Because I can. These are titles which you should at least be familiar with, if you haven't played them. In most cases they are among the best games I have ever played. When the running is really close for some years, I'll give one-sentence runner up descriptions too.

1995: MechWarrior 2
Although this game mainly made the list because it's the only title from 1995 that came to mind, that doesn't make it any less awesome. Probably my first 3D PC game and certainly my first Battletech game, MechWarrior 2 and its successors also boasted some of the most complex controls of any game I've played. Seriously, probably two dozen keys for movement alone. But still, stomping around in a giant mech is a great pastime, and MechWarrior 2 was my first time doing this. Yay Thor!


1996: Civilization 2
At 13 years old, this is the oldest game that I've seriously played this year. Unfortunately it's a 16-bit application which means 64-bit Windows will be unwilling to play it, but I still keep it around and remember it fondly. The Civilization games defined my entrance and experience in the 4X genre, and I pity anyone who hasn't played them. This is the "just one more turn" series which is so addictive that it takes both willpower and a visible clock to avoid expanding your civilization until your vision is blurry at 5 AM. Seriously, in Civ IV they added an always-visible clock with an alarm feature. It's that addictive.


1997: Total Annihiliation
Featuring some of the most epic game music in an RTS to date, TA landed a full 6 months before Starcraft. Although it would never have the 9.5 million units sold or excellent story and characters of its Blizzard competitor, it's a noteworthy title for actually being a 3D game, hundreds of units, loads of user-made content, and a successor of sorts to hit within the next decade. In many ways, TA and Starcraft were polar opposites: Starcraft was dripping with charm and backstory, TA was fairly bland and the story was "These doods didn't want to have their brains put in robot bodies, so they started a civil war". Starcraft units were limited in numbers but highly memorable, TA units were extremely plentiful but easily forgettable. In Starcraft you could only select a dozen units at a time and build a few dozen good units, in TA you could select every unit on the map, including buildings, and the number of units you could have was in the hundreds and only limited for performance reasons. In short the game supported 3D at big resolutions with big numbers of units stomping around and blasting each other to smoking metal wreckages, which was pretty damn cool. It's also the place where, at the tender age of 10, I learned how to spell 'annihilation'.


1998: Starcraft (Brood Wars)
In many ways the compliment to the previous year's TA, Starcraft belongs on every list of 'best PC games ever'--just ask the Koreans. From its story and cinematics to the units and gameplay, there's just so much to love about this 1998 title and its expansion pack. There aren't a lot of games that people will be rabid for a sequel to more than 10 years after the series' last release--Starcraft is one of them. Even ten years later, who could forget Kerrigan, the banishment of the Dark Templar, and building additional pylons? The RTS genre at its finest, folks.

Runner up: Half Life
Certainly a noteworthy game, Half Life defined a great model for FPS and told a mildly compelling story, starting the Valve tradition of raising more questions than they answer.


1999: Homeworld
Another RTS with absolutely beautiful music, Homeworld took the genre into space. With a highly motivating story (you're a civilization on a shitty planet, you discover a massive spaceship derelict in a desert and realize you're a race of exiles, and you fight your way back to your homeworld against the tyrranical empire that exiled you) and colorful, imaginative locations in deep space, the game was a delight to play. It also featured a lot of gameplay elements which still aren't too common in games: your resources, army and researched technologies are persistent from one level to the next so you can't just narrowly complete a level. You can use salvage tugs to capture enemy vessels--depriving them of the units, getting free ones yourself, avoiding losing your own ships, saving yourself huge sums of resources and getting the chance to reverse-engineer their technologies for yourself. There is a single unified resource (the Resource Unit), given that your technology lets you break objects down on the atomic level. All units can be repaired. All these things just make sense in a space-faring RTS of this sort, and make the game both a challenge and a delight to play.

Runner up: MechWarrior 3
Awesome for the same reasons as MechWarrior 2 but so much prettier and with some of the "you're on your own, your equipment and teammates are persistent from one level to the next" elements that made Homeworld cool, MW3 was an awesome game which was the pinnacle of the series, in my opinion.

2000: Deus Ex
Without a doubt, this is one of the best games I have ever played. With so many things just done so right, it's hard to know where to begin. The game takes place around 2050 when nanite-based augmentation is able to grant superhuman abilities to those with access to the tech. Ripe with cyberpunk and conspiracy theory themes, the game has a compelling story which takes you all over the globe. Although the entire game (except chat cutscenes) is an FPS, there are a lot of RPG elements in the game--you can spend your experience points on upgrading your skills, you have a 2D inventory which forces you to carefully consider what equipment you bring along with you, weapons are upgradeable, there are multiple approaches to most situations (stealth, hacking, combat), your game actions and dialog options impact each other (saying certain things may trigger combat, taking non-violent approaches may earn or lose you favor from certain NPCs), and there are multiple endings. This game is difficult, entertaining, and so goddamn fun. Ten bucks on Steam, buy it if you have any respect for the FPS genre or sci-fi and conspiracy theories.

Runner up: Homeworld: Cataclysm
Building off the success of its 1999 predecessor, Cataclysm refined many of the imperfections of the series, improved balancing, had an even MORE compelling story, and featured an upgradeable mothership which slowly transforms from self-sufficient mining vessel to war ship.


2001: Max Payne
The only game I've ever bought with a mousepad and the only mousepad I've ever used for more than a year, Max Payne is my favorite Third Person Shooter ever. It's gritty, it's got bullet time, and it's freaking MAX PAYNE. It also has such awesome theme music. From the thugs to the drugs to the cults, this game is all kinds of dark. And diving to cover while slow-motion firing your assault rifle at some punks just never gets old. And did I mention that the game is dark and gritty? The game STARTS with your wife and baby being murdered by some drugged up criminals. Max Payne is all kinds of good.

Runner up: Aliens vs Predator 2
One of the few 'flawless' FPS I've played, AVP2 tries to do so many things well and absolutely succeeds--from the space marine on the run from aliens to said wall-scurrying, shadow-dwelling aliens to the stealthy and advanced Predators, the game offers three distinct and entertaining ways to play.


2002: No One Lives Forever 2
Another of the 'flawless' FPS of the early 2000s, No One Lives Forever 2 puts you in the shoes of a less pornstarish female version of Austin Powers. Set during the Cold War, you play as a British secret agent who works for UNITY, trying to stop the diabolical and slightly silly organization of HARM from igniting the third World War (get it? You're in HARM's way). The premise is fairly serious but the game is just riddled with humor. Instead of a proximity mine, you use a small robotic cat which pounces on anyone who walks by and then explodes. You can throw bananas so people will trip on them. You can hit bunnies while on a snowmobile. Evil henchmen have conversations about the importance of having a really cool secret lair. You have a swordfight with a ninja in a house that's been sucked up by a tornado. And in the culmination of all things silly, you wield a tommygun with infinite ammo as you ride on the back of a large Irishman who is peddling away on a tricycle and chasing after the unicycle-riding French midget Mime King through the streets of India.. That's not to say that the game is just an exercise in silliness, it's also an exceptionally good FPS. There are elements of stealth, although you don't have to be stealthy, and like Deus Ex you are rewarded for your achievements with experience points that you can spend on your various skills. The gameplay, story, sound, and graphics are all just so polished that even 7 years later it's an absolute delight to play.

Runner up: Morrowind
'Live another life' was the marketing tag of this '02 first-person RPG, and at the time it was one of the best examples that I'd seen of the concept--from picking your race and skills to equipment, missions and dialog, it was perhaps the first game where I was able to and wanted to explore the wilderness freely and find everything there was to see and do.


2003: Warcraft 3
Although there were many good titles to hit in 2003, the best one I think was good ol' WC3. Although this may be in part because it was the last major push for the awesome Warcraft realm into the RTS genre, it was also just an exceptionally good game. The missions ranged from huge battles to small, tactical dungeon-crawlers, there was the standard Blizzard sprinkling of humor, the graphics were colorful and playful, and the story was memorable and motivating. And the cinematics, dear lord--I remember a friend who downloaded all of those before the game itself, because they were just so pretty. An excellent game which was well-balanced, fun, and a good balance of serious and joking, WC3 still holds up to this day.

Runners up: Unreal 2, Freelancer
The final 'flawless' FPS of the early 2000s, Unreal 2 was a great title which excelled in all the areas an FPS should--story, inventive weapons, exotic locations, and graphics--it's also one of the few FPS to ever make me genuinely cry. Freelancer was a great first/third person dogfighting and trading space sim which I still want to get into playing with friends to this day, and which defined easy and powerful controls for its genre.


2004: Half Life 2
Although the original Half Life didn't make it to be one of my top games because its genre-defining impact was lost on someone who didn't play it until after the impact had swept the industry, I was there for HL2 and thus can appreciate all the things it did so right. Continuing the Valve tradition of answering a question and raising ten, HL2 told fragments of a story with as many unspoken cues (settings, character expressions, general atmosphere) as it did through direct explanation provided to the player. It also brought us huge levels and outdoor environments with vehicles, physics puzzles, and the foundations for Garry's Mod. An excellent game in pretty much all respects, it's also notable for helping to usher in the era of widescreen gaming in a time when most displays were still 4:3 or even 5:4 and the Xbox 360 was still a year out.

Runner up: Far Cry
Lacking the memorable characters and story of HL2, this game is still notable for having very impressive graphics for the time, looking like Doom 3 while offering lush, sprawling tropical environments--months before HL2 and Doom 3 and from a developer nobody had ever heard of (also it was fun).


2005: Civilization 4
Much like Civilization 2 from 9 years before, Civ IV offered a highly addictive and entertaining nation-building experience. This was its first foray into true 3D graphics, and it did so beautifully. Many refinements were made over previous games, removing the things which most annoyed players and streamlining pointlessly meanial tasks. There isn't really a whole lot to say about Civ IV, other than that it is the highest point of the series--and that it features an awesome main theme song.


2006: Oblivion
Oblivion and I have a love-hate relationship. I've put hundreds of hours into it, played through a couple times, even finished the game once--and yet it's just got so many flaws. Dozens, hundreds of little things that make no sense. Like how merchants will only permit X gold per transaction, but unlimited transactions in a row. Or how merchants are able to tell that an apple from 15 miles away is stolen, but thieves will eagerly buy up things you just stole from them. At the end of the day, though, the game offers a whole lot of fun and can be modded to remove a lot of the bugs and build off of the pretty strong platform it offers. And let's not forget the Triumphant Execution of the adoring fan.


2007: Team Fortress 2
I don't see how TF2 could NOT be the game of 2007--it's probably the most-played title from that year at present. Sure, Portal got critical acclaim and Mass Effect was very good and popular, but at the end of the day TF2 is what people play after work and before bed. Managing to inject humor and personality into purely multiplayer characters is no small feat, but Valve managed to do it, using just a handful of cinematics (which are purely optional, and not all complete) to provide more than 4 second sound clips from any given character. Not everyone enjoys class-based online FPS, but for everyone else TF2 is a blast to play and is positively dripping with potential for YouTube videos.

Runner up: Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
The game which brought the CoD series away from its WWII roots and possibly made true on Infinity Ward's earlier desire to make the best FPS, Modern Warfare provided excellent singleplayer and multiplayer action and did more for the irradiated Chernobyl setting in a single level than the entirety of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.


2008: Fallout 3
Offering a blend of Oblivion-like "explore, steal, kill everything ugly" gameplay S.T.A.L.K.E.R. irradiated post-nuclear holocaust wastelands with black humor and somewhat turn-based combat, Fallout 3 was something that I knew all of nothing about until it launched. Once I looked into it I immediately understood why people were wetting themselves over it, and I must admit I wasted many weeks exploring and grinding and stealing everything I could. I really don't have a lot to complain about when it comes to this game, which is more than I can say for most these days. My biggest gripe is that they didn't include a set of armor which is hands-down the best, which makes me have to irritably weigh pros and cons. That's saying something.

Runner up: Left 4 Dead
Despite the controversy over L4D2, the original FPS zombie survival game is still a lot of fun and very replayable if you've got good friends willing to get your back.