Abe's Top 30 Video Games of All Time

[Grammaticus]

dola,

I'm curious to see if my all time favorite makes your list.

[Abe Sargent]

I guess we'll find out

[Peregrine]

Great list so far Anxiety, glad to see EU2 represented, I'd have to put that one in my top 5 alltime list, I just go back and play it again and again, and the experience is so different each time depending on country and culture, etc. The dynasty listings on the Paradox boards are beyond incredible, also, dozens of novel-quality dynasties and hundreds of others.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

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.

Which Civ to pick is definitely tough. As the best game, I'd have to go with Civ 4 also, since it is so much improved over the other versions. Personally I'd also have Alpha Centauri high up on my list since it has a lot of unique ideas and is one of my favorite games ever, but I know not everyone feels that way.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Which Civ to pick is definitely tough. As the best game, I'd have to go with Civ 4 also, since it is so much improved over the other versions. Personally I'd also have Alpha Centauri high up on my list since it has a lot of unique ideas and is one of my favorite games ever, but I know not everyone feels that way.

Just nerve staple the populace until they agree

SI

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Just nerve staple the populace until they agree

SI

Yang loves the people and the people love him. A few dissidents may need to be re-educated, but it's all for the greater good of the people!

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by Grammaticus

dola,

I'm curious to see if my all time favorite makes your list.

I'd be shocked if mine would.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by MIJB#19

I'd be shocked if mine would.

Likewise my #2 (Civ being unquestionably my #1) would make it, since it is a console game (though ported to the PC).

[AgustusM]

first off another tip of the cap, great idea, great list.

in fact so good you have inspired me to purchase Europa Universalis 2 and Tropico. ordered them both just now.

also my 2 cents, I think I would have chosen Civ4 as well, I have played the hell out of every version including the "ugly" DOS one (it didn't seem ugly at the time) and I think 4 has removed a lot of the little minor annoyances of previous versions - now I obviously don't know what 1-9 are yet, but at least for me I think Civ would have to be top 3.

[Abe Sargent]

This next title should need little justification for the people on this board.

9. X-Com: UFO Defense
Microprose
1993
PC
GameSpot Review - 9.0
Strategy/Simulation

X-COM: UFO Defense on Steam




One of the things you may notice is that I really like games that have several different parts, several different games. Monster Rancher 3 has a fighting and a raising game, Sea Battle has an overland map and a fighting map, Heroes of Might and Magic II has the strategy game and then the chess-like game, Master of Orion II has a Civ like game and then a chess like game. Even StarCon2 has a strategy map and a melee with ships fighting.

X-Com is arguably the best dual-game ever designed. Although one more dual-game will chart higher (two spots higher at number 7), that's because of an affectation (you'll see when I list it).

X-Com is simply the best game at merging two worlds. The strategy element segues seemlessly with the tactical element. Although it was not the first game to do so (see Sea Battle and later Archon), it probably remains, to the day, the best game to do so.

In fact, X-Com has proved so good, so important that many other games have really copied it directly (Jagged Alliance) or indirectly (Heroes of M&M).

X-Com has sevearl things going for it. To begin, you have to build a base, train soldiers, worry about finances, order equipment and fuel ships. The strategic element takes place over a globe map of the world.

As aliens go about their business, your bases will track their movements, and you dispatch craft to take them down.



Once you intercept them, you can attack, retreat, etc. If you manage to shoot down the craft and do so over land, you can dispatch a team of X-Com agents to investigate the crash site.

Once there, the games shifts to the ubiquitous chess-like tactical combat that everybody knows and loves. You move your men, then the alien moves as well. Several unique ideas, like Time Units, attacks of opportunity and such were added to give this turn based system the illusion of reality.

Our X-Com Agent sees two bad guys!



You have to explore the map, protect any civilians, and secure any alien equipment you find. Afterwards, your ship lifts off and you have some goodies for your tech guys.

Downed alien craft are not the only reason you may find yourself in tactical mode. You could launch an attack on a hidden alien base. The aliens could be attacking your own base, and you defending it. You could be responding to a Terror-Site, a city where aleins are trying their best to terrorize the locals. Lastly, you could be launching a game winning attack on the alien homebase.

Different alien ships have different purposes and capabilities. You'll begin with the small ships and upgrade your way to bigger and better ships as time progresses.

Since it was designed after Civ, it took into account several Civ-ideas. The first is tech development. Your tech boys can research live alien specimens, do autopsies, and try to figure out gadgets that you bring back from missions.

One of the things you can do research on is parts of spacecraft. Looks like the aliens were up to some research of their own:



The game progresses as your guys get better tech. Armor, guns, ships, ammo, and psi abilities will all get better as stolen or integrated tech comes online. Of course, you'll need a workshop of engineers to build all of this stuff. And all of these things: engineers, scientists, lab space, alien containment and workshop space do not come cheaply...

Which leads us back to the seemless combinations I meantioned earlier. As you do better on missions, you'll get more material for the brain boys, more items to sell, so you can pay the brain-boys, more esperience for your soliders so they get better. Then your brain boys find a new piece of equipment and your engineers build it, and then you equip your soldiers so that the tactical missions are more likely to be successful.

Do you see how it all fits together, smoothly?

In fact, I think that there were less X-Com clones than Civ clones (which were all over game stores for several years) because X-Com did what it set out to do so much better than Civ.

And therefore X-Com is number 9 on my list.


-Anxiety

[Vince]

Number 9...not sure if it would be that 'low' on my list, but it is definitely one of the best games ever made.

[Eaglesfan27]

Yeah, I think X-Com would have been closer to #1 on my list. However, I can't wait to see what is next on the list

[Abe Sargent]

Let's create some controversy with the next pick. Maybe.

8. Angband
Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand, 1990 - 1991, 1991 - 1993: Sean Marsh and Geoff Hill, 1993 - 1994: Charles Swinger, 1994 - 2000: Ben Harrison, 2000 - Now: Robert Ruhlman
1990
Unix (Later, Mac, PC, OS/2, Unix, and Pretty Much Every System Ever)
GameSpot Review - 9.4 *
RPG





Okay, before I begin this review, I want to point out a couple of things. I like a game with a lot of detail, tons of complexity, and strategies I can learn for months.

Angband is not a good looking game. It's clean, but it's not pretty. However, take a look at the user reviews of this game. 9.4 is higher than almost any other user reviewed game that I have looking at.

Okay, with that caveat, I present Angband. We'll start with a graphical version:



Okay, before you get all up ons, let's take a bit about Angband. Angband is freeware. You can download it for free and play it at no cost. It's free.

In fact, if you are interested in Angband or variants, you had head over to:

http://www.thangorodrim.net/


Okay, let's talk about the history of Angband, because it is very important.

In the late seventies, a game developer created a cute little freeware game called Rogue. In Rogue, you are delving through a dungeon and picking up potions, scrolls, wands and more while killing various monsters. The tech at the time was poor, so you were represented with an "@" symbol, and everything else were ASCII characters as well.

In 1985, Robert Koeneke fondly remembered that Rogue game he played years ago, but could not find it. He set out to create a similar game, with a bit of a Tolkien theme, named "Moria." He built the game around Tolkein, with the player decending to level 50 before killing the Balrog.

He remembered Rogue being very difficult, so he handed out early version of his game to friends, and each time they beat the game, he closed off the avenue they used to do it. He intentionally set out to make Moria the hardeset game ever developed (and succeeded).

Moria was significantly more advanced than Rogue, with tons of monsters, items, spells, classes, and more added to the game. There was also a village level at the top of the dungeon that had a few shops.

Other writers also wrote Rogue variants, and this genre of game is called a "Roguelike" game (go figure ). Most of them share a common element with Rogue - once you die, you are dead. No save game. If you die, you die.

This creates a ton of suspense. It's tough to go through a game that is designed to be amazingly hard and THEN is unable to load a save game.

As a result, Angband is the hardest game I've ever played. Ever harder than Fragile Allegiance.

Anyways, back to history. In 1990, a couple of guys decided that Moria was not Tolkien enough so they wrote Angband. Angband has come to be viewed as THE roguelike variant to play.

Angband added so many unique ideas to the equation. They added unique items, many from Tolkien, like Angdrast, Sting, Ringil, the Phial of Galadriel, and more.

This added a new element to the top end of the game and added tons of flavor as well.

Next they added unique monsters. Many of these are Tolkienian, like Smaug, Thuringwethil, Saruman, each of the Nazgul, and more. This also added a new element of challenge to the game as you progressively moved into harder and harder terrain.

Then they added tons of things to the dungeons, like a monster pit, which is a room full of a monster type, or vaults, which are large areas chock full of treasure and nasty out of depth monsters (As you delve deeper, more powerful monsters exist, and an out of depth monster is one that is up too high of his average level.)

On this floor, an orc pit is to the left (like I said, a lot of monsters) anda vault is to the right. Both of these are special rooms and to get them both that hgih up in the dungeon is unusual.



The randomizers added out of depth items and monsters upon occasion. There were new elements to add more creativity to your armor (in addition to basics like fire and cold there was now nether and chaos and such).

The game also stretched 100 levels instead of the previous 50.

Angband took everything that was great about Moria and exploded it into many more pieces while also adding tons of new elements to the game.


I prefer playing with the text version, instead of that crappy graphic version. Here's a pic (remember, you are the @)




Angband became so popular and definitive that over SIXTY-THREE variants were written by other people as freeware. That's how influential and important Angband became.

Now, as a matter of fact, I prefer one of those variants, ZAngband, to Angband. Z is a game as advanced from Angband as Angband was from Moria (and Z is the most popular variant as well.). Z is based on Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles. It also includes quests, outdoors, tons of classes, a better overhauled magic system, tons of races, mutations, and lots more great stuff. I love it.

However, this is not a review of Z but of Angband, the vanilla version. It may not look like much, I know, but packed in here is one of the best computer games ever made. I spent an entire summer once playing Angband. And the best part?

It's free!



-Anxiety

[Groundhog]

Interesting selection with Angband. That's really the only Roguelike game I ever played much, though it may have infact been ZAngband that I was playing, because I recall being outdoors a fair bit. It's been years since I played it.

[Daimyo]

I would have picked Civ2. I played all four games in order and loved them all (although civ3 took many patches and an expansion to become lovable), but civ2 was the one that really captured me and I probably played it well over 10 times as much as the other three combined.

I don't know what is up with me on EU... I absolutely loved EU (my wife still knows it as "the amazing game" from how I used to refer to it). However, I was disapointed with EU2... I don't know what it was, they added a while bunch of stuff that was great on paper, but I just didn't like it much.

If I had to rank my top five games of all time, limiting to one pick per franchise, it would very likely be EU1, Civ2, FOF2k1, FM2006, and FF Tactics. I'm glad to see four of the franchises represented this far.

[Abe Sargent]

One thing I forgot to mention about Angband was how Diablo was an Angband clone, with fewer unqiue weapons and graphics.

[bob]

In case anyone wants a free remake of XCOM: UFO Defense, check out the following link for the game UFO: Alien Invasion.

hxxp://pc.gamespy.com/articles/718/718272p2.html

[Abe Sargent]

Thanks bob

[Vince]

The Civilization series would probably be the hardest one for me to choose from, between the original and Civ II. Both were absolutely fantastic games.

As for rogue-likes...I think I'd have to go with JAMoria for the Macintosh. That's the one that got me hooked back in the early '90s, and from there I went on to Zangband and ADOM. I think ADOM would have to be the most quality of the games I've played, but JAMoria meant much more to me growing up.

I'm loving the list, Anxiety!

[Abe Sargent]

Time for the next game on my list. As a mentioned before, this is the last dual game, with two different games in one. Sure, X-Com was probably the best at this synergy, but this game was the most fun at doing it.

7. Magic: The Gathering
MicroProse
1997
PC
GameSpot Review - 7.2
Strategy/Simulation - Card Game




Incidentally, the GameSpot review is a particularly low review, if you look at other websites, the average review is much higher, and the GameSpot review is one of the lowest scores.

The campaign game is called Shandalar, so that is what most people call the game.

Okay, let's talk about Shandalar. Shandalar was an attempt to bring Magic to a single player PC game. How could you translate this game?

What the developers decided to do is to keep the Magic game. You will duel opponents in Magic, with real Magic cards and the real Magic rules. Then you also have a campaign game as well.

You resolve combats by dueling, and then you adventure around the map, collecting gold, items, cards for your deck, mana links, and more.

Okay, let's talk about the game in detail:

You begin the game with a very poor deck of cards that you can modify. All games you play are for ante, so there is a chance you'll lose a card from your deck as well as a chance you'll gain a card from your opponent's deck.

Here is an adventure screenshot:




You can stop in towns and cities and sell off extra cards for gold. Each place also has a small number of cards for sale, and you can try and get some new cards for your deck here. You'll also need food, which yu eat as you move about the map.

On the map, there are five different terrain types which correspond with the five different terrain types in Magic: mountains, swamps, islands, plains and forests. Enemies can only go into terrain areas if they have that color in their deck.

Enemies are all around and you'll have to do a lot of dueling in order to move across the map.

As your deck gets better, you win more often, but better players with btter decks will emerge from the wilderness to challenge you.

You begin the game with just 10 life (your starting life total in each game. 20 is the normal starting life in a game of Magic). You can complete quests at cities and gain a mana link with that city. Your life permanently increases by one. You can gain a lot of life this way.

However, there is a evil wizard in the land, one in charge of each color of magic. They are trying to conquer the land magically. Occasionally, one will send an enemy to assault a city, and a short time later, if you do not intervene, the city will be lost and you'll lose your Mana Link. Once a city is tapped, you'll have to assault it yourself, which is very difficult. When a wizard gets three mana taps, he wins, and you lose.

Random events are on the map in each land type. Sometimes you'll come across a free random card, sometimes you'll find a monster guarding a horde of spells, and sometimes you'll come across a bazaar exchanging your gold or gems for any card you want.

There are little gems that you can collect during the game. These can be used to fuel WorldMagics or to exchange at bazaars. There is one WorldMagic for each color of gem (again, one of each color of Magic). As you advance through the game, you have the option to buy WorldMagics, and five of these use gems. For example, the most useful is the Sword of Resistance. Once you have it, you have use a white gem to teleport ourself to a city that is being sieged by a wizard's servant before it is captured. You want this one as fast as possible.

Other WorldMagics are more or less useful. The Amulet of Swampwalk allows you to walk through swamps much more quickly, Sleight of Hand allows you to switch your ante with a random new ante at the beginning of a match, and so forth.

You can eventually delve into dungeons. The dungeons will have a permanent enchantment in play. In these dungeons are very rare and unique cards, like a Mox or a Black Lotus. These cards will amp up the power of your deck significantly.

Expansions to the game added new cards from the earlist Magic sets, so you'd have new strategies.

One of the interesting things the designers did was to design twelve new Magic cards called the Astral Set that used some form of randomizing agent. For example, Rainbow Knights had protection from a random color (out of the five possibilities).

Eventually you would be ready to tackle a wizard overlord in his own castle. Once you defeated him, all creatures of that color disappeared from the overland map. Defeat all five of the evil wizards, and you have to tackle the mega, super, ultra bad guy, who begisn the game with 500 life.

I loved the game, but it suffered from one major flaw. Here is a duel:



The flaw was in duels. The AI sometimes made boneheaded decisions, and couldn't handle some cards (Mishra's Factory and Strip Mine are examples) correctly. As a result, you could cheese wins that shouldn't have been so easy.

If this flaw was not in the game, and the AI was good, I'd give the game my top spot. As it is, the game is still challenging because of low life, an abhorrent starting deck, losing cards in ante, and so forth. However, the AI is so poor that you will really begin to notice.

If you doubt this game's worthiness to be here, let me share a recent story with you. I have a friend who loved Morrowind and was dying to play Oblivion. He got Oblivion and was playing it. He loved it. Then, when he was over at my place, I showed him Shandalar. He went home, downloaded it, and got so addicted that he stopped playing Oblivion completely until he finished Shandalar. That's how good Shandalar is.

Just so you know.

-Anxiety

[Izulde]

Shandalar *was* a good game, but the ungodly low amount of life made duels a real pain in the rear for me.

[Grammaticus]

Blah, I'm not a magic fan at all.

[ISiddiqui]

Also, interestingly, the "Magic: The Gathering" computer game was designed by none other than Sid Meier:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/sidlegacy/gather.html

[Groundhog]

Yeah, I have zilch interest in Magic or any other game involving cards. Just not my cup of tea.

[Buccaneer]

This is a cool idea, I really like the screenshots and writeups. Of course I have to disagree with some of them. As much as I was a huge fan of Microprose, I could not understand why Colonization proved to be a hit - esp. when the far superior Interplay's Conquest of the New World hit about the same time. CotNW had much better graphics (Colonization looked like something from the mid-80s while CotNW had very similar improvement graphics that you see in Civ4 - and that was 10 years ago!). CotNW had one of the best SP, turn-based combat ever - even better than Civ4's combat (although a little different in scope). But Colonization had Sid's name on it.

As usual, I agree with Imran about Civ and EU. As much as I tried to like that and get up some interest here for that game when it came out, it didn't take long to realize that there were some elements that were poorly implemented (trade, combat, naval and the whole system of improvements/research). It did implement some things very well (diplomacy, religion if I recall) but there always have been the debate of whether you accepted their way of implementing these things and whether you thought the good outweighed the bad.

I also understand paying homage to the original in picking Civ1. Civ2 was a better game in every single way and Civ4 (once they get going on true scenarios) will likely surpass even that. Having said that, I would have been consistent in picking SimCity over SimCity4.

[Abe Sargent]

Time for number six. After this, we have only the top five to go. Incidentally, this is the last MicroProse game to chart.

6. Master of Magic
MicroProse
1994
PC
GameSpot Review - 9.4 *
4x

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_magic




Master of Magic was, to me, the pinnacle of Civ-clones. To my mind, no Civ game has ever been as good for its time as Master of Magic was. Why am I so smitten by MoM?

First of all, Master of Magic is a Civ clone in a traditional sense, but you choose a magical race instead of a nationality. Each race has their own units, buildings, bonuses and penalties. Things that typically change from race to race include what building a race can build in a city, growth rate, soldier types, and more.

Like I said, a Civ clone in some sense:



You see, each race had their own, individual units. Only orcs had wyvern riders, for example.

You would build a city, grow it, send out new settlers, make army units, build a nice army, and have a lot of fun with the Civ aspect of the game.

Of course, the units here were much more detailed than Civ. They had the old veteran, rookie, type ratings for their combat, sure, but they also had abilities. Some units flew, others were faster or slower, some had a ranged attacks or immunities, and a few cast spells.

However, an adjunct to all of this strategy was the magic side of the game. You researched new spells, and could cast them. You needed mana, which you could get from cities or from magical nodes of energy located throughout the world. Tapping into a node yielded a sizable bump in mana each turn.

You then channeled your mana and cast various spells. The most common spell was a summoning spell, which would create a unit you could add to your armies. The Civ strategy gave you normal units, like the aforementioned Wyvern Riders, and they were paid with gold and upkept with food, like all units. Summoned creatures instead relied on a regular amount of mana, and cost you mana per turn.

Yet another type of unit was the hero. This represented one individual who gained signifcantly in skills and abilities with experience, and in fact, leveled sort of like an RPG.

The best army often combined good regular units with good heroes and good summoned units.

Nothing better than casting a spell.



In magic, you could also enchance current units, create artifacts for your heros to carry and enhance their powers, cast enchantments on your land, and of course, cast spells in battle.

You could cast a spell in battle. Sometimes, you want to heal one of your guys, and you can. Or, you may want to protect or enhance your guys, and you can. You can even attack opposing figures.

There is one world, with ruins, lairs, temples, towers and more to explore. In these places your find gold and artifacts. There is also another world, another plane of existance, where other players are playing and building armies.

This adds an entire dimension to the game (Figuratively as well as literally.) You have a new front to explore and use. Some units can cross the boundaries between planes and make amazing flanking units. You can also study spells that do the same. There are places on the map that are also crossing spaces.

You can win by defeating all of your wizard foes or casting the ultimate spell of winningness (it's called something but I forget the title).

Of course, there's diplomacy with other wizards, combat with both random units and other foes, and more.

Like Master of Orion, there are various options that you can choose at the beginning of the game to select your own wizard. Or, you can choose one of the pregenerated wizards.

Wizards can have abilities, just like Master of Orion. However, as a neat little spin, wizards also have to purchase access to schools of magic. There are five different schools of magic, from nature to chaos to death and life and sorcery. Chaos will give you a alot of attack spells and death will give you some, but no healing. Nature and life have healing spells but no attack spells (actually, I think Nature may have one), sorcery has phantasmal monsters that can be summoned in combat and counter magic, and so forth.

Not only do you purchase access to a school of magic, but you also spend points to determine how strong your access is. The stronger your access the more and better spells you will have available to research.

This adds an amazing replayable element to the game. You have races with different abilities, you can start on one of two planes, and you can choose which magic(s) you want along with various abilities. Then, when you start playing, you can focus on developing magical strength or traditional strength.

It is, frankly, the best product MicroProse distributed (made by SimTex) and one of the best games I've ever played.

-Anxiety

[Peregrine]

Excellent choice, I still break out MoM a couple times a year to mess around with it, just a great game.

[Daimyo]

Wow, I never knew the M:tG game had all that other stuff in it... Ill have to look for it now (underdogs?). I was a huge fan of the CCG back then and I remember playing the demo (I think you could use the white deck to play against five other preset decks) and the computer AI was so terrible in the duels that I never even bothered to look at the game after that. Guess I missed out!

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Excellent choice, I still break out MoM a couple times a year to mess around with it, just a great game.

"

[Marc Vaughan]

Definitely agree with Master of Magic - loved that game

[Havok]

MoM rocks hard

[Eaglesfan27]

MoM is a great choice.

[Abe Sargent]

It time for the first game in the top five games ever made, and it finishes a three game mini-theme in games 7, 6, and 5. This is also the highest charting console game, and you would never have guessed the console.

5. Culdcept
Omiya Software
1997
Saturn
GameSpot Review - None for DC version, 7.9 for later PS2 port.
Strategy - Card Game




The PS2 port was rated lower than it might otherwise had been because it was several years old and desiged for a system with worse graphics. However, you have to be surprised to see a Saturn game make my list (a later verion was on Dreamcast), and even more suprised to see it hit this highly.

The pics will be from the PS2 port, which combined the original Culdcept game with an expansion disc into one game.

Culdcept is the perfect blending of two distinct genres in one game: Monopoly and Magic.

In Culdcept, you move around a board with a variety of spaces. Some spaces have rules attached, and some are of four different elements - Air, Fire, Water and Earth. You can "capture" a vacant spece by summoning a creature to guard it. Then, if you land on someone's space, you either have to pay a toll, or summon your own cretaure to fight their guardian. Defeat their guardian, and you take the space. Lose, and you still have to pay the toll.

Here's a look at one of the maps:



Later maps, including this one, have new spaces. This map has vacant spaces that are elementless. Some have spaces that are all four colors.

Cards are divided into three types. Creatures, items, and spells. At the beginning of your turn, you can cast any spell you want. Some make mana, some affect the dice roll, some affect creatures, some affect the board, some affect players, and a few affect other things, like symbol value and such.

After playing a spell or not, you then roll the dice and move. After moving you can take one territory command or summon a creature to either capture or attack the space you are on, if it is capturable.

Here is a player about to summon a Spitting Cobra:



The currency of the game is mana. You gain mana when you make a circuit of the board, like passing Go in Monopoly. There are also various magical effects you can have that gain you mana, and you get mana from tolls. You need mana to summon monsters and to play the other cards in your hand. You also need mana to activate most of the various terrain commands (explained later).

The game is also a collectible card game, like Magic. There game comes with cards that are common, uncommon and rare. You will get cards after playing a game, no matter whether you win or lose, but you'll get more and rare cards the better you do. This is a permanent benefit to playing the game.

Before the game, you build a deck and then as the game progresses, you draw cards from your deck. Each campaign is different as your deck evolves in different ways.

Each creature has one of the four elements, or is neutral. A Centaur Archer, for example, is a desert creature. If a creature is summoned to guard a land of its own element, it will get a HP bonus equal to ten times the level of the land.

You have mana, but you also have a net worth. This is the value of all of your holdings, plus your available mana. When your net worth goes above a certain amount, you win the game.

One way to increase net worth is to take a space. Taking a space allows you to own land. That incrases your net worth. If you gain a second spalce of the same element, then you have a chain. Each space is now worth a little more than they would be worth individually. If you get another space of that element, your chain will get bigger, and the individual value increases even more. Therefore, one of the keys of the game is to get chains, much like getting all of the properties of the same color increase the value in Monopoly, only more conplex.

Any time you pass a space you own, you can take a territory action with that space as your action for the turn. Most of these cost mana. You can change the element of the terrain to another element. You can switch monsters with one from your hand, you can move a creature one space adjacent, you can use any territory ability the creature has, or you can level up the land.

Levelling up land is like buying hotels and houses in Monopoly. The charge in mana for landing on one of these gets increasingly higher. It also protects a creature of the same element more. However, it is a risky move, because if the space is taken from you, it can be a major swing in net worth.

Changing elements is useful to force chains. Switching monsters can give you a more defensive creature to guard the space. Moving, which is free, can move the creature to a better space or begin a conflict with whoever is already in teh space you moved to.

Lastly, some creatures have a territory command, like Fate. Whenever you pass Fate, for your action, you can spend 40 mana to draw a card. The Spitting Cobra pic above shows a creature with a territory ability.

Another way to increse net worth is with symbols, which are like stock. You can buy symbols in one of the four colors, and as land is leveled and chains are made, the value of that symbol increases. When that happens, your net worth increases. However, if a land is easily divded between players, lacks development and sees creatures die, value will barely rise, or hold steady, or possibly even plummet. Therefore, a concerted effort is often placed in ruining an opponent's symbols.

Okay, let's take a look at a creature. This is a Shell Creeper:



You can tell it is a water creature from the blue border and the blue symbol to the right of its name. The N in the upper right corner means that it is a common creature (N stands for normal).

The creature has hit points and attack. In this case, a 20 attack and 30 hp.
As a creature takes damage, their HP drops but their MaxHP is still displayed. The G is the mana used (there's another word for it, but I can't remember).

The item limit tell you what items this creature cannot use. Here, you can see that our turtle friend is unable to use scrolls.

He also has a special ability. All attacks on him from air or fire monsters are neutralized. This makes him a good attacker into one of those guys with first attack (explained below) or a good defender against those two element types.

Lots of creatures have abilities. Normally, the attacker attacks first then if the defender survived, it attacks back. However, creatures with first attack get the first hit on defense, unless the attacks also has first attack, in which normal battle progression occurs. There are other abilites. Support allows you to use a creature as an item, for example.

You can then use one item. Some pump defense, some pump offense, some give various abilities, some prevent damage, and quite a few do odd, eccentric things. For example, a lucky coin will give you some mana after combat if your creature survives.

Once two creatures attack, a little animation shows each card, and various animations based on the attack type will attack the cards. Here's a battle animation:



The hobgoblin on the left is in the process of clubbing the Cyclops on the right. The Cyclops will kill the hobgoblin on the return attack, but he will have lost HP. HP are restored slowly over time or through spells.

If neither creatures kills the other in one attack, the battle is over. The summoned or moved creatures returns, all items are used, no territory changes hands, and any tolls still need to be paid.

Some powerful monsters require that you already have land of the appropriate type to summon them, in addition to any mana. This means they aren't getting summoned in the early game. Some powerful creatures, spells, and items require you to discard a card in addition to paying any costs. Super powerful creatures combine these things. You have to balance power with cost. You often want cheap creatures and cheap cards justas much as you want uber-powerful cretures and cards.

As a multiplayer game, Culdcept is the best non-GameCube party games I know. Women and men love Culdcept, and we played a lot for months. Everybody starts with a solid deck, and can build it from there as they gain new cards. You can also trade cards to people in a multiplayer trading room, so a player with a ton of cards can give a few to a newb to round out the newbs decks.

Culdcept has a campaign with tons of maps to fight on. Afterwards, you can do a variety of challenges to unlock maps and extra rare cards for your character.

There are two negatives to Culdcept. First of all, although it doesn't happen regularly, occasionally you'll run into a smattering of Engrish on a card and wonder what it does. (Like Nymph or Lilith).

Secondly, the graphics are a bit dated, although I excuse that knowing its age and the system it was meant for. However, the art on the cards is very beautiful, and makes up for the poor graphics.

Many players don't like collectible card games because they don't want to drop all of that money on packs of cards. Every card in Culdcept is in the game, and you always get cards by playing, but you can also get them through trading and even get a few extra rare (Unique for each player) cards in the campaign and later in the challenges.

I hope you can see why I love Culdcept. The meshing of two distinct genres in one game is simply, magical, and it combines together very well. Gamespy even had it in its top ten games of the year.

-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

I believe that the the top four games on my list are a tier above ebery other game, but that they are all in the argument for my number one game, and I consider it a close race. At different points in in, 1, 2, and 4 have all been in my number one spot and 3 could have been. These games are immense, detailed, intricate, complex, open-ended, and tons of fun.


I wonder what they are?




-Anxiety

[Izulde]

Wow, that was unexpected.

I tried Culdcept back in the day and really wanted to like it, but just couldn't. Maybe I'll give it another crack.

[Peregrine]

Wow, definitely not what I was expecting for the top 5, I remember one friend said it was decent but that was about it.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

I believe that the the top four games on my list are a tier above ebery other game, but that they are all in the argument for my number one game, and I consider it a close race. At different points in in, 1, 2, and 4 have all been in my number one spot and 3 could have been. These games are immense, detailed, intricate, complex, open-ended, and tons of fun.


I wonder what they are?

Well at one point I was considering guessing, but after the total surprise (to me anyway) at #5, maybe I'd be way off.

[Toddzilla]

What? No Cross-Country USA?

[Eaglesfan27]

Count me among those who tried Culdcept, and never really liked it. It was ok, but not one of my top 25 or 30.

Then again, I'm not a fan of Magic: The Gathering either.

[Warhammer]

I agree with most of these picks, but I do have a few comments to make. First, instead of singling out Angbad, I would have specified Rogue-likes. There are a significant number of them out there, and it is hard to single out any single one as the definitive one.

Second, MoM should have been in the top 5. The only problem that game had was the AI.

Third, my wife is pissed at me since I had to go back and replay Starcon 2. My son has loved me because we have played SuperMelee head to head every night since I downloaded UQM.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Great job with this. I'm enjoying it.

This will make a nice resource when I'm looking for something new to play. I love retro gaming, and our tastes seem to run along similar lines. I'm looking forward to trying out some of these games that I've never gotten around to.

It's really hard to read this and not want to make a list of your own.

Some thoughts on the games you've mentioned...

Colonization
I had the Mac version and have never been so disappointed or pissed at a game in my life. The port from the PC was so horribly done that the game was essentially unplayable on the Mac. I downloaded the game for the PC a few years ago but never got around to playing it much. I'll have to go back and give it a shot.

Monster Rancher
I really enjoy this series, but haven't played much since playing Monster Rancher 2 on the GBA. I picked up Monster Rancher 5 (import version) for the PS2 recently when I was in Japan, but it was in a discount bin for about $8, so I have a feeling the latest version is not the series' best effort. I wish I grabbed MR3 or MR4 while I was there.

Magic the Gathering
I really liked this game but played it on a computer that could barely handle it. Like about a hundred other games, it's on my list of "games to get back to" now that I've got a better computer that can run it. Reading this makes me want to give it a try.

In any case, great stuff! Looking forward to reading about your last four favorites.

[cubboyroy1826]

Anyone have a link to download the Magic:Shandalar other than the demo?

[Abe Sargent]

Thanks guys!

[Eaglesfan27]

I've been putting out a few slightly negative comments in so far that I haven't agreed with some of the picks, but I just wanted to add to the many compliments about the write-ups. While I have some disagreements with the actual ranking of games, the style and substance of the write-ups is top notch. Good job, and I look forward to seeing more of the top 5.

[Abe Sargent]

I had intended to write this up last night but board slowdown resulted in me spenind 30-40 minutes more running my Werewolf game than I would have done otherwise. I have a break right now, though, so I am ready for the first game of the final four. The top echelon, in my opinion, of all video games, ever.

4. Crusader Kings
Paradox
2004
PC
GameSpot review - 8.2
Strategy

GamersGate - Buy and download games now!




Three gaming companies have multiple games on the list. 3DO and New World Computing had two games in their franchises chart. At times, it might have seemed like half the list was MicroProse. (Master of Orion II, Master of Magic, Shandalar, Civ, X-Com and Colonization for a total of 6 games), and now Paradox scores with EU2 and CK.

If EU2 ruined my experience with traditional turn based strategies, CK buried it deep underground where is may never be found save by archeologists years in the future.

When I first wrote this list, CK was in the top spot. After some consideration, I dropped it to four, because I do think that this game is the most flawed of the highest tiered games. However, there are some things about CK that no other game on this list can touch.

First of all, I have played some complex games. Space Empires IV, Monster Rancher 3, text based sims, and more. Tons of complex games over the years have been in my console systems and in my PC.

What I am about to say may shock you at first, but I want you to consider it:

Crusader Kings is the most complex video game I have ever played.

It seems to me that the gaming paradigm has switched. Now console games are intricate while PC games are built around The Sims and 50,000 tycoons, little java games, and other games designed to fill time at work or on a plane. Where once PC games were complex and detailed, now console systems are, but PC games seem to be getting simpler.

Breaking through all of that is Crusader Kings. Crusader Kings seems to the be evolution of what computer gaming is all about. It is the pinnacle of a classic strategy game. In fact, CK is the highest charting strategy game in my countdown. No game has ever been as good.

Crusader Kings is similar to EU2 in many respects. It was designed by the same company, it has many of the same principles. Crusader Kings is to Europa Universalis 2 as Master of Magic is to Civilization. Both games came afterwards and added a ton of new features and ideas to the formula.

Here are some things CK has:

A living, breathing dynasty. It's a little small, though.



You have uncles, aunts, brothers, parents, children, distant cousins, and a spouse or three. You choose who to marry in England, assuming the monarch of that country agrees. You can look at dynasties and try to find one that is vulnerable. Then you marry into it, assassinate an heir or two, and now your grandson is the heir.

If you die without a direct descendant as your heir, its game over.

You can also bring in new blood for your line, including better stats for your rulers and advisors. The basic states are martial, stewarship, intrigue and diplomacy. You rule can have an advisor in each of these field which will add the advisors stat to his own.

Controlling your dynasty is a very important part of CK, just as it was in those times. This adds a new element to the classic strategic forumula. Conquering, not by diplomacy nor by war, but dynastically.

Of course, war and diplomacy are also available to you, similary to EU2. CK kept the best stuff from EU2, like the badboy rating that prevents you from attacking and annexing land haphazardly. Other things they kept was the tech development system and the four classes that you have to balance.

Another addition is the use of policies. For example, there are several different heritage policies, and the one you use will determine your heir. Another set of policies, for example, is how you treat the church. Are you sovreign, is the church sovreign, do you try to equal it out. This will determine things like who chooses bishops - the pope or you?

The concept of desmesne is taken very seriously here. Based on factors such as your intrigue rating, you can only directly rule a small number of lands. After that, you have to give them away to dukes or counts. If you are a Duke, you can have counts who rule provinces nad report directly to you. If you are a King, you can have both dukes and counts report directly to you.

There are no standing armies. Instead, you have to raise an army from one of your provinces. These armies have a set number of units based on the relative power of the four economic classes, based in large part on various policies you set.

You can build up your provinces as you gain technology. However, you can only do this with the provinces in your direct desmesne. Your vassals will have to choose when and what to build on their own. The games suimulates this very well. Give a vassal a gift of 100 ducats and you might immediately see that vassal start a project in his province. On the other hand, some vassals just hoard their money and won't start anything at all.

Vassals have loyalty to their monarch, and that changes over time either positively or negatively based on several factors. Prestige of the monarch, similarly of the monarch and the vassal when it comes to personalties, intrigue or diplomacy ability of the monarch (I forget which), and more.

Everybody has various personalty traits. All traits have some game effects. People have educational traits, like Martial Scholar or Poor Diplomat. These reflect how well the person learned their trade. Then they have various personalities like ruthless, generous, cruel, chaste, and more. Many have both positive and negative benefits, and many will add or subtract to a character's score.

Using these personalties, you can see which vassals are more likely to get along than others. A generous king will get along more with his generous duke. A duke who is not generous won't have such an attachment, while a greedy Duke will have problems with the king (many personality traits have opposites).

The problem is that if you do thigs like strip someone of their title just because they don't like you and their loyalty is dropping over time, your other vassals are not going to be pleased, and their loyality will suffer an immediate hit. Plus, if the vassal refuses to give up their title, you may have to go to war with your own vassal in order to get your land in the hands of someone more loyal. Then, when you die, and your son takes over with a different set of personality traits, the loyalty of your vassals change. This creates serious tension in your family.

This is a much more open ended game than EU2. As you raise your children, you get options that might give them various traits. All events in CK are random, whereas EU2 had random events and set events to show the historical struggles of a country.

If you are a count, you can claim a Duke title once you've gobbled up enough lands in a historically accurate duchy. Once your are a Duke, you can claim a historical Kingdom with enough provinces.

You can also begin as a vassal of a Duke or King. There are literally hundreds of counties, duchies and kingdoms for you to start with.

Your ruler has a piety and prestige rating. Some diplomatic actions take prestige, like "discovering" an ancient claim to a land, so you can capture land. Piety will increase or decrease based on traits, how much the ruler is donating every month to the local church, and various policies.

The map is very detailed, and I love it:



Compare, for example, to other games. In Medieval: TW, Ireland is one prevince. In the Viking expansion that focuses on just the British Isles, Ireland is only five provinces.

In CK, which is focused on all of Europe, there are 13. Combine the sheer size of the map with the difficulty of taking land, and you have an amazingly tough time.


One of the only complaints I have against the game is that is does not have enough documentation. You have to figure out some things on your own, or consult people on forums. However, despite that, the difficulty, complexity, and sheer size of the game make this not only my fourth overall game of all time, but my top strategy game of all time as well.


-Anxiety

[Abe Sargent]

The screenshots for CK are too big, let me see if I can find anything a little smaller.


-Anxiety


EDIT: Okay, new pics are up.

[ISiddiqui]

Meh, that should have been considered in the EU series .

I believe that the the top four games on my list are a tier above ebery other game, but that they are all in the argument for my number one game, and I consider it a close race. At different points in in, 1, 2, and 4 have all been in my number one spot and 3 could have been. These games are immense, detailed, intricate, complex, open-ended, and tons of fun.


I wonder what they are?

Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas?!

Though, actually my second favorite game of all time was the GTA3 series.

[King of New York]

Cool thread.

Now, a good-natured rant: CK over EU II? EU II covers the whole globe, and CK is hampered by court management issues: after a couple of generations, your court has about sixty people in it, and there is no search filter! In fact, I would put HOI II above both CK and EU II, although maybe that will be in your top four.

I am guessing that CM/FM will be in the top four, and perhaps number one.

What about Eastside Hockey Manager? Dominions II? I would put them in the top thirty, and Dominions II might even merit a top-five finish.

[rjolley]

Couldn't find the old post about the-underdogs.info, so I'll post here. Has anyone been able to download from that site?

[Eaglesfan27]

I love CK. Great choice