Initially revealed in 2020.
The great factor about this query is there’s actually no mistaken reply, as a result of yearly is a superb 12 months for PC gaming. Perhaps 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 Stable 5, otherwise you assume Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and The Sims 2 helped make 2004 the very best 12 months for PC gaming ever.
Like I stated, there is not any mistaken reply!
But it surely’s nonetheless one thing to debate and argue (hopefully politely!) over: What was the very best 12 months for PC gaming? Under you may discover solutions from our employees in addition to some from the PC Gamer boards (opens in new tab). Tell us your favourite 12 months, and why it is the very best, within the feedback beneath.
1999
Evan Lahti: ’99 is a non secular second for aggressive FPS gamers over the age of 30. Quake 3 and Unreal Match fashioned a brand new period for aggressive FPS. You would possibly consider them as an identical model of recreation, 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 could possibly be mixed with a sublime motion system. In distinction, UT seems to be 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 citadel siege, mutators, low gravity railgunning, Chainsaw Melee, a gun that lobbed piles of poison goo.
Throw in Workforce Fortress Basic and Counter-Strike (the mod, no less than), and 1999 is definitely the primordial pool from which most present aggressive shooters had been spawned. I assume another stuff got here out that 12 months 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 straightforward argument for 2007 on the power of The Orange Field, Supreme Commander, Crysis, BioShock, and STALKER, however that is actually a private decide. It is the 12 months that obtained me again into PC gaming after the price of upgrading and shopping for video games right here in Australia had saved me away for just a few years. Portal and Workforce Fortress 2 helped win me again, however so did quite a lot of glorious low-spec video games like Recettear (nonetheless the very best JRPG I’ve performed), Peggle, Deathworm, and Osu! I spent quite a lot of 2007 taking part in The Shivering Isles growth for Oblivion as effectively.
1998
Andy Chalk: 1998 is the 12 months all of it started for me. Thief: The Darkish Mission, 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 12 months for gaming, but in addition a launchpad for therefore many larger and higher issues. Apart from Fallout 2, which deserved so a lot better than it obtained, every of those represents the start line of sequence that had been deeply formative on a private stage: The Thief and Baldur’s Gate sequence nonetheless share the highest spot on my all-time greatest checklist, and despite the fact that I am not as passionate about Half-Life as I was, Half-Life 2 set a regular for shooters in a approach that is by no means been replicated. With out 1998, none of it occurs—that makes it a hell of an excellent 12 months in my eyes.
2002
Tyler Wilde: I am tempted to go together 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 larger than they ever had earlier than: I might stand on the wing of a airplane 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 an entire island in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. It wasn’t as if massive 3D areas had been extraordinary on the time, however that 12 months stands proud to me because the 12 months we would actually 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 expertise 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 resulting from its mod scene). No One Lives Endlessly 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 the whole lot. Good 12 months, although!
3057, or perhaps 1995
Wes Fenlon: I do not want a protracted checklist of video games launched in a given 12 months to let you know which 12 months was the very best for PC gaming, as a result of it is clearly 3057, the 12 months MechWarrior 2 takes place. As that thirty first century warfare documentary has proven us, future PC gaming may have every of us preventing for our lives in a sweet-ass mech. Sure: sooner or later, all computer systems are inside big robots, clearly.
(Anyway, 1995 was a brilliant influential 12 months: MechWarrior 2, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, TIE Fighter, and Darkish Forces all hit the PC that 12 months).
2004
Steven Messner: A bit stunned nobody has beat me to this as a result of 2004 is clearly the very best 12 months for PC gaming. In that brief 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 12 months together with Rome: Complete Warfare (which redefined the sequence), The Sims 2, Far Cry, Counter-Strike: Supply, and Unreal Match 2004. This 12 months additionally had a variety 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, Remaining 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 Warfare. Trying again, that is an absurd variety of actually good video games that might fulfill nearly anybody.
Loopy 12 months, that 2004.
2015
Phil Savage: If I decide years based mostly on how heated the discussions had been throughout PC Gamer’s Sport of the 12 months course of—and actually, why would not I—2015 is the clear standout. As an RPG fan, The Witcher 3 was probably the greatest video games of the last decade—large, stunning, and stuffed with nice writing. As a stealth fan, Metallic Gear Stable 5 was an intricate sandbox stuffed with toys—the whole lot from the enduring fulton balloon to the horse that poops on command. 2015 was the 12 months that introduced us the very best detective recreation of latest reminiscence in Her Story, the very best city-builder of latest reminiscence in Cities: Skylines, and probably the greatest techniques 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 tons of of hours with Rocket League. And, look, personally I preferred Fallout 4, so there’s that. Notably, it is also the final 12 months (thus far) wherein we awarded a 96% rating (opens in new tab)—traditionally, for the UK facet no less than, 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 while you reply final—you need to get artistic. However 1982 was an extremely necessary 12 months for me personally: it is the 12 months my dad and mom purchased us our first house laptop, an Apple IIc. And with it got here Choplifter, my very first laptop recreation.
I devoured as many video games as I might that 12 months, together with Aztec (opens in new tab), which was principally Spelunky earlier than Spelunky: a randomly generated tomb-raiding recreation stuffed with traps and dynamite, snakes and monsters, destructible partitions and flooring, and a treasured idol to carry again to the floor. Liked it (opens in new tab).
There have been loads of others I performed that 12 months: a preventing recreation referred to 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 feel 1993 was the very best 12 months for gaming and I particularly give Doom that motive. Doom was one of many first video games to make multiplayer FPS fairly in style and I keep in mind how cool it was to attend native LAN occasions attempting to get that candy frag. There’s a little slice of entertaining gaming historical past to be discovered when trying up a number of the biggest Doom gamers up to now.
Lead programmer John Carmack would additionally make it simple 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 recreation you would mod, this one positively was the preferred, carving the way in which for future modding communities. One other factor to say is that with 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 occasions.
Oh, I nearly forgot to say it was essentially the most violent and gory fps recreation that 12 months, how the 2D was made to look 3D, the BFG, kick-ass soundtrack, monsters from hell, erm..story and that Doom not too long ago obtained 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 many others. Cult classics like MDK, Interstate ’76, Oddworld: Abes Oddysee, Darkish Earth, The Final Specific, Delusion: The Fallen Lords, Outlaws, Privateer 2, and Twinsen’s Odyssey. We obtained 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 12 months wherein the naming conventions of the Darkish Forces sequence 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 recreation within the sequence, 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 12 months:
- Witcher 3 got here into its personal with Blood & Wine
- XCom 2 got here out early sufficient within the 12 months to be in fine condition by the top of the 12 months
- Remaining Fantasy 9 (on PC) – not my favourite FF however effectively value taking part in
- Battlezone 98 Redux – which I actually actually wish to play some day quickly
- 2016 model of Doom
- No Man’s Sky confirmed up and I, for one, actually preferred it early on
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
- Valley – a brief, candy, and really fairly recreation
- 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 12 months so, by summer season 2016, X:Rebirth had gotten fairly enjoyable.
MaddMann: Personally I’d say 2004. A few of my all time favourite video games that I nonetheless play to at the present time, and a few which have died, however left me with nice recollections. A few of my favorites from 2004:
- Mafia: The Metropolis of Misplaced Heaven
- Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen
- Remaining Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
- Metal Battalion: Line of Contact
- Metallic Gear Stable: The Twin Snakes
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword
- Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
- Far Cry
- Remaining Fantasy XI
- Battle Evening 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 Warfare
- Katamari Damacy
- Rome: Complete Warfare
- Ace Fight 5: The Unsung Warfare
- 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
- Purple Alert 2
- The Sims
- Deus Ex
- Shogun: Complete Warfare
- Counter-Strike
Kaamos_Llama: Oh man 1998 has Halflife, Starcraft, Baldurs Gate, Fallout 2, Thief Darkish Mission, 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 occasions!
