VGTribune

Well folks it’s almost the end of another year, at this time of year most of us will be stuffing our faces with chocolate and left over turkey sandwiches  but this year in particular is special, the end of this year marks the end of another decade and we at VGTribune would like to take you on a journey back over the pass 10 years in gaming to show you the very games that have paved the way for popular titles today.

Okay the way this is going to work primarily is we are going to be going over the games of year for the past 10 years, picking out a few titles here and there for special treatment and analysis, the reviews of each game won’t be long or prize winning but just an insight.

Lets start with the year 2000:

2000

The year of the Y2K phenomenon yes folks we where apparently all doomed the world was going to end and computers would stop working and some how spontaneously combust … anyway this is the year Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States, Microsoft also release a little old operating system called Windows ME.

Game of the year:

Diablo II

Genre: Hack and Slash

Platforms: Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X

Developer: Blizzard

Diablo II was a fantasy themed action role playing games, it had elements of the hack and slash genre but also had elements of Dungeon and Dragons like Dungeon based gameplay in keeping with what was a very popular and cool game at this time.

Diablo II is played around 4 different acts, each act follows a pre-set path and list of quests. The player takes the role of one of five different playable classes they fight monsters through wilderness areas and dungeons in order to level up their character to beat higher monsters and gain better items.

Combat is in real time and is played in an isometric view, the game also featured different difficulties, end bosses and a Multiplayer feature.

Now in the year 2000 the internet was still not that big a thing with only major companies such as AOL only having a online presence cyberspace was a bit lonely and with 56K modems the internet was more a chore than a way to lay back.

To the rescue comes battle net, now many of you that play Blizzard titles have probably heard of battle net, back in the year 2000 Blizzard developed Diablo II with online gaming in mind they allowed you through either battle net or on a LAN to play Diablo with friends, Blizzard used realms to separate those serious players from the less so serious players, serious players could join a closed realm which where stored on Blizzard servers as a method to fight cheaters in the game. Alternatively players could join a Open realm in which they can use their single player characters many players often cheated in this mode by duplicating or creating their own in game items.

Diablo II also brought to the scene the art of PvP and PvM, as well as a ‘group’ based system all of which will come in to play later on in the decade.

2001

In this year George W Bush succeeded Bill Clinton in the title of President, the UK dealt with the Foot and Mouth crisis as well as the election of Tony Blair.

Game of the year

Halo: Combat Evolved

Genre: First – Person shooter

Platforms: Xbox, Windows, Mac OS X

Developer: Bungie Studios (Creators of Marathon and Myth)

Halo: CE known to almost everyone as just ‘Halo’ was the first game in the Halo series, it was launched in November of this year as a launch title for the Xbox, it was Microsofts killer title to boost Xbox sales through the roof and it did just that selling around five million copies worldwide by 2005.

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the past 10 years Halo’s story is set in a twenty-sixth century setting, as the player you assume the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced ‘SPARTAN’ super soldier. The story is also helped a long by the character Cortana who is an artificial intelligence that occupies the Master Chief’s natural interface.

In Halo CE players can battle various aliens either on foot or in vehicles as they attempt to uncover the secrets behind the Halo ring.

This being the first Halo game it pretty much set the standard for future Halo games with vehicles like the Warthog and Ghost featured as well as Halo’s well renowned  shield system and heads up display, something we can pick out from all Halo games is Bungie’s ability to balance weapons in such a way that each weapon has a unique purpose and therefore is useful in different scenarios which is good because unlike other games it doesn’t have this OMGWTFBBQ weapon that can kill everything and make the player invulnerable.

Something I think I should mention here is multiplayer, Halo was released before Xbox Live so multiplayer online games where not officially supported as such. Instead the games success and probably the main reason it took off is because of the LAN element of the game up to 16 players could play through Ethernet or system link this created some pretty epic LAN parties and also sparked the development of software such as XBConnect and XLink Kai packet tunnelling software enabling players to overcome the no Xbox Live limitation and play with players from all over the globe from the comfort of their arm chair, and it felt good to do this it felt as though you where sticking it to the man as such.

In my personal opinion Halo games have pretty much shaped the FPS genre to how we see it today, many games try to live up to the expectations a game like Halo brought but they often failed or get branded as a ‘Halo Clone’ which in some ways is also unfortunate because it pretty much has given a monopoly on the Sci-fi/FPS genre but with a truly popular major story based game like Halo who would blame Microsoft or Bungie for capitalising.

2002

Game of the year

Battlefield 1942

Genre: FPS

Platform: Windows & Mac

Developer: Digital Illusions CE

2002 the year of the War game, 2002 seen the release of quite a few War themed games such as BF2, Conflict: Desert Storm ,Americas Army, Command and Conquer: Renegade and Civilization III.

Anyway, Battlefield 1942 for those of you that don’t know is a World War II themed FPS, it can be played in a singleplayer mode against bots or in multiplayer mode against other players on the internet or in a LAN. Battlefield 1942 is a very popular platform for mod developers with practically hundreds of mods that totally modify or rework the game very much like Half life 2.

In the game, players assume the role of one of five classes all of which are infantry, classes available include Scout, Assault, Anti-Tank, Medic, and Engineer. Players also have the ability to control various vehicles such as various aircraft, bombers, tanks, APCs as well as anti-aircraft and mounted machine guns.

Something to note is that all maps in 1942 are based on real battles and are actually somewhat realistically portrayed.

Gameplay in 1942 has more of a cooperative focus than a lot of other games previous of the genre, mainly because as well as wiping the enemy into oblivion it is also important to hold on to control points and territory around the map. When players capture points it allows their team to reinforce themselves by dropping vehicles in zones they control you can also spawn players in these zones so pretty much when you have a few zones you’ll be bringing the fight to the enemy’s doorstep rather than sitting back at HQ drinking tea.

Battlefield 1942 is one of these games that just changes things in the gaming world it is one of those first mainstream games that really shifted the FPS genre into a higher gear through both it’s mentality and the encouragement of teamwork.

Believe or not 1942 didn’t really receive that good a reception from media outlets with Metacritic only giving it a 89 out of 100 as well as other outlets questioning the quality of the single player experience.

Battlefield 1942 finally received a proper sequel in 2009 when Battlefield 1943 was released for the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN on July 8th/9th.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 coming soon…

Related posts:

1. Halo Wars goes Gold, gives us a demo as thanks on February 5
2. Halo Wars Demo Now Available on Xbox Live
3. New Halo 3 and Gears Of War 2 DLC coming to the UK
4. Halo Wars now best selling RTS on current-gen consoles
5. Battlefield 1943 debut trailer