I don't think there's a single game from this year in my all-time top 50, though there are still several titles that I like very much and consider great Mario Kart is always fun, and Double Dash is no exception, Final Fantasy X-2 has its positives including the excellent battle system, but it was a decided step down from its predecessor, Beyond Good & Evil was a great adventure game with an interesting setting and well-written characters, Ratchet & Clank was among my favourite series during the PS2-era and Going Commando was one of the best in it, but the game I'm going to vote for wasn't even listed.

The best game of 2003 was Tales of Symphonia. It introduced me to the series and made me a fan, and it remains one of the best games in it. Great music, battle system (especially in co-op), memorable characters, and one of the better stories in the franchise. As mentioned, there are no games from this year in my top 50, but there were still a wide variety of great titles released, Tales of Symphonia first and foremost in my eyes.

KOTOR!!

Double Dash and Viewtiful Joe were fantastic staples that year too. 

And as a guilty pleasure, Enter the Matrix

2003 was a calmer year for me and from September we were exclusively playing Lost Dungeons of Norrath (Everquest expansion) which was awesome. It transformed the game from the regular, go sit somewhere and let the tank in the group pull mobs to your camp, to a dungeon crawl through a set of instanced dungeons for alternative XP rewards. (A second upgrade path with lots of great enhancements) It also added upgrade slots to items to make certain gear more powerful.

Yet I still made time to play Beyond Good & Evil in the holiday seasons, awesome game

But ultimately best kept in hindsight as I could not get into the remake years later. The final battle was a mean one as well, reversing the controls on you during the boss fight. Evil! Very varied game, loved it at the time.

Jak II was fun but very hard. I didn't complete the game until the ps3 collection where it felt a lot more playable. Bigger screen, better visibility? I struggled with the ps2 version and put it aside. In the collection I still had some trouble with the turret sections yet overall it was a much better balance between challenge and frustration. Screen size matters....

Midnight Club II got plenty love from me, fun open world racer

A remake with HDR would really shine nowadays. I always liked these better than NFS Underground.

SSX 3 continued the series with another great game. And playing it on PS2 I enjoyed it for its DTS surround sound.

It was so satisfying to fill up the trick bar, escalating the music track which played in awesome DTS surround.
Great game play with great music, music reacting to the gameplay, remake please.

I bought Star Wars Kotor as well, was looking forward to play it, but for some reason my GPU was not supported right and no matter what I tried, after the intro sequence the game crawled down to nearly a halt, running at 1-2 fps. No clue why as Flight Simulator and Everquest ran without issues, yet Kotor just wouldn't work in a playable state. A shame. I never got back to it later. It was the time when I started to get disillusioned by PC, all the issues starting to pile up over time while consoles provided smooth game play without any hassle. The 2000s started my shift from mainly playing new games on PC to mainly playing them on consoles. (Although in time measurement most our time still went to WoW from 2004 until 2007)

Mario Kart Double Dash is the Mario Kart game I played the most of the series. Great levels, looks awesome on GameCube


Call of Duty started this year and we all know where that went. For impact on the gaming landscape CoD should probably take this year. However I give it to my personal favorite of 2003, Prince of Persia The sands of time.

Great game play which was still just as good in the remaster(s). One of those games I enjoyed just as much if not more when playing it again later, which is rare for me. Usually I only play the first level out of nostalgia and then move on. Not PoP Sands of Time, just as good today as in 2003. (Still hoping for the remake to actually get finished https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6rk3dzrT4ndn9ofFfZg4GV/an-update-on-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake )

Sadly the sequels had to be darker and edgy (Warrior Within, Two Thrones) and weren't as good, maybe also a reason why I still love the first one so much.

Decent year, bit of a lull between the greatness of 2002 and 2004. (HL2, GTA San Andreas, MGS3, Burnout 3 Takedown, Far Cry, Fable, Halo 2, UT2004, Paper Mario Thousand year door, World of Warcraft, Doom 3, Driv3r)

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time for me. Just a great game I really enjoyed.

Homeworld 2 for me, though I didn't play it until the remastered collection came out (which goes to show how well the space-based RTS gameplay held up). It built on the great concept, narrative, and gameplay of the first game.

Knights of the old republic was the easy choice for me.  Still to this day one of my favorite games of all time.  I really hope they do the remake right.

It was a demanding game for the time and it also required Directx9 to be playable which was very new at the time.  I actually bought a GPU just so I could play this game and was a motivation for building a high end machine in 2004.

I was still in college when this game came out so did not have a lot of money.  My NVidia TnT2 ultra did not support the game because it require directx9 to be playable.  My PC also did not support AGP only PCI (not PCI-e which did not exist yet but the original PCI) so I ended up getting a PCI GeForce 5200 which I not even sure was better then the Nvidia Tnt2 Ultra other then the fact it did fully support Directx9.

It played the game ok, would get some really bad FPS drops at times but it was playable.  In late 2004 I finally saved enough to build a high end machine Athlon fx-55 and GeForce 6800 ultra.  Replayed it with that and it played flawlessly.  

I remember when Call of Duty came out - all the folks I knew who were into that type of games were interested in it, and liked it, but at the time I don't remember any of us really thinking it is any better than Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Of course, when we find out the backstory behind it all, that the folks who made MOH:AA jumped ship and made CoD, it was pretty obvious why in retrospect MoH started to go downhill, and CoD uphill.

Anyhow, 2003. Lot of games that I really like, Beyond Good and Evil, Max Payne 2, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Star Wars Jedi Academy, True Crime: Streets of LA, Freelancer, XIII

But two really stand out for me as candidates for GoY:

- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which was really different from PoP 2D games, but was such an enjoyable and beautiful game with great flow in both exploration and in combat - Patrice Désilets really hit the gold with that one and then later with Assassin's Creed

- Star Wars: KOTOR - after Newerwinter Nights that, while a great game, was a little bit of a letdown, given what people were expecting from Bioware (something like BG2, but in 3D), KOTOR came as a proper vision of the next Bioware's big thing. Based around WotC's Star Wars TTRPG (which is based on their DnD 3e), it was a great example of turned-based with pause party based RPG. And being made with SW licence gave players a lot of familiarity with the lore and setting, making it even more appealing (even more than Baldur's Gate with Forgotten Realms). Now, I really don't like linear narrative driven RPGs, and KOTOR is very linear (though you have a Jedi/Sith choices) and that's a major minus in my book, but overall it was a fantastic package.

I'll go with Prince of Persia for my vote, with Vietcong, a tactical FPS, being my favourite from that year (both due to excellent single player campaign and a lot of LAN multiplayer time spent with it).

Third slow year in a row. SNES era is def. when gaming peaked son.

Im going with Kotor I guess.

One of the poorest years in gaming history imo. Gave my vote to Fire Emblem: The Blazing Balde but it's not really GotY material, just the best game in a poor year. Simpson's Hit and Run was good too, but the same principal applies