Still Half-Life 2 for me.

I guess I'll have to sit this one out. Never actually played/finished any of the games remaining in the runoff vote.

Ah yes, Tropico, I thought about that game a couple of 'years' ago, but then forgot to mention it. I played the original some. Not as much as like SimCity or RCT of course, or Anno, but I liked the first game enough to give it significant playtime. It wasn't as 'free' in its gameplay as those though, and I didn't really like rebels shooting up everything so I never really tried any of the sequels. I have been tempted to get and play another when some of the sequels came out but it just never happened.

Yeah indeed for me personally this was a period in time when certain things disappointed me in rapid succession. First Nintendo's mainline Mario and Zelda games which I thought were inferior to the N64 games and my subsequent abandonment of console gaming more or less. Then things like RCT 3 not being anywhere near as good as its predecessor, and later the butchering of SimCity. There was the decline of Star Wars games after KotOR II, the rts genre as a whole and yes also my interest in shooters would also take a major hit over the coming years.

I was very much into shooters, first person ones, during this era. I loved the World War II themed shooters like the first two Call of Duties (never really played III much since it was a console exclusive) and the quirky unique ones like No One Lives Forever or scifi ones like Star Trek Elite Force. Sadly for me the WWII focus went away with the success of CoD Modern Warfare after CoD had also usurped basically all the other fps's as well.

When you get disappointment after disappointment it hurts your motivation to actually look for and start anything new so I am aware I missed things I probably would have liked, but at that point there wasn't much left for me except for older games which I just continued playing. Until finally sometime during the 7th Gen, some new and interesting stuff would emerge and I would gravitate backwards towards the console space. Interestingly enough a similar phase has began for me in this day. A 'second dark age'.

Half-Life 2 gets my vote, once again

HL2 is a mixed bag imo. Some levels are meh or drag on too long. The gunplay isn’t great. The grav gun is a cool idea but hard to use in practice. Still, it’s got the excellent Highway 17 and some nice atmosphere along with at the time new tech and ideas so I’m ok with it winning.

Unfortunately I’ve not gotten around to playing some of the games that could challenge it, Ninja Gaiden, KOTOR 2, Fable, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.

Same here. That's going to become a permanent problem for me when we get a decade further: should I vote by impression games that I haven't played?

I should always have something to vote for initially regardless of the year, but there are quite a few years coming up where my opinion of the best games is not going to align even remotely with what I expect to get the most votes in general, so whenever a year goes into this second round I might have to just not vote.

For the record, I also haven't voted in the runoff, due to not having played any of the four remaining games.

Half-Life 2 again, but Thousand Year Door would be a strong second place for me in this poll.

It's never too late ;) 3 and 4 are very relaxing games, the rebels are such a minor part which you can easily keep at bay anyway by keeping the population happy. Which works best by building a communist utopia with minimal spread in income and lots of socialist programs to support everyone. It does always seem to come down to starting with exporting cigars to turning the island into a tourist haven. Playing as a benevolent dictator is quite fun, hardly any need for military, rebels don't gain any traction when the population is happy.

I enjoy it since you can build an alternative to our capitalist driven world thriving on income disparity with heavy military needs to keep populations in line. Plus the music completes the package, relaxing through and through.