The best Ars Technica video games, 1998-2008

Welcome to Ars 2019 Game Week! As a staff of players and gaming enthusiasts, we will offer critics, guides, interviews and other reports on the game from August 19th to 23rd.

A long time ago, on a very distant Ars, the coverage of video games worked very differently. In our first ten years of existence, game coverage has often been merged into a format focused on the focus we place on busy and passionate forum articles. The most important articles by the Ars authors can elicit comments, but most often, the most animated topics are those that have been launched by the readers themselves.

It is therefore interesting to examine the concept of "best Ars games" in history through the unique prism of the retreat based on the forum. I embarked on this project of sorting out the history of our game reviews with a list of personal favorites that, in my opinion, could be corroborated by at least some of our readers. I soon found that it was more important to watch the games that were acclaimed by both the hard-nosed and obsessing regulars.

The result is a fairly solid list of compelling video games from the turn of the century, although this list combines some surprising trends with some surprises. So let's go back to 1998, when ArsTechnica.com was officially registered at the end of December and move from one message to another on a forum for the next ten years of this Ars Gaming Week retrospective.

1998 StarCraft And StarCraft: Hens War

We start this list by an absolute year in terms of viable candidates for the game of the year. But if we stay true to the founding vision of Ars Technica as a destination for PC enthusiasts, then the best console games of the year …Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid⁠, etc.-Is disqualified by default. (Please allow this decision to serve as a strong reminder that it is do not a certifiable list "best game of each year". The bias is strong with this one. But do not worry, console games will soon see the light of day.)

Even with this restriction, the choice is always difficult. Windows 95 (and soon W98) had solidified its dominance as a gaming platform. As DirectX tools matured, dedicated video cards became more appealing. The result was a year full of action and adventure games in 3D that everyone around Ars could say the 1998 PC game, both in terms of immediate sales and lifetime rewards.

You can always say that the choice is the 1998 one Half life, but we chose another game for several reasons. By 1998, not all PC gamers had a Voodoo card ready to exploit its full potential (and users were still using the Ars forums to determine the system requirements of the game in 2001). While the world's 486 and Pentium systems were ready to launch the first 2D game, 480p: StarCraft. In addition, Blizzard turned this game into a sci-fi movie of WarCraft II in an explosion of brilliance RTS in three factions. This has happened despite the incredible attention paid to the strategic game, both as a highly anticipated hit from Blizzard and like a salvo in the tactico-military battle of more and more people of that time.

Yes, Half life The first-person game inspired and redefined as we knew it, paving the way for years of bright future and important games elsewhere on this list. But StarCraft undoubtedly the opposite: he stopped for a very long time the contenders for the crown RTS. Therefore, the game fans are again watch, and delirium, high level StarCraft professional game. Two decades later, readers still turn to Ars Technica to keep up.

Although StarCraft gets the honors for 1998, the readers did not really come to Ars to discuss it⁠– or, in fact, any RTS⁠ – until the following year. At that point, at least one user was bold enough to declare StarCraft "The best RTS game of all time", and they were joined by others who were already charmed by this The brood war expansion made to the RTS table. However, more than a few others argued that Total annihilation was a better entrance. None of the parties could agree on whether StarCraft unit balances and unit grouping limits were compelling or "StarCrap".

Fortunately for us, we are not here to choose the best RTS. We simply choose our choice for 1998. (And let's not forget, the default game and its huge indispensable game) The brood war extension pack launched the same year, which was not common in the era of expansion packs).

If you ask yourself: damn it Yes Half life gets the second place of the year … even though the first Ars readers had waited for 1999 to plead for inclusion in the "best results" list.

1999: System Shock 2

1999 was another classic year for PC gaming. While online multiplayer shooters have begun to dominate the retail business, the soap opera of the year has to go to the game that users of the Ars forum could not get enough of: System Shock 2.

The good news is that the game persists as a landmark, terrifying and timeless entry into the "second" era of PC games. By the time the game reached the sphere of modern digital download through a GOG reissue, fans had spent years rebuilding and optimizing its tracks for new players. As my colleague Ars, Lee Hutchinson wrote in 2013:

The biggest thing about System Shock 2 it is that it does not need to be modernized. When you crawl through the tunnels located under the Botanical Garden on deck 5, rummaging through bodies buried in a hurry because you need the access map of the crew section, it does not matter that the graphics are low-poly and the textures are a little blurry. because it's bloody terrifying. The air is thick with the shudder of the midwife's automatons horribly disfigured, cooing in the hands, their terrible cooing with swollen eggs filling the voids. The sweet tones of crazy SHODAN artificial intelligence resonate in your ears, provoking and provoking at once. You do not hear the crew member infested with parasites sneaking behind you until he yells "I AM SORRY!" and start bludgeoning you with a key.

Meanwhile, for a "forum in 1999" turned towards the game, here is an excerpt from our best thread of 1999:

System Shock 2 Everyone may not win the game of the year (he won at some places like Looney Games), but it is the best computer game I have ever played for a long time (I like it better than Half lifeSo if you like games and want to play a really cool, complex and addictive game, try SS2. Of course, get ready for frustration with some complicated puzzles … $ # @! @ Multi-images …

Our second place finishes with a tie: Unreal tournament and Quake 3 Arena. Choosing a favorite is difficult, if only because we know what a fire war can lead to, but it is difficult to minimize their value. combined retail impact. Both games were offered with annoying single-player modes, but they were two huge gimmicks in a new world of "online required" games, and it's fair to say that everyone needed the other to make their point of view stand out. at big-box retailers. (Plus, they paved the way for this year's biggest mod version, Counter Strike, to make waves with his own independent retail launch a year later.)

2000 Deus Ex

The rhetoric applied to 1999 System Shock 2 double count here, and Deus Ex even earns a few more gushing praise nuggets that still apply nearly 20 years later. Up & # 39; to Deus Ex 'launch, you could make a good argument for another favorite FPS game of the "second era": either SS2, Half life, or Thief: the age of darkness. Deus Ex may not count as your absolute favorite compared to those but objectively he was the first big game to synthesize the best songs from the previous three.

It was really the pinnacle of the wave of clever and sneaky first-person video games, and it was jam-packed with complex RPG systems, complex puzzles, diverse narrative paths, compelling stealth and a memorable cyberpunk story and dubbing. One amazing thing is that this game has somehow emerged from the same combined company that brought us Daikatana. Give credit to the leader of Ion Storm, John Romero; when he was not trying to make us his dog, he had apparently left Ion Storm Austin alone … and ensured that his team, led by Warren Spector, could showcase his experience in series like Ultima and Thief.

The arrival of the game on the forums Ars was resolutely mitigated, with a thread praising his impressive free demo, downloadable before the launch of the game in the retail. Another thread decried the commercial version mainly because it did not work optimally. (This last discussion prompted at least one reader to ask OP to update his computer and "drown in the toilet." How is this happening for the Y2K culture?)

But finally, Deus Ex won by readers as the most favorably received game of the year. As one speaker said:

It's been a long time since I played a player who was so immersive. the only thing that is missing to make perfect deusex is the fact that corpses do not warn guards that something [sic] is in place.

Diablo II wins second place in 2000, if only because its springboard of an extension pack, Lord of destruction, was not launched before one year. At the time of the first version of the game, Diablo II did not land as cleanly as we could all want to remember; Ars forums are lit during the game's launch window in June with complaints about performance (not to mention the anger caused by a two day delay in the retail business, egads!).

2001 Halo Combat Evolved

Let's talk about one year for console games: the Xbox has arrived Dreamcast hooked for dear life. Nintendo launched two systems (Gamecube, Game Boy Advance). And the PlayStation 2 has finally established itself as a dominant console, largely thanks to Grand Theft Auto 3 and a bunch of EA Sports games to assault sales. At the same time, Ars readers at the time conceded that it was not a year of deadly computer gaming, with Max Payne, Civilization III, and Flashpoint operation at the top of their lists.

While our readers at the time were not all buying a new Xbox console, those who took advantage of it did not miss to say how much fun they had with Halo:

Halo is hallucinating. The AI ​​and the people with whom you play in single player mode are extraordinary. My friends watch me play, it's awesome. They do not even want to play. The depth of history and mission is incredible. Nothing like.

This thread also includes thanks to the potential for multiple networks of multiple Xbox consoles at the local network level, if ever our readers were sufficiently savvy to copy "Xboxen" as early. Points for the faithful of Ars.