Best of the Decade

[Nubbins]

I mean, why not... we've got one of these everywhere else now and the first 10 years of the new millennium have been more formative for video games than perhaps anything else.  With Microsoft entering the home console market in 2000 and Sega bowing out, you just knew big, strange things were ahead.  Then, just when it seemed all hope was lost as Microsoft and Sony squared off with their juggernauts, Nintendo scored a huge hit with their less-complicated, more-interactive, family oriented video game console, changing the game all over again.

Please, please add anything I might have missed or left off.  There are a lot of platforms I didn't play very many games on and there are plenty that I never got a chance to play, particularly when it comes to PC and Mac based games.

- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Grand Theft Auto III (III was the first 3D version of the game)
- Halo
- Fallout 3
- Morrowind
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- World of Warcraft (I hate it that I have to include this)
- God of War
- Prince of Persia Sands of Time
- Guitar Hero
- Max Payne
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Everquest
- Half Life 2, Team Fortress & Portal (Orange Box)
- Jade Empire
- Gears of War
- EA Sports Fight Night
- Psychonauts
- Metroid Prime
- Wii Sports
- Bioshock
- Splinter Cell
- Spore
- The Sims
- Starcraft
- Call of Duty
- Deus Ex
- Dance Dance Revolution
- Oblivion
- Little Big Planet

[Tatertots]

Sorely missing from your list, from my world of PC gaming:

Portal - Innovative as hell. Truly original.
Team Fortress 2 - A mere update to a classic crammed into the Orange Box has turned into a huge still-growing community. And the various updates and "DLC" type things have only grown the community further. Valve can triple their sales for a week by running fun stuff like what's going on this week: http://www.teamfortress.com/war This is going to be a big business model for games going forward, I think.
Left 4 Dead - I dunno. I love the shit out of this game.

*Valve wank*

[nacho]

Morrowind and not Oblivion?

And Spore?  No way.

[Tatertots]

And, *cringe*, Dance Dance Revolution. That earned a whole subculture for quite a while.

[Nubbins]

DDR definitely deserves a place if only because I think it started the whole "music game" thing... and I was under the impression that the Orange Box was TF2 and Portal and all those games as well, so I just listed Orange Box.

For a lot of the games, I just listed a generic title (like Morrowind) that I intended to be all-inclusive.  I guess I just listed Morrowind because it came earlier than Oblivion.  Grand Theft Auto III is another example... while pretty much every iteration of that game since III has been an improvement (most of the GTA series is actually better than III), but III was the first GTA in 3D and basically started the idea of an open-world environment you could wander around and wreak havoc in.

Everquest probably belongs on the list, though I never played it.  It's the earliest example of an MMORPG I can think of.

[Nubbins]

Spore, too, I listed because of its unique premise.  The sheer epicness of what the game makers were trying to capture gives it a spot on the list.

I almost listed Fable, too, as it was one of the first RPG's that allowed you to choose a moral path to take, but I think it fell short of the mark they'd set for it.

I'm going to add Little Big Planet as well, even though it's fairly recent, because I think it marks a rise in the public's interest to return back to 2d platforming and the fact that it's designed so you can build your own levels and share them with the online community shows that they have their development feet firmly planted in both worlds.