For the record, it's DEUS EX, not DUES EX

And my vote goes to Other again

5. Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer. Unbalanced as hell (what do you expect when you can have fricking Dragons in your party?), but the unusual classes and story make up for most of it.

4. Diablo 2. The most fun Diablo, though it loses in atmosphere compared to it's predecessor

3. Paper Mario. The concept is great, the game even better.

2. Baldur's Gate II. A superb RPG, just like it's predecessor

1. Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption. The best Action-RPG of the year, with a great story, great graphics and an adapted version of the classic World of Darkness license. It's only real drawback is the AI of the coterie, micromanaging is a must.

The start of a damn strong decade, though my choice for this first year still feels mostly like a 90s game: Majora's Mask. I always liked it even more than OoT for its story, atmosphere and the mask transformations. My top 5 for the year:

1. Majora's Mask
2. Deus Ex
3. Final Fantasy IX
4. Diablo II
5. Skies of Arcadia

Say no more.

From here on out it gets a little harder, with the exception of some years. The year 2000 is still a part of it, but the Golden Age is now on its way back and I'd slowly grow out of console-gaming for a while during these years.

Still, this was the year of Zelda: Majora's Mask of course, which is an amazing sequel and still is a very unique game and one of my all-time favourites. By now the legendary N64 was on its way out as well though and this was now the time when the Dreamcast was at its peak. Though these had an Arcade release in 1999, so they're not eligible for this year, the Dreamcast ports of Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis that came out this year were my favourites. This is the year we as a family would have a lot of multiplayer 'parties' at home with friends playing various Dreamcast games. A fun time. I also played the likes of Jet Set Radio or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

The PC however would gain more and more traction. I played Diablo II of course, some Red Alert 2, the expansion for SimCity 3000 came out, Zeus Master of Olympus (a city builder in the Caesar series) and I also very much loved the fps Star Trek Voyager Elite Force. Probably the best, or maybe, along with its sequel, the only Star Trek game that's really good. Then came The Sims well, and this was huge. It was something new, and I was quite addicted to this for a while, though I also grew out of it fairly quickly.

However none of these would win, because in 2000 there was also a little game called No One Lives Forever. This fps was unique, had a fun story with great locations that were consciously ridiculous like a 60s Bond movie, and memorable characters and items. It would become one of my all-time favourites as well and I'd say this game deserves a modern remake. So that means this year is down to Majora's Mask, and No One Lives Forever. A tough choice, but I'd give the nod to the latter. My vote is "Other" for The Operative: No One Lives Forever.

Easily Diablo II. Pretty much tied with StarCraft as my favourite game of all time. And like StarCraft, it almost blows my mind how a game made 20-25 years ago could be crafted to have so much depth, replayability, and an addictive multiplayer component that it's still played by tens of thousands to this day.

Yeah, Elite Force was such an excellent game - I've replayed it some 6 months ago, installed it for my son and I just couldn't keep my hands off of it.
But I'd argue that there were other really good ST games, Star Trek: Starfleet Command especially, tough I really loved Star Trek Armada, RTS game, and STTNG - A Final unity, P&C adventure.

Great choice on No One Lives Forever, it is one of my most favourite games from that year (which was really good). I just had no choice but to vote for The Sims (although it would be really toward the bottom of my Top 10 from that year), given how innovative and important it was.

Cultural Impact: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 for the same reasons I described in the 1999 thread. It impacted the culture for a highly memorable moment in time well beyond the gaming space.

Favorite Games: I'm phrasing it that way because I can't choose. The year 2000 in my mind is a massively underrated year in the history of gaming. It literally saw the release of all of my favorite games from that console generation: both of my favorite PlayStation games, Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy IX, both of my favorite Nintendo 64 games, Perfect Dark and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and also my favorite Dreamcast game, Jet Grind Radio, a.k.a. Jet Set Radio for those outside the U.S., and I really can't choose between them, I'm afraid. Hell, it even included a computer favorite of mine in American McGee's Alice and my favorite Nancy Drew game, Message in a Haunted Mansion!

Other Thoughts: My mind always instinctively frames the year 2000 as sort of the peak Dreamcast year more than anything, where Sega unleashed so many clever new titles on the world, like Crazy Taxi (which came out in 2000 here in the U.S.), Seaman, Space Channel 5, Jet Grind Radio, and Shenmue (also a 2000 game here in the U.S.), to name a few examples, along with their launch of the Dreamcast's online play service, which, while not Sega's first or second attempt at that, was the first console online play service to really take off. (Most Americans finally had internet access by the year 2000.) It just felt like a Dreamcast kinda year at the time, like Sega was really making a comeback. Then the news came at the end of the year that actually they were giving up and dropping out of the console biz. That shocked me! While I wouldn't say I was a superfan, I'd grown up with Sega and the Dreamcast seemed like a success! But it turned out they were actually losing money hand over fist. Wow. I hadn't seen that coming at all. What would the gaming world be like without Sega in the console-making business?

No huge favorite for me this year, mostly 8/10 games: Paper Mario, Z:MM, BG2...
Some are special like Counter-Strike and Phantasy Star Online.
Several candidates of great reputation that I haven't played.
Honorary mentions to couple little personal favorites: Deep fighter (PC) and Robot Warlords (PS2).
I've never before pointed a game I'm definitely NOT voting, but in this case I have to mention Driver 2 was perhaps the most infuriating game I've ever played!

Leaves me three options: Dragon Quest VII, Icewind Dale and Sega GT.
Sega GT is very dear to me for nostalgia and aesthetics and general structure; but I have to admit some of driveability can be bad.
Icewind Dale is hugely underrated and overshadowed by BG, despite being IMO the better of the two. And specifically the first IWD is best of the games, expansions considered.
But I'll vote Dragon Quest VII.

Majora's Mask for sure, incredible game.

Skies is amazing. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.