Opinion Your 1997 GOTY (FFVII, SotN, Fallout, Goldeneye, Diablo)

[Bonfires Down]

Any expansions or DLC count as being part of the base game.

Since I set the rules I’m gonna give you all two choices each in ’97 and ‘98. There are just too many all time classics released during those years to limit it to a single choice. If you just want to vote for a single game then go ahead and do so.

Honorable mentions:
Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror
Blood
Wing Commander: Prophecy
Carmageddon
Shadow Warrior
Outlaws
The Last Express
Hexen II
KKND: Krush, Kill 'N Destroy
Mischief Makers
Dark Reign: The Future of War
Blast Corps
Mega Man X4
PaRappa the Rapper
Vandal Hearts

 

[lashman]

need i say more?

 

[Ge0force]

Voted diablo and theme hospital. Definitely my most played games that year.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

It was so hard to choose between all these games. In the end the games I mostly enjoyed from that year were Tomb Raider II and Jedi Knight Dark Forces II.

 

[Li Kao]

By historical importance, I'm not sure you can top Ultima Online.

 

[ISee]

Another fantastic year, the 90s were on fire! So many great games.

Back then TR2 was probably the biggest game released, the Lara hype was just starting but it was getting huge real quick. Especially Fallout was rather a dwarf in comparison. Funny because Fallout seems to be more appreciated and loved than Tomb Raider 2 today.

The most significant (in hindsight) was probably Ultima Online, but an Internet Connection was still future talk to me back then and U:O just this awesome, unreachable concept. There were MUDs before but U:O started a genre imo and was in many ways above later MMOs.

Monkey 3 is great, but I feel like nothing can touch monkey 2 tbh.

Many people will probably vote for Goldeneye, but as a pure PC gamer I never found it to be impressive at the time. I was just spoiled because of Doom, Quake, Duke and co.
Though I understand why it is so revolutionary from todays POV. It changed console shooters for the better.

My personal picks? Diablo and Jedi 2. I've spend months in Diablo single and local multiplayer and Jedi 2 LS combat was a revelation, once you actually collected it after like 40% of the game was done. But the Star Wars Atmosphere was so thick in this one, you could breath it. I wish the sequels were as good as this sigh

Honorable Mention: Total Annihilation, not sure why but the game was ultra addictive.

Disappointment of the year: X-wing vs. Tie-Fighter. A multiplayer game and I had no Internet connection...

 

[Durante]

I voted for Ultima Online, even though I was really limited in how much I could play that at the time due to dialup and parents
Still, it was just so much the future, and felt different from everything that came before.

 

[Kandrick]

This one's gonna be an easy one for me. There are other pretty good games in that list, like Dungeon Keeper, but Ultima Online was just something else so i have to vote for that.

I spent so much time playing it on the Catskills shard. So many good systems, i loved the housing in that game, i remember when me and a friend got our tower placed. The PVP was also pretty crazy, i remember the gank squads, fun times. I loved going around mining and crafting armor. The whole spell system with reagents and and runes that you could mark pretty much anywhere and then teleport there. Just an impressive game all around.

It got me into MMOs and eventually led me to play Everquest in 99. A very special game to me.

 

[5taquitos]

Total Annihilation was my life. After that came out, I followed Cavedog news religiously. They never came close to touching the brilliance of TA, but I remember they announced an FPS game that was supposed to be highly interactive (break a glass window and then use a shard as a weapon, etc.). Nothing ever came of that game, though, and Cavedog dissapeared not too much later.

Thank god for Total Annihilation, though, one of my all-time favorite RTS games.

 

[gabbo]

Age of Empires and Goldeneye dominated 1997 like no game prior had ever done, except maybe the year my parents got us a SNES.
My friends and I would stay up all night playing Goldeneye deathmatch, and then when AOE came into my life lan parties became a thing that for better or worse has brought me here.

 

[Taborcarn]

Again I had to go with the games I had the most playtime with and the ones that brought me the most enjoyment at the time. So for this year it was Diablo and Mario Kart 64.

 

[Dandy]

Curse of Monkey Island is what I voted for as in hindsight it's one of my all time favorite games... But I was DYING for Ultima Online at the time.

Growing up, I adored Ultima(especially 6 and 7/7.5). I started buying gaming magazines because I wanted to make sure I knew when the next one was coming out. Some of my first internet memories were joining newsgroups about Ultima. I ran a fan site for Ultima 9. My biggest dream was to play Ulitma in multiplayer with by best friend. Unfortunately, despite being a huge accomplishment, Ultima Online was something I got bored of quickly. It was amazing to see what players came up with on the Great Lakes server though!

 

[Joe Spangle]

The 90s was the best decade for everything.

Goldeneye tops it for me with Blade Runner also up there. We used to play Goldeneye all the time at university. Proximity mines in the Temple no Oddjob.

 

[Wildebeet]

TotalA! Greatest RTS of all time. And depending on how I'm feeling about it, I sometimes think it might be my favorite game ever, all things considered. I still play it. It still has a good mod community with the incredible Escalation mod and TA Zero.

 

[Futaleufu]

Jedi Knight and Dungeon Keeper from the list.

The King of Fighters '97.

 

[Mitch]

1997 was the year I got my very first home console.

I knew of the PlayStation, but had only ever seen it at Babbages/FuncoLand. My parents bought me Crash 2 and Oddworld. Christmas day was spent trying to figure out why one game only had a "fart" mechanic and the other was such a difficult platformer (I was 7, give me a break). Those two games ultimately became favorites of the year, even with just a few days of the year left.

Quake 2 gets an honorable mention. Not sure if I played it in 97, but I remember my dad bringing home a floppy disk with a demo(?) of the game. Never beat the whole thing, but man did it blow my mind.

 

[Jared]

Intersate 76 was one of the best vehicular combat games ever made,

 

[QFNS]

Man Symphony of the Night AND FFVII in the same year.

Also consider that Diablo is basically the invention of the ARPG/Loot game as it is now. Fallout 1 is a forever classic for spawning the franchise even if 2 is basically a better game in all respects.

 

[Tizoc]

Tekken 3 arcade was 1997?
Wow I remember it from 1998 on PSOne.

EDIT: FF7 and Curse of Monkey Island get my pick.
I never to play Curse on PC as my cousin had it but I was quite impressed with it during my younger years.

 

[Le Pertti]

Just so many many games that I would consider favourites, but Diablo, nothing really beats the mood it had and how it was playing it when it came out. I stopped going to school all together for Diablo! (other bad life choices had me at a school I didn't want to be at already)

 

[low-G]

Oof this thread went below my radar!

I'm a little sad to see I'm the only person who voted for the best game of 1997 and the best Real Time Strategy game of all time: Myth: The Fallen Lords. This game has a level of tactics and physics-based gameplay that we have literally never seen in video games sense and displays a clear inspiration for Halo in several of its mechanics. With incredible storytelling, plot, music, and visuals, there's really not much that comes close! For shame!

But hey, some other really hot games that year...

My other vote went to SOTN, because I don't think any game of that genre has ever quite reached that pinnacle, and that's a shame because it was the first to actually cement the genre. Mechanics, music, and visuals just are unmatched for its type. There are a lot of games that do well at the genre, but none quite reach this particular God-king.

3rd choice would have gone to Quake 2. MP and SP, I love both modes.

4th would probably be Dungeon Keeper. Again, the best of its genre, and really there haven't been all that many games trying to top it. Such a moody game too! Still a blast to play.

But yeah FF7, Curse of Monkey Island, Fallout, Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Theme Hospital, Turok, all great....

 

[Sygmaelle]

Fallout, no contest. There's no better rpg up to this day. Everything else for me that year was about Dungeon Keeper and Pandemonium ^^ DK was just too good

 

[m_dorian]

FInal Fantasy VII, Fallout & Diablo.