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Shamus Young's Top 64 PC Games

TripJack

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some dumbfuck said:
Which Elder Scrolls should make the list? Should it be the talky, obtuse, deep and vast world of Morrowind? Or do we give the spot to Skyrim, the shallow glamorous meme-spawning dragon-punching spectacle that served as fertile ground for a massive library of aggressively ambitious mods?

While I’ll always love Morrowind for its depth, it’s exquisite world-building, its fascinating themes, and its fantastical environments, it also gave us cliff racers. So Skyrim it is.
:retarded:

admit that skyrim has no depth, no exquisite world-building, no fascinating themes, and no fantastical environments and then in the same breath pick skyrim as the superior game, i lyke da way dis guy thinkz
 

Crooked Bee

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Man, God bless the Codex. The game journo that probably enjoys classic-style RPGs the most today is Jason from Kotaku... we're doomed.

Kotaku did some good D:OS articles, iirc. Cobbett also writes some good RPG reviews ocassionally.

But yeah, it's pretty dire.
 

Infinitron

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Jason Schreier reminds me of the liberal US journalist David Weigel - definitely on the "other side", but open-minded enough to dissenting opinion that you wonder if he's really as partisan as he seems to be.

I might be biased cuz they're Jewish tho +M

And yeah, Richard Cobbett's pretty good for what he is(tm)
 

dnf

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Codex Staff shilling skrotaku writers, what a surprise. "Wow they covered a new RPG release, they must be oldskool!!1"
 

felipepepe

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DISCLAIMER: JASON SCHREIER WROTE ABOUT MUH BOOK.

I think he's a guy with a good heart working in a bad place. Even the GamerGate guys say that Jason is the only journo open to hearing the other side. Hell, he registered and posted here to debate with Grunker about the Gamescom...

/DISCLAIMER: IT WAS KOTAKU'S SHORTEST POST EVER, BUT IT WAS A POST!


 
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dnf

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I think he's a guy with a good heart working in a bad place. Even the GamerGate guys say that Jason is the only journo open to hearing the other side. Hell, he registered and posted here to debate with Grunker about the Gamescom...
This post should have a disclaimer of your bias, since he is one of the few that have covered your book.
 

sser

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On MoH:AA:
I add it here not because I remember it vividly, but because I don’t. It perfectly encapsulates everything about the genre today. The only parts I remember now are the bits it ripped off from the movies it wishes it were, and the only impression I still carry with me was that the end was a bit of a slog.

Weird, I actually think it was one of the more memorable WW2 FPS games. Omaha Beach is, of course, stuck forever in the minds of everyone who played the game. The U-Boat mission with the hilariously shitty disguise segment was great too, as was that part with the Nebelwerfers or whatever they're called, where you get a squad of dorks who will almost necessarily die within about 10 minutes.

And the bullshit sniper town mission where you can't even see the assholes shooting at you, and every single wardrobe has some guy who thinks he's a ninja hiding inside. And that music:


Those first few MoH games had amazing soundtracks.






Also, the list is pretty incoherent -- I guess self-admittedly so? It's a lot like that PCGamer top 100 list that was full of trollbait and nonsense and general shit.
 
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some dumbfuck said:
Which Elder Scrolls should make the list? Should it be the talky, obtuse, deep and vast world of Morrowind? Or do we give the spot to Skyrim, the shallow glamorous meme-spawning dragon-punching spectacle that served as fertile ground for a massive library of aggressively ambitious mods?

While I’ll always love Morrowind for its depth, it’s exquisite world-building, its fascinating themes, and its fantastical environments, it also gave us cliff racers. So Skyrim it is.
:retarded:

admit that skyrim has no depth, no exquisite world-building, no fascinating themes, and no fantastical environments and then in the same breath pick skyrim as the superior game, i lyke da way dis guy thinkz

But dude, cliffracers. You need 30 skill with swords to hit them without missing, that takes like a whole hour to achieve and I can't really stay focu
 

dnf

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Why not let Elder Shit games out of your lists if they are flawed like that. But that would be truth only if you are too much of a dumbshit to only consider vannila and discard mods that fix flaws, enhance the game, etc.
 

TheGreatOne

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A game that needs mods in order to be considered good does not belong on a top/best games of all time list
 

DraQ

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some dumbfuck said:
Which Elder Scrolls should make the list? Should it be the talky, obtuse, deep and vast world of Morrowind? Or do we give the spot to Skyrim, the shallow glamorous meme-spawning dragon-punching spectacle that served as fertile ground for a massive library of aggressively ambitious mods?

While I’ll always love Morrowind for its depth, it’s exquisite world-building, its fascinating themes, and its fantastical environments, it also gave us cliff racers. So Skyrim it is.
:retarded:

admit that skyrim has no depth, no exquisite world-building, no fascinating themes, and no fantastical environments and then in the same breath pick skyrim as the superior game, i lyke da way dis guy thinkz
I just can't build up the kind of rage over this that is inspired in me by someone considering oblivion to be superior to either of those (which makes you a failure of a human being regardless of reasons stated).
Or maybe I can't just hate the guy now that he has included Unreal on the list.
 

Infinitron

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8-1: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=24435

8. Tomb Raider


top50_tombraider.jpg



Obviously Tomb Raider makes the list, but which entry? Is it the first one, which gave us the character, the gameplay, and a gunfight with a T-Rex? Or do we use one of the later entries, which more firmly established the look and personality of the character that would eventually grace the big screen? Or do we go with the one game that’scompletely unlike all the others in tone and gameplay, but which is actually good? I say we go with the good one. No offense to 90′s Lara, but… actually there is no way to finish that sentence without insulting 90′s Lara. She was a narcissistic pinup girl, and her stilted platforming gameplay could never hold a candle to the graceful and satisfying feel of the Prince of Persia.

But I do thank 90′s Lara, because if not for her then we never would have gotten Reboot Lara. And Reboot Lara is an interesting lady in a mechanically solid game. The platforming here holds up when compared to your Uncharteds and Prince of Persias. The tomb puzzles are great, and their only flaws are that they’re too short and too scarce.

I’m a little uncomfortable having a game this new so close to the top of the list. I was crazy about the game when it came out, but I don’t know if it will stand the test of time. Will I still be playing this game next year? Will I still regard it as noteworthy? I dunno. Furthermore, my opinion of this game may shift based on how well this rebooted series evolves. If the series falls apart, the things this game did right will look like an accident. If the new series thrives, then this game will get credit as the start of something great. It’s almost as if these “Top X Games” lists are perilously arbitrary.


7. System Shock 2


top50_systemshock2.jpg



A unique blend of everything I love: It has a cyberpunk setting. It has a focus on item scarcity and survival rather than empowerment. There’s an RPG leveling system that offers many ways to play that – while perhaps not really all that balanced – offers lots of replay. It offers a lot of open-world exploration where you can re-visit previous areas. It’s not quite a Metroidvania game but it does kind of scratch that same itch for me. There’s lots of environmental storytelling. It has a techno-horror aesthetic that can provide some genuine scares[1].

Sadly, it’s not without some really annoying flaws. The entire last section of the game feels really unwelcome, awkward, and poorly justified. The game features a biological enemy that the engine simply was not designed to portray. The PSI powers were expensive and only a few of them were useful. And the ending is clumsy attempt to set up a sequel that never happened. Still, we could use more like this. And no, BioShock doesn’t count. Don’t get me started.

5. Diablo II


top50_diablo2.jpg



Often imitated, never replicated. Not even by its own sequel. Like God of War, this is one of those games that looks easy to copy, but is actually very difficult to match. The world is filled with “Diablo clones”[2] that came and went, while Diablo II continued to make money and devour lives.

People still claim that Diablo never had a story, or that the story didn’t matter. But in my view the story offered exactly what I want from this kind of game: Context and tone. The story was told in vignettes between chapters, not sprinkled throughout the gameplay like flow-breaking landmines. The story of Marius was brief, tragic, and powerful. The game itself was tense and dark.

Yes, the Diablo III Real Money Auction House hamstrung the core gameplay of D3, but it was the shift in tone that ruined the game for me. It wasn’t sinister. It wasn’t mysterious. It mistook the simple Diablo 2 story for a cheesy one, and the sequel felt like a Diablo clone instead of a Diablo successor.

5. Starcraft


top50_starcraft.jpg



Warcraft begat Warcraft II, and Warcraft II begat Starcraft, which was (at the time) the ultimate realization of everything that had gone into the Real Time Strategy genre so far. Three radically different races, all wonderfully balanced against each other.

It wasn’t the first e-sports game, but it was the first e-sports game to be a national sensation, to the point of getting television coverage[3]. All this, and it also gave us an imaginative pulpy new sci-fi universe to tell stories in.

4. Portal 2


top50_portal2.jpg



Okay, yes – the memes from this game got really annoying after a while. But I don’t think we should hold that against Portal 2.

It took the innovative and interesting gameplay mechanic of the original, added to it, broadened the story, gave us some great characters, provided genuine laughs, gave us a deliciously varied visual palette, and ended before it wore out its welcome. If there are any sins in the game, it’s that it has nothing in the way of replay value. Puzzles and jokes do not hold up well to repetition. And I suppose the puzzles felt a little on the easy side.

I’ll take a short brilliant game over a long, mediocre one any day. Although “long and brilliant” would be nice. Speaking of which…

4. Deus Ex





See? This is why we can’t have nice things.

Deus Ex was a wonderful, sprawling game in a way that we just can’t have now that graphics have made gamespace so expensive to produce. It presented a fresh new world, which will never feel fresh or new again because publishers insist on continuing an existing storyline – no matter how final and complete the previous ending was – rather than wiping the slate clean and telling a new story. The characters were interesting to meet and the places were interesting to explore, because they weren’t treated as fan-service-y shout-outs and cameos for existing fans, but instead arose naturally from the needs of the story. It offered choice and consequence not as a gameplay gimmick[4]but as an organic thing that emerges naturally from your goals and the mechanics. And it offered tons of replay value because the gameworld and the mechanics were so broad and diverse that it was literally impossible to see it all in one play through, which runs against today’s trend that the player isn’t allowed to miss anything.

Human Revolution was a good game, and it’s probably as free and as deep as we can hope for in today’s world. But it can never match Deus Ex in scope or scale.

3. Half Life 2


top50_halflife2.jpg



As popular as it is, Half-Life 2 doesn’t have a legacy in the sense of numerous copycat games. In fact, even in 2004 it represented something of a throwback. More games were heading for voiced protagonists, camera-grab cutscenes, growling military-flavored machismo, and continuous action. But Half Life 2 has an empty vessel of a protagonist, allowing you to decide for yourself what you think of the world. The game is full of quiet time. In the first three minutes of the game it’s able to build a more convincing and palpable authoritarian dystopia than a dozen other games manage in twenty minutes of overbearing exposition.

But the real legacy of Half-Life is the boost it gave to Valve software. Half-Life made the company a fortune, and Half-Life 2 was the acorn that grew into the industry-enveloping oak called Steam.

2. World of Warcraft


wow_nitpicks8.jpg



The MMO that changed the course of an industry. Hundreds of millions of dollars – perhaps even billions – were pissed away by by arrogant nincompoops who thought they could just copy the “WoW formula” and make “WoW money”. The fact that they didn’t seem to understand WoW beyond the most superficial attributes only made their failures more painful. And perhaps we could forgive the first two or three, but at some point it got to be kind of disturbing, like watching the members of a suicide cult kill themselves one at a time. Fortunes were lost, jobs were obliterated, franchises were tarnished, and studios were closed. Innovative, successful, and interesting MMOs were forced to re-tool their mechanics to be more “WoW-like”, in hopes that some of those amazing WoWbux might land in their laps. (Spoiler: They didn’t. They just pissed off their existing fans.)

And WoW endured. At best, the new MMO of the month might siphon off some tiny sliver of the WoW userbase, but they always came back.

WoW ruined a lot of companies. Not by making a bad game, but by making a popular game that looked easy to copy and made so much money that greedy idiots couldn’t help but change the direction of their entire company in the hopes of striking gold. It was like a brilliant surgeon who saw America’s Got Talent and thought it would be great to be an international pop star. So he sold his practice, took singing and dancing lessons, and went on national television and made a complete fool of himself. Two years later he’s penniless. His wife has left him. His kids won’t return his phone calls. He tried to start up his practice again, but nobody wants to be operated on by the guy who made an ass of himself in front of the world. And he doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself. What a loser.

World of Warcraft didn’t ruin the industry. The industry ruined itself.

1. Minecraft


top50_minecraft.jpg



TWO. POINT. FIVE. BILLION. DOLLARS.

2.5×109 dollars. For an indie studio with less than a dozen employees and one released game.

But what a game. Minecraft is often compared to Legos because both have you building with blocks, but I think the similarities go deeper. Both can stand in as the universal symbol for their medium. Just as Lego is a ubiquitous toy with endless possibilities and an appeal that spans all social, cultural, and age demographics, Minecraft is the ubiquitous game with endless possibilities and an appeal that spans all social, cultural, and age demographics. If you somehow run out of things to do in the base game, there’s always the ever-permutating collection of mods that can turn Minecraft into a survival game, a shooter, an adventure game, an engineering game, an RPG, or any other of a thousand other things. If you run out of mods, then jump on a server and build with friends.

Minecraft has sold over fifty million copies to date. That’s more than every iteration of The Sims (The Sims to The Sims 4) combined. More than double the sales of Battlefield 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV combined. The only games to outsell it are Tetris (which has been selling for decades) and Wii Sports (which was the pack-in game on the Wii).
 

Lemming42

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Goddamn, he totally alienated me with his comment on Tomb Raider. The original first three TR games for PS1 are some of my favourite games ever and I thought the new one was total shit, so it's like he specially engineered that paragraph specifically to piss me off.
 

DeepOcean

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Yeah, Shamus got the prize of faggot of the year.Turning Tomb Raider on an Uncharted clone and make her whine alot, this is a clear improvement... yeah, shoot man in the face on corridors/QTE fest/Press J to Jason platforming is so much fun. Those old Tomb Raider fans that are complaining are just a bunch of sexist pigs that aren't amused with the whole shoot hobos in the face to find soul bullshit. Yeah... killing a bunch of hobos to become an one woman army killing machine is so artistic that makes the whole archelogist after loot so boring.
 
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And its atrocious DRM was the first of a bad breed of obnoxious customer abuse, a trend that lingers to this day.

But the real legacy of Half-Life is the boost it gave to Valve software. Half-Life made the company a fortune, and Half-Life 2 was the acorn that grew into the industry-enveloping oak called Steam.

Double standards. Double standards never change.
 
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I understand that he made the list for shits and giggles and openly says most lists are shitty, and I suppose to an extent that is excusable.

What is not excusable however, and demonstrates that he's a raging autistic idiot pedarast, is that nearly every single reasoning he provides is hilariously flawed and backwards.

Yes, the Uncharted clone, Tomb Raider Laura who-doesn't-actually-go-tomb-raiding-because-tombs-are-optional, quick time events mash this button no now mash this button ok now press a b a b x y x y Laura, the incredibly disturbing gore porn death scene Laura, disgustingly submissive, several rape attempts Laura is clearly superior to the filthy pin-up doll women objectifying 90's gameplay Laura.

World of Wacraft at number two not because it's a good game, but because it ruined an industry.
Minecraft at number one not because it's a good game, but because it made a lot of jewmoney.

I don't even want to touch the rest of the list.

What the fuck Shamus. What kind of backwards liberal arts college degree school did you crawl out of? Hey guys, top whatever lists are shitty and nonsensical, so watch me spread my ass cheeks and add more feces to the pile.
 

dnf

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We should just say how much of a subhuman he is because we are hipster like that :martini: Another derp was his inclusion of GTA San Andreas slandrering GTA 4 for being too much linear and punitive. The irony is that GTA 4 is a piss easy game and he made a post complaining about the design missions of GTA San Andreas, see here: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=336
 

Infinitron

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Shamus sums up his list: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=24666

If you locked me in a room and asked me to make another list of 64 without letting me refer to this one to refresh my memory, I’m sure I’d come up with a different list. Sure, a lot of the same titles would appear in both lists, but you’d end up with a different ordering and different rationale for their inclusion and position.

I think the problem is with the concept of “Top Games”. The framing is wrong. It pretends to be something definitive, which is impossible and puts reader expectations on all the wrong things. I couldn’t even come up with a useful ordering when I’m the only contributor. The problem would be even worse if this was the work of a staff of writers.

Having said that, I don’t think lists are useless. This was actually a lot of fun. We got to look at games that don’t get a lot of attention these days, and we got to contrast games that rarely end up under the microscope at the same time. I’d actually like to do something like this again in the future, but I wouldn’t want to call it a “Top Games” list.

Probably the best approach is to just call the list[3] “N games of category X that I want to talk about.” If I ever do this again, I probably won’t waste time with the “top” idea but will choose entries based on some other criteria. (Shooters, BioWare games, platformers, pre-2000 games, etc.) Too many videogame conversations are focused on the hot new releases, and retrospective lists are a good vehicle for looking back. This hobby is changing so ridiculously fast, and the constant focus on new and upcoming releases is good for publishers and bad for our understanding of the medium.
 
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Lists are more fun & useful if you keep ordering and numerical scores away, yeah. But then you don't have drama! Discussing games without drama is like watching movies without popcorn.
 

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