Best [and Worst] of the Past Decade

[Great Rumbler]

One Must Fall: 2097 was pretty awesome. I probably played the shareware demo for a good 20-30 hours. Always wanted to get the full version, but I never did. Man, that music brings back memories.

The writing improved, the cinematics improved, the understanding of gameplay improved.

The latter two, yes, but the same could be said for Japanese games as well. Prior to FF7, there wasn't much cinematic about Japanese RPGs.

Writing though, it's very hard to top the writing of Black Isle's 90's RPG stable of Fallout 1 and 2 and Planescape: Torment. Or Bioware's early work with the Baldur's Gate series.

The only RPG from the aughts that I'd really put on the same level is Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, made by former Black Isle developers. Although there are some recent RPGs that would rate fairly high, like the Mass Effect series, Fallout 3 [to a lesser extent], and Neverwinter Nights 2.

Survival Horror before Resident Evil, do you even know what you're talking about? Capcom *invented the fucking term*

That's because when Alone in the Dark came out people had no idea what to the call the genre. It was a mixture of horror, action, and puzzle-solving adventure. Alone in the Dark was pretty awesome when it first came out back in 1992.

By the way, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records for "First 3D Survival Horror Game".