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The point of this topic is to discuss which years in gaming you feel could be argued to be the very best. So it's not so much that one title came out that year that blew your mind, but multiple amazing titles. Unless it's a year that has Half Life 2 in it.

For me personally, I don't think any year has come close to 2018. It was in many ways the defiant return of the single player masterpiece, with games like God of War, Detroit Become Human, Spiderman and Red Dead Redemption all launching in that year. (Notice how many are Sony exclusives, or started life out that way). You could certainly make an argument that The Witcher 3 started the revolution in 2015, but I feel like 2018 is when it cuinated.

2011 was also a pretty good year, with Portal 2, Skyrim and Minecraft launching. (I'll be honest, I only care about Portal 2 and Skyrim).

2007 is another really good one, with BioShock, Mass Effect and Crysis all launching, and each of these were vital to the modern game industry in some way. BioShock had perhaps one of the best ever narratives, Mass Effect became everything all RPGs since have aspired to be, and Crysis just fucked shit up with its graphics, leading the charge with the modern obsession to get to photo realism. I thought at the time that Ubisoft really had something with Assassin's Creed, but we all know how that turned out.

2007 also had Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Guitar Hero 2 and 3. Very solid year.

I'm gonna argue that 2008 was better, though. Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, Fable 2, Dead Space, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Far Cry 2, Rock Band 2, Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

I'm gonna argue that 2008 was better, though. Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, Fable 2, Dead Space, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Far Cry 2, Rock Band 2, Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Sims 3

Where's that damn dislike button? 

I thought at the time that Ubisoft really had something with Assassin's Creed, but we all know how that turned out.

I think it's fairly obvious it was never intended to be a series, considering the sheer number of asspulls directly contradicting knowledge you gained in the first game they had to do with AC2 in order to make it make sense ('oh the Assassins are actually not all dead', 'oh those weird news articles you were reading were just Assassin disinformation') - not to mention Lucy being weirdly willing to break you out at the beginning of the game, instead of breaking you out before the Templars got their worldshaking new knowledge that told them where every Piece of Eden was in ~1190.

I thought at the time that Ubisoft really had something with Assassin's Creed, but we all know how that turned out.

I think it's fairly obvious it was never intended to be a series, considering the sheer number of asspulls directly contradicting knowledge you gained in the first game they had to do with AC2 in order to make it make sense ('oh the Assassins are actually not all dead', 'oh those weird news articles you were reading were just Assassin disinformation') - not to mention Lucy being weirdly willing to break you out at the beginning of the game, instead of breaking you out before the Templars got their worldshaking new knowledge that told them where every Piece of Eden was in ~1190.

There are some things in that game that they really wrote themselves into a corner with. For example: 90% of Africa's population being decimated.

I actually just finished replaying AC1. I always felt like a sequel was meant to be in the present day (Desmond Miles' futuristic present day) that possibly had time-travely stuff. And at the end of the game, you get visions of Egyptian, Aztec, Chinese, and Hebrew stuff, which is interesting since the only game that's gone to one of those places yet is Egypt in AC Origins (as long as you don't count the Assassin's Creed Chronicles games, which I don't). Definitely felt like there was a major shift in direction for the series after the first game.

Pretty sure it was meant to originally be its own thing and the end of the game was just throwing a line out there like some pilot games do when testing ideas out.  But AC1 did extremely well, Ubisoft got dollar signs in their eyes, and thus have the convoluted milked series that we do today.

When Patrice Desilets was still leading it, it was a lot better. Even with Assassin's Creed 2, the series seemed like it was going somewhere. That flew out the window as soon as Brotherhood came around.

I don't know about best, but if you're looking for a year which was most pivotal in the history of gaming, I think 1983 has to be it. The 1983 crash (and downfall of Atari) fundamentally changed the landscape of the industry and paved the way for the rise of NES in 1985. (Which might be a contender for "best"; NES and Super Mario Bros came out in 1985.)

I won't call it a best ever year because I am sure there are better years and I don't know enough to really determine what some of the best years for games are but I will bring up that 1995 was a good year for strategy and trivia games as the original Command & Conquer and You Don't Know Jack were released that year.

Different games in the Command & Conquer series would change the genre by adding tactics and gameplay mechanics not seen earlier such as the first one causing the "Tank Rush" to be used in a widespread manner.  Not sure if the ability to run over infantry with tanks was already present before C&C but it was definitely present after Command & Conquer was released since tanks were often less effective against infantry units so being able to run them over would help them survive being attacked by groups of infantry.  Later games would improve upon the garrisoning buildings features among other things which are more common features in more recent games but these are not just in strategy games now.

You Don't Know Jack would inspire some later games of different genres and some of the producers would help the company Jackbox Games make You Don't Know Jack even better in later years along with other games.  The game itself also may have introduced the "screw your neighbor" tactic to that kind of game since when there were multiple players, they could sabotage each other using the screws to force them to answer questions by adding a penalty for not answering when they would normally would not have a penalty for not answering a question.