I've been playing games as far back as I can remember. A part of me would argue that I started playing games seriously when I was around about 8 years old, but in attempting to put together a list of ten games for each year it wasn't until 2001 that I can happily sit here and say: "These are my favourite ten games of the year!"
With all that in mind, it's worth bearing in mind that not all these games are great. In 2001 I turned 11 years old and I haven't played most of these games in years. A lot of this exercise is based entirely on how much I enjoyed playing a given game way back in the day and so for some of these entries, I'll not even attempt to justify my choices. But, hey...I think that's half the fun.
For those wondering, here are the following years up until the present (Unless I ever fall behind in the future):
GOTY 2001
GOTY 2002
GOTY 2003
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
Played on: PS2, PS3 Let's kick things off with what is really the first game to get me into video-games. MGS2 remains, to this day, perhaps my favourite game of all time. To some it's indefensible, to some it's genius is beyond compare, but in all honesty, I'm somewhere in the middle. I know MGS2 has problems but it's the first game I truly loved and that's all that matters to me.
Played on: PS2, PS3 Ico is a game I never really played too much of. I never finished it (although I still mean to) but I've become more than engaged enough in the atmosphere and the world to know that it's a great game that I love dearly. It lacks the more focused objective of it's successor (which will be in one of the following years lists) but it still stands tall on its own.
Played on: PS2 I suck at horror games. I really, really am not very good at them. I think it's because one of the first horror games I ever tried to play was Silent Hill 2. I didn't get very far. But I got far enough to know that this game could do things to me that very few other games could. It made me want to stop playing because it was so *good*.
Played on: PS2 The original Jak and Daxter doesn't shine as brightly as it's follow up, which is ironic because it's an excellent platformer with a remarkably bright and bouncy style that feels in hindsight like a suitable salute goodbye to the Crash-esque design philosophy that Naughty Dog left behind with this title.
Played on: Xbox I've never been the biggest Halo guy in the world and I've never come close to finishing Combat Evolved, but there's something about those first few hours of this game that are just astonishing, no matter how many times you go back to them.
Played on: PS2, PC Max Payne doesn't hold up especially well a decade following its release, but it's one of those games that should always be remembered as being a milestone for the gritty shift that games took at the beginning of this millennium. Also, this game was the closest we had to being in The Matrix for, oh, a year or two.
Played on: PS2 Agent Under Fire isn't an especially fantastic game but it's the sort of title that I remember myself and my other 10 year old friends would play for hours at a time and for days on end. This one is here for the memories more than anything else.
Played on: PS2 Like Halo, I never really loved GTA in the same way that everybody else did. I've always generally dug them though. I admire the technological breakthroughs that GTAIII brought about and although I think the rest of the game feels like far more of a sketch for future, better games, it's influence is undeniable.
Played on: PS2 I've got no excuse other than that I've played a lot of Time Crisis 2 over the years. I literally just remembered the name of the guy I used to play it with. That's weird.
Played on: PS2 I don't even know, I remember kinda liking it, but I might even be wrong here to be honest.