poll: best 10 games

nitrofurano on 2009/09/21 11:28

i don't know if it would be interesting a poll which anyone of us cite the best 10 games we ever played, for having a better idea of the average tastes, culture, and expectations from pyweek participants - what do you all think?

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Comments

tartley on 2009/09/21 13:42:

#1) Nethack

ServalKatze on 2009/09/21 14:20:

Talking about your favourites is always fun - even if it's not very productive. ;)

I don't know if these are the best but here are 10 of the best games I've ever played (in no particular order):

  • Diablo I
  • X-Com aka UFO: Enemy Unknown
  • System Shock 2
  • Parodius
  • Starcraft: Broodwar
  • Portal
  • Samurai Shodown
  • Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle
  • Starflight (only played the fancy MegaDrive/Genesis version)
  • Arcanum (I suppose Baldur's Gate would take its place but I've never played that)

Hm.. They are all commercial but at least I have a nice mixture of different genres here. ^^

ServalKatze on 2009/09/21 14:40:

Come to think of it: I've never actually played Portal.. Um.. Let's replace Portal with.. EVE Online. XD

killdream on 2009/09/21 15:50:

#1) [ps2] Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Although I didn't finish it yet, it's better than Persona 3 so far.
 
#2) [psx] Seiken Densentsu 3 (Legend of Mana)
It's a more light-hearted RPG, but it has certainly memorable characters and the 2d graphics are just way too beautiful *-*
 
#3) [snes] Chrono Trigger
Hm, I guess there's no RPG player that actually dislikes it, is there? xD
 
#4) [ps2] Fatal Frame II -crimson butterfly-
It has a good atmosphere. The sounds make for the mood and the story is great as well.
 
#5) [pc] Chäos;HEAd
Despiste the ending being somewhat generic and don't having routes for the heroines I liked, it was a good psychological horror story.One of my favorite Visual Novels so far.

#6) [ps2] Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

#7) [pc] Narcissu
Has a really touching story. Left me crying a lot in the ending, even with it being predictable from the beginning.

#8) [psx] Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
#9) [pc] Age of Empires II
#10) [psx] Digimon World 3

So... most of the time I spent playing is with jRPGs or Visual Novels (although you don't really play them lol), sometimes I also play random casual games on the internet. I don't really play games too often, though.

I like horror games as well, but I just haven't played much of them. Just a bit of Silent Hill and Resident Evil (I don't really consider RE to be an horror game, though). Fatal Frame II was the first horror game I really played, actually.

Cosmologicon on 2009/09/21 18:21:

I never played a lot of games, and hardly any from the past 10 years. I keep meaning to, but who has the time, you know?
  • Star Control 2
  • Myst
  • Chrono Trigger
  • Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
  • Sim City 2000
  • Yoshi's Island
  • Final Fantasy 3
  • The 7th Guest
  • Populous: The Beginning
  • Command and Conquer: Red Alert

saluk on 2009/09/21 18:38:

It would take too long to edit my favorites down to 10, but I can list some that I like that others haven't listed already:

  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations (the 3rd one is the best) - a visual novel that is actually POPULAR. I don't know how it happened but it did.
  • Alter Ego on apple2
  • Shadowrun for the snes - feels a bit like the precursor to fallout. A shame nothing else interesting has been done with this property (though some people like the genesis version better)
  • I guess I have to say fallout/fallout2 now :) I do actually like 3, but it doesn't quite compare
  • Deus Ex
  • Metroid Prime 2 - so many hated it, but I loved the challenge and length. I like all of the metroid games, and I don't know if this is my favorite one, but I'd rather pick an unusual choice than a usual one for this
  • Escape velocity
  • Secret of Monkey Island
  • Doom
  • Alpha Centauri
Ah nuts. No room for some of the platformers I have really loved. Shoot. How can I list only 10 favorites when I have more than 10 favorites from every single game genre? I can't talk about Lost Vikings? Oh, lemmings, how I enjoyed thee. And worms! Bushido Blade was great... Arg, too many games, too little time.

richard on 2009/09/21 23:49:

I've played a lot of games :) In no order, because that's just too hard:
  • Ico
  • Shadow of the Colossus
  • Portal
  • Half-Life 2
  • Oblivion
  • Valkyria Chronicles
  • Little Big Planet
  • Day of Defeat: Source
  • Civilization 4
  • X-COM: UFO Defense (aka Enemy Unknown)
I'm hesitant to list X-COM because it's actually aged a lot but I still enjoy it. I bought it through Steam a few months back and it plays very slowly these days. Valkyria Chronicles is actually a very similar game, and it also suffers a bit from the game slowing the pace down. But ultimately they both rock :)

I've easily sunk 200 hours or more into each of Half-Life 2, Oblivion, Valkyria Chronicles, Little Big Planet, Day of Defeat: Source, Civilization 4 and X-COM (easily if you count Terror From The Deep as well). The first three on the list didn't get as much play time but they have stuck in my mind as exemplars of the art form.

Games I play (or played) a fair bit that didn't make the cut: Flower, Wipeout HD, SSX 3, Half-Life, ...

Uncharted was really good but not really worth a replay.

I have Chrono Trigger DS (it's the game I got for while I wait for Scribblenauts) and I'm not sure I get the appeal.

pymike on 2009/09/22 00:29:

Top 10 Lists are always fun. :) This is a toughie though; I have almost 200 games. O_O

<ol>
<li>Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga</li>
<li>Metroid Prime</li>
<li>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time</li>
<li>Super Mario Bros. 3</li>
<li>Super Tennis</li>
<li>Super Mario Kart</li>
<li>Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door<li>
<li>N+</li>
<li>Sonic the Hedgehog</li>
<li>Civilization: Revolution</li>
</ol>

pymike on 2009/09/22 00:30:

Ahh great. Not used to this new editor, haha. Richard, you going to implement comment editing any time soon? :P

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 00:41:

here goes the best 10 from me: (mostly shooters...)
. Majoh Densetsu (a.k.a. Knightmare - Konami - MSX - '86)
. Rez (Sega, PS2, '01)
. Torus Trooper (Kenta Sho,  Linux/OSX/msWindows, '?? - opensource)
. Cho Ren Sha ( Famibe No Yosshin, X68000/msWindows, '?? - freeware)
. Daytona USA (Sega, '93)
. Raystorm (Taito, '96)
. Xevious (Namco, '82)
. Dangar, Ufo Robo (Nichibutsu, '86)
. Legendary Wings (Capcom, '86)
. Scramble Formation / Tokio (Taito, '86)

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 00:44:

(oops mistype errata - i meant  'Kenta Cho' :| )

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 00:53:

@saluk yes it's hard talking about so few games - i cutted out some Amiga games like 'Robocop 3' or 'Shadow of the Beast 3', 'Rygar' (arcade version, '86), Swordquest trilogy (Atari2600), etc...

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 00:54:

and Ninja Gaiden 2 (NES)...

richard on 2009/09/22 01:00:

You know what though? I've found that I might have really fond memories of lot of those older games, and they may have been ground-breaking, but if I actually play them now I realise how very much we've all learned about video game design over the last few decades. Some of those older games are painful to play when compared to modern ones. Which is not to say that there's not people churning out modern games that don't appear to have learned any lessons from older games ;)

gcewing on 2009/09/22 02:13:

Some games that stand out in my memory, in roughly chronological order:

Apple ][ Trek
Zork (mainframe version on a VAX)
Rogue (also on VAX)
Lode Runner
Pinball Construction Set
Sim City
Fool's Errand
Lemmings
Tetris
Prince of Persia
Myst
Oxyd
Wolfenstein 3D
Marathon
Unreal
The Undying
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
RHEM

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 02:48:

@richard curious is when we know oppinions from 10yo kids now about 80's games, they get really excited with them, and feel no much differences in the game structure, only technology used. it's very curious listening about this from them...
One thing shocked me a bit about 3d remakes of 2d games were about Rygar - the actual 3d version of Rygar (  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikd_RWSzKAA ) has nothing like the addictivity we see from arcade Rygar from 80's ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGSOICL7mbw ) and all those features makes this arcade game very unique (and inspired a lot games like 'Shadow of the Beast' (all 3), 'Toki', etc., for example)

@gcewing where can i get more information about VAX's Zork and Rogue?
Prince of Persia is another awesome one! :)

@cosmologicon @gcewing - is the Myst that one from Cyan?

nitrofurano on 2009/09/22 02:49:

@tartley Nethack is a great one, and wonderful on GP2X console! :)

kent_turbo on 2009/09/24 19:44:

X-Com
OpenTTD
Flower
First Encounters (Elite 2)
Super Mario Bros.
Doom, Doom 2
Quake
(here I took a deep thought and started enumerating games I have ever played).
Eve Online (I barely played it, but the scale of it's economic simulation is impressive).
God of War
Pop'n Music, Drummania (keysounded rhytm games rock).

There are a lot of other games I played and liked, but I can't say any of them is any good to be named best.

@richard: all that game designers learned in the past ten years is to add unskippable tutorials and overload games with narration (modern shooters suffer from this most). Although I must admit I got this impression from trying random games (and I skipped most of last 8 years of PC releases).

richard on 2009/09/25 00:05:

@kent_turbo: I disagree :)

The field of game design has matured considerably over the last couple of decades. Hell, it's being studied! There are books! :)

Yes, there are still bad games with terrible tutorials / narration. I'm not talking about those.

Consider the classic PS1 game Crash Bandicoot. It was incredibly popular in its day, and I enjoyed it. More modern releases of the Crash franchise have integrated modern game design ideas: no longer are you severely punished when you do something wrong; skill challenges are introduced at a much more reasonable rate.

You can see this in a lot of games: Half-Life 2 contained significant improvements over the original Half-Life. I played the original a lot and considered it the best FPS ever. After playing HL2 through (and through and through) I can't go back to HL1 because in places it feels clumsy, slow, non-intuitive, etc.

And I'm not saying that my statement applies to all older games. Far from it - Tetris, Asteroids, Moon Buggy, etc. all still hold their own. I just happen to prefer more complex games these days :) But sorry, Quake, Doom and Doom 2? They do nothing that (good) modern FPSes don't do, and the modern ones do them prettier :) Shadow of the Beast? You know what, it was really pretty back in the day but that's pretty much all it had going for it. Now that it's a little dated and there's better platformers...

kent_turbo on 2009/09/25 09:26:

They didn't put narration between me and killing monsters - something, that all modern FPS I have tried do (I admit, I haven't played a lot of them, and even less in recent years). Things got awry with Half-Life (that unbearable 10 minute introduction), and that was the last shooter I played through to the end.

I don't say narration is bad. I can see why it is there. I just don't like it.

nitrofurano on 2009/09/27 16:29:

@richard
Crash Bandicoot were really influential in most 3d games seen since then.
Shadow of the Beast i were talking about 'Shadow of the Beast 3' specifically, where you have much more complex puzzes (and somehow easy to solve) mixed in the gameplay - i think this game as a whole is still unique, after all that time.
Talking about FPS, it's impressive what can be done using 'popular' game engines, like 'Unreal Tournament 3' - http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/09/freeware_mod_pick_hazard_the_j.html