2004.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

We come now that defining moment in time that really put us on the path we are now. This is the year that defined a decade of gaming and, and would still leave marks upon the world that we see today. 2004 sure was a year to remember.

Welcome to 2004. The year when everyone learned that a certain country was invaded a year before with no actual cause. The year that gave us the first confirmed Unnamed Aerial Drone kills. When Hurricane Jeanne killed over 3000 people in Haiti, when over 1000 people, mostly children, were taken captive by terrorists in North Ossetia. And, probably worst of all, when Myspace and Facebook were opened to the public. G-Mail became a thing, requiring people to get invites to use it, Ubuntu was first released, Firefox came out, The Web jumped to interactivity, to user created content, to 2.0, and somewhere out in space, the Cassini-Huygens orbiter and probe brought us the first close-up glimpse at Saturn’s rings. And back on Earth, we even found what seems to be a species of human that never made it passed the Stone Age. Homo floresiensis.

Moving to the realm of video games, we were at a point in time when video game consoles were nearing the end of another generation, at least when it came to handheld, as Sony released the Playstation Portable. A system with nearly the power of a Playstation 2, in your hand. It would be very successful over the next decade, but not as much as Nintendo’s new money printing machine, the DS. A callback to its dual screen Game and Watch from the ‘80s, that proved there was one area where Nintendo could be progressively more successful. Because in the home console market, things were not looking great. The Gamecube was barely 3 years old, and a replacement was already planned

as it had announced a Revolution, one that we would not see for another few years. The other consoles, however, were still doing well enough. The original Xbox received Halo 2, the most successful game on the platform, thanks in no small part to its outstanding multiplayer, and in a tiny part to a half-finished campaign, that left people wanting to finish the fight for years. Microsoft’s console also received Fable, one of Peter Molyneux most touted creations, a game that promised the world, and delivered somewhat less than that. But was still well loved enough to start a franchise in its own right, and some would call it one of the reasons RPG dialogue went down hill, since it didn’t have any, just emotes and farts.

But in terms of consoles, the Playstation 2 still ruled. It dominated at a level unparalleled, with games like the, some say yet unsurpassed Spider-Man 2, and Metal Gear Solid 3. Not just a sequel, but the sequel that everyone unanimously loved, with a different, yet familiar main character. The genetic father of Solid Snake, Naked Snake, Big boss himself. Cracking jokes, eating frogs and sneaking through a wonderfully crafted succession of levels that allowed a high degree of freedom when approaching targets. And it featured something truly rare, common sense. But in terms of success, there were only three worth mentioning in 2004. One of them was a Playstation 2 exclusive, selling 12 million copies within a year and becoming a monster hit there was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. An evolution of the series that put the biggest focus on story the franchise had ever had, as well as bringing in the largest variety of gameplay of the series to date, adding RPG elements, and to this day being the most quotable title in the series. Some will say that San Andreas hasn’t been outdone yet in the sheer amount of freedom it gave you.

One of the other best selling games of the year was The Sims 2. A game that took many of the ideas of the first one, reduced them to zero, and began again, driving an expansion fueled profit machine that forgot about its satirical origins and fully embraced the rampant consumerism.

And, of course, the other great seller of its time was the most profitable video game in the history of the human race. Now, I don’t have the numbers to back that up, but I doubt anything else comes close. Blizzard released World of Warcraft in 2004. A game that fundamentally changed the MMO genre. Up until then, there were a few successful ones. But when this hit, there was no comparison. It didn’t matter that EverQuest 2 was released that same year, or that Metin2 came out… though a lot of Romanians probably played that one more. When World of Warcraft hit, everyone bought it and everyone played it. It eclipsed anything before it and everything since it. And it did it through sheer approachability, without an interface that takes up half the screen by default, with no strange button combinations needed, no daft rule system, and very, very easy to understand mechanics. Sadly, that also meant limited mechanics. This was a simplified game even compared to EverQuest, but made up for it with its presentation, style, and connection to one of the best RTS franchises on the market. As it continued to expand, World of Warcraft would continue to break record after record, and effectively killing the MMO genre. All games that would come after it would try to be it, and fail. Even those already released were trying to emulate it, with disastrous consequences, as Star Wars Galaxies players would learn in just a few months.

A lot of games were still trying to find their footing in this new world. A Bard’s Tale returned from Exile, from InXile actually, with The Bard’s Tale, a comedic spoof of the RPG genre that worked surprisingly well. Leisure Suit Larry came out with an awful attempt at reviving the Sierra On-Line classic, in the form of Magna Cum Laude. Fallout tried to turn into a console game with Brotherhood of Steel, the game we never speak of. And Thief Deadly Shadows tried to become a third person action game. But if we’re talking sequels, we did the rushed, unfinished and yet fantastic Kotor 2, a game with a story that still puts every other Star Wars property to shame. We got Need for Speed Underground 2 with its open world and magnificent car customization. Though it was far from being the only great racing game of the year, 2004 giving us Flatout and its arcadey goodness, and the driving simulator Richard Burns Rally, which to some is still the finest Rally sim ever made. Then came the great combo in the form of Unreal 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004, a truly great multiplayer shooter with so many features to it that you’d even have fun playing it all alone. Unlike Counter-Strike Source, a sequel to Counter-Strike released that year, and its much troubled singleplayer counterpart, Condition Zero.

But if you really wanted a first person shooter that wasn’t Halo 2, you had some great options that year. One of them was the return of the daddy of the series. Doom 3 tried to modernize the series by making it more serious, more grounded, darker. It mostly succeed at annoying people with total darkness and monster closets, but it really missed the essence of what it used to be. The role of what it used to be was taken by the likes of that year’s Painkiller and Serious Sam The Second Encounter. People that wanted a bit more freedom and open space had the excellent Far Cry, a distant shout, if you will, from Doom 3’s constant darkness, this game was bright and colorful non stop. Even the Vin Diesel video game: The Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay managed to do darkness better than Doom 3. If you liked Star Wars, Battlefront let you fight as if you were a storm trooper on the battlefield, taking elements from Battlefield and combining them with the spectacle of the movies that everyone loved. But what really made 2004 shine for FPS games was Half-Life 2.

Valve returned to the genre with a game that combined cinematic storytelling with great characters, excellent action, and a physics system that made a linear shooter a lot more fun that you’d think it would be. And along with Half-Life 2 came the realization that the digital age was indeed upon us. For the game needed Steam to function, to be validated, to be verified. Without it, the game was a bit unplayable. And through Half-Life 2 the platform grew, expanded, extended and became what it is today. The underlying technology of the game, the Source engine, itself proved to be quite flexible and useful, being used to create the sandbox Garry’s Mod that same year. And it was also used for a rushed, unfinished and very buggy Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. A game that many have described as Deus Ex with vampires. A masterpiece of atmosphere, immersive setting, open ended gameplay and sheer style. Although it would require a decade of community patching to be brought to a shape that you can call fully functional, Bloodlines was and still is one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Sadly it would be the last game Troika would ever make. Bloodlines wasn’t a commercial success, and it cost a lot to make, with a lot of pain and effort poured into it. In a few months, one of the most creative game studios that ever was would vanish. And since I’m in the RPG sector, I’ll throw Sacred a bone as well and say that for a while it was the best game inspired by Diablo 2 to come out for a while.

And if it was strategy you wanted, well, you’d have Ground Control 2, a great game that was a bit overshadowed by the juggernaut that was Rome Total War. Riding a bit on the wave of the Gladiator movie, that was still being quoted by everyone at the time, it applied the Creative Assembly formula to the Roman Empire. To a lot of people it is still the finest game of the series in depth, theme and the amount of fun you could get from trying to capture most of Europe for the glory of the Senate and the People of Rome.

And what was the game of 2004, you may ask? Well, it can’t really be anything other than World of Warcraft. We still live in its shadow. The entire MMO genre was absorbed by it, it molded what people expected from the genre, or at least what companies thought people wanted. It’s a game that would lead to a lot of wasted effort to outdo it, and it would bring a lot of joy to millions. Well, at least until the Cataclysm and Panda thing. But they’re coming back for the war that reignited in 2018.

With that, we end 2004. Next year probably won’t be as exciting as this one, unless you really like first person shooters. Goodbye.

We are supporting Steem/Steemit/DLive.io/D.Tube through our Shows

---

Support Us and Our Work !

Youtube.com/c/GaminGHD | Minds.com/GaminGHD | Gab.ai/GaminGHD | Patreon.com/GaminGHD | Steemit.com/@free999enigma | D.Tube/c/GaminGHD | DLive.io/#/@GaminGHD |

- UPVOTE - RESTEEM - COMMENT - FOLLOW -

Gaming-Related Friends you should follow: @StefaNonsense & @ropname & @unacomn & @vladalexan GaminGHD Discord Server https://discord.gg/CZSXJwy