Abe's Top 30 Video Games of All Time

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by 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!

Maybe you need the most recent patch that really ckeeps courtesans down. I also libreally use the cheat/kill command to off useless courtesans.

-Anxiety

[Izulde]

A couple of small corrections to make in your CK review:

The number of provinces you can control as of the latest patch (1.05) is determined by your character's Intrigue rating, not Stewardship.

Also, the types of troops you get is largely dependant not so much on the power of the classes, but on what governing system you have. Hence, if you want a lot of knights, you use Feudal Contract as your law of rule.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by King of New York

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 certainly agree about the EU 2 part, I would have switched them in the list, and maybe dropped CK a few spots down from there, but this isn't my list, it's Anxiety's. I enjoy CK and think it has some very good ideas, particularly after the 1.05 patch. However, while it's a good game to document what one count or duke or kingdom could do in a historical vaccuum, I feel the weaknesses in the diplomacy and war systems make it very unhistorical. You routinely see countries completely collapse because of rebellious vassals, and of couse while there were many of those in history, seeing things like the entire Byzantine empire collapse in the first 50 years of a game really gives me pause. I also miss the events of EU2, I guess overall I want more of a connection to history than the game provides.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Izulde

A couple of small corrections to make in your CK review:

The number of provinces you can control as of the latest patch (1.05) is determined by your character's Intrigue rating, not Stewardship.

Also, the types of troops you get is largely dependant not so much on the power of the classes, but on what governing system you have. Hence, if you want a lot of knights, you use Feudal Contract as your law of rule.

That's where intrigue was, not replacing dip for vassal loyalty


See the game is so complex that a guy who had probaly put months into differne dynasties forgets thing!!!

[Abe Sargent]

I have a few minutes so let's do the number three game, and the one game from its genre on my list.

3. Ultima Online
Origin later EA
PC
1997
GameSpot Review - 4.9
MMORPG

Newsletter and Exciting News – Ultima Online




I think it's funny that my number three game had such a low review for UO. To be fair, UO shipped with bugs and they also didn't know what to expect from a mega-multiplayer game.

Ultima Online stands to me as one of the best mmorpgs of all time, plus arguably the first (some would claim LOTR is the first).

Let's look at some of the things UO did:

1. There were no classes, and no levels. Instead of a traditional RPG approach to the game, you simply have skills and a certain number of skill points you can put into them if you so desire. You raise a skill by using it, and skills are capped at 100 points (this has since changed a bit). This was amazingly inventive, and later competitors could not touch UO in this area.

2. UO was happy to support non-combatitive skills. Sure, you can RPG as warrior, or an archer, or a tamer or a bard if you want, but there were other skills as well. There were skills that really appeared in RPGs for the first time: Carpentry and fishing and tinkering. You raised these like you did combat skills - with practice. You made lots of weapons and armor to raise blacksmithing, and made lots of maps for cartography. This was also super realistic, and no competitor added this to this game for years.

3. UO allowed you to buy a house deed, and set it down. You could store stuff in your house and decorate it however you wanted. Lots of items were designed to be used in houses, like almost everything a carpenter could make.

In a traditional RPG, if it included carpentry, you probably made wooden weapons and armor. Here, you could make tables, chairs, bookshelves, stools, and more.

A later expansion set allowed houses to be customizable, so you could really build whatever you wanted with your house.

To this day, no other RPG has duplicated the UO housing system.

The game also had traditional RPG elements in it. Here people are fighting lizardmen.



You have traditional skills that help you to fight, cast spells, enchance your fighting, your spellcasting, and so forth. For example, my first character had:

Sword-fighting, which allowed him to use a sword,
Parrying which allowed him to effectively fight with a shield,
Healing to use bandages to heal himself
Anatomy which increased melee damage and amount healed with bandages
Tactics which increased damage dealt
And a smattering of magery and hiding.


The world was immense. It was the largest gameworld ever seen when it was released, chock full of ruins, caves, dungeons, cities, islands, temples, shrines, graveyards, and a lot more. There's a lot of history in Britannia.

Here a couple of guys are dominating a small sandstone ruin in the jungle.




Some of the things the game allowed people complained about, and resulted partly in the lower score by GameSpot. Origins thought it would be a selling point, but instead, these things sent people away. They were looking for a traditional RPG in an mmorpg, and it hurt the game. What are these things?

A. People could steal stuff from you. There were ways to protect yourself, but was a chance someone would snoop your backpack and then steal an item. A lot of players like to keep a hold of the things they acquired.

B. People could attack you out in the wild away from towns. They might even kill you. Sure, there were penalties for this, but a developed character may not have cared as much. Again, people liked knowing that they weren't going to be attacked.

C. People could loot your corpse. When you died you has to get ressed and then get back to your corpse before it decayed. In the meantime, people could loot your corpse and take what they found. Once again, people don;t like losing their stuff.


In a normal RPG, you'd just reload a save if you died, and there'd be no players to attack you and the stealing AI wouldn't be as good as another player so you'd be able to handle it.

What game developers learned from UO was that people don't like losing their things or being attacked unless they want to. Even UO would ultimately patch to no PVP servers and permissive PVP servers where you had to belong to a faction.

It was the right idea, but it was too revolutionary. Another great idea was the concept of a living economy. But some regs from a mage in town and the next time someone wants to buy regs, the price goes up. If there is a long time before anybody buys regs, then the price drops, with an absolute floor.

It was great for controlling the economy, but again, players didn't like this. UO got rid of it, and over time, the economy went bust, in part because of this.

Power creep was introduced to the game with expansions as well. More powerful monsters, more powerful items, higher skills allowed, more powerful monsters, no individual stat cap, artifacts introduced, even more powerful monsters - etc.

However, the game has several constants still. It has a very dedicated group of players that still play UO to this day. Although it was first, UO has seen many Mega-Multiplayer games come and go, but it is still around.

In addition to amazing ideas and advancing RPGs years and founding a new genre with its release, UO is also a damn fun game, and one that is even easier to play today than it was almost 10 years ago.

-Anxiety

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

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)

Probably a top 5 in my book. That was the best game on the C64 next to Hardball, 4th and Inches, and Stealth Fighter.

Not a mention of any FPS game yet or Tecmo Bowl?

[Abe Sargent]

Half Life is an FPS

[Peregrine]

Good choice with UO, definitly an underrated game. I got on the MMORPG train a bit too late to play it more than a little, but my DAOC clan had moved over from there and was always talking about how good it was. Ah, the good old days.

[Swaggs]

Just caught up on this one.

Good stuff.

Makes me long for the high school and college days, when I had time to play an RPG for like 15 hours a day.

[Ironhead]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Half Life is an FPS

I think he might mean Front Page Sports.

[Abe Sargent]

Ah, I see.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Makes me long for the high school and college days, when I had time to play an RPG for like 15 hours a day.

Tell me about it. I miss the days where I'd get up at 7, go to school, get home at 4, play Baldurs Gate until 1am, sleep, and then repeat the cycle once again...

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Ironhead

I think he might mean Front Page Sports.

Yes, sorry. .. I'm more of a sports junkie.. but there are some golden games in this thread for sure.

[Havok]

GREAT choice with UO.

Before it got taken over by carebears, UO was the best PvP game ever. People are to dam lazy in MMORPG'S. They want nice shiny loot and they wanna kill big mean computer controlled dragons.

Old school UO there was actual FEAR when you left town. Fear that at any second some PvP'er could come along and nail you. I do admit that there were quite a few griefers and they sucked. But nothing felt better when you finally got a nice sized crew together, then went and took out those griefers. Nothing you do in modern day MMORPG's comes close to that feeling.

What a game! after it turned into blue'be land, i went and played on quite a few player run shards. In fact there is a dam big one still out there that is awsome. I forget the dam name though, last i checked they had an average of like 400 people on line at a time. Its very PvP based but mostly in factions. Good fun

great pick bro, UO is a top 5 for me aswell.

[Abe Sargent]

I'm feeling industrious since I'm nearing the end of my list. Next up is number two, and being my Second Favorite Game of All Time is Something. One caveat, I have no played the sequel yet, because I don't have a DVD-ROM. As soon as I get one, I intend to play the sequal for years on end until I have squeezed every last drop of flavor out of the game. Until then, my second favorite game is...

2. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Bethesda
PC
2002
GameSpot Review - 8.7
RPG



The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition on Steam





Flavorful.
Sprawling.
Labyrinthine.
Realistic.
Haunting.
Breathtaking.

Beautiful:
























Words are simply not sufficient to express the beauty, awe, and grandeur of Morrowind. Can a review be told with just pictures?


-Anxiety

[Peregrine]

Yep, this is top 3 material for me as well. Oblivion is also good, though in different ways. I feel that the mods are just starting to bring it up to a good level though, so it's probably a good thing you didn't play from the start.

[Abe Sargent]

Im trying to find smaller pics for the Morrowind pic sequence

[Swaggs]

Anyone have guesses as to #1?

I'm thinking it has to be a Wizardry or Warcraft.

[thealmighty]

Morrowind > Oblivion, imho.

[saldana]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Anyone have guesses as to #1?

I'm thinking it has to be a Wizardry or Warcraft.

wizardry 8 is one of my all time favorites, so i could easily see that, but while reading this thread i of course started working on my own list in my head, and i keep coming back to StarCraft.

[saldana]

dola, if it werent for the fact that we know its a pc game, i could also have voted for Metroid.

[Abe Sargent]

I hope you guys don't mind the different style of review. I could talk at lentgth about how Morrowind in the spiritual successor to Might and Magic with a huge world, tons of things to do, scads of temples, ruins, burial mounds, caves, and mines that you never are asked to go to, but you can wander in if you'd like, and more.

However, I think Morrowind is the computer game closest to being a piece of modern art. Therefore, I felt a different style of review was in line.

[Grammaticus]

I had been wondering if Fallout would be in there. Doubt it is number one, though. No idea, a few of the top 5 have come out of nowhere.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by Grammaticus

I had been wondering if Fallout would be in there. Doubt it is number one, though. No idea, a few of the top 5 have come out of nowhere.

No kidding (sorry, Anxiety, I won't bring the GD discussion here... promise!) .

If we are limiting to PC games, I think something like Fallout or Planescape: Torment or System Shock 2 or Doom or Grand Theft Auto 3 could fit in here.

[Peregrine]

Well some of my top 10 that haven't been named are Fallout, Planescape: Torment, and System Shock 2. Will be interesting to see what is #1.

edit - Heh, just read the post above, at least we're on the same track!

[Raven Hawk]

One word:










PONG!

[Groundhog]

Commander Keen.

[condors]

#1 i am guessing is football manager 2005 or championship manager 3 but i also don't see how wizardry, fallout, bards tale and dominions 2 are not on the list. If rts is factor than starcraft could be #1.

Its been a great read though

[Peregrine]

This has really made me think, it would be an interesting project to try to identify the top 30 games among FOFC in general. I guess you'd have to do something like compile a giant list of games, then have people pick their favorite 30 of them and compile the results. Might be interesting though.

[Havok]

another great pick at number 2..... but i just bought Oblivion last week and i gotta say it's better then Morrowind in my mind. I enjoyed MW alot and i thought it was 1 hell of a game. But Oblivion is blowing me away. The graphics are jaw dropping, the shear size of the game is amazing, the combat is actually challenging(unlike MW), you don't spend hours just running from place to place and EVERYONE actually talks!!

great game!

[spleen1015]

I think the top spot goes to one of the GTA3 triology games.

[Mustang]

Lot's of games I can think of. These - Fallout, Command & Conquer, Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, Pirates, Elite.. probably would have made my list.

[Buccaneer]

Oh no, Morrowind is #2. Well, it is your list for I hated that game. I thought it was a very ugly, barren world. Cool lighting and water effects though.

[vtbub]

I'm surprised that none of the cm/fm series made your top 30.

Wow did that get stuck in a loop? It posted that 15 times.

[Abe Sargent]

Time to write up the pinnacle of games, the tip of the top, cream of the crop, Mary Poppins and there we stop game. The top game is one that will be familiar to many of you. Wondering what it is? Well wonder no more.

1. Football Manager 2006
Sports Interactive
PC
2005
GameSpot Review - None (2k5 received 8.6)



Why do I like this game, and I did I choose it as my top game?

To me, FM is pretty much the ideal game in many ways. Although it is tremendously intricate, like the other top games, it does not suffer from a lack of documentation. Instead, the manual and guides you can download from SI's site are very good at telling you what the game is about.

The game's difficulty is modular. If you don't want to do training, you don't have to. If you don't want to worry about your lower squads, you don't have to. Your Assistant Manager will take up a lot of slack for you.

On the other hand, if you want to get yoru hands dirty, no game will let you do as much under the hood as FM. The sheer number of leagues, teams, coaches, players, scouts and unemployed will stagger a mule.

The tactics are just incredibly deep. Note that the pic is from the XBox version of the game because those pics are smaller.




I know that some people prefer the quick sim of FOF to the slower speed of FM. However, that does not deny the greatness that is FM.

I didn't even like soccer when I started playing FM. When I played the game, I was not only learning a new video game, I was learning a sport as well. This past World Cup, I watched almost every game. I went from soccer scrub to soccer fan because of this game.

The depth of game really brings to life soccer management. When other sports sims often feel like accounting, FM feels like enmeshment. You feel like you are really involved in the game. Players have personalities, coaches have personalties, the media has a personality, your coaches have personalities, and you, of course, have a personality.

Are you going to tear into your third string keeper who just blabbed ot the press about not getting enough playing time? Are you going to encourage him? Or are you going to say enough is enough, time to cut him loose? SOme players react better to hardball, and some want to be encouraged, while others want praise in the press.

When you compliment another manager, some players like the professionalism while others dislike their manager praising other managers. Attack another manager and some players love it, becuase they think you're just like them, while others aren;t sure you should be lowering yourself.

You work hard to bring in a bright young star and watch after a couple of seasons as he dominates on the pitch, then demands to be transferred to a bigger club. When you decide to transfer him, other players get upset that you traded away this young star.

The game is frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. I won the Ukraine High League twice in a row and got third in the 2010 World Cup with Ukraine, but no team in a top European League would even sniff my jock as a manager.

On the other hand, I took Carlisle to the Championship, (which is the second highest league in England), and did poorly with the USA national side and a German club from their top league offered me a job.

Someone is working on a training schedule:



The beauty of the game is that you can play on so many levels. Once, I just laoded up a game and grabbed the Kenya National Side and worked hard and ultimately qualifed them for the World Cup where they proceeded to lose all three matches, but we were there.

The financial engine is realistic, with sponsorships and gate receipts against maintanence costs and payroll.

Different owners and board of directors also have different personalities, and you will learn to feel them oot and figure out what they want. Some want financial success while others want on the pitch success. Some want an aggressive acquisition of players.

There are so many things to determine when playing the game. When I pick a team, I look at stadium size, finances, expectations for the team, and other types of information. I really don'tcare about the players or staff, though.

Imagine all of the choices you have in FOF but multiplied by a factor of five, and you begin to see the detail in FM. In fact, I suspect that many of you will not even need to be convinced about the quality of FM, and that more than one person will read this post and think, "Yep, FM sure is a great game alright."

In the space created by the overlap of tremendous detail and sheer staggering size and the living, breathing organic life lies a game that some call FM. I call it the closest thing to perfection a video game has ever been.

-Anxiety

[vtbub]

D'oh

[Abe Sargent]

I love how you posted that AS I was writing up my top game

[Eaglesfan27]

Great pick for #1. I've gotten more time (and enjoyment) out of FM/CM than any other series of computer games, and most likely more than my next top two put together. I've literally put thousands (just over 2,000 hours - sheesh that is a year's worth of work almost) of gaming time into the FM series over the past several years.

[condors]

Just wondering if you have any thoughts on how games like fallout (thought it improved over wasteland),wizardry, earl weaver baseball, and dominons 2 didn't make the list? were they considered? I just wanted to hear your side of the story, overall i think you did a great job and i really enjoyed your thoughts even if i disagree with some of the choices (which is to be expected).

[spleen1015]

I'm surprised by the lack of GTA, although I don't see many games like it on your list. Have you played any of the GTA3 games?

[Lonnie]

Did you play Daggerfall at all? I think it actually came out before M&M VI and I believe it was the leader in the resurgence of RPGs. Like M&M VI the graphics were not great, but the game was very deep and wide open. Which you can see with Morrowind, the next step.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I'm surprised by the lack of GTA, although I don't see many games like it on your list. Have you played any of the GTA3 games?

I've played tons of games, hundreds and hundreds over the years. including them. I like them.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by condors

Just wondering if you have any thoughts on how games like fallout (thought it improved over wasteland),wizardry, earl weaver baseball, and dominons 2 didn't make the list? were they considered? I just wanted to hear your side of the story, overall i think you did a great job and i really enjoyed your thoughts even if i disagree with some of the choices (which is to be expected).

Fallout 2 is solid, but all of those games are in the Baldur's Gate engine of games, and therefore I consider the BG pick representative of the group. If I were to pick another game from that group, it'd be Fallout 2.

Wizardry? I can't select too many RPGs, there have to be other games M&MVI, UO, Morrowind, BG, Wasteland - there were a lot of RPGs selected.

[Bee]

Can't disagree with #1, but I also was expecting Wizardry and possibly Bard's Tale. And there's no such thing as too many RPGs.

[Abe Sargent]

Folks, if you have read up through all of my games, I want to give you great thanks. I wrote my reviews in a Word document first and there are sixty some odd pages of Word in my reviews, so I appreciate your dedication in reading.



Thanks all!!!


-Anxiety

[saldana]

what about starcraft or warcraft...without going back over the list, were there any RTS games...rise of nations, command and conquer...any and all of these would have some representation on my list....and i cant believe i forgot about diablo

[Izulde]

Thank you for the list, Anxiety.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by saldana

what about starcraft or warcraft...without going back over the list, were there any RTS games...rise of nations, command and conquer...any and all of these would have some representation on my list....and i cant believe i forgot about diablo

Diablo was represented by Angband. Diablo is just a dumbed down Angband with graphics.

If I chose a RTS, I'd have chosen Warcraft. I find the genre a bit to click happy for my tastes. I loved Warcraft III, thought Rise of Nations was very overrated, still enjoy the original C&C and Starcraft is probably the best of the group.

-Anxiety

[tanglewood]

My Top 10 of all time:

1. Half-Life

One of the few games that I just absolutely loved every minute of, even the alien world levels. I still remember the shock of training when you use pistols and the SMG thinking "Wow, I'm using real guns!", since every other FPS of the time had corny portable rocket launchers and nailguns and sci-fi laser blasters and whatnot. I have replayed this so many times it's crazy. Even today it's still for my money the best FPS ever, the only one even coming close being it's own sequel.

2. Championship Manager 96/97

This is the one that started it all for me. I remember I became hooked when I had led my Man Utd side (hey, gotta start easy) to the League Cup final on the day of the actual League Cup final, thinking "Wow, what a neat coincidence", then continuing to play on in the game and ignore the actual match that afternoon! Even though there wasn't a 2d match screen and players didn't really have a personallity and you didn't talk to the media and so on it didn't matter then. Plus it ran like a rocket even on my old P90.

3. Civ 2

The actual game itself was fantastic, but it was the ingenious mod community that really made Civ 2 stand out for me. The number of absolutely fantastic scenarios created by some really talented guys using the most creative workarounds on a rapidly ageing engine just amazed me. I think that since Civ 3 and Civ 4 became so complicated they've lost a bit of the simplicity that made Civ 2 so easy to edit, and thus the scenarios now need huge teams of modelers and coders and so on. Back in the day, one guy took about 2 months to create a masterpiece and I miss that.

4. Deus Ex

Since you don't really 'complete' Civ or CM/FM, this game vies with HaldLife for my most completed game, and it's damn close between them. The whole RPG/FPS hybrid had been done before a few times (System Shock) but never so superbly and with such a brilliant storyline. The illusion of freedom and choice (yes it was an illusion, but you don't care at the time) in this is quite brilliant and was far ahead of its time. If I had the funds to make one game into a film, I would chose Deus Ex hands down, the only worry being that Hollywood would simply mash the nuances and subtleties of the game into some technobabble Schwartznegger disaster. So infact I wouldn't suggest Deus Ex at all and instead point them in the way of Jazz Jackrabbit or something.


5. Tie Fighter

Even though Deus Ex is the most cinematic game expereince I have ever played, I think that Tie Fighter has the best atmosphere ever in a game. I mean come on, when we all watched the Star Wars trilogy we all secretly wanted to be the bad guys. But Tie Fighter doesn't make you a bad guy, you are the good guys! The way it paints an image of an Empire striving for order and peace and elimation of corruption is simply magnificent. But it wouldn't hold up if the space action wasn't excellent, and it was bloody fantastic.

6. Command & Conquer: Red Alert

The original C&C was pretty damn good but Red Alert was the first RTS that ever got me to go back and complete it multiple times. Again, the ability to be the really cool bad guys was a part of it (nothing like shouting "Die for the motherland!!" as you lead hundreds of Soviet infantryman to certain death), but I think on a basic game mechanics level it was so balanced and well thought out. I think the fact it was one of the first big budget RTS games to back in time instead of forward (albiet in a alternate reality past) gave it added authenticity that I felt the genre was lacking before.

7. Monkey Island II

Simply hillarious. I really enjoy all of the Lucas Arts 90s adventure games but I think this was the best one they ever did. It's just non-stop laughs all te way through, yet concurrently challenging, intelligent and a damn good puzzle game. I never forget trying to record all the different affects the different types of hurling made at the spitting competition. And if you haven't played the game before and that sentence seems very, very odd to you, well, that's kinda the point.


8. Mario Kart 64

The next two games on the list are heavily based on the fact that my best friend had an N64 and I would always play multiplayer games with him and our brothers and sisters. Basically, when it comes to one game to play at a party I don't think Mario Kart, any incarnation, can be beat. Ridiculously simple to pick up and learn and so, so much fun. Even if you take out the Marioness and the zany Nintendo setting, as a pure racing game it's still damn good.

9. Goldeneye 64

Ahh, Goldeneye. My friend practiced this endlessly and stomped me all the time, but I still loved it. Goldeneye was cool because Bond was cool for the first time in about 20 years, and that's all that mattered to us kids back then. Even taking that into account it's still a solid FPS with good variety of levels and weapons and a well thought out single player game too. But ultimatley, it's all down to who gets to be Bond, who gets to be Valentin and making sure nobody picks Oddjob when no-one else is looking.

10. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

As a big Star Wars fan I think this was the first title that really captured the feel of the original movies (Tie Fighter is different, capturing the exact opposite feel). It may seem a bit strange considering it's not even set anywhere near the movies, but it's just a perfect representation of everything George Lucas' dream has come to be. A distant galaxy bustling with incredible alien life, sleazy crime lords, an evil empire and gallant heroes, all set to an epic storyline of truth and justice where the galaxy hangs in the balance until the very last. The sequel was also great until about 3/4 of the way through, heres hoping the third in the series is back on form.

Honorable Mentions: Quake, Syndicate, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Theme Park, System Shock 2, Pharoah, Sim City, Privateer 2: The Darkening, Close Combat III

[Greyroofoo]

Any top 30 list w/o Tie Fighter makes me sad.