Which year in the last 15 years had the best games to you?

To me, i thought 2001 was a REVOLUTIONARY year for gaming, with AMAZING releases such as:

Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2, SSX Tricky, Metal Gear Solid 2, Halo: Combat Evolved, Ico, Grand Theft Auto III, Devil May Cry, Paper Mario, Klonoa 2, Mario Party 3, and many more!

What year do you guys choose?

I will go with 2007 :)

• Super Mario Galaxy
• Guitar hero 3 Legends of Rock
• Halo 3
• The Orange Box (Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2 Episode 2)
• Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
• Metroid Prime 3
• Bioshock
• Mass Effect
• Rock Band
• Crysis
• The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass
• Super Paper Mario
• Zack & Wiki Quest For Barbaros Treasure
• The Witcher
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations

99.

Quake 3, Counterstrike, Everquest, Team Fortress Classic, 3rd Strike, Soulcalibur, Unreal Tournament, FF8, Smash Brothers, Silent Hill, System Shock 2, Tony Hawk, DK64.

2011, epic year for game releases on various platforms.

• Skyrim
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Sonic Generations
• Rayman Origins
• Zelda: Skyward Sword
• The Witcher 2
• Dark Souls
• Portal 2
• Uncharted 3
• Gears of War 3
• Saints Row 3
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations
• Disgaea 4
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
• Crysis 2
• Rage
• Dirt 3
• Mortal Kombat
• Resistance 3
• Killzone 3
• Little Big Planet 2
• Forza Motorsport 4
• Xenoblade Chronicles
• Dead Space 2
• L.A. Noire
• Modern Warfare 3
• Battlefield 3
• Batman Arkham City
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• DC Universe Online
• Dragon Age 2
• Yakuza 4
• Motorstorm: Apocalypse
• Hunted: The Demon's Forge
• Infamous 2
• Alice: Madness Returns
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon
• Dungeon Siege 3
• F.E.A.R. 3
• Dead Island
• Payday: The Heist
• Lord of the Rings: War in the North
• King of Fighters 13
• Catherine
• Mass Effect 2
• Rift

Unreal and Forsaken were really big for me, they get in just under the wire for the 15 year time frame I think. Of course when Morrowind came out in 2002 that changed everything from my point of view largely due to the graphics that helped form its atmosphere.

98 and 99 come neck and neck for me, and no other year comes close. Here are the most memorable games from these years for me:

98: Panzer Dragoon Saga, Freespace, Starcraft, Unreal, F-Zero X, Grim Fandango, Half-Life, Tribes, Falcon 4.0

99: SimCity 3000, Team Fortress Classic, System Shock 2, Soul Calibur, The Longest Journey, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3

I maintain that this has been the first truly great year in gaming in over a decade, but no way do I pick a winner.

98: KOF '98, Metal Gear Solid, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, Radiant Silvergun, Brave Fencer Musashi, Cool Boarders 3, Sega Rally 2, Daytona USA 2, The Last Blade 2...

99: 3rd Strike, Flag to Flag, Gran Turismo 2, Tekken Tag Tournament, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Hydro Thunder, Grandia finally arrives in the US...

00: Grandia II, Final Fantasy IX, SSX, Ridge Racer V, Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, RayCrisis, Legend of the Dragoon, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia...

13: Super Mario 3D World, Dragon's Crown, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Gran Turismo 6, Eiyu Densetsu: Sen no Kiseki, Kamen Rider: Battride War, oh, and two systems launched...

2004 was brilliant

I see Mass effect 2 and BF3 there, so 2011 wins by default.

@Black_Knight_00: 2004 does give a really good account of itself, with OutRun 2, the $20 ESPN 2K Sports line, Forza Motorsport, Rallisport Challenge 2, Eiyu Densetsu: Sora no Kiseki FC...I still think the industry had moved into a distinct lull by then, but there were some great games coming out still.

yup 2001 for me too

@DarkCatalyst: Hlf-Life 2, Halo 2, Riddick, Doom 3, MGS3, FarCry, GTA San Andreas, Paper Mario, Pikmin 2, KOTOR 2, Metroid Prime 2, SC: Pandora Tomorrow, Vampire The Masquerade, Rome Total War, Ninja Gaiden, The Bard's Tale

2004 was crazy

I dont have any particular year, all have their bad and their good and there hasn't been one game that really stood out for me.

Every year but the dark years of 2005 and 06.

I agree with @Jacanuk. I do have to say that Age of Empires II, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Half Life 2 made the biggest impacts in my gaming life, but that experience is as biased as can be.

@Black_Knight_00: It just didn't do for me what it did for a lot of people. By the end of 2004 I was already lamenting what had appeared (and proven for several years thereafter) to be a western takeover of the industry. It felt like everything I loved about gaming was getting kicked aside, and not for anything I could bring myself to care about in the slightest despite trying very hard to appreciate what was front and center at the time. Ninja Gaiden I considered the bastardization of an amazing platform franchise, GTA never managed to gather any interest from me whatsoever, I was never a Star Wars fan so the KOTOR games were lost on me, etc.

To be honest, only now is my interest in gaming starting to pick back up to where it once was. That's largely due to the indie scene, the emergence/re-emergence of some competent localization houses, and the fact that JRPG studios are finally washing off this whole experimental phase they've been in for years. I got so frustrated at one point a few years back that I started strictly playing imports.

overall 2013

personally: 2001 or 2010 for Final Fantasy X and Mass Effect 2 alone

Have to be my favorite as well with halo2 kotor 2 and gta sa

To be fair, most of the games I mentioned were PC/Xbox exclusives, I think the PS2 was still going strong concerning japanese games by that time. The rut began a few years later, I think.

@Black_Knight_00: It had its moments, and definitely kept waving the old-school flag throughout its lifespan, bless it. (Grandia III in 2006 was definitely a high point, if one of the last.) But there was a noticable chain of events earlier on that definitely combined to gradually knock my kind of gaming into a coma - Sega of America's surrender, Square Enix's turn for the experimental, that initial western charge on consoles led by games like Halo, GTA3, Morrowind, KOTOR...then you had a lot of the games that traditionally would've been front and center on consoles getting relegated to handhelds (a practice still going on today but about to come to a screeching halt). It's not to say that nothing came out that I liked, but the flow was very choked down compared to where it was.

The first signs of a revival came around 09-10 in the wake of the rebranding when developers decided the PS3 needed to finally become a PlayStation, and Sony themselves introduced PSP Engine in Japan (and it's a crime they haven't brought that over here), things started moving faster again. Being able to consolize the PSP from the time the 2000 was rolled out helped quite a bit too, even if it did have aspect problems on most TVs.

But now, the PS4 list of developers pleases me, especially now that we know Nihon Falcom is developing the Kiseki spinoff's 10th Anniversary project for it, and this whole notion that the PS Vita should complement the PS3 and PS4 rather than be a replacement for what the PS3 wasn't really wins me over...these games are coming back to the TV where they belong. Meanwhile you've also got Nintendo making the kinds of games I've been calling for them to make for over a decade (3D Land/World are the Mario games they should've been making way back on N64, and A Link Between Worlds is the game I wanted Ocarina of Time to be), so I'm in a pretty happy place right now. :)

@DarkCatalyst: I wish Nintendo went back to the open world formula for both Mario and Zelda. A Hyrule to explore with the seamless size of Skyrim would make my day.

@Black_Knight_00: See, I always felt Mario 64 (I assume that's where you were going with the "open world" comment) was just a generic 3D platformer (as much as such a thing would be possible before there really were any other 3D platformers) with Mario shoehorned into it, whereas 3D Land/World actually take the existing conventions of the series and apply 3D gameplay, which is the only way I ever accept my updates of classic franchises. I suppose you could say that gamers like me are why risks are risks.

The 3D platformer genre quickly became generic, but Mario 64 launched it and for the time it was earth-shattering, never before seen. I remember the first time I played it, it was unbelievable.

@Black_Knight_00: I remember being technically impressed while disappointed that they weren't (at the time) able to apply it to a proper Mario game. That was a feeling that I encountered a lot in the mid-to-late 90s, and really soured me on a lot of the technical advancements that were being made around that time.

@marcheegsr Yes ME2 was released a year before but came on PS3 in 2011, so it does qualify as being released on both 2010/11.

Unfortunately compromises must be made as technology progresses, for instance: The Elder Scrolls 1 featured the whole world of Tamriel to explore (of course in horrible fake 3D graphics) and TES2 only feature the Hammefell and High Rock provinces in order to accomodate the much prettier visuals.

Same goes for Mario 64, unfortunately: I'm sure they would have loved giving the game more verticality and make Yoshi playable like in the 2D games, but it simply wasn't possible with the new 3D engine. I personally think they fixed that with flying colors in MArio Sunshine, though no one seems to like that game except me.

2007 Was an amazing year for me. Great games

The greatest games for me? The Orange Box for sheer value and fun, Spyro 2 for being the first game I ever owned, the Ratchet and Clank series for it's futuristic setting, Metal Gear Solid 4 for having the greatest ending to any series ever. But none can compare to The Last of Us, a game which really got to me emotionally.

@Black_Knight_00: Once Super Mario 64 came out, they pretty much lost me on the Mario series until New SMB and 3D Land.

They lost me with Galaxy. Gorgeous game, but it was so linear and scripted it felt like Mario of Duty to me.

@Black_Knight_00: I didn't even get that far. I started with the NES Marios and that's really the only way I like them, I just refused to believe that they can't be made that way in 3D, and thus felt really vindicated when 3D Land came out.

1998.

I don't know, I don't get to buy the games just as they are released...but in the last 15 years I stumbled upon really great games (for me at least). Some of them are Darksiders, RE Outbreak, DMC3, Dissidia...

1998

• Baldur's Gate
• Banjo-Kazooie
• Fallout 2
• F-Zero X
• Grim Fandango
• Half-Life
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes
• Mega Man Legends
• Metal Gear Solid
• Panzer Dragoon Saga
• Parasite Eve
• Sakura Wars 2
• Shining Force III
• Star Ocean: The Second Story
• StarCraft
• Suikoden II
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
• Unreal
• Xenogears

2001

• Advance Wars
• Devil May Cry
• Final Fantasy X
• Golden Sun
• Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec
• Grand Theft Auto III
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• Ico
• Klonoa 2
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Mario Party 3
• Max Payne
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• Onimusha: Warlords
• Sakura Wars 3
• Shadow Hearts
• Shadow of Memories
• Silent Hill 2
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Soul Reaver 2
• SSX Tricky
• Super Smash Bros Melee
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages
• WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It