Initially printed in 2020.
The good factor about this query is there’s actually no unsuitable reply, as a result of yearly is a good yr for PC gaming. Possibly you are particularly a fan of 2007’s Orange Field, Bioshock, and Crysis, otherwise you actually love 2015 as a result of it introduced us The Witcher 3 and Metallic Gear Strong 5, otherwise you assume Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and The Sims 2 helped make 2004 the very best yr for PC gaming ever.
Like I stated, there is not any unsuitable reply!
Nevertheless it’s nonetheless one thing to debate and argue (hopefully politely!) over: What was the very best yr for PC gaming? Under you may discover solutions from our workers in addition to some from the PC Gamer boards (opens in new tab). Tell us your favourite yr, and why it is the very best, within the feedback under.
1999
Evan Lahti: ’99 is a spiritual second for aggressive FPS gamers over the age of 30. Quake 3 and Unreal Match shaped a brand new period for aggressive FPS. You may consider them as an analogous type of sport, however they had been constructed on opposing philosophies. Quake 3 was outlined by its purity: its weapons had been easy, however within the palms of athletic gamers, they had been paintbrushes for ache that may very well be mixed with a chic motion system. In distinction, UT appears just like the Canyonero (opens in new tab): a rocket launcher stuffed inside a grenade launcher, an attack-and-defend mode that performed out like a fortress siege, mutators, low gravity railgunning, Chainsaw Melee, a gun that lobbed piles of poison goo.
Throw in Staff Fortress Basic and Counter-Strike (the mod, at the least), and 1999 is certainly the primordial pool from which most present aggressive shooters had been spawned. I suppose another stuff got here out that yr too: System Shock 2, Everquest, Planescape Torment, Homeworld, Age of Empires 2, Alpha Centauri, and C&C: Tiberian Solar.
2007
Jody Macgregor: You can make a simple argument for 2007 on the energy of The Orange Field, Supreme Commander, Crysis, BioShock, and STALKER, however that is actually a private choose. It is the yr that received me again into PC gaming after the price of upgrading and shopping for video games right here in Australia had stored me away for just a few years. Portal and Staff Fortress 2 helped win me again, however so did a number of wonderful low-spec video games like Recettear (nonetheless the very best JRPG I’ve performed), Peggle, Deathworm, and Osu! I spent a number of 2007 enjoying The Shivering Isles enlargement for Oblivion as effectively.
1998
Andy Chalk: 1998 is the yr all of it started for me. Thief: The Darkish Challenge, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout 2, Half-Life, and StarCraft (which I wasn’t actually into, nevertheless it most likely deserves a point out) all confirmed up in ’98, which makes it not solely a seminal yr for gaming, but in addition a launchpad for therefore many greater and higher issues. Except Fallout 2, which deserved so significantly better than it received, every of those represents the start line of collection that had been deeply formative on a private stage: The Thief and Baldur’s Gate collection nonetheless share the highest spot on my all-time greatest listing, and despite the fact that I am not as keen about Half-Life as I was, Half-Life 2 set a typical for shooters in a means that is by no means been replicated. With out 1998, none of it occurs—that makes it a hell of a very good yr in my eyes.
2002
Tyler Wilde: I am tempted to go along with ’96 or ’97 for Quake, Quake 2, Diablo, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, and different of my all-time favorites, however the begin of the brand new millennium feels extra notable to me. In 2002, video games felt greater than they ever had earlier than: I might stand on the wing of a aircraft in Battlefield 1942 whereas another person flew it, see the Command & Conquer world from a unit’s perspective in C&C: Renegade, go jetpack snowboarding in Tribes, and discover a complete island in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. It wasn’t as if large 3D areas had been remarkable on the time, however that yr stands proud to me because the yr we would really escaped hallways. Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 additionally got here to PC in 2002.
In the meantime, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault stays one in all my favourite shooters ever—my digital M1 Garand abilities won’t ever be higher than they had been then—and the discharge of Warcraft 3 marked the start of a short interval after I went to gaming cafes and drank Bawls (plus it is among the many most influential video games of all time, largely because of its mod scene). No One Lives Ceaselessly 2, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, and Mafia assist seal it for me. I want there have been some indie hit I might level at to attain extra factors—Cave Story was 2004—however I suppose yearly cannot be consultant of all the pieces. Good yr, although!
3057, or perhaps 1995
Wes Fenlon: I do not want an extended listing of video games launched in a given yr to inform you which yr was the very best for PC gaming, as a result of it is clearly 3057, the yr MechWarrior 2 takes place. As that thirty first century warfare documentary has proven us, future PC gaming can have every of us combating for our lives in a sweet-ass mech. Sure: sooner or later, all computer systems are inside large robots, clearly.
(Anyway, 1995 was a brilliant influential yr: MechWarrior 2, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, TIE Fighter, and Darkish Forces all hit the PC that yr).
2004
Steven Messner: A little bit stunned nobody has beat me to this as a result of 2004 is clearly the very best yr for PC gaming. In that quick span of simply 12 months, a number of the most influential video games of all time had been launched alongside a bevy of actually good video games that did not have fairly the identical lasting attraction. Clearly the large one to notice is Half-Life 2, however World of Warcraft additionally launched in that very same yr together with Rome: Whole Battle (which redefined the collection), The Sims 2, Far Cry, Counter-Strike: Supply, and Unreal Match 2004. This yr additionally had quite a lot of nice cult classics, like Metropolis of Heroes, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, EverQuest 2, Battlefield Vietnam, Tribes: Vengeance, Want for Velocity: Underground 2.
I might go on… so I’ll. Painkiller, The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Center-Earth, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Star Wars: Battlefront, Ultimate Fantasy XI: Chains of Promathia (one in all its coolest expansions), The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, Doom 3 (it sucks however I nonetheless like it), Warhammer 40,000: Daybreak of Battle. Trying again, that is an absurd variety of actually good video games that would fulfill virtually anybody.
Loopy yr, that 2004.
2015
Phil Savage: If I choose years based mostly on how heated the discussions had been throughout PC Gamer’s Recreation of the 12 months course of—and truthfully, why would not I—2015 is the clear standout. As an RPG fan, The Witcher 3 was among the best video games of the last decade—enormous, lovely, and filled with nice writing. As a stealth fan, Metallic Gear Strong 5 was an intricate sandbox filled with toys—all the pieces from the long-lasting fulton balloon to the horse that poops on command. 2015 was the yr that introduced us the very best detective sport of latest reminiscence in Her Story, the very best city-builder of latest reminiscence in Cities: Skylines, and among the best ways video games of latest reminiscence in Invisible, Inc.
It additionally introduced us 80 Days, Life is Unusual, Rainbow Six Siege, Sunless Seas, Undertale and Pillars of Eternity. It introduced GTA 5 to PC. It wasted a whole bunch of hours with Rocket League. And, look, personally I appreciated Fallout 4, so there’s that. Notably, it is also the final yr (up to now) by which we awarded a 96% rating (opens in new tab)—traditionally, for the UK facet at the least, the best we give out. Whereas there could also be years with extra historic significance, I would argue 2015 stays the very best of the final decade.
1982
Chris Livingston: That is what occurs once you reply final—you need to get inventive. However 1982 was an extremely vital yr for me personally: it is the yr my dad and mom purchased us our first dwelling laptop, an Apple IIc. And with it got here Choplifter, my very first laptop sport.
I devoured as many video games as I might that yr, together with Aztec (opens in new tab), which was principally Spelunky earlier than Spelunky: a randomly generated tomb-raiding sport stuffed with traps and dynamite, snakes and monsters, destructible partitions and flooring, and a valuable idol to deliver again to the floor. Beloved it (opens in new tab).
There have been loads of others I performed that yr: a combating sport known as Swashbuckler, turn-based technique Taipan!, journey video games Sherwood Forest and Zork 3, all which helped type my early and lasting love for laptop video games.
From our boards (opens in new tab)
Frindis: I believe 1993 was the very best yr for gaming and I particularly give Doom that purpose. Doom was one of many first video games to make multiplayer FPS fairly widespread and I bear in mind how cool it was to attend native LAN occasions making an attempt to get that candy frag. There’s a little slice of entertaining gaming historical past to be discovered when wanting up a number of the biggest Doom gamers previously.
Lead programmer John Carmack would additionally make it straightforward for gamers to make their very own maps, thus opening for each competitors and yearly praises of a number of the greatest WADS. Whereas not being the primary sport you could possibly mod, this one positively was the preferred, carving the way in which for future modding communities. One other factor to say is that having the ability to perceive the sport knowledge additionally opened up for speedrunners to tighten the scores and nonetheless to this date individuals are competing in getting the very best instances.
Oh, I virtually forgot to say it was essentially the most violent and gory fps sport that yr, how the 2D was made to look 3D, the BFG, kick-ass soundtrack, monsters from hell, erm..story and that Doom lately received a megawad: an unofficial sequel to the fourth episode from none aside from John Romero, one of many unique creators of Doom.
Mazer: A whole lot of my childhood favourites appear to be clustered in 1997.
Mainstream hits like Fallout, Quake 2, Hexen 2, GTA, Dungeon Keeper, The Curse of Monkey Island, Age Of Empires and so forth. Cult classics like MDK, Interstate ’76, Oddworld: Abes Oddysee, Darkish Earth, The Final Specific, Fantasy: The Fallen Lords, Outlaws, Privateer 2, and Twinsen’s Odyssey. We received ports of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Shadows Of The Empire and Panzer Dragoon to check our new graphics playing cards, and Carmageddon’s launch in Australia was utterly uncensored in a really uncommon transfer for my nation.
It is also the yr by which the naming conventions of the Darkish Forces collection formally went off the rails with the discharge of Star Wars Jedi Knight – Darkish Forces 2. It is by this logic that I would like to maneuver that we formally rename the ultimate sport within the collection, Jedi Academy, to now be ‘Star Wars Jedi Academy – Jedi Outcast 2 – Jedi Knight 3 – Darkish Forces 4’.
Zloth: Really, 2016 was a mighty good yr:
- Witcher 3 got here into its personal with Blood & Wine
- XCom 2 got here out early sufficient within the yr to be in fine condition by the top of the yr
- Ultimate Fantasy 9 (on PC) – not my favourite FF however effectively price enjoying
- Battlezone 98 Redux – which I actually actually need to play some day quickly
- 2016 model of Doom
- No Man’s Sky confirmed up and I, for one, actually appreciated it early on
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
- Valley – a brief, candy, and really fairly sport
- Rise of the Tomb Raider was fairly enjoyable
- Dishonored 2 (PC Gamer’s GotY)
- Stellaris and Civ 6 – nevertheless it was positively too early to play both in 2016, IMHO.
- Dragon’s Dogma: Darkish Arisen confirmed up on PC
- X:Rebirth’s House of Mild DLC appeared early within the yr so, by summer time 2016, X:Rebirth had gotten fairly enjoyable.
MaddMann: Personally I might say 2004. A few of my all time favourite video games that I nonetheless play to this present day, and a few which have died, however left me with nice reminiscences. A few of my favorites from 2004:
- Mafia: The Metropolis of Misplaced Heaven
- Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen
- Ultimate Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
- Metal Battalion: Line of Contact
- Metallic Gear Strong: The Twin Snakes
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword
- Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
- Far Cry
- Ultimate Fantasy XI
- Struggle Night time 2004
- Painkiller
- Hitman: Contracts
- Metallic Slug 3
- Thief: Lethal Shadows
- Doom 3
- Silent Hill 4: The Room
- Name of Obligation: United Offensive
- Fable
- Warhammer 40,000: Daybreak of Battle
- Katamari Damacy
- Rome: Whole Battle
- Ace Fight 5: The Unsung Battle
- Counter-Strike: Supply
- EverQuest II
- Halo 2
- Half-Life 2
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
- World of Warcraft
- Star Wars: Knights of the Outdated Republic II The Sith Lords
McStabStab: For me I would say 2000.
- Diablo 2
- Crimson Alert 2
- The Sims
- Deus Ex
- Shogun: Whole Battle
- Counter-Strike
Kaamos_Llama: Oh man 1998 has Halflife, Starcraft, Baldurs Gate, Fallout 2, Thief Darkish Challenge, Commandos and Grim Fandango. Video games of that period had a lot affect on future video games.
Trying again during the last 25 odd years although, it appears yearly has an argument. Good instances!
