2003
Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic
Licensed games are usually bottom-of-the-barrel scum. After all, who wants to waste time and money making a great game if it’s a guaranteed cash cow no matter how you slice it? The answer: BioWare. Demonstrating both an extreme reverence for the source material and the writing chops that have made it one of the best in the business, BioWare crafted a story that rivaled – and in some ways, surpassed – the original trilogy. On top of that, your choices altered both your character and the story’s outcome, meaning that conversations weren’t just snooze-worthy verbal spew that you mashed your way through to get to the good stuff. And then there’s HK-47, who single-handedly gave us back the ability to smile after the second trilogy froze our faces into ugly masks equal parts rage and sadness.
Call of Duty
Call of Duty didn’t necessarily do anything new, but boy did it do things right. Massive cinematic action sequences and pacing that barely left time for players to catch their breath made other WWII campaigns look downright silly, and the multiplayer – while not quite as revolutionary as Modern Warfare’s – had more than enough variety to keep players hooked.
Splinter Cell
The more realistic rival to Metal Gear Solid’s fat-men-on-rollerblades-and-oh-look-a-vampire zaniness, Splinter Cell encouraged precision and perfection, and – in the process – crafted a methodical hero who stood in stark contrast to gaming’s gallery of increasingly trigger-happy meatheads.
2004
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a lot of things. Far too many to fit in this tiny space. Even when it first launched, It was accessible in a way other games only wished they could be – fun for everyone without being “dumbed down.” It was also smartly designed to encourage multiple playstyles, whether you wanted to pop in for 30 minutes or quest from sun-up to sundown. Emerging after an incredibly long beta period, WoW proudly bore Blizzard’s standard of quality-over-quantity, yet still managed to be positively massive – a personality packed world full of things to see and do. Depressingly often, things become pop culture “phenomena” due to targeted marketing, bad taste, or the evil machinations of some blood-devouring devil that exists outside the realm of space and time (see Justin Bieber’s success). WoW, however, is definitely an exception to that rule.
Half-Life 2
Many would see the original Half-Life as a perfectly decent swan song, but for Valve, it was only a warm-up. Half-Life 2 topped it in just about every way imaginable with City 17′s haunting believability, the pitch-perfect pacing of levels like Ravenholm, and characters like Alyx, who brought a human quality to the proceedings that the majority of games still struggle to match.
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
We’re all for revolutionary titles that change the face of videogames forever, but sometimes we just want to have fun. If we had to describe Pirates in one word, it’d be exactly that: fun. Sailing the high seas in the game’s brightly colored world was so effortlessly enjoyable that we spent days utterly absorbed in its charms. And all the while, we couldn’t wipe the goofy, childlike grin off our faces.
