The year 2002 in video games saw the release of many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Madden NFL 2003, NBA Live 2003, NBA 2K3, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth, Final Fantasy XI, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Jet Set Radio Future, Metroid Prime, Onimusha 2, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Pro Evolution Soccer 2, Resident Evil and Zero, Super Mario Sunshine,The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, along with new titles and franchises such as Battlefield, Dungeon Siege, Kingdom Hearts, Mafia, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, SOCOM, and Splinter Cell. The year's best-selling video game was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the PlayStation 2, while the year's most critically acclaimed titles were Metroid Prime and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the GameCube.
Grand Theft Auto III is a 2001 action-adventure game developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 1999's Grand Theft Auto 2, and the fifth instalment overall. Set within the fictional Liberty City, the story follows Claude, a silent protagonist who, after being betrayed and left for dead by his girlfriend during a robbery, embarks on a quest for revenge that leads him to become entangled in a world of crime, drugs, gang warfare, and corruption. The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Its open world design lets players freely roam Liberty City, consisting of three main areas.
Grand Theft Auto 2 is an action-adventure game, developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games in October 1999, for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 2000. It is the sequel to 1997's Grand Theft Auto, and the second main instalment of the Grand Theft Auto series. Set within a retrofuturistic metropolis known as "Anywhere City", the game focuses on players taking the role of a criminal as they roam an open world, conducting jobs for various crime syndicates and having free rein to do whatever they wish to achieve their goal. The game's intro is unique for a title in the series, as it involved live-action scenes filmed by Rockstar Games.
Need for Speed (NFS) is a racing game franchise published by Electronic Arts and currently developed by Criterion Games, the developers of Burnout. The series generally centers around illegal street racing and tasks players to complete various types of races while evading the local law enforcement in police pursuits. The series is one of EA's oldest franchises not published under their EA Sports brand. The series released its first title, The Need for Speed, in 1994. The most recent game, Need for Speed Unbound, was released on December 2, 2022. Additionally, a free-to-play mobile installment released in 2015, Need for Speed: No Limits, is actively developed by Firemonkeys Studios, the developers of Real Racing 3.
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and is owned by Fandom, Inc. as of 2023.
Grand Theft Auto is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones and Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. It is primarily developed by British development house Rockstar North, and published by its American parent company, Rockstar Games. The name of the series is a term for motor vehicle theft in the United States.
Pokémon is a series of video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company under the Pokémon media franchise. It was created by Satoshi Tajiri with assistance from Ken Sugimori, the first games, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, were released in 1996 in Japan for the Game Boy, later released outside of Japan as Pokémon Red Version and Blue Version. The main series of role-playing video games (RPGs), referred as the "core series" by their developers, has continued on each generation of Nintendo's handhelds. The most recently released core series games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, were released on November 18, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch.
Worms World Party is a 2001 artillery turn-based tactics video game developed by Team17, and is the sequel to Worms Armageddon in the Worms series. As with the previous games in the series, players take turns controlling their teams and using available projectiles, firearms, explosives, and equipment to destroy all opposing teams and manoeuvre across a specified and highly destructible map.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a 2005 action-adventure game developed in a collaboration between Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North, and published by Rockstar Games. The ninth installment in the Grand Theft Auto series, it was initially released as a PlayStation Portable exclusive in October 2005. A port for the PlayStation 2 was later released in June 2006. At the time of release, the recommended retail price of the PS2 port was around half the price of the PSP version, because the PS2 version does not feature the custom soundtrack ripping capability of the PSP version. Ports for iOS, Android and Fire OS devices were also released in December 2015, February 2016, and March 2016, respectively.
Crime Life: Gang Wars is an action video game developed by Hothouse Creations and published by Konami. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. There are various methods of earning money, ranging from mugging to burglary. The soundtrack of the game is provided by the hip-hop group D12, who also contributed their likenesses and voices for some of the game's key characters.
Animal Crossing is a social simulation video game series developed and published by Nintendo. The series was conceptualized and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. In Animal Crossing, the player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can do various activities like fishing, insect catching, and fossil hunting. The series is notable for its open-ended gameplay and use of the video game console's internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time.
Sherlock Holmes is a series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The games are based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson. While the franchise is based on Doyle's stories, each game has an original plot and storyline.
Imperium Romanum is a 2008 city-building video game for Microsoft Windows developed by Haemimont Games and published by Kalypso Media. Players act as governor of a Roman province and must build and maintain a thriving and prosperous settlement. The game takes place during the time of the Roman Empire. Players build Roman towers, gates, and bridges and use currency to fund projects. The Italian and Spanish versions of the game are titled Imperivm: Civitas II.
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony is the second of two episodic expansion packs available for the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. The game was released individually for the Xbox 360 on 29 October 2009, and for the PlayStation 3 and Windows on 13 April 2010, as part of a standalone disc-based package titled Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, which also contains Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned and does not require the base game to be played. Microsoft added Episodes from Liberty City to its backwards compatibility list for Xbox One platforms in February 2017.
James Noir's Hollywood Crimes is a puzzle game developed by Ubisoft for the Nintendo 3DS and iOS. The game is set within a TV game show in the 1960s and the player must solve puzzles to defeat a mysterious criminal mastermind. The player takes on the role of a contestant working their way through 6 stages of a game show as Hollywood becomes the staging ground for a set of gruesome crimes. The game stars Elias Toufexis who played Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Batman: Arkham is a series of action-adventure video games based on the DC Comics character Batman, developed by Rocksteady Studios and WB Games Montréal, and published originally by Eidos Interactive and currently by Warner Bros. Games. The franchise consists of four main installments and an upcoming spin-off, along with four smaller titles for mobile devices, a virtual reality game, tie-in comic books, and an animated film. The continuity established by the games is often referred to as the Arkhamverse.
Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic point-and-click video game developed and published by Telltale Games, based on Mojang Studios' sandbox video game Minecraft. The first five episodes were released between October 2015 through March 2016 and an additional three episodes were released as downloadable content (DLC) in mid-2016. A second season consisting of five episodes was released in 2017.
Mafia is a series of action-adventure games originally created and developed by 2K Czech. Since the third installment, however, the games are developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K Games. The franchise consists of three mainline installments, along with a remake of the first game, a remastered version of the second game, and two spin-offs for mobile devices. A fourth game is in active development.
Batman: The Telltale Series is a 2016 episodic point-and-click graphic adventure video game developed and published by Telltale Games and distributed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment under its DC Entertainment label. The game is based on the DC Comics character Batman, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, though not tied to any previous adaptation of the work in film or other media. Upon release, it received mixed reviews, which praised the atmosphere, action sequences, and faithfulness to the Batman mythos, but criticized it for technical issues and plot. A second season, titled Batman: The Enemy Within, was released in 2017, and was viewed as an improvement over the original.
