2005
Psychonauts
Judged purely on mechanical terms, Psychonauts was good – but not great. Its brand of brain-powered brain-teasing was enjoyable, sure, but nothing to write home about. Fortunately, that’s not all there is to videogames, and that goes double for Psychonauts. The game was a vibrant, hilarious, and – most of all – completely original vision of what a videogame world could be. Its settings and encounters were brilliantly inventive, and to this day, you won’t find anything even vaguely like it. Or, summed up in three words: the milkman conspiracy.
Civilization IV
Newsflash: Yet another Civilization game is great. Shocking, we know. Sure, no one’s stopping the presses here, but there’s a reason many regard Civ IV as the best in the series to this day. Its interface was beautifully slick and streamlined, and it finally made Civ multiplayer more than just a pipe dream.
Battlefield 2
Despite a title that might lead you to believe Battlefield 1942 is the 1,940th sequel to this game, Battlefield 2 advanced leaps and bounds beyond its predecessor. More weapons, more levels, and more vehicles were merely icing on a surprisingly meaty cake (in a good, significantly less disgusting-sounding way) that included an RTS-like Commander mode, squads, and an addictive promotion system.
2006
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Open air. Snow-capped mountains off in the distance. The bright morning sun glinting off a nearby lake. Green everywhere. Lush grass and trees as far as the eye can see. As far as memorable moments in games go, it’s pretty hard to top your emergence from the sewers in Oblivion. It was all so beautiful that you almost didn’t notice that irrationally angry mud crab attempting to devour your ankles. Even so, that moment encapsulated everything that made Oblivion great. Put simply, the game was mind-blowingly massive, and you could adventure wherever you pleased. The main quest in Oblivion was the faintest whisper of a suggestion, and forging your own path found you quickly rewarded with all sorts of interesting, epic sights and sounds.
Company of Heroes
RTSes, right? You click on tiny men until your finger’s a bloody stub and collect resources so you can get to the actual fun part in roughly 45 minutes. Wrong, says Company of Heroes. A thousand times wrong. The game placed an emphasis on fast-paced tactics and unit management above all else, creating a new breed of RTS that was streamlined yet still incredibly deep – just in different way. The game’s stellar AI was also a breath of fresh air in a genre where the aforementioned tiny men were previously prone to happily jogging into enemies’ streams of hot leaden death when left to their own devices.
DEFCON
Defcon matches typically ended with the entire human race dying a horrible nuclear death. Yeah, kind of makes all these other games look kind of silly, doesn’t it? Beneath that chilling premise, however, was a highly cerebral brand of strategy that – true to its setting – all went kablooey in the final few minutes of each match.
January 25th, 2011 at 6:14 am
nice game
March 17th, 2011 at 2:53 am
cool