I want to know which game(s) were responsible for the decline of mech and space combat games. Or did they just have too many buttons to master for casual gamers?

Maybe instead of calling your friend stupid you should realize some people want shooters to control like shooters. I hated playing that game because while the enemies were all over me and all around me my character controlled like a tank. It worked fine for the early games, it doesn't work fine when you turn it into a shooter.

Miraculously when the hype died down and RE5 came out reviewers realized this and knocked the game for it, but RE4 got by on new flashy.

Half Life, neat experience, but since HL, everyone wants to make a linear 'experience' shooter.

Freespace 2. Big budget game that they obviously spent a lot of effort on... and that sold so poorly that developers & publishers suddenly were afraid of the genre.
Mechs probably died because Battletech lost so much ground to Warhammer. Suddenly the flagship mech licence (in the west) was far less attractive to work with, and thus the mech-sim genre almost died.

WoW

Still the best MMO on the market and worth paying a monthy fee for

Why?

Because after it was released, everyone and I mean EVERYONE wanted to jump on the MMO bandwagon after it saw all of the Mucho Casho that Blizzard was making. Dumbass publishers just thought: "Hey, let's make an MMO about a popular XYZ theme and roll in cashmoney!"

The problem here is that they failed to realize why exactly WoW got so popular and why to this day it still has like 10 million subscribers
I was like 13 when that game came out

I remember at least for the next 7 years I was constantly asking to myself: "Why isn't this new RTS better than WC3 and TFT?"

In time I really got to appreciate how exactly good and polished that game is, as a young teenager you dont really realize these things and take them for granted...

Did not Halo start all that rechargeable health thing in shooters?

I believe so, yes.

Anyway, my pick would be Bloodrayne.
I like the BloodRayne series, and I hope to one day acquire a GOG copy (because my current copy is defective).
So why is it here? Two words : Uwe Boll. He ruined everything >.<

It's not a bad thing. It can be in some games but for some others it's a good thing. Adding "medkits" in a level doesn't make for good game design, regenerative health still means you're going to have to be careful when in danger but you won't have to run around looking for medkits everywhere and can just play the damn game x)

Of course, in some games it just doesn't fit.

I also disagree on diablo 2, Titan Quest was great and so are the torchlight games and Diablo III.
Most gamers fail to understand that Diablo 2 wasn't that great when it first came out, it became great with time (and the expansion + new patches), and i'm hoping it'll be the same for Diablo III (fun but a bit boring after a while).

Back on topic, i'd have to go with master of orion series.
While i love MoO2, no game has managed to be as good as that one. The third one was a total failure, and even if galactic civilizations II is pretty good it lacks several features from MoO 2 and has a bit of a bland/generic design.

What's the problem with Other M? I enjoyed it as much as the Prime saga.

Oh man, someone get this woman some chocolate. As far as my friend goes if I want to call him an idiot I will.

I just have to put this out there...

I really enjoyed Resident Evil 5. It was one of the best coop games I ever played in splitscreen with a friend and I played through RE2 and RE3 before. I can very well imagine that it would have not amazed me in singleplayer but playing through hard with a bro and without farming was really enjoyable.

Resident Evil 6 is dirt thought...

That was actually made possible by german taxmoney....

http://www.pckoloji.com/wp-content/uploads/the-elder-scrolls-arena.jpg

I think we had sexualizd women before Tomb Raider.

seriously, the way you guys argue you could put ANY influential game on this list.

I thought resi5 was dirt but loved Resi 6... is there something wrong there?! I seem to be the only one not on the resi 6 is bad band wagon yet. Though I'll admit the co op was good it just didn't feel interesting (the actual game).