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Old 07-27-2006, 07:35 AM   #51
Havok
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well i've yet to play Oblivion(i will soon im sure), but from what i hear its quite simply one of the best games ever made. So thats my pick
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Old 07-27-2006, 10:59 AM   #52
Abe Sargent
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It's time for the next game on our countdown and the second game by the company with the most games to chart:


19. Colonization
MicroProse
PC
1995
GameSpot Review - 9.0 (Once again, average player rating, not staff rating)
4x - City Management




I suspect that time and memory have sort of blended together Colonization with Civilization and ended up neuturing Colonization. However, the game is an amazing game in its own right, and really is the not so much the child of Civ as the cousin.

Colonization does not have tech research which is one of the foundations of the Civ gaming system. There aren't wonders of the world, nor are there tons of military units over time. Instead, there are just a small number of units (five ships, and three ground military units).

To call Colonization a Civ-clone is to ignore these major differences. Sure, both are turn-based strategy games with an emphasis on city/colony management, and there is an obvious similarity, but this game has its own road to walk.

Colonization deals with a smaller time period than Civ. Among the concerns here are friendly Indian relations, unless you play the Spanish, friendly European relations, and friendly home country relations, until you are ready to revolt.

Unlike other Civ-clones, the best strategy for winning Colonization is not to spread out and gobble up land as fast as possible, but instead to have a small amount of land with a smaller amount of built up colonies. Seven or eight colonies close together and built up is way better than 15 or 20 colonies spread out everywhere.

The reason for this is simple. In order to win the game, you'll have to declare independance and then your home country is going to send massive and powerful armed forces. They will blast your republic to pieces if you are spread out and thin, but if you are tightly bound together, even if they do crack your nut (and that will be much more difficult to do), your concentrated forces can oust them.

The game does have an impressive city management system:



Indeed, despite the fact that city management is at the core of Civilization, no Civ sequel has ever been as complex and diverse as Colonization in this area. There are all sorts of specialties your colonists can have. A farmer is really great at raising food, a lumberjack amazing at harvesting lumber, a silver miner good at extracting silver, a cotton planter good at growing cotton, etc.

Many colonists work the production side of things. A tobbaconist is great at making cigars. A tobacco planter is great at growing tobacco. Get them together, and you'll be making tons of Cigars. The problem is that the game has a realistic economc model. The more Cigars you and other European colonies sell to the homeland, the cheaper they become, and vice versa.

Some colonists have other specialities as well. Firebrand Preachers and Elder Statesmen are great in bigger colonies to increase unrest in Europe and liberty in your colonies. Veteran soldiers and scouts are also specialities.




In between balancing relations with Indians and other Europeans, and building an economy, you'll have to deal with your home country raising taxes constantly. The higher taxes go, the less money you'll get when you carry goods back home. Refuse a tax, and instead, a good is embargoed and you can't buy or sell it.

You begin the game with a lot of colonists and indentured servents and criminals. You can send these out to Indian tribes, and if they are friendly, the tribe will teach their speciality - which is the only way to get Cotton and Tobacco planter specialists. Scouts can spend time with a tribe and get news of a small gift of gold. They can also explore sites and find a variety of things.

Three events from an explored site are major, game shifting events. You can find a Fountain of Youth, which results in you getting EIGHT free colonists, many with specialties. You can find a Lost City of Gold which gives you serious points and a ton of gold. Or, you can find an Ancient Burial Mound that you have to explore and will sometimes give you a ton of gold as well. If you are carting this gold back, Indians will often attack the gold wagon. Then you'll need a special ship (a galleon) to send it back to Europe or else lease a Royal Vessel for 50% of the cut.

You can work to establish founding fathers for your Constitution Congress. Each founding father has some ability you gain, and some are very useful, like Pocahontas, which halves your problems with Indians. You can get non-USA founding fathers too, like Simon Bolivar.

You can play as the Spanish, Dutch, English and French, and all have advantages. I prefer the Dutch. You start with a better ship and the Dutch economy doesn't drop as fast as other economies do. The French aren;t bad either, with the Pocahontas effect (and get Poca too, for a quartered problem).

See, the Indians have problems with you developing the land too much. As you build walls, equip soliders, fortify cannon, and so forth, the Indians get testier and testier, until they eventually start attacking. The French halve their concern.

You can also send missionaries to the Indians, and you'll occasionally get Indian Converts to join your colonies.

This game is signifcantly unlike Civ in many ways (there's just one way to win, no techs, no wonders, no large number of units, no sweeping era, no victory by expansion, a real economy, many products, more complex city management, founding fathers, etc). As a result, I have no qualms about making it my ninteenth game on my All Time list.

-Anxiety
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Old 07-27-2006, 04:25 PM   #53
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No Colonization comments, eh? Well, now we are strating to move through franchses famous and important. Final Fantasy was two spots ago. Now its time for another major franchise, one that has had numerous entries. Unlike the Final Fantasy franchise, when I felt the first was ultimately the best, with this franchise, I feel that the most recent is the best:

18. SimCity 4
Maxis
PC
2003
GameSpot Review - 8.1 (8.3 after addition of expansion)
Simulation - City Management



SimCityâ„¢ 4 Deluxe Edition on Steam




The city building genre owes its lifeblood to the SimCity franchise. Someone once said that Civilization and SimCity are the two great strategy games of all time, two giant pillars that stand astride the PC world, tall above everything else.

I almost put the SNES version of SimCity here, because I think that version reached more players that wouldn't normally play SimCity on the PC than anyone else. However, I ultimately decided that, for me, this is the greatest iteration because I have played it more than all other versions combined.

As I am sure most of you already know, SimCity is a game without end. You just build a city using various tools. You zone areas of the city, and people start opening businesses and moving in.

You build the infrastructure like water pumps, pipes, purfying stations, windmills, nuclear plants, coal plants, hydro plants, oil plants, trash to power plants, landfills, power lines, roads, rail, subways, bus stations, ferries, naval ports, airports, interstate networks, hospitals and clinics, libraries, schools, museums, operas, police stations, fire stations, jails, recycling centers, and probably another 50 things I can't remember.

Here is a Water Puriciation Plant beside some landfill:




The point is simple. The sheer scale of things to build and do in Sim City is staggering, yet it all works together. Your advisors wil tell you when the city needs something - like a Water Purification Plant. You can also look at a map of the city and see it by water pollution - telling you if you need a plant or not.

Therefore, you can tell when you need to build something, merely by these maps or your own advisors.

The transporation networks are complex on their own. Roads, streets, one way streets, avenues, elevated highways, highways, and intersections plus bridges make for an interesting road network.

Here are some bridges across a river. You can also see power lines and industry on the left bank.




The beauty SimCity 4 is that there were several additions to the franchise. You could load up your characters from The Sims and place them in your city. Then, you could follow them around and hear what they thought about your city. If you didn't have or didn't want to have The Sims added, you could just make some Sims. This was valuable to do because it gave you information from the ground, often providing an early warning indicator to see if there are problems in a neighborhood. For example, the Sim would complain about travel time to and from work before people starting moving out, so you could address the problem early.

Another thing that was added were quests. You could do quests like fly a helicopter to little Suzy's house and pick her up and return to the hospital in a hort period of time. Succeed with these, and your mayor rating would rise, you'd get a little cash, and you could unlock various bonuses. This was really useful because some bonus buildings could be unlocked way earlier than normal, and they were worth it too.

This was especially good for the Casino. The Casino was one of seveal "bonuses" that provided your city directly with cash but were negative for your Sims. Others included a Nuclear Waste Dump and a Missile Silo. You only unlocked these when you went into debt. However, if you never went into debt, then you never unlocked these "bonuses." However, the Casino was actually a debt building with a plus and a minus, besides the cash you got from it. Commerical buildings were upped by a nearby Casino, and it increased crime. You just build a Police Station beside it (which the profit more than covers and you are set. You can unlock a Casino with a quest, instead of going deep into debt.

You could also build famous landmarks for serious cash. You could build the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Bank of China, the Space Needle, the Sphinx, the Hollywood Sign, The Hadj Sophia, and much much more. This added a great amount of top level significance to the city.

The game also added region economics. Your city was part of a region, and you could buld two cities side by side. One city could buy power from the other instead of building its own plant. Water, trash, and more could also be bought and sold.

The interaction of citizens with the economy, housing, commercial ares, transportation, each other and industry was all complex. People would even cross through the region to other cities to work or shop. One farm city would feed several other cities nearby. One garbage city could take the trash from several adjacent cities, build several Trash to Power Stations, and then sell the power back to those cities and make a killing (You get paid to take trash and you get paid to provide power). That killing would need to be spent on some parks and whatnot, because Trash to Power is a very nasty pollution high power supply, but you get the idea. Local cities could do without trash removal or power of their own, just buying it from a local city. And your sims would be happy to cross over and work in their dirty industries and then come home to a nice clean city. A regional economy was a great idea.

The game was great at telling you when something was amiss. Just in case you didn't get the message from your advisors or maps, here is a section of the city that has been abandoned:



Can you tell by looking at this map which buidling have been abandoned?

If the demand for cheap housing outstripped your ability to provide it, lower level citizens would take over a more expensive place. You'd sometimes see mansions get overwhelmed by lower level cits, and more of them can fit into a mansio that high level cits could, so it would sometimes put a lot of pressure on your transportation network.

The whole game was an amazing simulation of city life, living, and politics. You could issue edicts like youth basketball programs or free clincs. These cost money, except for legalized gambling which brought in money and was necessary to build a Casino.

Other bonuses included a Convention Center, Disease Research Clinic, University, Major League Baseball Stadium, TV Station, County Fair, City Zoo and tons more. This gave your city a real nice, organic look to it.

SimCity is one of the classic franchises in all strategy games. SimCity 4 was a great version, and I still play it from time to time. Long live the City!


-Anxiety
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Old 07-27-2006, 04:42 PM   #54
rjolley
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Great list, Anxiety. I think I'll have to find a copy of Colonization tonight and pick up SimCIty4 and the expansion pack. Never found time for SC4, but maybe I'll make time...
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Old 07-27-2006, 04:56 PM   #55
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Really impressive list. I'm anxious to see what else makes the cut.
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Old 07-27-2006, 05:14 PM   #56
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I'm hoping X-Com is somewhere in this list.
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Old 07-27-2006, 06:21 PM   #57
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I have the urge to go out and buy Sim City 4 now.
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Old 07-27-2006, 06:23 PM   #58
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Big thumbs up for Final Fantasy -- one of the greatest games ever made, period. It was so far ahead of its time, it was absurd.

I haven't played much of SimCity 4, but even so I'm surprised that SimCity 2000 doesn't get the nod from that franchise. It was such a huge improvement over the original, and I got hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of play out of it.
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Old 07-27-2006, 06:57 PM   #59
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vince
I haven't played much of SimCity 4, but even so I'm surprised that SimCity 2000 doesn't get the nod from that franchise. It was such a huge improvement over the original, and I got hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of play out of it.

Identical comments here. SC2K was just so amazing- I probably got thousands of hours of play time from it. Haven't played SC4 yet but I need to.

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Old 07-27-2006, 07:11 PM   #60
Abe Sargent
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Vince - Like I said, I seriously considered the original version on SNES before deciding on 4. In this case, I fel that 4 was sufficently advanced from the previous version that it warranted consideration
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Old 07-27-2006, 07:13 PM   #61
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I'm really enjoying reading this as well. I would have put Baldur's Gate 2 as the definitive game, and I would have put it significantly higher, but I haven't had too many other quibbles. Great writeups.
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:01 PM   #62
Abe Sargent
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Lots of interest after SimCity 4. Maybe the next game will get your juices flowing too.

17. Pokemon: Ruby & Sapphire
Nintendo
Game Boy Advance
2003
GameSpot Review - 8.1
RPG - Monster Breeding








Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire have around the level of technology of an SNES game. I know that a lot of adult players look down on Pokemon because they think its cute and meant for kids. Pokemon is such a great game, and I want you to listen to this statement. Pay attention.

If Pokemon had been released as an SNES game fourteen years ago, people would remember it as one of the greatest console games of all time.

Pokemon is not the second best selling franchise in video game history simply because it was a fad seven years ago. It keeps selling. These games are good. There's a lot in Ruby/Sapphire, so let's get started.

Like Monster Rancher 3, you are raising monsters (Pokemon) and fighting with them against other trainers. Unlike MR3, this is a more of an RPG game, where MR3 is more of a pure strategy/fighting game.

In MR3, you chose training regimens, here your Pokemon gain by fighting. In MR3 you actually fight, mashing buttons and what. Here, you just choose an attack and it happens behind the scene. No button mashing, no maneuvering.

Let's go over the basic Pokemon game, just to refresh those who are unaware or to inform those who do not know.

At the beginning of the game, you get a Pokemon. You then walk around town, getting acquainted:



After you get familar with your surroundings, you head into the wilderness and fight wild pokemon. This will help level up your guy. You'll also get money. Once you get some money, you'll go buy some PokeBalls for catching pokemon. (Pokemon has the tendancy to be the McDonald's of video games. There are PokeSnacks, PokeBerries, etc.)

You snag some Pokemon and you can add the ones you like to your party to train just like your original Pokemon. You can have up to six Pokemon at one time, although almost all fights are 'Mon-to-'Mon. (One of the things Ruby/Sapphire adds is the ability to have tag matches where two of yours go against two of theirs. This seriously changes the dynamic, as can later be seen in the GameCube Pokemon games Gale of Darkness and Colloseum, which are exclusive tag team.)

As you level up your Pokemon, their stats will get better, and they'll learn new moves. It's very RPG. Your Pokemon can also evolve to a different, and usually better, monster.




One of the beautiful ideas behind Pokemon is the type system. Every Pokemon is one, or at the most, two types, just like elements. Every attack is one type. The seventeen types are Psychic, Fighting, Flying, Electricity, Fire, Ice, Water, Rock, Ground, Steel, Ghost, Poison, Dark, Grass, Normal, Bug, and Dragon. Some types are vulnerable to certain attacks. Grass Pokemon are especially vulnerable to Fire attacks, for example. Fire Pokemon are especially vulnerable to Water attacks. Water Pokemon are especially vulnerable to Electricity.

Some types are less effective against each other. Poison is less effective against Rock. Electricity is less effective against Grass. And so on. Some types are completely immune to certain attacks, although immunity is rare. Normal Pokemon are immune to Ghost attacks and vice versa. Flying Pokemon are immune to Ground attacks while Ground are immune themselves to Electricity.

Different Pokemon get different attacks, and having a well balance selection of Pokemon types and attcks is important to winning. Having the right Pokemon can help you tons. Going up agains a tough group of Water Pokemon is fine if you have a Grass Pokemon with a powerful Grass attack like Absorb. Beware though, because some Water Pokemon, like a Spheal, have other attacks besides Water, in this case, Ice. Water is less effective against Grass, but not Ice.

This system encourages a great deal of diversity. In fact, you'll raise an awful lot more than just six Pokemon. You'll have a battery of Pokemon designed to go into different dungeons and whatnot.

Like any RPG, there are quests and items, and such. You'll eventaully go against the various Gym Leaders in order to level up. As you defeat Gym Leaders, they'll give you a machine that can teach your Pokemon special moves. These moves allow you to go places you wouldn't normally be able to go. For example, Surf allows you to move across water while Flare lights up a
dungeon and Cut slices through certain trees.

So, in addition to having all of these elemnts to worry about, your party also has to have all of these moves as well. Each Pokemon only has room for four moves at a time, so it can be a precarious balance at times.

Here the character's Torchic (so you can see it pre-evolution) is really taking it to a Poochyena:




In every Pokemon, there are also two games, and some monsters can only be found in one version or another. You can trade monsters with each other, and only through doing so can you "Catch 'Em All."

Now, let's talk about some of the things Ruby/Sapphire added.

As mentioned above, the game added tag battles, which creates a new dynamic. Some attacks will affect both opponents, and many just one. Many attacks aren't "attacks" but buffs for you or debuffs for your opponent. In tags, a few buffs work on both your Pokemon, while a fwe debuffs work on both your enemies. As I said, it's a nice extra dynamic.

The game also added farming. There are patches of special dirt around the map and PokeBerries. If you plant one of these many berries and water it, it will grow into a berry tree, and you can pick the berries. You have to plant, and regularly water these spots. This creates a very interesting gardening sub-game. Of course, you never have to participate, if you don't want to.

There are also beauty contests for Pokemon. You can use various moves and some will hurt other competitors and some will help you with the judges. These moves are not always good combat moves, so, again, you have to balance a lot with your monsters.

You can blend PokeBerries into PokeSnacks, brick like food. The blending itself is a minigame all on its own. What berries you choose to use will determine what the Snacks look like and their properties. Feed these to a Pokemon and a variety of things occur, usually potential for growth in several statistical areas when it levels up. You'll need a lot of berries for this, and I wonder where you can get them....

The world is a smoother design than Red/Blue or Silver/Gold. It's the first time I've really respected a world. In Red/Blue, your game was often dominated by a few legendary Pokemon (meaning there's just one) like Zapdos, Articuno and Moltres. This dominated the game too much, and diminshed replay because they were the hands down best critters for you to snag and fight with. Not so in Ruby Sapphire, where you don't get access to legendaries until after you win the game.

The result is a game that adds a lot, has a better designed world, and keeps everything good about the prior versions of the game. The game is complex enough for adults. It's even complex enough for me, and I pretty much demand complexity in my games.


-Anxiety
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:06 PM   #63
Abe Sargent
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I just wanted to let you guys know that after the next game, number 16, when we are half way finished, a few things change. The next game is a console game. After that, there is just one console game in the top half (at number five no less) (Although I occasionally change around my top games slightly as I learn more about myself and what I like as I write these up).

As I said before, PC games were top dog for so long that any historical list like this one is going to naturally be PC heavy.

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Old 07-27-2006, 08:13 PM   #64
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Ew, strongly disagree. Glad Pokemon is on the list, but, again, dispute the one that was chosen.

Ru/Sa are easily my least favorite of the outings (tho I still have over 100 hours in it, just like the others). It seemed like a big step back from G/S/C, which would have been my choice. Stripping out elements like the real time clock and the full Pokedex were huge minuses in my book and th new elements were decent but not great.

The interface was better, but with each game it's taken a big step forward. RBY -> GSC was a bigger step than GSC -> RuSa and next to FR/LG, Ru/Sa's looks old (but, again, they all do- it's hard to go backwards in the series- big gameplay improvements each time).

I can't wait for Pearl and Diamond for the DS.

SI
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:29 PM   #65
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenEagle
I have the urge to go out and buy Sim City 4 now.

"

I also really dig the Pokemon series. Got Ruby in my GBA SP right now as a matter of fact, though I keep restarting.
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:30 PM   #66
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I like the pick of FF1 (although i would have had it higher). IMO FF4 is the best of the series, but its by a very, very narrow margin over FF1 and FF6 (I'm assuming FF Tactics is considered a different franchise - otherwise it would be the clear #1 IMO).

I'm very surprised to see Sim City 4. I loved Sim City 2000 and was disapointed by 3000 enough that I didn't even bother with 4. I might have to pick it up now if I can find it on a bargain rack.

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Old 07-27-2006, 08:30 PM   #67
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DOLA, and how does Pokemon chart higher than FF?
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:34 PM   #68
Abe Sargent
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Sterlingice - I'll probably buy the DS just so I can play Pearl or Diamond so I agree. However, the new Pokemon in G/S are just UGLY and STUPID. For proof, I submit: Hoppip.



Or, Sudowoodo



Or, Sunkern



Or, as my final piece of evidence, the PINECONE POKEMON, Pineco:



-Anxiety
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:40 PM   #69
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Daimyo
DOLA, and how does Pokemon chart higher than FF?


By being a better game
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Old 07-27-2006, 08:45 PM   #70
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I tried the original Pokemon for a several days back when it was first hot and it just bored me to death. Not nearly as good as the first Final Fantasy Legends (comparing GB RPGs) IMO.

I liked the CCG okay though.

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Old 07-27-2006, 08:49 PM   #71
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This is the edited post. I am putting the next game here, which bumps Zelda up one. What game almost edged out Zelda and did for some time?

16. Star Control II
Accolade
PC
1992
GameSpot Rating - 9.3* (From now on, I'm just going to put a star beside the games that users rate but have no official rating)
Strategy/Simulation





If you think I'm kidding with rating StarCon2 so highly, just look at the users. The average user rating for StarCon2 is 9.3 versus 9.1 for Zelda I. This is not mere nostalgia or a pet game, this is one of the true classics from the middle era of PC Gaming.

Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well.

You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow.

You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station.


Earth under an inpenetrable Slave Shield:





After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other.

In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls.

If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time.

Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions.

Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship:





If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game.

You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel.

StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter.

Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations.

Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage.




The game has mutiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game.

The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away.

There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them:

StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik.

The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive.

The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz).

StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game, and there's one more reason to really like it:


Several years ago, the two developers of the game, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, released the game source code. Fans of the game worked to develop a freeware StarControl II, but they had to reanme it The Ur-Quan Masters.

Would you like to download and play, FOR FREE, one of my top games of all time and one of the true classics of the middle age of the PC?

Just click your mouse here and enjoy

The Ur-Quan Masters - News


-Anxiety
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Old 07-28-2006, 01:51 AM   #72
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With this game, we begin the second half of the countdown. This is a favorite that virtually everybody knows and loves. This entry should be like an old friend, and I expect everybody's face to crack into a smile, because at number...


15. The Legend of Zelda
Nintendo
1987
Nintendo Entertainment System
GameSpot Review - 9.1 (Once again, the average of all voters, not an official number)
RPG - Action




Rewind with me to 1987. A new gaming system has recently been released that is, in many ways technologically superior to the system that came before (Although not in all ways. The IntelliVision, for example, was a 16 bit machine.)

This new system made a lot of promises. Maybe one of your friends had one, but your parents weren't convinced that it would stick after the Great Gaming Crash of '83. Maybe you saw it on TV commercials and in comic books. You wanted it.

And then The Legend of Zelda came out. Zelda showed us what was possible with console games. A save game feature? A long, exhaustive quest through numerous dungeons across what we thought was a huge map?

Zelda promised hours and hours of play value, and then a Second Quest afterwards that was harder with everything changed around. The game was replayable, at least once, for the Seocnd Quest.

Think how clever the Second Quest was. Beat the game once, and everything moves around. Can you do it again? Games still don't do that today and that feature is still ahead of its time.

"Where do I go?" you might ask.



The quest for items and heart containers seemed neverending. There was always a better Candle or the Blue Ring or getting another Magic Shield after one had been eaten. They had to stuff two items in the final dungeon because there wasn't enough space for them.

And we knew. We knew that the game we were playing had changed the rules. After playing Zelda, other games seemed quaint. Later there would be better games for the NES, like Final Fantasy, but no game was as important. Without Zelda, would the NES have reached its level of sales in the home? Zelda was for the NES what Pac-Man was for Atari and Grand Theft Auto III was for the PlayStation 2 and Halo was for the XBox. Without Zelda, with just Mario and Duck Hunt and Ice Warriors and such - would the Nintendo System have ever dominated? Would there have been a revolution, or would it all have washed away like consoles had once before in 1983?

I loved the thematic dungeons.



Zelda was a more than just an amazing console game for its time. Zelda was a wake up call for consoles. It was a new way of looking at gaming. The Legend of Zelda was a window into a world that soon was to be, so we didn;t mind waiting a few years.

It's hard to describe Zelda because we've all played it. You had to get the Triforce to save the Princess Zelda and the Triforce is split up into peices each of which is at the end of a dungeon. You adventured through graveyards and The Lost Woods to try to get to dungeons, claim items, and kill creatures for Rupees (gold).

Even my dad loved Zelda. He wanted more games like Zelda. It was like a drug, but there was no fix except to play more Zelda becaus eno other console game could touch it.

And we all knew it was genius. My friends and I never debated what the best NES game was - only what was second best.

And that's why Zelda is the highest charting NES game on my list. Even if other games would later be better games for the system, no game had Zelda's heart. In fact, I don't think any console game, ever has been as impactful to us as a gaming society than The Legend of Zelda. No cartridge was as seditious as Zelda, with its seductive gold plastic packaging.


-Anxiety
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Old 07-28-2006, 01:59 AM   #73
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In fact, after looking at my list, I'm considering switchign Zelda and it, making Zelda fifteen and making this other game 16. If I decide to do that, I'll make a post and edit my posts to reflect that. I learn more about my gaming that way.

However, no way is Zelda making it past the game after that (making it to fourteen). I consider Game Number Fourteen to be the beginning of a new tier of games. Games that are either virtually flawless or so great at what they did you ignored the quirks. Zelda is not in that category, but it is near the top of this category - the great games that are flawed (MR3) or never reached their potential (HOMM2) or were outdone (M&M6) or ruled only a small perch (MOO2) or were great in one area (Tropico) sort of games.

Starting at Game Fourteen all of that changes.
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Old 07-28-2006, 02:08 AM   #74
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I LOVED Colonization! One of those games I would stay up till 3am playing, WAY too many nights. a great, great game and one I was sad they never made a sequel for.
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Old 07-28-2006, 04:57 AM   #75
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Well i hope fallout, plansecape:tourment, football manager, front office football, are on here, if it was my list saap and diamond mind would also be in the top ten, i am wondering if earl weaver baseball makes the list. Also since you seem to like the genre wondering if Dominons 2 is going to make an apperance. Masters of Magic would be on my list also. For rpgs i would have to have Wizardry and the orginal Bard's Tale. I am curious how many of my favorites will show up. I also loved autoduel.

Great stuff.
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Old 07-28-2006, 07:19 AM   #76
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Zelda's a really tough series to rank There are 3 games in it that could go on a best of list (zelda, lttp, and oot). I tend to favor lttp then oot then the original but you can't really go wrong with any of them.

As for the character designs in G/S, yeah, there are some weak ones, to be sure, but there are also some pretty good ones. But, again, just one facet of the game (yes, the pics show up).

I'll be curious to see what the top 15 hold. There are definitely some console games that I'd rank up there with PC games, but I could see putting 15 PC/arcade games at the top, especially if you go with a lot of stuff pre-1990.

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Old 07-28-2006, 03:27 PM   #77
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Alright folks. I am officially moving Zelda up to fifteen and I am editign the post above it with number sixteen, previously number 15. It should be up in a little while.


EDIT: Okay, the new game is up!
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Old 07-28-2006, 04:19 PM   #78
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Zelda beats out SC2! You're insane!

Who can forget the greatness that is the Ultron! Who can forget after you get the damn thing together they break it again!

One of my favorite parts of the game was defeating the Thraddash enough times for you to determine their new culture.

I gotta download the game and play it again!
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Old 07-28-2006, 04:22 PM   #79
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Warhammer
Zelda beats out SC2! You're insane!

Who can forget the greatness that is the Ultron! Who can forget after you get the damn thing together they break it again!

One of my favorite parts of the game was defeating the Thraddash enough times for you to determine their new culture.

I gotta download the game and play it again!


Don;t get me wrong, I think SC2 is a better game, but for its time, I think Zelda was more ahead of its time than SC2 was.

Besides, the Utwig messing up with the Ultron, again, only happens in the credits, which are not canonical.
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Old 07-28-2006, 06:13 PM   #80
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I might favor a Link to the Past slightly over the original. The original blew my mind as far as how epic a video game could feel, and then lttp re-blew it.

I also think I'd have something from the zelda series ranked higher, but I can't really complain about that until I see the rest of the list.

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Old 07-28-2006, 09:20 PM   #81
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As I mentioned before, I believe there is a big jump in game quality from #15 on my list to here. Let's take a look at a more recent classic, and the best game in a very popular genre:

14. Half-Life
Valve/Sierra
1998
PC
GameSpot Review - 9.4
First-Person Shooter



Half-Life on Steam



In fact, I'd say that the modern age of PC Computing began in 1998 with games like Baldur's Gate and Half-Life.

For those of you who may be living in a very deep closest, allow me to explain. Half-Life is a PC game that revolutionized the first person genre by taking it one giant Lambda step forward in technology.

For one thing, Half-Life was completly about immersion into the game. From the beginning sequence where you spend five minutes in a rail car moving through the Black Mesa Complex to the platform where you work, you get the idea that this is a different game.

There are no cutscenes, no written dialogue, level transitions, or anything. Nothing breaks the mold of a living, breathing Gordon Freeman trying to fight like hell to get his way out of Black Mesa and survive.

This was innovative. In previous first person shooters, there was a cutscene at the end of the level giving you your kill count and percentage hit ratio, or mission briefings or cutscenes. Half-Life was simply about being there, with a crowbar, and maybe a gun.

The first time I saw that giant tentacled thing pouring up through a central corrider up several stories and I had to walk softly past it, or else one of those huge clawed tentacles would kill me. The first time I saw that, I held my breath as if to say, "My God."

Here is the big giant tentacled thing viewed from several floors up:




There are no spinning and glowing icons to represent health, weapons, ammo, or anything. Instead, placement is very logical. For you, its on a shelf, in a crate that you have to destroy, on a corpse of a dead person, and so forth.

There are no levels, the game is just one never ending romp.

Some bad guys are spawning in front of Gordon:





One major thing Half-Life had is a very believable squad AI for the human opponents. See, as the reasearch facility explodes, special forces head out the kill anyone in there, alien or human, and shut the place down. You'll be fighting these guys who have a very realistic AI. Shoot down one of a group from around a corner and all of the remaining characters will dive for cover, peek their heads out, and start laying cover fire while one or two others will creep to your position.

If you run into a room, they aren't stupid. They'll just toss in agrenade or two to kill you or flush you out. All of this is amazingly realistic.

The result is a very nice single player mode.

However, Half-Life does not end with a single player mode. Any review of Half-Life would be missing half of the review if it ended there.

Multi-player is a major aspect of the game. I know players who bought the game just for multiplayer. Valve intentionally created a very moddable game and we'll talk about a certain mod in a bit, but for now, let's just talk about Deathmatch multiplayer.

I loved playing against real people in this environment, with interesting maps and believable characters. This is my second favorite multiplayer gaming experience of all time.

Living in a residence hall, as an RA, with almost all of my residents and myself playing on the same server with our doors open and taunting each other.

Nothing compares to that. You got a chance to slap some people silly all while taunting them, or running around saying, "Where are you hiding, bitch?" and whatnot. The game was awesome.

I loved learning new maps. I started with some maps that everybody else liked, but I began to host because I had a fast machine, and I got to choose new maps that everybody began to like, ie The Mansion and X-Bow2.

Of course, everything changed when the Counter-Strike mod was made. Counter-Strike was a multi-player mod created just for Half-Life and was truly significant in the evolution of multi-player FPS. It was an amazing game using Half-Life textures and whatnot but with a more realistic, military feel to it.

Counter-Strike:



Another CS screenie which I think looks very cool:



It became hugely popular, so much so that Sierra began selling this player made mod in retail stores for a cheap price.

From mods to multiplayer to an amazing reality, Half-Life is truly one of the greats.


-Anxiety
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Old 07-29-2006, 05:13 AM   #82
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Half-Life was one of my favorite games ever, but I think that since I missed the actual release, and didn't get in on the game until a year later, that I'd give the nod to Half-Life 2, which I pre-ordered almost as soon as humanly possible, and was STILL able to completely blow away my expectations. I think that Half-Life 2 might be the best game I have ever played.

And I would have to give the nod to A Link to the Past as my Zelda franchise winner -- one of the best games ever made, and in my opinion second only to one Nintendo game on any platform.
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Old 07-29-2006, 05:14 AM   #83
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The more you go over this list, the more I realize how hard this would be to do definitively on my own. It would be interesting to see how much my heavy console-based youth affected my rankings -- I didn't really get into computer games until College, near the end of 1999.
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Old 07-29-2006, 02:59 PM   #84
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Will there be an update today?
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Old 07-29-2006, 03:16 PM   #85
Abe Sargent
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Sure
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Old 07-29-2006, 03:28 PM   #86
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Anxiety, would you mind if I did a Top Games thing after you're done with yours?

I started compiling a list last night after I couldn't sleep. I thought about starting the dynasty soon, but I didn't want to steal your thunder.
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Old 07-29-2006, 05:07 PM   #87
Abe Sargent
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Izulde
Anxiety, would you mind if I did a Top Games thing after you're done with yours?

I started compiling a list last night after I couldn't sleep. I thought about starting the dynasty soon, but I didn't want to steal your thunder.


Of course not! Id on't mind in the least!


-Anxiety
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Old 07-29-2006, 05:22 PM   #88
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This next game certainly isn't controversial to choose around here, but the version I choose may raise a few eyebrows:

13. Front Office Football 2001
Solecismic/EA Sports
2001
PC
GameSpot Review - 7.5
Sports/Simulation - Football




How do you review a game that everybody on this board has played? Even if a handful haven't played it, surely they've heard about it a lot.

It's difficult.

Here is why I'm choosing 2k1. There only other option, for me, is to choose the original, but I've never played the original nor the second game, so it would be highly unfair for me to pick agame that I haven't even played.

Secondly, the game series doesn't change that much from iteration to iteration. Madden changes more from game to game than FOF does. Tiny little tweaks here and there don't make me want to chose to the most recent version.

However, one deletion does make me want to choose 2k1. It is the last title with expansion.

Expansion was amazing. I had the Chiefs to three Super Bowls in a row and won the first and third. Then the expansion teams were named, and one of the game chosen expansion teams was in Huntington, WV. Well, I had to jump at that, so I named then the Huntington Highlanders and did the expansion draft and built them into a perennial playoff team.

Then I jump to the to the expansion team in Charlottesville, VA. They still had an awful roster and as awful cap. I can't remember their name, but it was something dogs, and I hated it, so I changed their name to the Wolves and failed to build them into a playoff team after three years, just getting them to 8-8 when I jumped to a new expansion team in Burlington, VT. I chose the name them the Cyclones, and once again, went through the draft, and so forth.

I loved expansion, and no other FOF has given me that experience. In fact, I've soured a bit on the more recent versions because they haven't jumped that much in new features and haven't brought back expansion.

I still remember my first draftee in 2k1 with the Chiefs. He was a safety named Sean Stewart that I drafted with the 28th pick the first round, and he started for me every year, got All Pro twice, and was put in the Hall of Fame with over 70 interceptions and tons of tackles.

I was hoping to find a Charlie Batch screenshot, because he was a 2k1 player of great ability, but instead, we'll just have to look at the Titans:




It wasn't the best game ever, and it did have issues, like backup soften demanding starter pay to resign, but the game was really good and it had expansion. That's why I chose it.


-Anxiety
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Old 07-29-2006, 06:14 PM   #89
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I'll probably get rocks thrown at me for saying this, but I figured FOF would make it on the list somewhere and I'm not sure I can disagree more. It's not that FOF isn't a good series or doesn't have good games but in the pantheon of games, text-based sims are such a small segment and to put it up there next to Half Life and Zelda and SimCity and, yes, Pokemon... it's just not right.

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Old 07-29-2006, 06:16 PM   #90
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I understand your concern si. If it makes you feel better, I just wrote up number 12, and you can see it. Remember though, this is my list.
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Old 07-29-2006, 06:16 PM   #91
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At number twelve we have one of the true classics of the early PC era.

12. Wasteland
Interplay
1986
PC
GameSpot Review - 8.9 * (remember, an Asterisk means no official review, just a user review)
RPG




The developers on this game read like a who's who of RPG greatness. Michael Stackpole (writer of many books, developer of RPGs), David "Zeb" Cook (Writer of a few books, creator and writer of AD&D 2nd Edition), Liz Danforth (famous painter and RPG writer), Brain Fargo (creator of many famous RPG PC games and founder of Interplay), and Bruce Balfour (writer of many books).

Some of the game designers dressed up in Wasteland apparel and had their pic on the inside cover of the box. Unfortunately, the only pic I could find is not working

Instead, here is the Scorpitron - one of the toughest monsters in the game.



If you asked me what the best RPG ever designed was three years ago, i still would have said Wasteland. I don't think any RPG hit as many notes as perfectly as Wasteland. Even my Dad liked it.

What was good about Wasteland, you might ask? Everything.

Wasteland was an RPG that took place after a nuclear war cleaned the slate. You are a part of the Desert Rangers, and survived because you were underground. Your party emerges and heads out into the desert to investigate some odd occurances. You'll head to Needles, Quartz and Las Vegas to find out what is going on, and eventually you'll learn that a militaristic group of people who survived the Nukes have been building death robots and are building an army of them.

The game has a very Mad Max or Road Warrior feel to it, and its great!

It takes a long time to investigate the world and figure out what's going on. In the meantime, you'll have some of the most descriptive text in any game, ever. Here is a sample from a mere abandoned building. You got a short message of text with every step in the building. For the record, there are dozens of abandoned buildings in the game.

Quote:
The wind has been blowing dust and leaves into this room so long that it is now almost 3 feet deep.
There used to be a door here a long time ago.
The old brick walls are slowly crumbling and falling apart.
Though rusty with age the hinge springs will close this door after you walk away.
The squeaks of rats bounce off the walls all around you.
You are walking on the door to this room.
The walls and ceilings all around you are covered with graffiti and bullet holes.
Don't wiggle! This chair is trying to fall apart.
This wall is covered with gang names and warnings to other gangs.
THE WHITE BOY IS #1 has been painted over the hundreds of bullet holes in this wall.
Crude pictures of nude girls and gang symbols are all over this wall.
Don't put anything on this table. I don't think it could take the weight of a feather.
Either that trash is moving or something is moving under it.
Lucky you! That snake could have been very nasty if it hung around to fight.
These old dusty shelves have stood here unused for more years than you have been alive.


With so many people who became published authors on the staff, you can understand why the text is so good.

The world is vibrant. Radiation has mutated a few, and there are realistic missions that take you all over the map. From a three legged prostitute to the Church of the Mushroom Cloud, you'll range all over. You'll either install a new mayor of Quartz, the leader of a group of thugs, or free the good Mayor Pedros.

During the game, your party can add three NPCs which are almost always (for me at least), Ace, Covenant, and one of the two dying people in Darwin Village, and usually Christina until then. I never liked Redhawk because he is too unstable.



Here are some of the inventive things that Wasteland did:

There are no healing items and no healing skills. There actually is a First Aid and a Doctor skill but those stop bleeding and so forth, they do not cure diseases and heal. Too many RPGs rely on healing items, but there are none here. You can go a Doctor but it costs a lot of dough.

Random encounters never drop money or items. Only set encouters do. Therefore, you will never get money and items unless you are advancing the plot.

Stores have a limited supply of items, and keep things you sell to them so you can rebuy them later. Many stores at this time had unlimited items or never kept what you sold to them.

If you kill an emeny with a gun, you get a certain amount of experience. If you pull out an axe or a spear and charge them, killing them in melee, you get double experience. This was a nice incentive to fight up close and personal.

NPCs in your will refuse to give the team items in their inventory, especially if they are vital, like body armor. Some NPCs (Redhawk) do this more frequently than others. I love this and it makes perfect sense that someone who joins your quest may not feel comfortable giving you back the armor you gave him.


A radiated monster:




Wasteland was such a great game, full of flavor, excitement, an advanced gaming system, and more. It's impact reached through the genre and inpired the Fallout series which in several locations has had references to Wasteland.

Unfortunately, Interplay was never able to really do a sequal. Interplay was a developer, but EA was the publisher. EA got the right to the name Wastealnd when they published it, and only recently (2003 in fact) has Bryan Fargo repurchased the name.

This guy's not happy to see you:




The game was the first high quality RPG. It influenced tons of games that came after. It was truly remarkable and great and more than worthy to be number 12 on my list of the top games ever.


-Anixety
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Old 07-29-2006, 06:19 PM   #92
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I've got a problem with a WL pic, let me see if I can figure it out
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Old 07-30-2006, 04:41 PM   #93
Abe Sargent
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Let's get this next one out of the way so that all we'll have left is the top ten.


11. Europa Universalis II
Paradox
2001
PC
GameSpot Review - 8.5
Strategy


GamersGate - Buy and download games now!





EU2 ruined it for me. Up until 2001, my favorite strategy games were turn-based Civ and Civ clones. Then I played EU2 after someone here posted a dynasty.

Nothing was ever the same again. EU2 and FOF2k1 completely changed my gaming, but EU2 more than any other game really did. Europa Universalis II was so epic and so detailed that it erased from my mind my previous love. I plum forgot anything else.

Europa Universalis II is a real time strategy game but the real time is so slow that is has the effect of a turn based game. I hate real time strategies because they always seemed like button clickers, but EU2 is different.

Here's a look at Spain:




I played an entire dynasty written here on just this peninsula. Some people remark that the map looks a bit like a gameboard, and I think they're right.

One of the things that I always appreciated was the simple fact that the game, despite tons of detail, has three military units - infantry, calvary and artillery. The emphasis of the game is elsewhere, and I love that.

Let's begin with the world. You play on the most detailed and exact version of the World Map that I have ever seen in a video game. It is amazing in its detail. Even with its European focus the game still has plenty of time for a highly detailed Nippon (Japan), SE Asia, Russia and Siberia, China, India, Middle East, North Africa and South America. Many felt that Southern Africa, North America and Indonesia needed some work.

The map creator decided that areas of the world that were completely inhabitable with 18th century technology (the highest in the game), would be written in as Terra Incognita - places you could not go (like, for example, the Sahara Desert)


Here you can see that Inland Greenland is completely Terra Incognita.




The game is built around an event engine. This is a highly detailed event engine that helps to simulate some of the real world issues involving various states.

For example, suppose you are playing China. At some point in time, you are going to have to deal with the White Lotus Rebellion. In fact, you'll get an event with several choices, and the one you choose will show how your country is guided by your leadership. When you script an event, you can make one choice the likely choice for the AI, so the AI will usually follow the historical path, but will deviate occasionally so that each game is different.

China, to continue the example, will have an event early in the game where they choose whether or not to fund their Treasure Fleet under the guidance of Zheng He. Fund it, and you get Zheng He, one of the earliest explorers in the game but it costs you money. Choose not to, and you don't get Zheng He.

Areas of the map you don't know can be explored by an explorer at sea or a conquistador if by land. Zheng He, in the above example, would open up sea lanes for later trading, exploration or war. (Explorers have a small chance of discovering coastal land as they sail by)

The game's technology was very simple. There are a variety of techs and each are from level 1-5. Some are military, some economic and some social. You can have your people working on a tech, but it is very uncertain when you'll get it. As neighbors get techs, you'll get them slowly. You have techs by provinces. If you discover, for example, cathedrals, you can only use that tech in your base province and as it moves throughout your country you can use it in your provinces. Likewise, a tech a neighbor has will start at the edges of your empire adjacent to that neighbor and move in. It's very realistic.

The economic system is based around trade. Each province has a good it specializes in. Let me see if I can remember them all (Naval Goods, Spice, Copper, Iron, Gold, Coffee, Tea, Slaves, Ivory, Fur, Chinaware, Fish, Sheep, Salt, Wheat, Cloth - but gold is not a traded good). Goods have a production value and a trade value. Production is how much you make from them and trade is how much in made in the local Center of Trade. Production is also affected by factors like population, but trade isn't that much.

The local Center of Trade is the place that all nearby goods go to be traded. An example of a Center of Trade is Tago, the capital province of Portugal. Nearby goods are shipped to Tago and, as a result, a ton of money is made in Tago by Portugal.

You can send off merchants to a CoT to set up shop and siphon off some of the profits. The more merchants you set up, the bigger a slice of the pie you have. Big CoTs, like Byzantium, have a lot of competition for spots so your merchants get squeezed out a lot.

New CoTs will occasionally spring up, some from random events and some from set events (Flanders, for example, will pop up as a CoT if the Netherlands form as a country).

In order to expand, one option is colonization. You send out colonists to unclaimed land and there's a chance based on climate, previous colonizing attempts, conquistador presence, number of natives, and hostility of native as to whether or not the colonizing attempt will take. Once you get six successful attempts, any local natives will join your colony. In the meantime, natives could burn down your colony with a higher chance of it occuring the more aggressive and numerous the natives are.



The Carribean:





You can also expand by war. In this game, you have to have a Casus Belli o go to war with someone. You have a permanent Casus Belli on a country if they have land that you have a claim to. For example, at the start of the game, Wallachia has a Callus Belli on Moldova because of an ancient claim Wallachia has on the province. Anytime Wallachia wants, they can go to war with whoever has the Moldovan province. If they claim that province in war, there is much of a problem with the international community.

However, if you start gobbling up neighbors and land that you do not have a claim to, others will get antsy and start attacking you. This concept is called your badboy rating. Over time, your BB rating will get better, so you can expand occasionally but not significantly. If you take land in a defensive war, as opposed to an offensive war, your BB isn't hurt as badly. Annexing land politically as opposed to war is also not as bad. There are other examples, but those illustrate how the principle works.

As a result, although you will get into wars, wars will not drive the game. There will be periods of prolonged peace, for example, interspersed with a lot of blood. It's very historical in that respect.

In your provinces, you can build a ton of improvements over time as your techs increase. You can even specialize your provinces with various improvements.

You'll learn to love/hate the random events. Some are great, while others include such events as plague and civil unrest.

There are a handful of game events that change the nature of the game and effect everyone. They are; Treaty of Tordesillas which divides up the New World, the Protestant Reformation which creates Protestantism as a new religion, Jean Calvin which creates Reform as a new religion, and Counter-Reform which created Counter-Reform Catholicism as a new religion - all offshots of Christianity, and then later, Religious Tolerance which reduces the disagreements between religions.

As you control your empire, there are a variety of sliders that affect how you organize and treat your people. Do you want to be more centralized or decentralized? Do you want your military to be more offensive or defensive? Do you prefer free trade or mercantilism? And so forth. These sliders will adjust happiness of the four castes in your society (peasants, nobles, clergy and burghers) as well as increase merchant, colonist and missionary production, change tax effectiveness, and so froth. (Missionaries can be sent, at some cost, to try and convert the masses of a province to your state religion.)

You'll also have to worry about tax rate, keeping people in a province happy, revolts, and more.

As you can see, the game is quite complex, but many of its complexities make sense, like the badboy rating simulating the need to not appear too much a tyrant or else neighbors will come down on you.


The game is highly moddable, and in fact, I scripted many of my own events for a fantasy Granada in my dynasty. Players have added hundreds of events, tons of countries and more in a player made mod called the AGC-EEP which is a combination of two previous mods.

The company patched the game long after it has passed its shelflife, much like Jim does, only these patches were much more grandiose. They are still tinkering with it, trying to fix little things and make the game work much more smoothly.

As a result of all of this, EU2 is my eleventh game and came very close to cracking the top ten.

-Anxiety
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Old 07-30-2006, 09:35 PM   #94
timmynausea
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Man, FOF2k4 is so much better than the other versions for multi-player purposes alone. I never thought I'd care about multi-player and didn't even look into it until over a year after the game came out, but it is amazing.
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Old 07-30-2006, 09:56 PM   #95
Abe Sargent
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Time to begin the top ten countdown with that classic of classics, that marvel of marvels:

10. Civilization
Microprose
1991
PC
GameSpot Review - 9.0 *
4x




What is there to tell about a gem we've all played or heard of? If it didn't begin the "Just one more turn" phoenomenon, it certainly brought it tinto our public conscience. Civ was responsible for more than its share of cold dinners and sleepless nights.

It was magic because it has never been done before. So many aspects of Civ have been taken and added to other games, from tech development to strategic development. Making armies and fighting, sending a spaceship to Alpha Centauri and nuking those damn Indians led by that pretentious Ghandi.

In terms of ingenuity, Civ would rank near the top of all games.

Therefore, I'm not convinced why I should need to defend the choice for Top Ten spot to Civ. I may have to, however, defend why its near the bottom of that list.

Civ, the original game, does not stand up well. Let's take a look at the graphical Civ from DOS:




That's just painful. There have been numerous games that were either contemporaries or earlier that looked much better. Wing Commander came out a year prior to Civ and it looks much better to our eyes. At the time, poor graphics wasn't a big deal, because we weren't so use to good graphics. However, now, Wing Commander is tolerable and Civ isn't. In fact, for the rest of the review, I'm going to post pics from later versions of Civ and not the original DOS version.

For comparision, here is the later Windows version:



That's a much cleaner interface and the graphics are sharper as well. It's still ugly, but not as bad.

The graphical problems not withstanding, Civ still deserves a place in my list as opposed to Civ II because the original was the best. The other version may have tweaked the game a bit, added more techs, more wonders, more units, more playable nations, and more buildings, but Civ was the original.

So many decisions in Civ were really great. Different terrain types led to different cities and different things being built on them. Even railroads (which could look downright clunky after a while):



This alone was an amazing idea. Various terrain types that you improe over time with irrigation, mines, roads and more.

Even something minor, like the Civilopedia was a great idea. Put everything in one, easy to access area and then questions are reduced significantly.

From units to cities, so many of the things in Civ are clever, unusual, unique, or just plain amazing (or any number of the above). So many games owe their heart to Civ.

For a decade I was obsessed with Civ and the next Civ games. Then EU2 changed all of that. Nevertheless, it is Civ, and not EU2 that makes the cut into my personal top ten.


-Anxiety
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Old 07-30-2006, 10:02 PM   #96
sabotai
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Count me as someone who had Civ ruined for him because of EU2. I just can't seem to get into Civ at all anymore. All I think about is how much I want it to be more like EU2.
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Old 07-30-2006, 10:09 PM   #97
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I'll have some personal disagreement here.

I hated EU2 and I still don't like it. For some reason, I just can't dig it, though I've tried it multiple times. Same thing with HoI2 and Victoria (which I wanted to love, btw, but couldn't).

I also would have put Civilization II ahead of Civ. While I can understand the rationale behind Civ in terms of historical significance, Civ II was just so much better it's unreal.

But I'll get into why later on.
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Old 07-30-2006, 10:55 PM   #98
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I would have picked Civ 4 to be the Civ representative. It is such an improved game from the earlier versions. However, I understand that historical significance is a factor.
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Old 07-30-2006, 10:58 PM   #99
ISiddiqui
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Like Izulde, I would have put CivII on the list ahead of Civ, and probably would have it either 1 or 2 (probably #1). CivI was the first, the innovative one, but CivII was everything a sequal should be and far more.

I think Izulde and I have been seperated at birth because I share his views on EU2. If I was doing this list, I don't think I would have had EU2 in my Top 25, frankly. Ambitious idea, but doesn't pull it off, IMO.
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Old 07-30-2006, 11:15 PM   #100
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Just started reading this, great stuff. I love the pics, man that brings back some memories. Me and my buddies used to play the heck out of sea battle on the Intelivision! Nothing as intense as trying to hit the juice and move your battleship out of a torpedo line.
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