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Pinback’s Top Ten Games of All-Time: #0
Jun 30th, 2008 by Pinback

#0: Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (2008)

As I said before, this list is “genre based”, in that I tried to make sure that no basic gaming genre ended up with more than one entry. Whether this was a wise decision or one which ultimately renders the list pointless, I will let the pundits and historians argue over for time immemorial. Is it a travesty that I left off such definite top-10 material as Half-Life, Robotron: 2084, and Barbie Fashion Show? Of course. But I don’t care, because I am HOUSE.

However, I did have a tough time picking the 4X winner. As much admiration as I have for the Civ games, the fact is that there is one 4X game which I have played far more, and enjoyed far more, than any other, and it is Galactic Civilizations.

As much as I wanted to, though, I couldn’t, with any sense of integrity as a gaming expert, pick GC, because the fact is that when it was released in 2003, it was already way behind the times.

You could only play as one race (humans). Lots of other races in the game, but you could only play as that one. No multiplayer. No ship design — there were a handful of stock ships you could research, but that was all you got. The very thought of releasing a space 4X game with a straight face, in 2003, with these limitations, is almost inconceivable.

And yet, it was the most fun 4X game I’ve ever played. I loved it primarily for two reasons:

1. Even with the aforementioned limitations, it still had a perfect blend of style, panache, and charm that no other 4X game had ever matched. There was still a depth to it, multiple victory routes, a robust trading and diplomacy system, but it was all done so smoothly, with such great humor and obvious love, that it was even more impossible to put down than the most state-of-the-art 4X games. The game’s complexity was masked by a uniquely well-designed UI and a lighthearted (but not cartoonish) touch which made just one more turn way too compelling. And though it was clearly an independently developed game, the quality level was strikingly high. The graphics weren’t going to wow anybody, but too they weren’t a giveaway that it was an indie game. And it still has the best, most memorable orchestral soundtrack of any game I know.

2. I gained most of my GC experience while living in Boulder, CO, without a job, and recovering from getting my tits lopped off. Of course, now I’m so fat that they’ve grown back again, so the entire thing was a waste of time and money, but what was NOT a waste of time and money were the drugs that I was prescribed for the post-operative pain. These were Percoset and Ambien, to be taken together, and friends, to say that playing GC on Percoset and Ambien is the most fun thing ever is not an understatement. Of course, neither is it an understatement to say that anything you do while on Percoset and Ambien is the most fun thing ever, so this perhaps skewed my opinion somewhat.

No matter, it was definitely my favorite 4X game — my favorite computer game — ever.

Now, I put it away for a while, and waited patiently for Galactic Civilizations II to come out. Which it eventually did, in 2006. This was an important milestone, because GC2 finally brought the franchise into the 90s, adding such not-quite-obsolete-yet features as being able to play other races, being able to design ships, and introducing “3D” graphics, letting you rotate and zoom the map however you’d like.

This was all very exciting, and yet… something was wrong. For all of the new additions, something seemed to have been taken away. There was more to do, but doing it seemed clunkier. You could rotate and zoom the map, but it didn’t seem to add anything except slower framerates and difficulty finding a layout that made the map as easy to read as the old 2D map in the original game. The 3D ships looked clunky and added nothing. The humor and charm still seemed to be there, but even that part of the implementation seemed rough, unfinished. And you could play as any race, but all that seemed to change is what color the border around the screen was, and how your ships looked.

In short, it made me miss GalCiv. And that upset me so much that I just disavowed the franchise entirely.

Until!

On April 30, 2008, Stardock released Twilight of the Arnor, the second expansion pack for GC2. I hadn’t bought the first expansion, and certainly was not going to get this one. That’s when the reviews started showing up, claiming that this was no mere expansion pack. This was to be the last offering in the GC2 line, and the developers just went insane trying to put everything they could possibly manage into it, knowing it would have to hold off GC fans for at least a few years until GC3 came around.

I so much wanted to love this franchise again. I so much wanted to give it another chance. So finally, I caved.

So friends, here is the verdict:

Holy fucking shit.

To call this an expansion pack really does not tell the story. Much more accurate would be to call it Galactic Civilizations 2.5. You have to understand what they did here:

– All races now have their own tech tree and look/feel. That’s 12 different tech trees for 12 different races and 12 different themes. That is frigging huge. Now there is a reason to play other races, and feel like you’re not just playing the Red guy or the Green guy.

– The entire graphic engine was overhauled. The map all of a sudden seems to jump to life, and the ships have all been overhauled to look, there’s no other way to put it, bad ass.

– The UI has undergone countless changes and now runs smoother than a roll-on deodorant. Ship design is still available, but now the computer will design them for you if you don’t feel like having to micromanage that stuff.

– All of the wit and whimsy shines through more magnificently than ever.

– Ladies and gentlemen, the FUN is BACK.

And when the fun is back in the GC world, that can only mean one thing:

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor is the 0th best game of all time.

(And the music is still fabulous.)

Pinback’s Top Ten Games of All-Time: #3
Jun 11th, 2008 by Pinback

NOTE: The game originally scheduled for this slot was CounterStrike. But then I thought, well, that’s not really fair to Half-Life, which could also be right in the same spot. But I don’t want to fill up the rest of the list with games of the same genre, so I knew I had to pick one. Totally different games, of course, but the FPS genre definitely needed to be represented by one of them. I went back and forth on it a lot. Counterstrike, Half-Life? Half-Life, Counterstrike? Multiplayer mayhem with a bunch of 14 year olds with foul mouths, or boxes and barrels as far as the eye can see?

It was a difficult decision, but late last night, after much soul-searching, as well as searching for CDs in the unpacked cardboard boxes in the garage and reinstalling games, the answer finally became clear:

#3: FAR CRY (2004)

The most vivid recollection I have of any moment in my history of computer gaming occurred about 30 seconds after I loaded up Wolfenstein 3D for the first time. I downloaded it just because I had been a fan of the 2D version of the game, and didn’t really have any idea what I was about to experience, so when the first screen came up and had me staring straight at the door to my cell, I thought, “hey, cool!” and started hunting around the keyboard to figure out what I needed to type to make the door open. In the middle of this exercise, my arm accidentally brushed my mouse… That’s when I looked up at the screen, and everything had… changed. I grabbed the mouse and moved it around a little, and the room spun and skewed right along with the mouse movements.

Hooooly shit.

In my little universe, the whole world of gaming had completely changed in that one little moment. There had never been anything like it. You were there, and you had full range of motion. You could do whatever you want (except, in Wolfie’s case, go up or down or eat anything other than chicken legs and dog food.) The FPS genre had been born.

In the fifteen years since, FPS and the technology behind it have enjoyed something of a binary relationship, as each continued to push the other forward to greater and greater heights. Things absolutely inconceivable even a handful of years ago have become commonplace. Unprecented levels of immersion and reality are achieved seemingly with every new release.

And yet, for the most part, every FPS game is still just Wolfenstein. You’d grab your gun, you’d go through some corridors, you’d shoot some bad guys, wash, rinse, repeat. Doom came out, which was Wolfenstein with stairs and demons and blinking lights. Half-Life came out and revolutionized the frigging genre, but when you stopped to really look at it, it’s still just Wolfie, with some trains and vehicles (and boxes and barrels) thrown in. Even in Half-Life 2, with its expansive outdoor environments, the gameplay is no different from when you are inside. You’re still pretty much in well-defined (often contrived) corridors, running through the levels like a well-armed rat in a maze, looking for chicken legs and dog food.

Far Cry starts out much the same way, and as you head down the first corridor, it is difficult to think that this is going to be anything more than another souped-up, high-tech version of Wolfenstein 3D.

And then you climb up out of that sewer and get your first look at the lush foliage, swaying palm trees, and expansive white beaches which lay in front of you.

Hoooooly shit.

If Far Cry had just done the whole “expansive playfield” thing, and just done the “pretty island” thing, it wouldn’t have been anything special. What makes it special is that it does absolutely everything else within its gorgeous environment right. Your very first experience outside the sewer, sneaking from hut to hut, is just exhilirating. Swimming through the cove, avoiding patrol boats and trying to get to the hole in the side of the carrier is spine-tingling. Hiding in the bushes and taking out some smug asshole with a headshot from 200 yards away is wonderful. And sitting in the middle of a huge hill, hearing footsteps searching for you, while the palm trees continue to sway, tropical birds flood the sky above you, and the great, shining blue expanse of ocean hissing behind you is just not an experience that you are going to get in any other game at any other price. It is the most replayable FPS I know, not because anything’s different the second or third time, but just because, wow. It’s like a virtual Club Med, but one where you get to shoot people in the face.

It came out well before Half-Life 2, and outdoes it in nearly every respect, except for Far Cry’s middle section, which essentially is Half-Life 2, and which is its weakest element. HL2’s vaunted physics engine has nothing over Far Cry except for silly puzzles involving the gravity gun. Doom 3 does not even come close.

It is the best entry yet in the world of first-person shooters, and deserves any accolade you can throw at it.

Epilogue: In my Caltrops review, I mention that at the time (and even as early as two weeks ago) I didn’t have a computer capable of running Far Cry at anything over the lowest graphical settings. Even at those lame settings, it was an unforgettable experience. I reinstalled last night to try it out on my new fancy graphics card, and set all the settings to “very high”, and it’s almost like a brand new game. Stunning. Phenomenal. And really, really good.

Pinback’s Top Ten Games of All-Time: #4
Jun 2nd, 2008 by Pinback

#4: ASTEROIDS

Asteroids is one of those games which gets exponentially better the better you get at it. I know this for a fact because it is one of only three games I can think of (including the next game on this list) which I ever considered myself really, genuinely good at.

For a while, it was inconceivable to me that anyone could possibly think that Asteroids was not, by far, the greatest coin-operated arcade game that has ever been. Then I got a chance to see some people play it, and what I saw was a lot of spinning around in the center of the screen, firing almost blindly out into the sea of angular vector shapes, stopping only to hit the “hyperspace” button whenever a rock got too close to the ship.

I can see how, when played in this fashion, the game would seem to be something less than incredible. However, every true Asteroids enthusiast can remember the first time they ventured over to try out that “thrust” button, then did his first “dodge-spin-fire” move. The game changes completely once you break this barrier, and the pure beauty and brilliance of its seemingly simple design begin to be uncovered.

It is still one of the few games in game history which offer the player complete freedom of movement, and the playfield is remarkably big in comparison to your ship, so there’s a lot of that freedom. As much as could be expected from an early video game, for all intents and purposes, you do feel cast out into a huge, uncaring universe to fend for yourself against harsh natural elements (and an occasional alien), and there’s nothing there to save you except for your own wits, techniques and strategies.

Asteroids is still used as training and practice for air traffic controllers, and for good reason. After you play for a while and gain some level of skill, your field and acuity of vision really begin to increase, to the point where while you cannot list one-by-one every rock on the screen, you realize that you instinctively still know where they all are, where they’re going, and what patterns they will take a half-second, a second, two seconds from now. You begin to see the entire screen all at once. Once you attain that level of what can only be called “enlightenment”, you begin to react instinctively. The game experience becomes fluid, as if you are in a never-ending dance with the rocks, and while you realize you are expending no energy thinking about what to do, still your fingers know where to move. The game begins to play you.

It is an exhilirating experience, and one which I believe is unique, definitely in arcade gaming, and possibly in video gaming in a larger sense.

And it still only costs a quarter.

Pinback’s Top Ten Games of All-Time: #6
May 14th, 2008 by Pinback

#6: INFOCOM GAME (1980-)

You can get all righteous and indignant about the state of gaming, our children, and our society as a whole by going on a rant about how video games these days are morally bankrupt, paper-thin exercises in satisfying an ADD-riddled generation with brainless quick-trigger entertainment full of sound and fury signifying nothing, and back in the good old days, you actually had to be able to read and imagine things and use your wits to navigate literary mazes which were nothing less than high art, produced by silicon Shakespeares who saw fit to begift our land with their great and holy wonders.

You can do that, and some people might even listen to you, and some people might even agree with you (mainly people on this and similar websites). However, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that primarily because while these games often did feature well-written prose and displayed definite artistry in their presentation, I think this genre, more than any other, has lent itself to overstated, drooling adulation, primarily by (I suspect) those who feel a sense of intellectual superiority in saying that their favorite games required literacy, which if that’s your big claim to fame, good luck to you.

The fact is, for every poetic passage full of great evocative emotion and whimsical fantasy, there was far more of this:

Code:
> put cat in microwave
I don’t think the cat would like that.

> eat cat
Boy, I’ve got a line for that, but this is a family restaurant.

>

Alright? Fun, funny, and totally cool, this is. Great art, it is not.

But this is about the best games of all time, not the best Victorian-era impressionist sculptures.

And the fact is, the classic Infocom games (I have left it to the reader to pick his or her favorite, as there were so many of such a high quality that it is folly to pick one for this list) were just tremendous entertainment, mainly for two reasons:

Reason 1 is their goofy advertising slogan, which said in one way or another with great irony that their games “had the best graphics”. Ha ha ha, yeah, had the best graphics, even though they had no graphics. So clever! But goddammit, tell me you have any visual memory of any video game ever as crisp, vivid, and lifelike as standing in that field west of that white house. Because I sure as hell don’t. I can recall every inch of the first level of Doom, better than I can my own house, but I still only see it in 320×200 resolution. That white house exists, thoroughly and completely. And that just makes every moment of one of these games so much more real, more compelling than any graphics could muster.

Reason 2 is that finally unlocking that door and entering the hidden room is as satisfying as any experience to be found in any video game ever. It’s almost sexual. It was even better back when you knew you’d done it because the floppy disk drive would have to spool up. Just the thought of it is enough to bring on goosebumps.

So, that’s it. A genre which was nearly perfected in its time, and then left to rot, kept alive only by a small group of enthusiasts with a bad mailing list. No matter, they are timeless, and will be as enjoyable in a hundred years as they were right now, regardless of how technology moves forward.

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