The Top 10 Games Of All Time

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Post by pinbacker »

Another reason I didn't put Counterstrike in there is that, after having reinstalled and played it for the first time in four or five years, it wasn't as good as I remembered.

Of course, then when I realized that I'd been sitting there playing it for two and a half hours and could have gone another five hours easy, I thought, maybe it is as good as I remembered.
That's the wrong video, by the way.

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Post by pinbacker »

#2: Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999)

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Before there was Mall Tycoon, and Zoo Tycoon, and Crackhouse Tycoon, and Auschwitz Tycoon, there was Rollercoaster Tycoon. Let me start the review with the end of the review, which is that there still has never been a better "building" game, and RCT does what it does with such perfection, freedom, and joy, that it shakes free from the bonds of its own genre to become one of the greatest games in history (some would say, the second best.)

But besides all that, it's important to point out that RCT is one of two games, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator, which actually changed my life in a non-trivial way.

The background is that I'd loved coasters as a child, and spent significant chunks of time "designing" and drawing coasters wherever I could, on blackboards, in the margins on papers, on book covers, etc. Something about the mixture of the elegant curves of the structure, along with the promise of fun and excitement, just spoke to me. The family's yearly trip to Kings Dominion was the highlight of my young life. I wanted to be a roller coaster when I grew up.

Then, something happened, I grew up, I left home, and coasters just disappeared from my life.

In 1999, my coworker Justin and I saw a downloadable demo and (on company time and equipment), installed it and fired it up. We both sat there transfixed, fiddling with the controls, realizing that, holy crap, this would actually let you build the coasters you had rolling around in your head all these years. Seems he was in the same boat, and something about this game was rekindling flames which once burned brightly in our youths but were sadly extinguished. We vowed that day to go out and buy the game the day it was released. And we did.

Many, many hours were spent with the game that weekend. That's the point where we realized that Six Flags Great Adventure was just down the road, and after not having had the joy of clickety-clacking up a lift hill for far too many years, we got our ride on in a big way.

And, man, that was it. We were both gleefully, immaturely hooked all over again. This newly re-found obsession culminated in a two week trip spanning most of the northeast quadrant of the country, and the enjoyment of over 120 different coasters all over the US in about a two-year span. Coasters were my life, all over again, and it was a time which I will always remember fondly, and which was just too much fun to begin to describe.

And all of that can be traced directly back to this game, which reminded me of one of the great loves of my life.

None of that is enough to qualify it for being the second best game of all time, though. What IS enough, is that it is about a hundred games in one, and manages to do them all superbly, and tie them together into a magnificent whole, with unlimited replay, and unlimited capacity for creative expression and, damn it all to hell, fun.

The coaster building part was revolutionary. The economic model was perfect. The animations and individual tracking of thousands of park visitors was astounding. The pathway design, park decoration, theme building, landscaping, and advertising parts, all perfectly able to occupy hours of time on their own, were nothing but beautiful, in terms of UI design, pacing, variety, graphics, sound, all of it. The game world is a huge canvas, full of unlimited potential, onto which your only job was to paint a good time.

And that's the last thing which makes RCT special. It is one of the few games that have been purely about fun, and in which nothing bad could ever happen. Look at the other games in this list. In one way or another, they are all about killing something, or not getting killed, or avoiding disaster, or blowing something up, or struggling through obstacles, etc, etc. This is the case for 99% of all games ever, as far as I can tell. RCT had none of that. The worst that could happen was, other than a little nausea, people would be sad that you didn't have rides they wanted to ride on. Nobody to kill, nobody to be killed, no treasures to protect. The purpose of the game was to generate as much fun and joy as you could. If you didn't do well, you only generated a little joy. If you excelled, you created much joy. The currency of the game was fun and excitement. Even the granddaddy, SimCity (which could have very well been on this list itself), forced you to deal with things like crime, and fire, and natural disasters, and pollution.

RCT's world, and its gameplay, were a perfect respite for all of life's struggles and ills. You had fun creating fun. There was really no way to lose. The ultimate tool for putting a smile on your face.

The fact that it did everything so goddamn great was just a bonus.
That's the wrong video, by the way.

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Have you played RCT2? Should I get that or the original?
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Will we get closure on this before you delete my website, you motherfucker?

Why don't you ignore this post like the one previous? HERE'S THE JERKOFF TRYING TO TAKE THIS PLACE DOWN.
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The answer was no, it was not finished before the forum was deleted.
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#1: Civilization IV (2005)

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My history with the Civilization games is checkered at best. I remember when the original first came out. I was right there in line to buy it the day it was released. I bought it along with another game which I don't remember. I brought them both home and started playing the other game. I hadn't even opened Civilization when Doug "Finsternis" Linder came over, saw the box, said "I've heard this is really good, can I borrow it?" and I said sure.

He left with the box that night, and I never got it back. I didn't much care, either. I've had a lifelong ego struggle with this man, and even back then I knew that if there was something he liked so much that I couldn't get even a borrowed copy back from him, it certainly wasn't anything I wanted anything to do with. So I missed it. That's okay, I didn't even know what a "4X" game was.

To the uninitiated: "4X" refers to "explore, expand, exploit, exterminate", a type of strategy game in which you generally find yourself in the middle of a large, unknown map, then set about 1) exploring the area, 2) building cities or military units in order to expand the amount of territory and resources you control, 3) wash, rinse, repeat until you've blown up all the competing players or otherwise found a way to victory or defeat.

My very first experience with a 4X game would come later, ironically with a much older game. I had to work late one night, just to monitor some overnight job for hours on end, and that same Doug "Finsternis" Linder handed me a worn, dogeared floppy disk with a game called Empire on it, and suggest I use that to while away the long, boring hours. Well, it had been years since he'd played it, so I figured that was enough time for the "Doug germs" to die and fall off of the game's packaging, so I loaded that sucker up.

I started a game of Empire, and before I was able to finish it, and before I knew it, it was 3 AM and the job was over and it was time to go. I never went back to Empire because of the obsolete graphics and unwieldy user interface, and also because I could still smell some Doug on it, but one thing I learned that night was that the 4X genre was the finest, most addictive, most compelling genre of computer game that I would ever come across.

---

As an aside, I'd like to give you a sense of how terribly addictive this type of game can be. There is another venerable 4X franchise, set in space, called "Galactic Civilizations". I was a huge fan of the first game and played it for countless hours while I was taking my year-and-a-half "finding myself" tour of the country. At the end of a game, if your score was high enough, you could have it automatically posted to the GalCiv website for all to see.

All I remember was that there was one guy, named "Technician", who would play the game every single day, once a day, with the game set to the exact same settings every day -- highest difficulty level, small galaxy, same number and type of enemies. He owned the first page or two of the all-time high score list. He had obviously mastered the game, at least with these (extremely difficult) settings, as he would win every single day. Not a loss on his record.

I looked back through the history, and he had been doing this for months. More than a handful of months, at that. Once a day. I couldn't believe this was actually happening. Eventually I asked the guy, you've obviously mastered the game, you're obviously never going to lose, why on Earth would you do this day after day, month after month?

He said, simply, he enjoyed it.

That's how addictive it is.

---

Shortly after that first encounter with Empire, Empire Deluxe was released, and that remains to this day the only computer game I've ever faked an illness so I could stay home and play it the day after I got it.

I told Doug about my affinity for these games, and he suggested I go back and try Civilization, since it was, in his words, like "super-Empire". I couldn't imagine anything more wonderful, but still my repugnance for this man's tastes and suggestions was stronger than my desire for a super-Empire game, so still I steered clear.

I would have to wait for Civilization II to truly get my first taste of the game that I bought and never played, lo those many years ago.

It was, truly, super-Empire. Turns and hours just melted away for weeks on end. It was, and still is, hard to believe that a game could have that strong a hold on a player for that much time. It truly is one of those games which just never gives you a reason to stop playing, all the way up until the game ends, which in Civ II's case could have been 10-20 hours in the future. And then there's not that much reason to not fire it right back up again.

Since those days, 4X games have come and gone, even another Civ game had come and gone. People didn't like Civ III but at that time in my life I wasn't playing games much, so I'm not sure why.

Then Civ IV came out and it was like that night with Empire all over again. I was under the spell again. The perfect gaming genre had won me over again. But this was different. You could fire up the worst 4X game in the world and it'll still draw you in for a few hours before you realize how much it sucks. As my hours with Civ IV went on, though, it began to occur to me that this might not just be the best genre, but the perfect entry into it.

The graphics were, for the first time, not merely functional, but very beautiful. The lush landscapes seem to come alive on your screen in a way no 4X game has managed. In one of the more impressive special effects I've seen in any game of any kind, you may seamlessly zoom in to a single city square, and hear all of the bustle and music within the city, and then zoom back out again so far that you are floating in the solar system, seeing and rotating the entire globe, hearing nothing but wind and emptiness. Sure, you can't hear wind in space, that's not the point. Does it affect the strategy or game design? No. Does it finally raise the 4X genre to the level of art?

Absolutely, and with poetic flourish.

The rest of the game is similarly polished and wonderful. World Wonders, when accomplished, bring back the little movies from Civ II, but this time fully computer-generated and magnificent. Leonard Nimoy's voice resonates with the perfect balance of studiousness and whimsy. The icons are all clear. Everything you need to know about the game is no more than two mouse clicks away. Everything is spelled correctly. Search the game from nook to cranny, and everything is just right.

On the gameplay front, 4X has never been deeper. It is not just about territory. Layers upon layers of shifting power overlay the landscape, offering countless ways to "expand and exploit", from religion, to cultural influence, to economic power, to resource monopolization. It is like several games in one, all being played at the same time, and all brutally effective at sucking away your time and brainpower.

And they even managed to make the gameplay smoother than all of the predecessors. Games are mercifully shorter now, without losing any of the punch.

This is the desert island game, the last and only game you will ever need. You will never be done with it, and the only way to lose is to stop playing. Everything else is endlessly joyous, endlessly fun, and essentially flawless.

Civilization IV is the greatest game of all time.
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

You have done what some consider the impossible - you have finished your thread.

Well played. An excellent review. It truly is a marvelous game, and is worthy of the fine attention you gave it. Bravo.
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Post by Finsternis »

pinbacker wrote:The pathway design, park decoration, theme building, landscaping, and advertising parts, all perfectly able to occupy hours of time on their own, were nothing but beautiful, in terms of UI design, pacing, variety, graphics, sound, all of it. The game world is a huge canvas, full of unlimited potential, onto which your only job was to paint a good time.
RCT was indeed a phenomenal game, marred by only one teeny flaw: no sandbox mode. As much as you might want to, you couldn't just say "fuck the economics, I just want to build The Best Park Ever." You had to earn the money to do it. And while the economic part was seriously fun, sometimes I had great ideas for really cool things but just couldn't get the money to make them reality. Many maps didn't have much land for sale, and the ones that did - well, land is expensive. Add up all the earthmoving costs and ride construction costs, and you'd have to play one park for six months to get up the cash to do something truly spectacular. The game really needed a sandbox mode that just said "here's a huge piece of land and infinite money, have fun."

Worse, although some people created cheat patches for the game, the lead game designer, in a fit of hubris of unimaginable levels, actually kept patching the game to break the hacks. He was so determined that people play the game his was and only his way that he took extra effort to disable any cheats with each new patch. That really pissed me off. "You're only allowed to have fun the way I say you can have fun!" Fucking Prima Donna.

But it was a relatively minor flaw, and everything Pinback says about the amazing design and concept is right one.

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Post by Finsternis »

Regarding Civ IV, I never played it. I did play and love Civ II. I found Civ III disappointing. The planet-based 4X game that sucked me in the most was Alpha Centauri. That game was truly amazing.

I didn't care much for Galactic Civilzations, I prefer Space Empires 4/5. That game was/is probably responsible for more "just-one-more-turn-itis" than any game I've ever played. If you like 4X space games, Space Empires is the best one, IMO.

But lately I've been finding myself plying single-player games less and less. No matter how good they are - and there are still some amazing ones, like Bioshock - I'm really leaning toward all multiplayer games now. Eve Online, Team Fortress 2, City of Heroes, and even (forgive me) World of Warcraft. Winning just isn't as satisfying when you know that the algorithm you just defeated doesn't know you defeated it. It's so much more fulfilling to know there is someone, somewhere, pounding their keyboard and shouting "Damn him!!"

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I will be changing this thread today in a way that will BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND.

Look for it!
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

The Rollercoaster Tycoon guy breaking the cheats in patches is hilarious. I had never read that before, haha. Wasn't the guy who did RT one of the last people to make a commercial title of that magnitude more-or-less himself, with parts of it in Assembly? I may be thinking of a different Tycoon game.

Finsternis wrote: I prefer Space Empires 4/5. That game was/is probably responsible for more "just-one-more-turn-itis" than any game I've ever played. If you like 4X space games, Space Empires is the best one, IMO.
In the long tradition of "hearing about a kick ass game, buying it, playing it, saying, 'that really was excellent' and then leaving 80% of it undiscovered because someone else recommended a game," I ask: Fin!!!! Do you have a preference between Space Empires 4 or 5?

pinback wrote:I will be changing this thread today in a way that will BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND.
If someone is getting dropped from your list, I think the game in question should at least get a trial.
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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Fin!!!! Do you have a preference between Space Empires 4 or 5?
I will let Fin tell you his preference. However, LET IT BE KNOWN that SE5 was roundly panned (or "mediocred") by critics, even those who lauded praise untold upon SE4.
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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:If someone is getting dropped from your list, I think the game in question should at least get a trial.
I won't drop any games. That's the list from 1-10.

But nobody said you could only use positive integers!!!
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Post by Finsternis »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:The Rollercoaster Tycoon guy breaking the cheats in patches is hilarious. I had never read that before, haha.
Yeah, he was a total asshole about it. That kind of arrogance just makes me furious. Plenty of times designers will refuse to make changes players request, or not fix bugs, and so on. But this was the first and only time I've ever heard of a designer forcing people to have less fun with a game. It's like the Lego company saying "you're not allowed to make castles with our Legos, and we're going to make the pieces so that you can't make them even if you want to."
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: I ask: Fin!!!! Do you have a preference between Space Empires 4 or 5?
To be honest, I just didn't notice that much difference, good or bad. The graphics were a little better in SE5. There were a few very minor additions that I liked. For example, it finally had an "explore" feature for ships, so you could make scouts that auto-explored instead of having to manually move them every turn. Really, though, I hardly noticed after a while. Just about every gameplay element is pretty much the same. I'd say that if you have SE4, SE5 isn't really worth getting, but if you're going to buy one or the other new, you may as well get 5.

Damn. I can't think about that game because I might want to start playing. It's Friday night and I'm just sitting down with a drink. It would be the perfect time... but augh!! That would kill the whole night between now and 4AM, and possibly all of tomorrow also. Tempt me not! Get back, Satan! I swore I would never play again! I swore that having a life was more important!

SE5 is available through Steam, BTW, as most good games are. In the past year or two I think I've bought maybe 2 games that weren't via Steam.

The "Id Super Pack" on Steam is the best game dollar you can spend. $70 for every Id game ever made, from Wolfenstein 3D through Doom 3, including Commander Keen and all the Doom and Quake expansions.

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Post by pinback »

But then...

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

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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.)
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Post by Finsternis »

The best game in that single-player genre was Star Control 2. 1992.

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Post by pinback »

Make your own list, pissface.
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Post by Finsternis »

pinback wrote:Make your own list, pissface.
How polite of you. Glad to see you're well in the spirit of being more peaceful and mindful.

What is it that makes you so angry and bitter?

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Post by hygraed »

Finsternis wrote:The best game in that single-player genre was Star Control 2. 1992.
Except that SC2 is not a 4X game.

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Post by pinback »

According to Finsternis, SC2 is a 4X game. According to Finsternis, Eve Online is also a 4X game.

Here is a list of other games which Finsternis considers to be 4X games:

The Sims
Gears of War
Guitar Hero III
Mr. Do's Wild Ride
Freecell
Hunt the Wumpus
Chinese Checkers
Editplus
Tiddly Winks
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Playing frisbee with a dog
I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10
Global Thermonuclear War
Shoe repair
Recycling
Looking both ways before crossing the street
Spelling
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