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another day, another controversial top list emerges. granted all of these lists are biased in some way, and it would be hard to find a ranking everyone kind of agrees upon – but the pc gamer list is so wrong it hurts. but, it reminds me of my deep german desire to make lists and sort things by category. plus i wanted to do this for a very long time, as well as create a blog on TL.net and bring as much attention to myself as possible, so it would be natural to combine the three.
so here's my personal top 10: the best pc games of all time as judged by the holy impeccable incarnation of the pc gaming master race and signed by the pope:
#10 prince of persia 2 (1993)
the original PoP games have been one of my best childhood gaming memories, but if i had to pick one of the two i would go with shadow and the flame. why do i love it so much besides the colorful backgrounds, nice scenery, standout animation, great puzzles and brutal difficulty? 20 years later i still am looking for game with a better first level than PoP2: the game begins with you crashing through a window, directly involved into fighting palace guards, making a daring escape over the rooftops to run to the harbor and leaping onto a leaving ship.
currently ubisoft is working on a remake of PoP2 for mobile devices, and i have little doubt that they manage to ruin the game by altering the difficulty and making it 3D for no reason.
#9 GTR 2 (2006)
endless modding capabilities, great physics, a very good graphic and sound engine and online multiplayer: GTR 2 has been one of the most popular PC driving simulations, and is still a favorite of many sim racers to this day.
#8 marathon: infinity (1996)
for many readers this may be the dark horse in this list, because afaik it was only released on macintosh. but you might know it's developer, bungie, which afterwards made oni, myth and the halo series. marathon was the doom of the mac, but with an actual story (that was even good) and akimbo shotguns. with infinity, bungie bundled their editors forge and anvil with the game.
EDIT: you can download and play all three original marathon titles for free here (mac/win/linux).
#7 starcraft 2 (2010)
probably one of the best sequels ever released. what i really like is it's matchmaking system and … hey, i'm on TL, you should know the rest. one thing to note though: i favor sc2 over broodwar while playing myself, but would choose bw over sc2 any day for just watching, and both for the same reasons: the game got easier with multiple building selection and the units were more difficult to handle and master in bw.
#6 civilization 5 (2010)
having played the series since the second game, being a big fan of the third installment, and somewhat critical of the fourth (which doesn't seem to be a very popular opinion), civ5's change to hex tiles and one unit per tile combat made so much sense that it felt instantly right. with the second addon now released, the strategic play has become deep and engaging throughout the course of the entire game, and i can confidently say that i like civ5 now more than any other game in the series.
#5 half-life (1999)
any top video game list that ranks any random single player fps over the original half-life should be disregarded as stupid, uninformed and incredibly wrong. yes, that's including deus ex.
the graphics are the only part of the package that didn't age well, everything else – mechanics, sound design, level design, story, pacing, gunplay – are still an example for anyone trying to make a good shooter.
and even it's successor, hl2, while certainly good, had a lot of levels that felt gimicky in a way that they seemed to be created just for the purpose of showing off the havoc physics or the gravity gun. ironically hl2 is stuffed with vehicle levels as well, but the pacing and story put you more into the passenger seat than hl1. and i will never forgive valve for ditching the gauss.
#4 quake 3: arena (1999)
although the original quake probably had a deeper impact on the industry, and you could count q3 as a part of it's legacy i still think that id software's multiplayer focused shooter is the closest we ever got to a perfect deathmatch and 1on1 fps.
one thing that stands out in particular is the focus with which the gameplay was designed, like the weapons: while modern shooters suffer from an arsenal of often redundant and useless guns, each weapon in q3 is distinctively different from another. each weapon serves a very specific purpose and role, and overlap is minimal.
another hallmark of the quake series in general is their modability, and i will go out on a limb here and say: no other video game so far had so many iconic, distinctive mods as quake: ctf, threewave, team fortress, rocket arena, cpm, osp, defrag, action quake, western quake, urban terror, true combat, freezetag, WFA…
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
#3 diablo 2: lord of destruction (2000)
i don't want to know how many hours i've sunk into this game over the years… this game is like a drug: it's ugly, but it gives you kicks and it's incredibly hard to stop.
#2 starcraft: broodwar (1998)
if i need to explain this to you, what are you doing on TL.net? ohh…
#1 counter-strike (1999)
i have a love/hate relationship with this game, or to be more precise: with the development of it. i discovered cs beta 2 on a local lan party, and i was immediately intimidated. without hesitation, i bought a PC because the then announced half-life mac port was canceled (it was finally released this year). not only was this game the driving force behind my computer equipment purchases in the following years, but also the reason i bothered my parents to get ISDN and later DSL internet. through counter-strike, i met many people and some of them are still close friends of mine.
somewhere, between beta 5 and release 1.1 counter-strike was the perfect game for me. but then valve, now in charge after buying up gooseman and cliffe, lost focus and started catering the game to a different audience. everytime i see someone referencing cs 1.6 as superior to cs:s and cs:go (which happens all time, everywhere) i am seriously inclined to ask: what's the difference? cs 1.6 might be slightly less casual, but all the interesting mechanics have long been removed, the weapons have been made so inaccurate that the gameplay became very slow (or "tactical") and all that it takes to be good is to hover your crosshair over the most preferred sitting spots. there have been no new notable maps since 12 years.
here are some excerpts from the changelogs documenting the demise:
1.1
» Made jumping while shooting more inaccurate w/ submachineguns
» Took out sniper crosshair when zoomed out
» AWP leg shots now non-lethal
before this patch, there was a wide variety of weapons used on pubs as well as competitive play, after this patch almost no one bothered with anything besides the AK47 and M4A1. to this day, from just watching counter-strike you would never guess that the game includes over 20 weapons.
1.3
» Bunny hopping removed.
although the patch notes say bunny hopping, what they really removed was strafe jumping. what happened was that the single mechanic that required lots of practice aside from aiming got removed and made the game very slow and boring to the people who mastered it, while making it easier to pick up for the new and impatient players invading the scene. imagine starcraft without macro, build orders and base management, just armies endlessly marching towards each other and a little bit of micro. i wonder how popular that would be? ohh…
1.4
» Changed so players must stand still when planting the bomb (including no jumping)
» Changed so players can't move or shoot while defusing the bomb
» Adjusted pistol accuracy while jumping (all pistols)
» Adjusted player jumping values to minimize bunny hopping
the patch that finally made me stop playing counter-strike competitively.
this sounds very depressing, and for me it really is. because with all it's current faults, counter-strike is still a very good game – but it was perfect. at least in my memory, it forever will be.
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reading through the list you might have noticed that a lot of these titles are from the late nineties, which is coincidently the time when i was old enough to have my own computer but young enough to still be in school and as such was gifted with lots of free time. on the other hand, 1998 through 2000 were in my opinion the golden years for video games, look at the wikipedia pages (1998, 1999, 2000) with the notable releases for each year: if you would make a top 100 games list not restricted entirely to PC you could easily fill up 50 slots just from these years. In no particular order, just the games that jumped at my eyes:
Resident Evil 2, StarCraft, StarCraft Broodwar, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo 1, Gran Turismo 2, Fallout 2, Grim Fandango, Baldur's Gate I & II, Starsiege: Tribes, Falcon 4.0, Super Smash Bros., Alpha Centauri, HoMM 3, EverQuest, Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life, Quake 3, Counter-Strike, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Descent 3, Outcast, Soulcalibur, Homeworld, Age of Empires II, GTA2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Soul Reaver, System Shock 2, Shenmue, Diablo 2, The Sims, Thief 2, Icewind Dale, Deus Ex, Jet Set Radio, Hitman, American McGee's Alice, Zelda Majora's Mask, NfS Porsche, Chrono Cross, Planescape Torment.
If this list doesn't include at least one of your favorite games, i'm sorry we won't be friends.
 
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I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong. 
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No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here)
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On July 25 2013 22:55 Iyerbeth wrote:I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong.
i've added planescape to the list at the bottom, because it fits the criteria. i haven't played it myself, i'm far too impatient for more traditional RPGs. judging from the wikipedia article though, you don't seem to be alone with your opinion 
On July 25 2013 23:02 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here)
i seriously thought about adding warcraft 2 to the list, really close but no cigar. warcraft 3 would definately get a spot within a top 20 as well. the original dota would be included in a ranking of warcraft 3, but i personally don't enjoy MOBA games.
team fortress classic is in the list at the bottom, and tf2 is basically just that but with very nice graphics. i also mentioned the original team fortress mod in the quake 3 section, so maybe there's a tiny chance we might be friends? 
WoW, the elder scrolls and gothic fall into the category of games i'm to impatient for.
and concerning the settlers: i played through settlers 2 once, and liked it but didn't love it. a hidden criteria for this top 10 was a minimum of at least 100 hours played. but hey, i grew up a few blocks away from blue byte, does that count?
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I like your top 3
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You had diablo 2 up there, and BW, and since that was all the pc gaming i really did, i will agree with your top 10 in part.
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various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine
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On July 25 2013 23:24 zuqbu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 22:55 Iyerbeth wrote:I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong. i've added planescape to the list at the bottom, because it fits the criteria. i haven't played it myself, i'm far too impatient for more traditional RPGs. judging from the wikipedia article though, you don't seem to be alone with your opinion Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:02 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here) i seriously thought about adding warcraft 2 to the list, really close but no cigar. warcraft 3 would definately get a spot within a top 20 as well. the original dota would be included in a ranking of warcraft 3, but i personally don't enjoy MOBA games. team fortress classic is in the list at the bottom, and tf2 is basically just that but with very nice graphics. i also mentioned the original team fortress mod in the quake 3 section, so maybe there's a tiny chance we might be friends? WoW, the elder scrolls and gothic fall into the category of games i'm to impatient for. and concerning the settlers: i played through settlers 2 once, and liked it but didn't love it. a hidden criteria for this top 10 was a minimum of at least 100 hours played. but hey, i grew up a few blocks away from blue byte, does that count?
Okay. Good response. 5 stars for you sir!
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Top 7 are all some of my favourite games of all time, nice list!
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Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
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I think you could possible add "excluding RPGs" That'll save you a lot of responses.
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United States47024 Posts
On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
TBH, a lot of Bethesda games are not looked upon positively among the hardcore CRPG community.
Rating FO3/Oblivion/Skyrim highly is indicative of the genre bias/hypocrisy of such a niche community as ours. We are ultra-critical of the competitive RTS genre, but not equally critical of a game that hardcore fans of that genre consider a pretty dumbed-down game in the genre compared to the "classics".
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On July 25 2013 23:41 Kleinmuuhg wrote:I think you could possible add "excluding RPGs" That'll save you a lot of responses.
Yes this is true. That said, your list is pretty good. Better than a list with TF2, XCOM and L4D2 in it at least x_x. Here's my personal list, which changes all the time and depends entirely on my personal tastes and preferences. I rate games based on how I feel about them now, and not how much they meant to me when they came out, otherwise the list would also include Super Mario, Mario 64, Super Smash Bros and a few other classics from my childhood.
10: Civilization 5
9: Tomb Raider
8: The Witcher 2
7: Bioshock Infinite
---- Above this line, they're great games but I don't consider myself a fan. I guess it's filler kinda.
6: Mass Effect 2 (Great single player game)
5: Chrono Trigger (Ex-best single player game)
4: The Last Of Us (Best single player game - which surprised me more than anybody else)
3: Diablo 2: LOD (Best leisure time game)
2: Counter-Strike 1.6 (Best competitive team game)
1: Starcraft: Brood War (Best competitive 1v1 game)
Other mentions of excellence: Bastion, Frozen Synapse, Magicka, The Legend of Dragoon
I'm probably forgetting a bunch of games. Cheers.
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On July 25 2013 23:34 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc
Half-Life is using GoldSrc which is a modified Quake 1 engine, with a few bug fixes from Q2. you can mostly tell if a game is using any quake/idtech engine by pulling down the console and looking for the command formatting, for example triggers being preceded by +/- like +attack/-attack. a lot of other variables haven't changed in the past 15 years like r_picmip/gl_picmip.
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On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p
On July 25 2013 23:48 zuqbu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:34 FFW_Rude wrote:
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrcHalf-Life is using GoldSrc which is a modified Quake 1 engine, with a few bug fixes from Q2. you can mostly tell if a game is using any quake/idtech engine by pulling down the console and looking for the command formatting, for example triggers being preceded by +/- like +attack/-attack. a lot of other variables haven't changed in the past 15 years like r_picmip/gl_picmip.
Yeah i just checked wikipedia. Mind blown for me I really thought HL has its own engine So that's why you can bunny hop in CS :p
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United States47024 Posts
On July 25 2013 23:49 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own. You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p
Yeah, FO1/2 is actually the far more egregious omission than FO3. FO3 would actually have trouble making my top 100, tbh. Even if I were to pick a Bethesda RPG, Morrowind, FO:NV, and Skyrim would be more likely to make my list than FO3, and I'm honestly not a big enough Bethesda fan to have more than 2-3 of their games in my top 100.
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On July 25 2013 23:51 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:49 FFW_Rude wrote:On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own. You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p Yeah, FO1/2 is actually the far more egregious omission than FO3. FO3 would actually have trouble making my top 100, tbh. Even if I were to pick a Bethesda RPG, Morrowind, FO:NV, and Skyrim would be more likely to make my list than FO3, and I'm honestly not a big enough Bethesda fan to have more than 2-3 of their games in my top 100.
The only thing i hate with all my guts in FO3 is the level 20 limitation that they puted on the first one (i mean before DLC). I really like that game but yeah... You can't say FO3 without saying the other 2 (maybe 3 cause tactics is awesome too :p)
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United States47024 Posts
I don't think FO3 should be compared to the originals, because even though they both have the Fallout name, the gameplay is too different and they have a different developer. It's fighting for a spot with other Bethesda games (Morrowind, NV, Skyrim, Oblivion being the ones people would consider--Arena and Daggerfall are too old for people to fairly judge), and among those, the only one it's probably better than is Oblivion.
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I haven't even played FO1 and FO2 but I wasted 3-4 hours of my time on FO3 and had no fun whatsoever. I don't understand the appeal at all. I found it tedious after 30 minutes.
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On July 26 2013 00:14 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2013 00:09 Djzapz wrote:
I haven't even played FO1 and FO2 but I wasted 3-4 hours of my time on FO3 and had no fun whatsoever. I don't understand the appeal at all. I found it tedious after 30 minutes. I just can't help you. I love post-apocalyptical universe True about FO3 and the other not really comparable But it's inevitable when you put the "Fallout" name in front of it
I liked the universe in most ways, but the gameplay just didn't do it for me. One of my complaints was the lack of ammunition early on. I did my best to try to plunder ammo wherever I could, but I never got any, and I found myself selling my crap through the incredibly clumsy UI in order to buy like 7 bullets from a vendor...
I'm told that later in the game, ammunition is all over the place and you'll never run out, but I was always struggling to find it. Perhaps I needed to explore more or something, but even though I liked the universe on paper, it's brown... so brown, and dull. Cool, but dull...
Anyway, getting a bit off topic now!
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the "ohh..."s were hilarious. I love CS, but I first started playing CS 1.5 and then later on 1.6. I wasn't around during the bunny hop days.
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I think you should just have stuck by the first part of the blog title, instead of making another list that sucks.
If you really want to compile a top list of anything, you need to let go of your personal bias and cultural influences of the kind of gaming communities you hang around.
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Threads like these always get a lot of responses, critiques and such, but I don't really have that for you. The only thing I don't get is not having warcraft III on there. The only thing close to a critique that I have is wondering about why it's not CIV4 on the list considering how much more beloved that one was.
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On July 26 2013 00:22 29 fps wrote:
the "ohh..."s were hilarious. I love CS, but I first started playing CS 1.5 and then later on 1.6. I wasn't around during the bunny hop days.
those were fun times to be fair with valve, during the betas there were also some serious wtf moments at random releases that broke the game for days or weeks. like the initial beta 4.0 which added defuse missions, but had some maps in it with no designated target zone: the bomb spots were labeled on the map, but the engine didn't force the rules correctly. so Ts could plant the bomb at their spawn point as soon as the round started. hilarious. i can't remember how long it took them to fix it, but it felt like an eternity.
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United States47024 Posts
On July 26 2013 00:39 docvoc wrote:
Threads like these always get a lot of responses, critiques and such, but I don't really have that for you. The only thing I don't get is not having warcraft III on there. The only thing close to a critique that I have is wondering about why it's not CIV4 on the list considering how much more beloved that one was.
Judging Civ games is always a chore because which one you rate where depends a lot on how you're rating them. For example, I enjoyed Alpha Centauri a lot more than Civ 4 or 5 if we're judging just the base game, but the mods for Civ 4/5 are a step above everything else previously available in the genre.
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Any top ten video games list that doesn't feature Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate 1/2 or Deus Ex is a dubious list.
On July 25 2013 23:51 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:49 FFW_Rude wrote:On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own. You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p Yeah, FO1/2 is actually the far more egregious omission than FO3. FO3 would actually have trouble making my top 100, tbh. Even if I were to pick a Bethesda RPG, Morrowind, FO:NV, and Skyrim would be more likely to make my list than FO3, and I'm honestly not a big enough Bethesda fan to have more than 2-3 of their games in my top 100.
Fallout: New Vegas was designed by Obsidian. It was only published by Bethesda.
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No Deus Ex - your argument top ten list is invalid.
Even retarded PC Gamer got that right.
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United States47024 Posts
On July 26 2013 00:56 Absentia wrote:
Fallout: New Vegas was designed by Obsidian. It was only published by Bethesda.
I know, I put it on that list of "Bethesda" games because by gameplay its directly comparable.
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best gam is pokemons ruby red version is really good my friend had the blue one he said it was good too you should put them on your list
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On July 26 2013 00:57 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2013 00:56 Absentia wrote:
Fallout: New Vegas was designed by Obsidian. It was only published by Bethesda. I know, I put it on that list of "Bethesda" games because by gameplay its directly comparable.
You can mesure the level of Bethesda in a game by the number of bugs in it :p
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On July 26 2013 00:43 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2013 00:39 docvoc wrote:
Threads like these always get a lot of responses, critiques and such, but I don't really have that for you. The only thing I don't get is not having warcraft III on there. The only thing close to a critique that I have is wondering about why it's not CIV4 on the list considering how much more beloved that one was. Judging Civ games is always a chore because which one you rate where depends a lot on how you're rating them. For example, I enjoyed Alpha Centauri a lot more than Civ 4 or 5 if we're judging just the base game, but the mods for Civ 4/5 are a step above everything else previously available in the genre.
i also said that i am somewhat critical of civ4, and that it would not be a popular opinion. for a lot of the longer running franchises, the first game that made the jump from 2d to 3d often looks poorer than the sprite based predecessor, while adding nothing new to the gameplay. in the early 2000s a lot of series made that leap, maybe because at a certain point of time it seemed like no publisher would approve a budget for a 2d game anymore.
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United States47024 Posts
See, now I don't agree with that, because IMO Civ 3 was actually the low point of the Civ series (not saying much cuz the series was great all around, just that 3 was weaker than 2, 4, and AC). When Civ 4 game out it's most practical competition was Civ 2 and AC. As a title that jumped the series into 3d, it was successful, the question was always whether it was better than the "classic" Civ, Civ 2.
On July 26 2013 00:58 FFW_Rude wrote:
You can mesure the level of Bethesda in a game by the number of bugs in it :p
That's kind of funny in this context because Obsidian games are actually frequently quite buggy on release.
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Pretty good list. CS wouldn't be my first place but it would be in top 10. I feel the same way about it, started playing with beta 7 or something and stopped around 1.4 or 1.5 when the gameplay started getting slower and slower.
I discovered Wolfenstein: ET later and it was just perfect for me. Felt like early CS but a bit more strategic due to different classes and a lot faster due to the movement speed, strafejumping and more accurate guns.
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Call to Power 2= CIV 2?? Cause that game was awesome
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Yango, i can't put my finger on it right now, it's been too long since i touched civ 3 – but i somehow just enjoyed it more than 2 and 4.
On July 26 2013 01:05 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
Pretty good list. CS wouldn't be my first place but it would be in top 10. I feel the same way about it, started playing with beta 7 or something and stopped around 1.4 or 1.5 when the gameplay started getting slower and slower.
I discovered Wolfenstein: ET later and it was just perfect for me. Felt like early CS but a bit more strategic due to different classes and a lot faster due to the movement speed, strafejumping and more accurate guns.
i actually tried ET and found it to be quite fun, but call me hypercritical: i can't stand the color palette of WWII games. everything is either brown, grey or a swastika. i played urbanterror quite a lot after leaving cs though.
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No Baldur's gate, and mindless hack-n-slash games go top of your list, what kind of rubbish list is this...
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Baldur's Gate should make it into anyone's list, as well as deus ex and homm3.
Skyrim imo deserves a thought just cause they release their kits so the mod community can go nuts.
You should take a look at my modded skyrim before saying it's rubbish, gameplay hurdles have being ironed out by new tools(skyUI) and it looks incredibly gorgeous(powered by enb's).
Wc3Dota should make it as well, it's the father of all dota-like games and equivalent of dune and doom in importance.
And once again I'm stunned at how many of you are completely oblivious of the magical world of adventures.
Everyone reading this just make yourselves a favor and play The Longest Journey.
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Love how I mention Fallout 3 and it start a discussion, point proven....
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Civ 4 was VASTLY better than Civ 5.
Now i quit 5 before too many patches but the balance when I was done was in a state where the optimal stupid strategy was to have tons of size 1 and 2 cities. Civ 4's terrain had sooooooo much more flavor where resources were actually very good (+3-6 extra food/production/commerce) when improved as opposed to meh (2-3 extra as in Civ 5).
Happiness was a terrible idea to replace happiness and maintenance in Civ 4 which were perfect. Like look at Civ 5 with all the improvements that your cities can make (when I quit) and you discover your cities can only be like size 14 instead of like 36 which they have tiles for. Even then you are paying like 15-20 gold in maintenance and don't have any amazing improvements to offset it like the cottage system in civ 4.
Also the one unit per tile was a great idea, I loved it from a gameplay perspective, except:
1. Online combat against other humans became a speed of connection competition.
2. The AI couldn't deal with it.
Making the game essentially unplayable.
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zuqbu you are amazing! Best list I have seen in a long time 10 to 1 is a much better list too. Just a gorgeous list.
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Much better list than that other one. Hell, you've got Diablo 2 on it, along with Counter Strike and Starcraft. Those are the only PC games I really care about.
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Basicly living in cs 1.6 for 10 years plus makes me agree with this list so much.
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Great list. I haven't personally played #8-10, but I am tempted to try them out now.
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United Kingdom36158 Posts
On July 26 2013 00:35 Talin wrote:
I think you should just have stuck by the first part of the blog title, instead of making another list that sucks.
If you really want to compile a top list of anything, you need to let go of your personal bias and cultural influences of the kind of gaming communities you hang around.
Or you're completely missing the point of the whole thing and coming across as an unnecessary grumpypants? Thought of that one? ^^
Probably showing my age like the OP, but Civ 2 is the game I sunk the largest number of hours into. Kinda obscene actually. Civ 3 was really disappointing by comparison, barely played it :<
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On July 25 2013 23:24 zuqbu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 22:55 Iyerbeth wrote:I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong. i've added planescape to the list at the bottom, because it fits the criteria. i haven't played it myself, i'm far too impatient for more traditional RPGs. judging from the wikipedia article though, you don't seem to be alone with your opinion Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:02 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here) i seriously thought about adding warcraft 2 to the list, really close but no cigar. warcraft 3 would definately get a spot within a top 20 as well. the original dota would be included in a ranking of warcraft 3, but i personally don't enjoy MOBA games. team fortress classic is in the list at the bottom, and tf2 is basically just that but with very nice graphics. i also mentioned the original team fortress mod in the quake 3 section, so maybe there's a tiny chance we might be friends? WoW, the elder scrolls and gothic fall into the category of games i'm to impatient for. and concerning the settlers: i played through settlers 2 once, and liked it but didn't love it. a hidden criteria for this top 10 was a minimum of at least 100 hours played. but hey, i grew up a few blocks away from blue byte, does that count?
The thing is, you can't try to make a "best X list" while simply listing the ones YOU liked the most (if you want to be taken seriously at all). You have to consider games that you don't necessarily like to play, but you acknowledge them for still being fantastic. The fact that you didn't have at least one of Morrowind/BG2/PS:Torment and WoW in your top ten is disturbing.
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United States47024 Posts
On July 27 2013 02:54 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The thing is, you can't try to make a "best X list" while simply listing the ones YOU liked the most (if you want to be taken seriously at all). You have to consider games that you don't necessarily like to play, but you acknowledge them for still being fantastic. The fact that you didn't have at least one of Morrowind/BG2/PS:Torment and WoW in your top ten is disturbing.
While I agree in theory, this is simply not feasible in most cases because by and large, if someone doesn't like a particular genre, they don't have enough knowledge about games in that genre to select the best ones critically and intelligently.
Someone selecting games based on cursory knowledge of a genre that they haven't played deeply enough to properly analyze is how we got superficial mediocre AAA titles on the PC Gamer list in the first place.
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No planescape torment/deus ex/thief on this list. A considerable number of very popular competitive multiplayer games added in the same list as single player games, I never understood why people do that but that may be just me (and yes, I'm fine with lists containing games from different genres, as long as they're all either singleplayer or multiplayer).
I think there are many amazing games that you missed out on (I'm guilty of that as well when it comes to old RPGs and RTSs ), so I can't say I like your list that much 
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This feels like it's plagued with nostalgia goggles
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People who didn't play the older versions of CS have no idea how fast (and fun!) the game was back then. Crouch jumping with deagle and mp5 was super effective and spraying with the rifles was completelely different from 1.6.
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In some sort of order, I absolutely love :
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - don't ask
NFSU2 - Oh man, how I love this game. Love the looks, the music, the arcade control. Not much I can say about it, except that it's still awesome and I still have it installed, after all these years.
Prince of Persia Sands of Time, the one made in 2003. Brilliant game. Repetitive at times, with wonky camera, simplistic combat and obvious storyline. What's not to love?
Legacy of Kain - the whole series. This is probably my favourite RPG series, of all time. Everything was perfect. The voices, the music, the combat, even the graphics were goddamn spectacular at the time (I still marvel at how good looking Defiance still is, after all these years)
Starcraft - Well, I guess I don't need to tell you guys about this game. It was the first game I ever played on my own computer, after spending all my pocket money on internet cafes to play it for like a year. For the longest of times I couldn't even get past the Norad II mission. God, I still remember that one and I'm frustrated by it.
Dota - If there was a list somewhere with my most played 10 games by hours spent, dota's numbers would be higher than all the other 9 combined (including WoW and diablo). I used to get home from school, play dota until the morning, or when my mom shouted at me to turn of the computer THIS MOMENT OR ELSE. Some of my fondest and most terrible gaming memories come from dota. It's hard to pinpoint when I started playing it, but it was definitely at least 7 years ago. I remember that in my first game I played with a random dude I found on LAN and after thoroughly owning me he taught me a few things, like always building perseverance on every hero, ever (yeah). My favourite hero was naix, when he had 3 passives. I hated the fact that his ultimate was a (15 second?) bkb because it wasn't another passive and I didn't like skilling it.
So yeah, dota easily takes the cake. It's the uber game for me
I'm sure that I'm forgetting many, but such is life.
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On July 27 2013 08:29 Ushio wrote:
This feels like it's plagued with nostalgia goggles
It's impossible to write a subjective list like this without it being influenced by nostalgia. This is why everyone has a different list. Anyone who trys to write a list of objectively the best game has to resort to concrete things like graphics and mechanics, and therefore completely misses the point of what makes a game "good".
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Northern Ireland24239 Posts
Marathon is still my all-time favourite game trilogy.
Something about the story, and indeed the way the narrative had to be read via terminals rather than spoonfed via cutscenes really has stuck with me.
In other fields, the success of films like The Artist show that sometimes supposedly anachronistic narrative methods can actually give a different flavour to something, I hope mainstream gaming can take notes.
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i thought writing beforehand that this list would be "the best pc games of all time as judged by the holy impeccable incarnation of the pc gaming master race and signed by the pope" would be somewhat indicative how serious i was. well, maybe the text formatting invites some to only read the bolded text.
On July 27 2013 08:29 Ushio wrote:
This feels like it's plagued with nostalgia goggles
while there is some truth in that, especially with shooters i think that both singleplayer and multiplayer haven't seen any big innovations over the last decade – on the contrary, a lot of new found genre conventions are taking away control, skill and excitement from the player: automatic health regen, quicktime events, overlinear level design, cutscenes and the abundance of assault rifles. that would be the topic of a seperate blog.
On July 29 2013 12:28 Wombat_NI wrote:
Marathon is still my all-time favourite game trilogy.
Something about the story, and indeed the way the narrative had to be read via terminals rather than spoonfed via cutscenes really has stuck with me.
In other fields, the success of films like The Artist show that sometimes supposedly anachronistic narrative methods can actually give a different flavour to something, I hope mainstream gaming can take notes.
Pfhor sure!
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Northern Ireland24239 Posts
Marathon 1 had the whole Leela/Durandal thing going down, Durandal had you being an errand boy for an increasingly megalomaniacal AI. Eugh, I miss it Not just nostalgia speaking, actually did a replay pretty recently, the story stands up incredibly well
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On July 29 2013 17:03 Wombat_NI wrote:Marathon 1 had the whole Leela/Durandal thing going down, Durandal had you being an errand boy for an increasingly megalomaniacal AI. Eugh, I miss it Not just nostalgia speaking, actually did a replay pretty recently, the story stands up incredibly well
btw i totally forgot about aleph one – added a link to the OP.
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Northern Ireland24239 Posts
I'm not computer literate enough to get aleph one working
Apparently the Marathon box set box sells for quite a bit of cash these days in mint condition, as much as 150 dollars.
So annoying, my one has a crease in it! Not sure I'd sell it anyway
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EPT
