The Top 10 Games Of All Time

[Vitriola]

What's nieer?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

There is a really racist term for black people that I edited for the three following reasons:

1. At least three regulars / semi-regulars let it be known that their ability to come to, read and contribute to this place was severely impacted by hate speech terms.

2. I couldn't get the Google ads to come up for the first 24 hours and didn't want the hate speech to be the reason why I couldn't even run that experiment.

3. In terms of KILL ALL (modded word), that one thread where Ben posted cat pictures was at one point on the first page of Google when you searched for that phrase. Come on, who needs it.

There are other reasons as well. If someone really wants to know they can PM me, but there is no shocking revelation to be found. I'm not going to be all, "My new boss's name is Steve N-bomb and if he scans for his name on MSN he's gonna find this place" or anything like that.

Nobody needs the headaches, especially since it's only input into this system for shock value and not because anyone posting truly hates a particular race (as far as I know).

[pinback]

I DEMAND IT!

[Vitriola]

I DEMAND IT!

More cat pics? I have lots.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I will complete and release "Burning Down the House" for Ben if this thread is completed.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I will award a cash prize of ten dollars to the charity of Ben's choice if this thread is completed.

[Guest]

I'm allowed to say n!33r because I'm black.

[Guest]

A couple weeks ago my dad was watching tele and decided it was a program about "a bunch of niglets" is that better.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I am taking my offer of a cash donation to a charity of Ben's choice off the table and instead going to the local minority hairdresser palace to try to make up for the last two posts by anonymous flyby guy.

I will dye for your sins.

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#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: Select all

> 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 320x200 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.

[pinback]

#5: WARCRAFT III (2002)



I felt almost ashamed, picking up my box of WarCraft III and heading to the checkout aisle that fateful day. I had many reasons for this shame, but chief among them were these:

1. For the first and only time I could remember, at least in the world of gaming, I was succumbing to group mentality. I swear, when you walked into Frye's Electronics that day, there was no way to avoid running into hundreds of boxes of WC3. If you discount the giant stand-up display which hit you when you first walked in, and which housed a couple hundred copies, and then went on to discount the four shelves stocked to the hilt with more boxes (and action figures and other hazerai), then you'd still be left with hundreds MORE boxes which clogged little displays at the end of each aisle lining the entire computer software section. Obviously, if you did not own WarCraft III, this instant, you were a completely worthless piece of human garbage, who was going to be forced to leave the store in a special line, at the end of which a group of store employees would point at you and laugh as you sulked out the door. Never mind that I hadn't played any of the previous WarCrafts. Never mind that I hadn't played ANY real-time strategy game, save for the first couple tutorial missions of "classics" like Earth: 2150 and Conquest: Frontier Wars, which were bought, installed, fiddled with for 30 minutes and then never touched again. Never mind all that, I just HAD to HAVE THIS GAME! WHATEVER IT WAS! BECAUSE EVERYONE WAS BUYING IT! Pathetic.

2. There were four different box designs, each featuring the visage of a representative from one of the four races portrayed in the game. I chose the Night Elf box because her face was so goddamn hot. I had just turned 30, but felt like the 14-year-old drooling nerd boy which I realize I was, just 16 years hence.

Naturally, I was happy to finally get out of there, go home, install the game, lick the front of the box a few times, and finally get back into the whole RTS game!

And just as naturally, after the first tutorial mission fired up, and I had to draw a box around a guy and then right click somewhere, I remembered that I hated RTS games. Oh well.

But full price at that time was $60, and I'd be damned if I was gonna shell out that kind of jing, and suffer the humiliation of succumbing to my sheeplike surrender to groupthink and marketing, just to give up after 30 minutes. So I pressed on.

Given my checkered history with computer games, I think the best and only review I need give to WC3 is that it is the first, and as of this writing, still the only, RTS game that I've ever completed.

What made it different? To me, the difference between WC3 and the rest of the RTS world is, I would later find out, what really separates all of the Blizzard RTS games from their competitors, and that is: STYLE.

You could go all "eh, all RTSes are basically just harvest, build, rush" and while that may be true to an extent, what kept me harvesting, building, and rushing with WC3 long after I'd have shelved a lesser game was the consistent richness and quality of the world that it created, and the perfection to which it attains these goals. It tells a story with the artistry of the deftest bard. It oozes style, and always in support of the greater vision of the game. Everthing about the game is like this. The opening cinematic is the best opening cinematic I've ever seen. The main menu is still the greatest main menu I've click around in a game. The whole thing is just solid.

And besides that, you have just a rock-solid RTS game, with just enough complexity to keep you on your toes and provide the richness and variety of strategies which you'd want, without straying too far from the tried-and-true conventions. "Hero" units, as well as the occasional non-base-building missions, give a nod to RPG-style character building, which provides a much needed and welcome break from the hordes (pun slightly intended) of faceless warriors which you'll be cranking out by the hundreds.

After completing WC3, I went back to WC2 to learn a little about the game's lineage, and to see why some people still maintained that the previous game was better. For its time, and budget, it too was an exemplary picture of how solid a product could be brought out if a company was committed enough. But to me, it still seemed like nothing but preamble to the glorious, unmatched main course which WarCraft III ended up bringing to the table.

And come on, that Night Elf was hot.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have little to add, as I am burned out on real-time strategy games. Complicating matters is that when I feel I am ready to play one and give the genre another chance, I pick from the dozen I've acquired and see nothing new. I then go, "Hmmpf."

But the marketing strategy you mention: the WC3 Tower Castle Structure - is very powerful. It definitely works on me, and I fear it because of that.

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#4: Asteroids (1981)



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.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Do you spend any time hiding in a corner, waiting to blast the aliens, or do you pretty much just let the game come to you and clear the boards, shooting UFOs only when they are in your way?

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I have engaged in UFO faggery in the past, though since I no longer play for score, I rarely do so, for I much more enjoy the prospect of blowing up jagged lines into smaller jagged lines.

[krakos]

they sell the game on a Cd now. you put it in yuour computer and aawyua you go.

nothing beast the Real Thing. or mame.

asteroids was in Die hard 4: live free.


.krakos

[pinbacker]

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... <i>changed</i>. 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 <i>there</i>, 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 <i>right</i>. 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, <i>wow</i>. 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 <i>is</i> 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.

[pinbacker]

Also, I rate my Far Cry review as being superior to Jonsey's Far Cry review, because of the two reviews, mine was the only one to actually get the name of the game right.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Also, I rate my Far Cry review as being superior to Jonsey's Far Cry review, because of the two reviews, mine was the only one to actually get the name of the game right.

Yours IS superior, that's true. You definitely liked it more than me and I was wary of putting what was the youngest game on the list in too high a spot.

That being said, I actually spent real time trying to figure out the game's fucking name. I settled upon having no space there because of the game's box:



If they don't give a shit to present it right on the box then I don't feel too bad.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yes, having re-read it, my review is universally terrible. Look for a new one when the book comes out. I will keep the shots at Xbox Magazine and LITTLE else from it.

Also, I can NOT wait to hear about Rollercoaster Tycoon, as I recently discovered that they made a pinball game out of it.