1998 comes up a lot in response to this question, for good reason. Pokemon Red/Blue, Baldur’s Gate, Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Half-Life, Fallout 2, StarCraft, and on and on. Games were made much more quickly back then, and the technological advancements allowed for a lot of these games to do new things that no one had done before, that were quite predictably going to be well-received.
If I’m putting together a pantheon of great years in gaming, it looks like 1998, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2023. If I’ve got to pick one, it might be 2004. Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (an odd choice for many, but it’s maybe my favorite in the series), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Halo 2, Burnout 3: Takedown, Star Wars: Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Unreal Tournament 2004, The Sims 2, Doom 3, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Viewtiful Joe 2, Ninja Gaiden, Counter-Strike: Source, etc., etc. This was a magical time in online multiplayer, where it was pretty new for most, and you could do things like proximity chat in a shooter and expect people to actually use it for the video game at hand instead of spewing slurs into the mic. Local multiplayer was abundant. Obtuse game design made to sell strategy guides was just about obsolete, and DLC had yet to be invented (outside of beefier expansions). Midnight launches were exciting, and I have fond memories of, for reasons I can’t explain, playing Halo 2 on launch day in a 12-player LAN using bean bags, projectors, and 3 Xboxes set up in a local college’s racket ball court.
i was going to go with '06, but it looks like '04 was revolutionary for many game genres, and considered a major milestone in video game history due to its lasting affect on future titles.
Nice, that’s the 3rd launch of the year for Ariane 6. We’ll see if they get a 4th in December. One of their next big milestones, planned as their first launch of 2026, is the first Ariane 64, with a whole pile of Kuiper sats on board.
I don’t mind size so long as there’s meaningful activity.
For example, Just Cause 2 is huge with a massive variety of biomes but I enjoy hijacking military jets and blowing shit up on repeat and general traversal.
Infamous 2 and Second Son have very neat and small maps that are action packed and fun to traverse.
At least the main game, the world was kind of flat.
The land of Shadow’s map was kind of difficult to read. There was too many layers. Some things were underground. Some were above ground.
If the world wasn’t connected but broken by portals or something, it would have been fine. But condensed like that made it feel too big and I overwhelming.
I picked up the title. Haven’t gotten a chance to play too much, but it feels much more noon friendly. Automations let you focus more on the parts of the game you want. The tutorial happens during a regular game instead of a separate mode. Performance has also been great on my machine.
Yeah. I never fucked with EU but I am a huge CK sicko and… I have a LOT of problems with Paradox as a publisher but they’ve really been pushing their internal/flagship studios to focus on onboarding and approachability for these games.
Was really surprised to see that the new East Asia DLC for CK3 actually added a new tutorial sequence/character. Haven’t sat down yet to see if it is focused on the Mandate of Heaven or if it is just for people who want to get back in and are sick and freaking tired of Petty King Murchad.
GTA 5 was boring when it came to exploring, much of it was pretty empty unless there was a mission. Elder Scrolls Arena was just random generated repeated stuff - miles of it. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a lot of copy and paste.
I cannot describe how disappointed I was in the switch when it came out, and the situation isn’t much better now. It took one huge step forwards, yes, bus also ditched a ton of really good features :
No cameras !?
No microphone !?
No analog triggers
No 3D display
No stylus support
No Streetpass
No personality (fun apps, menu music, themes…)
Even the Motion controls, which are still a thing, do not feature any IR reference point, making the Wii still the best implementation of motion aim outside of VR.
The games are great, but these days I personally play the Wii U and 3DS more often, because unlike the switch these platforms still offer some experiences that are just not possible elsewhere.
In fact, the Wii U and 3DS are currently the only consoles I would recommend actually possessing physically. Wii U emulation is really annoying (though Steam Deck can get there, with a cable in the way), and good luck finding anything for the 3DS that does the 3D part any better than a New 3DS XL.
Some of the things make sense, but overall I agree.
3D display simply died, everybody did it for a while but so few things used it well that it wasn’t worth the cost (especially since it hurts quality unless you can get the player to use special glasses).
You could use touchscreen compatible stylus, but no extra features connected to it.
Definitely miss analog triggers, which also hurts emulation (GameCube). Something streetpass-like could’ve been put in the mobile app (which also is way too limited and supported by too few games).
Absolutely miss customization too.
Gen 1 Switch should also already have gotten a top side USB C port - with support for accessories like a camera + mic (which wouldn’t have necessarily been built in, but supported).
Switch 2 could benefit so much from better local discovery especially now that it has GameShare, you could have it passively advertise supported games so you could discover opportunities to play even games you don’t have (much like how Download Play used to work on the Nintendo DS and GBA)
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