Manny calavera cuando eswishea con la guadaña y luego mejor escena del juego ajalnsjwn me da pereza poner esto en ingles bro amar mucho este juego

the prelude to an onslaught of grim fandango posting

Manny Calavera | Grim Fandango

Another icon I've made :)

Repostober 31 - 2015

Happy Halloweeeen

Did this after I finished Grim Fandango for the first time. Excellent game, highly recommend.

"OH, rusty anchor! Goin' down.. down... down..."

He's like a shark to me.

Ok hi glottis sweep glottis sweep

Thoughts On . . . Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened Remake

Frogwares’ remake of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is one of the most unsung game releases of 2023. So let’s take a quick look at the new features of the title and how they compare with the original.

If you’re unaware, Frogwares is a studio based in Ukraine, a country currently repelling a Russian invasion. The devs have repeatedly addressed their struggles and yet they launched it anyway. For that reason, I feel it would be inappropriate to score The Awakened. I make an effort in all my reviews to respect the developers who’ve put in the work to make the game I’m playing, even if I’m not a fan of the game itself. But making a game during an actual and presently-occurring war is another matter entirely.

That being said, I think The Awakened Remake merits examination, even if I don’t want to review it. If nothing else, the game is a fascinating glimpse into the evolving story of point-and-click adventure games and their place in the greater gaming landscape. It’s also instructive to compare the two different Holmeses, to see how the character changes with several years of pop culture reshaping.

Second Awakening

The Awakened Remake feels like the culmination of Frogwares’ attempts to evolve its signature adventure game series from a post-Syberia form to a post-Telltale form. In the Dark Ages (a.k.a. the early aughts), adventure games adhered almost religiously to the Grim Fandango style: Third-person clicking navigation with viewpoints fixed in what I call “security camera” position. The Awakened (the original, that is), began the transition away from that to first-person exploration -- the Myst style, if you will.

The series continued to experiment with different stories and gameplay types. It vacillated between first- and third-person, tested new detection mechanics, and even dipped into true crime with the audacious Jack the Ripper recreation. The series rebooted with The Devil’s Daughter (though it retained at least a few story details unique to the previous game series). I’m not sure whether Chapter One and The Awakened Remake are set in the same continuity, though the retention of the new voice cast would suggest so.

Now here we are in 2023, and what does a Sherlock Holmes adventure game look like? It’s a third-person exploration title with an over-the-shoulder camera and the environments are a series of contained maps. In other words, it looks like several of Telltale’s later titles, or Dontnod’s. That’s not a bad thing . . . it’s just an observation of how the medium has evolved and Frogwares’ Holmes along with it.

The Awakened remake is also a microcosm of Sherlock Holmes’ . . . let us say “changeable” position in pop culture. The Holmes of the original Awakened was more of a Jeremy Brett-style depiction, hewing close to the source material’s dry wit and intense focus. The Holmes of the remake, on the other hand is -- being blunt -- young, hot, and mentally unwell. It’s not really to my taste, I’m not gonna lie. It’s clear the impetus for this comes from BBC Sherlock, which I despise. But the remake Holmes has an earnest gumption I’ve never seen in the character before -- it’s a choice, and not one I dislike.

Lovecraft’s Walking Tour

One of the benefits of remaking Awakened is that Frogwares has a chance to elevate a game that, through a combination of underpowered graphics and muddy art design, never had a chance to serve Lovecraftian horror as it’s meant to be served. And for the most part, they did -- there’s a creeping sense of wrongness on the periphery of most scenes, at least when you play as Holmes, a feeling that something isn’t quite right.

That’s the essence of Lovecraftian horror, in my opinion, this sense that something’s wrong, but there’s no way for your tiny human brain to understand what. One of the reasons I enjoy both iterations of this game is because Sherlock Holmes is the type of person who would absolutely refuse to accept there’s something his brain can’t comprehend. That makes him uniquely vulnerable to being overwhelmed by that sensation. Watson’s POV is more grounded and reliable by comparison.

The locations are mostly similar to what they were in the original, though the asylum section is much shorter and cuts out a subplot foreshadowing the arrival of one Moriarty. New Orleans serves a nice slice of Southern Gothic horror to balance out the traditional European Gothic elsewhere in the game. It’s a bit of a shame that Frogware’s didn’t correct one particular oversight: For a game based on Lovecraft’s work, we never go to New England, Lovecraft Country itself.

As far as gameplay goes, I only have one major complaint: This game desperately needs an auto-run option. Or at the very least, the sprint button needs to be sticky -- meaning, you press it once and the characters run until you press it again. Having to hold down a button to get them to get a jog on feels archaic, especially since the environments are much bigger than in your average adventure game.

Our next case, Watson?

Point-and-click adventure games will never be to everyone’s taste, no matter how much a developer might wish to court a bigger audience. Aiming for the Walking Dead/Life is Strange is a wise choice of direction for the Frogwares’ series if it’s going to capture any mainstream appeal while retaining its identity. That is to say: This is a good remake and I like where Frogwares is going with its new series.

Assuming the new series will follow the old, we’re looking at a remake of Sherlock Holmes vs Arsene Lupin next. Sherlock Holmes, tormented lad that he is in the new series, definitely deserves a lighthearted chase with a gentleman thief, so I’m looking forward to what Frogwares does next. My best wishes to them!

holaaaa i am your fan >W< i love your art sooooo much!

aand my cuestion is for Sir daniel:

Dan where is Kiya? qwq

First, gracias!! Your art is pretty cute too, and your avatar!

Second... The answer is not that simple...

Before doing this comics I always prefer to check the original material and try to make things very accurate (No joking, I watched in a few months more than 300 chapters of One Piece since the beginning till Brook appear, watched movies, played Grim Fandango and the original Medievil and PXP Medievil, before starting the comics... And I still need to check all the comics and the book of Nightmare before christmas, if you know how i can get those PDF's in englishPLEASE HELP)

I still don't play the second Medievil, I tried to start but now I barely got time for that... Maybe I'll try to watch gameplays before putting Kiya into the mix

Another thing is I don't exactly like her desing... I understand that game is from the 90's and also in play 1, you couldn't do that much with character desing without the machine exploding, but is not that much of my taste

Besides I tried to draw her before and I had some problems trying to understand her sprite...

For now the best I can show you is some little drawings of an idea of "Redesing" her

Maybe one day I'll put her and Dan can be happy with a cute girlfriend :3

Could u info dump about the smile for me game? :3 /nf

:-D!!! I can try! I'm not very good with my words, but thank you for letting me say them anyway :-]

I think one of my favorite things about the game is how weird everything is and how it makes it seem like 'Oh yeah that's normal!' Which is really nice!! Cuz I define myself as pretty weird!

Spoilers for the new update!!! v v v

For example, Flower Kid now has Flower Hands! Which I thought was a cute new addition, especially considering when playing you get A Hand as an item

SPEAKING OF THE UPDATE!!!!!!! GOD DAMN!!!!!!! They added so much ESPECIALLY INVOLVING KAMAL AND HABIT!!!! THE TWO GUYS!!

THEY MADE THE HABITAT TOGETHER LIKE I THOUGHT!!!!!!!!! AND THE ARTBOOK EXPLAINED EVEN MORE THINGS THAT I DON'T WANNA SPOIL HERE, SO I RECOMMEND GETTING THE DIGITAL DLC CUZ IT UPDATED ALONG WITH THE GAME. I really can't believe that LimboLane decided to make that canon. It's making me have so many Thoughts everyday.

Thoughts that include the fact that there's A COLLECTOR'S EDITION & PHYSICAL ARTBOOK!!1!!! THAT I IMMEDIATELY BOUGHT. NOT FAIR TO ME CUZ I BOUGHT THE GRIM FANDANGO COLLECTOR'S EDITION A WEEK EARLIER.

Anyway now I'm out of money <//3 This damn game I will purchase so many things, I bought the vinyl first pressing as well so you know that I'm a Super-Fan

I just really attached to Smile For Me for reasons unknown to me! It itches my brain in a good and nice way every time I think about it which is OFTEN! It's a silly game about mental health and helping people! I love helping people! And making them smile!! And the game makes me smile so Win-Win!.

I'm particularly attached to Dr. Habit as you can probably tell from all the art I do of him on here and all the talking I do of him on my main. He's so!!! Look at him!!! He's so pretty and silly and tall and all the things that I personally enjoy looking at into one being!

Legitimately I have NOT felt crushes on fictional characters to this extent before. I DON'T KNOW WHAT SPELL YUGO PUT ON THIS GUY TO MAKE ME LOVE HIM SO MUCH BUT IT AINT GOING AWAY ANYTIME SOON! Maybe it's cuz he's so mysterious and doesn't show what he really looks like up until the reveal which permanently changed my brain.

And even more epic is that Yugo said we can headcanon all the characters how ever we want so my headcanon for him is that he's transfem and uses He/Him and She/Her cuz I am a Girl Liker and I can do what I want. And him and Kamal are T4T (Kamal being transmasc)

I love how in earlier play tests of the game, the players wanted to Kiss Habit so LimboLane added the neutral ending where you can. So real of them to do that <3

ALSO!!!!! There's a lot of implication that the characters are Neurodivergent which makes me very happy and probably why I clung myself so much to the game being Au-DHD myself. Yugo is neurodivergent themself as well which is pretty swag. We love trans & neurodivergent creators of the world

Okay at this point I'm just RAMBLING, and I thank you if you read this much and thank you for being patient with me about it lol! I'm not very good at info dumping but I'm not sure if there's a way to do it really?

TL:DR I really like this game

Hi I am thinking of doing a project about Mexican art and how it influenced video games for one of my classes and all I can think of for examples are just Grim Fandango. Are there any other games that use/are inspired by Mexican art that you know about or anything like that? If not that's ok, was just wondering

Hey, moot! Sorry for the delay in reply!

So other than Grim Fandango (which is obviously my favorite), there are a few I can think of, although I wish there were more. The first one that comes to mind is Guacamelee, although I never really got into that game, myself. Still, a lot of the art style is very cute and colorful and inspired by lucha libre and papel picado designs.

Another game by Tim Schafer that has some inspiration is Psychonauts, in the Black Velvetopia area. It's more Spanish design than Mexican, but there's a lot of overlap, including luchadores and some poster designs that look inspired by the lithography of José Guadalupe Posada. I haven't seen confirmation of this, but I would believe it, since the mural in the train station in Grim Fandango is also reminiscent of painter José Clemente Orozco.

On the indie front, the platformer Imp of the Sun is based on Maya and Inca mythology and design, and the upcoming Ecumene Azteca looks very promising. I'm keeping my eye on it; it's a survival RPG where you get to kill Spanish conquistadors, so what's not to love?

There is, of course, the Super Mario Odyssey inspirations used in the Sand Kingdom. While they're a little stereotypical of the kind of souvenirs tourists usually like, I think they're pretty cute. It isn't meant to be taken that seriously.

Of course, there are always games like Call of Juarez, Tomb Raider, Red Dead Revolver/Redemption, (to an extent) Far Cry 6, and Desperados that all borrow locations and design from Mexico/Latin America in some way. A lot of the most well-known games in the setting are, of course, games that feature "lost" Aztec relics, the cartel, or the wild west in some way. Of all of these, I feel Red Dead Redemption and Far Cry handle the subjects the best, although Red Dead more explicitly so. (I may also be biased because I'm a huge Giancarlo Esposito fan lmao)

On the 8-bit front, there were a couple, I think... I remember both Aztec and Montezuma's Revenge, though I can't remember what systems my dad had them on. Could've been NES, Apple II, Commodore, or Atari. Regardless, they sucked. lol

There is also, tangentially, a little-known point-and-click game called "The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça and Pizza Boy," based on a comic book by Mike Mignola. I love this series, but technically it is set in Lisbon, Portugal. That said, the series and in particular the game was worked on by Argentinian, Brazilian, and Meixcan artists, and I feel the style very much lends itself to the underground Latin graphic novel styles of the early 00's.

Past that, there's precious little else, until you start getting into other game categories besides video games. At least nothing good; I think there might be a shovelware "La Llorona" game or something.

One of my favorites, though, that I've saved for last is a little inide game called El Hijo. It's an adventure game in the vein of Limbo/Inside or A Boy and His Blob, and while the gameplay itself is nothing special, the story and the art style are fantastic. It's oozing with charm and attention to detail, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It felt a lot more in love with its setting and the culture than some of the aforementioned games do.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your project! If I can think of anything more, I'll RB this again.

Your art is absolutely amazing and expressive I could just eat it! but can I ask do you have anyone you take inspiration from or any references you use?

Hey thanks!! I have tons of inspirations with a lot of them being ye olde cartoonists of the 90s and early 2000s. I grew up with all of the gnarly nickelodeon cartoons like Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life (Joe Murray has a lot of really cool work! I have his book!), etc. as well as the few odd ones of CN with I think the most apparent and obvious influence on me being courage the cowardly dog lol. I also like a lot of stop motion or puppetry or other more tangible stuff and it does deeply impact my art. Friends such as gumby, sifl & olly, jim henson stuff, and many more! I'm also a huge adult swim fan, sometimes. 12 oz mouse is a big one for me! Other more specific individual names of influence upon me are : Steve purcell, stuff that doug tennapel (I know. i know. he fucking sucks. i hate him too.) has worked on, Moebius, peter chan (does concept art for games and shit. look at his grim fandango work!), and many more that i am forgetting. i am also very inspired by my own peers! I'm very lucky to have a wide variety of art friends whose styles are on a huge spectrum that i get to see insight into. If any of my friends see this and want to plug yourselves in the replies do it and if you're a jokester and put yourself and i don't know you i will make fun of your rudeness and kick you out and finally there are a lot of crusty old games that inspire me a lot. it's already been implied by my mention of grim fandango but tim schafer's games are very artistically cool to me, as well as the oddworld franchise, doom, system shock, super metroid, etc... i'm a big fan of weird sticky gloomy atmospheres as well as scifi and i think this kind of shows in my art. as for reference: i just google photos when i need it. i don't consciously reference other artists because i like to problem solve on my own but this has also probably stunted me a bit to be frank! Hopefully this is the type of answer you were looking for! I don't really name out a lot of online artists because i...don't follow anyone online firsthand! There are many lovely skilled people out there but i just don't have the brainpower to sit and remember and follow people but i fear that that's the sort of thing you wanted. Either way, here is a list of things above!

a whole sketchbook page of just those scud freaks! yowza! [ some close-ups below ]

a labor of love for one of my favorite comic book series I think ever? anyways this boy deserves a shower hooey

Art/Fandom/General shenanigans | My art tag is #alien art

Currently more active on my sideblog: @6lovelytenders

Hullo!! You can call me Pip or Alien or whatever you like idrc.

I'm a 19 y/o, unlabeled queer who uses they/she pronouns, and I'm autistic also.

Right now I'm really into Tugs and Thomas The Tank Engine. But my other interests include: Transformers, Batman, TF2, Grim Fandango, Punch Out and Wonder Over Yonder.

BYF

This blog is PRO PALESTINE, zionists will be blocked. 🇵🇸

While this blog is SFW, I will still occasionally post suggestive jokes, nothing outright sexual though.

I talk about smoking weed occasionally (I'm Canadian and the legal age is 19 for most provinces) and I try to tag that but I may forget.

No dni, but I block proshippers, Harry Potter fans, TERFs/radfems, LGBTQ+ Exclusionists, bigots, and really anyone who makes me uncomfortable. This block button is rated E for Everyone.

Don't come into my askbox trying to start drama, you will be ignored.

🪦Pinned post GO🪦

Hi hi and hellooo my name is Jujuluumuu, you may me juju or jojo and WELCOME TO MY GRAVEYARD 🪱

Here I post art and reblog some Art occasionally but here is some info about ✨me✨

🪦||i am 19 (TRILLION) years old

🥩||i go by any! I be Gender-fluid ☕️

⚰️||i draw a lot of spooky stuff and am in a lot of odd fandoms like Psychonauts and such (teehees Grim Fandango, Alice in Wonderland, etc etc)

🦴||i am a huge fan of cartoons, my favorites being Flapjack and Courage the cowardly dog

☠️||I have several other accounts you can follow me on below!

I hope you guys like my content, and sleep well with the fishes,,,

Weekend Top Ten #569

Top Ten Years for Games in My Lifetime

Hey, guess what? We’re on a theme! That’s right, following last week’s deep dive into which years were the best years as far as movie releases are concerned, now we’re plugging in and logging on (and downloading an update…) and celebrating which are the best years for videogames.

This one is going to be a lot more personal – well, I guess they’re all personal, but this one perhaps more so, vis-à-vis mainstream opinion. I think if you got a professional games writer, or journalist, or blogger, or whatever, and asked them to do something similar, then I think you’d see other years celebrated, maybe when big Mario games came out in the late eighties or early nineties. Because I grew up playing computer games rather than console games, things like Super Mario Bros. 3 or even really Sonic the Hedgehog just never resonated the same way. And then, graduating to PC and eventually buying an Xbox, I totally missed out on the PlayStation generation. So I couldn’t really give a toss when Metal Gear Solid 2 or Resident Evil came out. They didn’t particularly register (although I do remember everyone was impressed by the MGS2 trailer back in the day).

Yeah, this is my list, of years that were significant to me. Although I’ve tried to be a bit more objective about it; I’m not the biggest Zelda fan in the world but I can still recognise the importance of the release of Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild. I can’t shout too loudly about stuff I’ve barely played, however, and so this is going to be looking at years that – yes – played host to some really important and terrific games, but there’ll be a lot of games that really struck a chord with me personally. There’s definitely going to be a keyboard-and-mouse focus with this one; might as well put down your joypads.

Unsurprisingly the nineties features a lot here, with incredible games and the births of some truly amazing franchises. I don’t think this is just nostalgia; it’s partly a result of us constantly going back to the well of material that was already successful, and also the fact that as a teenager I just played more games and sampled more stuff. Whereas nowadays everything seems built on evolution rather than revolution, the nineties blew the doors off the industry and what games were capable of. Now, if you look at, say, Mass Effect 3 from 2012, it doesn’t really look that much different from Elden Ring or God of War, two games that released a decade later. Yes, obviously, the latter two are better-looking and more technically impressive games, but there’s not been the sea change in graphics or mechanics that there was between, say, 1987’s Double Dragon and 1997’s GoldenEye 007 or Tomb Raider II. So in a lot of ways, the nineties were innovative and exciting, and I played a lot of games, and that’s reflected here.

Not much more to say, really. Here is a list of ten years (from within my lifetime) that were really good in terms of the games that were released that year. Enjoy.

1998: this is the year I always harken back to, mainly – if truth be told – because Half-Life came out and really helped revolutionise what could be expected from an FPS game, with its subtle narrative cues, tactical gameplay, and horror elements. But The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was also released, and excellent though it was it never gripped me the way it did everyone else. Grim Fandango, meanwhile, was a masterpiece of art design and a more mature LucasArts adventure. Baldur’s Gate – which I never completed! – is regarded as a seminal RPG. Unreal offered a more esoteric, atmospheric, otherworldly alternative to Quake, with its legendary, industry-conquering engine getting its first outing. There was also Banjo Kazooie, StarCraft, Thief, Fallout 2… I mean, blimey, that’s a hell of a list already and it’s only stuff that I played or really cared about.

2007: another year that I see getting bandied about as the medium’s Best Ever, and with good cause. One of my favourite Xbox games, Crackdown, was released, and its freeform superhero-tinged gameplay utterly ruined the entire GTA franchise for me because I couldn’t throw Smart cars at people. You also had BioShock, tweaking the System Shock formula more into a familiar FPS template, and arguably making skill trees and abilities commonplace for every game going forward. Halo 3, meanwhile, was an old-fashioned run-and-gun FPS, but with the tactical, emergent, open-world Halo formula, done to perfection; it’s still the best in the series. Valve released The Orange Box for Half-Life 2, which included Portal – an incredible, mind-bending puzzle-cum-platformer with a delightfully dark sense of humour. Super Mario Galaxy, another mindbender, is my favourite Mario game. The Mass Effect series began with an excellent first entry. And I don’t play Call of Duty, but this year was the first Modern Warfare, which was also a big deal I guess.

1996: arguably the year the PC really came of age, with many great gaming franchises solidifying themselves and proving that the platform was the best place to play at that moment in time. After Doom came Quake, which just upended everything with its 3D graphics, real-time lighting, multiplayer, and customisation. The follow-up to Command & Conquer, Red Alert, was just as fun and tactical but with comedy Soviets. The Duke made the jump from side-scrollers with the landmark Duke Nukem 3D, a game so good it was impossible to make a sequel – and they really tried. Civilization II took what worked, made it loads better, and in the process perfected a series that has robbed me of years of my life. And over on console, Mario 64 came out, revolutionising platform games with its use of 3D. But it wasn’t all sequels: the first Tomb Raider was released, bringing Lara Croft into an unprepared world. Before long she was on the cover of lads’ mags. Welcome to the nineties.

1991: sometimes when I do this I wonder if there’s just one title swaying my opinions, and that may be the case here, because Monkey Island 2 came out this year. But aside from one of the two greatest games ever made (see also 1990), there was a lot of other stuff! Lemmings was a game that blew my mind on the Amiga, showing me what games could be. The first Sonic came out on the Mega Drive, and even if I didn’t really play it back then, it’s still ace. A game I did play was Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, one of those games where I still remember some of the cheat codes; another was Alien Breed, an incredible homage to the Alien franchise. And if we venture out to the arcades, Street Fighter II was released, which was a bit of a big deal. But really 1991 was all voodoo dolls, zombie pirates, and stolen monocles.  

1997: on the surface, this might not seem like quite as big a year, but for me there are some absolute all-time masterpieces here. The big one, arguably, is GoldenEye 007, the first FPS that really properly worked on a console, and shook up some genre conventions in a way that I think is still being felt (try it out on Game Pass right now!). Quake II took the technical wizardry of the first game but added a story, as well as coloured lighting and texture filtering, becoming the poster child for the proliferation of dedicated 3D hardware. One of the greatest Star Wars games of all time, the vast and adventurous Jedi Knight, was released, as was Blade Runner, a really interesting use of a classic film licence, and one of my favourite adventure games. Plus a game I adored at the time but which has slightly less of an historical footnote: Carmageddon. Ah, moral panics; that takes me back.

2000: there are two games from this year that tower above all others, but first let’s take a moment to celebrate the birth of The Sims, an all-consuming juggernaut of a franchise, and also Quake III Arena, one of my favourite multiplayer games of all time (it looks any year a Quake comes out is a Good Year). Also, despite me not really playing them, I want to acknowledge important RPG sequels Diablo 2 and Baldur’s Gate 2, because they’re important. However, for me at least, the year belongs to Perfect Dark, which honed the GoldenEye formula into one of the most all-encompassing multiplayer experiences ever (from bots to co-op to “counter-op”, it’s sublime). And then there’s Deus Ex, a vastly influential game, a philosophical treatise in cyberpunk clothes, a resolutely millennial slice of emergent RPG gameplay, technical scope, and some fairly okay shooter mechanics. One of the greatest games of all time. Oh, and Tony Hawk 2 came out as well; we played that a lot.

1990: I promised this year would come round and here it is, riding on a pirate ship crewed by monkeys. Because The Secret of Monkey Island came out this year and there’s no way I can’t acknowledge my favourite game of all time. But outside of a revolutionary graphic adventure, we also had two strategy behemoths in the first SimCity and Railroad Tycoon games (technically SimCity came out on the Amiga on December 31st 1989, but the PC release was 1990, and who the hell played it on New Year’s Eve, so I’m allowing it). Speaking of “technically”, over here in Blighty we got two biggies with the European release of both Tetris and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I played to death on my Amiga. And I don’t normally mention companies, but Team 17 was founded this year, even if their first games didn’t make it out till ’91.

1993: there are a lot of really great games here that have left a footprint on the industry and – more importantly, for the purposes of this list – left an even bigger impression on my psyche. Syndicate and The Settlers were two dominant strategy games that dominated the Amiga landscape. Sam and Max Hit the Road came out, and I wasn’t able to play it for a few years, but blimey was I jealous of people who had PCs with CD-ROM drives; it’s such a good, funny game. X-Wing was another massive PC game that Amiga owners salivated over, and whilst sims like that were a bit too much for me, it was a huge deal that really influenced tons of games that came later. But, just like those ruddy dinosaurs dominated everything to do with cinema in 1993, so the year in games belongs to shotguns, imps, chainsaws, and more. Because Doom came out, and basically everything after that was different.

2004: quite a few games came out this year that, to be honest, I wasn’t that bothered about, but which were definitely a big deal: San Andreas, Ninja Gaiden, World of Warcraft (I mean, let’s take a moment to think about how huge that was). There were terrific sequels in franchises I love: Sims 2, which really solidified the great aspects of the first game; Burnout 3, which I think was my favourite; Rome: Total War, which, er, I’ve never played. The Chronicles of Riddick was a better movie tie-in than anyone expected; Lumines debuted on PSP, a version I’ve never played, but a game which I loved on different platforms in later years. And , hey, speaking of handhelds, the DS was released! But the year belonged to two other sequels, two of the best sequels of the decade: the action-packed, blockbusting Halo 2; and most especially the phenomena that is Half-Life 2, with its revolutionary physics-based gameplay stunning graphics, and slow-burning emergent narrative design. What a game.

2016: feels like we were only just talking about Doom and here we are again talking about Doom – because against all odds, the 2016 remake was genuinely excellent. But that wasn’t the best or the biggest game of the year. This was the year of Pokémon Go, a phenomenon that shows no stopping. There was a good Worms game, a Forza Horizon, and adventure games featuring both Minecraft and Batman. But what was the best game? How can I choose between two games that have dominated my life in different ways, sucked hours, days, out of me? Civilization VI and Stardew Valley both came out this year. I was never the same.

Actually, despite the nineties love, two noughties years were just bubbling under: 2006 and 2021. Both saw some tremendous and important games, from Wii Sports to Medieval II: Total War, from Forza Horizon 5 to Unpacking. So it’s not all nostalgia, promise! One of those years was very recent!