I’m thinking more about the legacy it left with the Wii as a device that transcended just being a console.
I think Just Dance could fill that spot.
I suppose mobile gaming should be in there but even its players don’t seem to think very much of it and I don’t see it breaking into mainstream culture in the ways some others do.
See I knew there was one I was forgetting.
Brain Training got my colleagues who had no interest in games to buy a DS.
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- Katamari Damacy / We Love Katamari — 2 games, but works best considering both. the first is thematically perfect, the second is mechanically perfect. the second is also a lot funnier (and darker) if you have played the first one.
- Death Stranding — an exceptionally rare case of a modern AAA game attempting new things (and succeeding)
- Minecraft — deeply flawed in ways that are wholly irrelevant when stood against the indefatigable brilliance of its strengths. probably still the single greatest “videogame” ever conceived
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom — another necessary two-fer. the first one is a game centered entirely around feelings, while shifting the mechanical paradigm to something almost soft-simulationist at times; a very un-nintendo move, it seemed. wistful and reserved. unhurried. the second one is less a traditional game, more perhaps the most delightful and magnificent digital toybox ever coded.
- Outrun 2 SP SDX — magical
- Elden Ring — for me it’s the definitive culmination of everything From has been working on since 2009. despite From’s copious entries in the soulslike mold in the 21st century, the formula still feels vital, essential, maybe even elevated. when considering the whole of the game, i find myself drawing parallels to Pink Floyd’s 1979 double-LP The Wall; as if something this drawn-out and indulgent shouldn’t be allowed to be so consistently inspired.
- The Outer Wilds — unimpeachable design chops, mind-bending creativity, genuinely humane writing. uncompromised brilliance.
- Disco Elysium — i am not the one best equipped to sing this game’s earned praises. i am content to just point at it and say “yes”. it is as good as they say.
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Sometimes I forget about, then can’t believe how good Outer Wilds is.
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As an attempt to address my previous error of including a game from the year 2000 (god forbid…), Seaman has been flushed down the toilet, back into the sewer of the 20th century where he belongs… Bye-bye, Seaman!
This whole time I had been secretly quite tortured about whether or not to include Chulip in place of Chibi-Robo anyway, so this has actually made my life a whole lot easier!
I AM NEVER UPDATING THIS LIST AGAIN!!!
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This is a good one. Id really like to read some kind of analysis / oral history on how RTS stopped being like a pillar of AAA games culture. I know there are still some that people play, and I would not be surprised at all if it turns out that StarCraft 2 or something actually has more active players now than any other RTS in history, but there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of energy devoted to the genre anymore. Why?
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the rise of world of warcraft (mmos) and aeon of strife/defense of the ancients (mobas) i think are 2 critical factors for different reasons, as well as a high base skill floor that was also effectively rising instead of lowering with new RTS games. very challenging design problems
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I definitely think the base-building RTS was gradually supplanted by MOBAs over time, which satisfy the need to click little guys around without the huge investment of a quality singleplayer campaign, map editor, multi-factions, etc.
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Single-player RTSes allow me ne to chill out and pretend I’m playing Sim City with a dash of violence — something a MOBA will never give me.
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you’re all forgetting the simplest of reasons which is that most rts developers were companies that gradually went bankrupt or were bought and closed over the course of the 2000s
there just aren’t nearly the same amount of professional developers working on rts games anymore. a lot of rtses got stuck trying to reinvent the wheel . it became kind of a stagnant genre, because it was like doom in terms of everyone shitting out a base building rts game, which is why dota was cool. supcom tried to move them in a new direction but it proved to be too niche. Zero k is running with that though.
The traditional rts is dead but there are many other real time strategy games out there to this day and interestingly there are more turn based strategy games than ever
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While AAA has long-since abandoned the base-building RTS, it still has a steady stream of games from smaller studios.
Some, like Stormgate, try (and fail) to capture the Starcraft market that Blizzard has on lock.
Others, like Tempest Rising, are aiming for the long-abandoned Command & Conquer niche (no FMVs though so I didn’t like the demo much)
Beyond All Reason is undergoing a renaissance of interest, it’s got pretty good CCU and daily uniques and a growing competitive scene. I’m fairly sure it’s because they got help rewriting their rendering pipeline and redoing the whole artistic direction of the game so it actually looks and feels very nice now (compared to other TA Spring games like Zero-K, which are great but maybe not as fancy looking)
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the past two years traditional rts is actually really coming back with indie devs yeah they’re releasing them in like 2001 amounts again
also Paradox games are technically real time strategy and immensely popular so arguably rtses are still around they’ve just metamorphosed into newer forms. The people do not lust for starcraft and cossacks, they lust for crusader kings and workers & resources: soviet republic
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I yearn for a new base-builder as good as RA2. Hoping DORF makes the cut.
I’m glad the genre is being kept alive by open source sickos and old game devotees at least, even if the death of Westwood and Blizzard’s decline has mostly killed the quality singleplayer campaign.
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