Another great year.
My personal favorite is Ico which is in my top 10 games of all time.
A game I've bought at least 3 times already and will buy again. I played both the PAL and NTSC version as I started playing this together with my then visiting girlfriend, and we finished the game together after I moved to Canada. It's the first game I bought when getting here. And of course later I played the remaster on PS3 and still hoping for a remake the way SotC was remade.
It's truly a magical game and no other game has made, what's basically is an escort quest, this awesome. The hand holding (actual hand holding, not the game coddling the player :p) mechanic is close to perfection and the sense of urgency you feel when she's in trouble has been done really well. A strange mysterious place to explore together with fun puzzles, it's right up my alley. Also the best save mechanic, couches to rest on along the way.
IL-2 Sturmovik became a favorite as well, actually it's still is my favorite historical flight combat sim
We played this together in LAN when you still only needed one copy to play together on PC. You just needed to install it on 2 PCs, then put the disc in the other PC after starting the game on the first 1, and then you could play together in LAN. IL-2 also had a clever trick to make forests look 3D from the air, worked great. All the planes were a joy to fly and unique in their own ways. One of the greats.
Halo created the big buzz in 2001
We had a preview / demo of the first level on PC in the office, it was awesome. However MS bought up Bungie and made it exclusive to the new XBox. Great move for MS, not for me as I had no proficiency whatsoever playing an FPS with dual analog sticks. I hated it. We tried Halo in 4 player split-screen and I was pretty much dead in the water. From dominating in Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike to not being able to turn a corner without running into things lol.
Later I replayed the first Halo in the remake and maybe it's because of the time elapsed, yet I still never finished it as it became rather boring after the awesome opening level. A lot of back tracking and samey looking levels, the campaign wasn't very good. Yet we had fun playing Halo 2 together and later Halo's got better campaigns. On and off that is and now MS has pretty much killed Halo local co-op with Infinite :/
2001 also saw the birth of Jak and Dexter with The precursor legacy. Another favorite of mine, awesome open world platformer.
Another game I enjoyed just as much, if not more, in the J&D Collection remake on PS3.
SSX Tricky desperately needs to comeback in it's original form. Such a great game at the time.
I did enjoy the last one (2012) a lot yet instead of a reboot it became the final installment :/
MGS2 had the best opening level at the time
The surround sound in this game was/is phenomenal. The rain sounded so realistic and the whole first level was auditory bliss. I didn't mind the switch to Raiden and actually enjoyed the campaign a lot. Whacky story aside (some of which is actually not that far off ugh) the way it handled time progression worked really well. Daylight fading as the missions went on. Spider-man 2 does it now as well, yet it worked much better in MGS2 since you're not constantly distracted by side missions. The day/night cycle in MGS2 feels realistic and actually as if time is progressing.
Max Payne, can't forget that one. That was my favorite shooter of 2001, introducing bullet time mechanics
The game looked awesome as well due to ray traced baked in lighting. The game play was the star of course, and showed the advantages of tps over fps. Clearing a room of enemies has never felt as satisfying and adrenaline pumping again as it was in the original Max Payne.
I also enjoyed Myst 3: Exile, another great entry in this mysterious alternate world.
Black & White introduced motion controls or rather gesture recognition with the mouse. A mix of RTS with Tamagotchi which somehow worked.
Next to training your champion/monster not to poop on your village, the RTS part was actually a lot of fun. The campaign was very good, I would play a remake of the first one any day. The sequel improved on some things but made others worse. B&W2 pissed off a friend of mine so much he broke the disc. Which I actually did with GT3: A-Spec. I wasn't that much of a fan of GT yet and A-Spec had some horrible rubber band AI that cheated with tire wear on top of running into you. I got stuck on some race with tire wear, comfortably in the lead until my tires started dropping off and the AI rubber band caught up to ram me off the road in the final lap, over and over lol. The disc broke in two when I threw it down on the carpet. At least I had the sense to take it out the ps2 first :)
Oh Silent Hill 2 was 2001 as well? Damn, 2001 was stacked.
The last and only flat screen game that could actually give me the creeps. I never finished the game as the battle against Pyramid head was too much for me at the time lol.
2001 has to go to GTA3. One of the best series transitions to 3D and the start of the open world gaming craze.
The game oozed atmosphere, both in day/night weather cycles, the excellently crafted city, traffic and people going about their business and of course the radio stations. I could just park at the top of a parking garage and look out over the city while listening to the in game radio. The police was also well done, nice challenge to ramp up the wanted level and then get away after causing max mayhem. Plus cheat codes were still in, summoning a tank for getaway vehicle, shooting backwards for extra propulsion :)
GTA5 has 185 million sales so far and is still selling. It came out a decade ago now. How much will GTA6 sell!
Last edited by SvennoJ - on 28 October 2023
