IGN's Top 100 Games
Dec. 3rd, 2007 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73IGN recently completed the countdown of their list of the 100 best videogames of all time. Such lists exist to be argued over because, well, they're opinions. I'm actually mostly not going to argue with their ordered list - particularly once you get into anyone's top ten anything, the relative ordering becomes somewhat moot. You'll have a lot of knowledgeable people generally agreeing that yeah, those were the ten best apple varieties ever developed, but one person will pick the Fuji as their number one whereas someone else will insist on the Macintosh as the top variety. As a result, I'm a bit bemused by the several posters who insist, passionately and at great length, that Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the Once And Future #1 Game.
Personal game news: I have all the non-minigame pieces of heart (except the presumed 2 in Hyrule Castle), and am thinking of starting the final dungeon soon. The huz beat Super Paper Mario on Saturday (on his second attempt, armed with many more healing items and a better sense of how to beat the end), and started Super Mario Galaxy, which has gotten stellar (ha ha!) reviews from *everyone*. It's sooooooooooo pretty!!!!!!! and really pretty playable. We got a quick hands-on in the local GameStop when we were browsing for a 'next game,' and I think that's part of what decided him. Minor peeve: you only get to save when you've completed a given mission. One sincerely hopes there aren't any really long stages!
Looking forward to: Endless Ocean, Okami, maybe NiGHTS depending on reviews. Was sad that Raving Rabbids 2 got mediocre reviews from both IGN and GameSpot - no rabbids at Christmas for us!
I've played few enough of the games in IGN's list that I really can't comment on the relative ordering of most of them. I was pleased to see FFTactics come in significantly ahead of FF7; I fervently agree that the gameplay in Tactics is much more interesting and engaging than Seven's. And I was happy to see Chrono Trigger come in somewhere in the 11-20 block, and FF3/6 at #9 or something like that.
They had a couple of early videogame nods: Space Invaders was somewhere in the 70s, and Ms. Pac-Man was I think #13. Nary a Pong, which I had expected in there somewhere. And most of the rest of the arcade game family got left out in the cold too. Not that I was ever any good at any of them; had there been an arcade near my family's house, I honestly don't know whether I would have had the good sense to stay far away because I knew I was abysmal at all of them, or whether I would have regularly blown my week's allowance in quarters in attempts to improve. But they were the first of their kinds, and I would have thought they'd have gotten a bit more recognition than they did.
There were, however, two genres that were (if I recall aright) completely ignored for their top 100 list, and I'll be darned if I know why. They can be supercategorized as 'older adventure games'.
The first of these is the text adventure. Colossal Cave was probably the first example of this genre. Once Infocom got going, there was a wealth of the things to choose from - starting with what I'd probably put in the top 100 list somewhere despite having never completed it myself, the immortal Zork. Perhaps the IGN editors chose to exclude this genre because relatively few people play them today; certainly, it's more than a little difficult to find text adventures being mass-advertised and sold, but the genre certainly lives on, particularly in the virtual halls of the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. (The huz participated in this contest back in 2003.) To this day, I believe it's the only genre of computer game that you could swear at (by means of the text parser), and in most cases it would understand and respond, generally reproachfully. Try swearing at Mario when he fails to respond to a 'spin' command in Super Mario Galaxy and see how much reaction you get from him!
The second is kind of the next-generation version of the texties: graphical inventory-based adventure games, probably most memorably things like the King's Quest and Space Quest series from Sierra, and the Monkey Island series from LucasArts. Yes, they had their flaws. Early King's and Space Quest games had far too many ridiculous ways to die - I'll never forget my shock when poor Roger Wilco managed to die by falling off of a 3-step staircase. Some of the Monkey Island game solutions were not even remotely sensible - who the heck would (1) think to combine a rock and a balloon, thereby (2) levitating the rock? Or, to choose an even more famous example, what about the mustache puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3? Nonetheless, these games were generally successful in entertaining and challenging the puzzle-minded player. I hope that the latest successor to this genre, Zack and Wiki, makes it onto the top 100 list next time around.
Other vague puzzlements:
SimCity 2000 was the only real Sim game on the list. Was a little surprised that none of the more recent Sims made it - but then, maybe they're not very good?
Also, wasn't Black & White supposed to be both (1) very good and (2) the very first 'god game'?
That's it from me.
They had a couple of early videogame nods: Space Invaders was somewhere in the 70s, and Ms. Pac-Man was I think #13. Nary a Pong, which I had expected in there somewhere. And most of the rest of the arcade game family got left out in the cold too. Not that I was ever any good at any of them; had there been an arcade near my family's house, I honestly don't know whether I would have had the good sense to stay far away because I knew I was abysmal at all of them, or whether I would have regularly blown my week's allowance in quarters in attempts to improve. But they were the first of their kinds, and I would have thought they'd have gotten a bit more recognition than they did.
There were, however, two genres that were (if I recall aright) completely ignored for their top 100 list, and I'll be darned if I know why. They can be supercategorized as 'older adventure games'.
The first of these is the text adventure. Colossal Cave was probably the first example of this genre. Once Infocom got going, there was a wealth of the things to choose from - starting with what I'd probably put in the top 100 list somewhere despite having never completed it myself, the immortal Zork. Perhaps the IGN editors chose to exclude this genre because relatively few people play them today; certainly, it's more than a little difficult to find text adventures being mass-advertised and sold, but the genre certainly lives on, particularly in the virtual halls of the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. (The huz participated in this contest back in 2003.) To this day, I believe it's the only genre of computer game that you could swear at (by means of the text parser), and in most cases it would understand and respond, generally reproachfully. Try swearing at Mario when he fails to respond to a 'spin' command in Super Mario Galaxy and see how much reaction you get from him!
The second is kind of the next-generation version of the texties: graphical inventory-based adventure games, probably most memorably things like the King's Quest and Space Quest series from Sierra, and the Monkey Island series from LucasArts. Yes, they had their flaws. Early King's and Space Quest games had far too many ridiculous ways to die - I'll never forget my shock when poor Roger Wilco managed to die by falling off of a 3-step staircase. Some of the Monkey Island game solutions were not even remotely sensible - who the heck would (1) think to combine a rock and a balloon, thereby (2) levitating the rock? Or, to choose an even more famous example, what about the mustache puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3? Nonetheless, these games were generally successful in entertaining and challenging the puzzle-minded player. I hope that the latest successor to this genre, Zack and Wiki, makes it onto the top 100 list next time around.
Other vague puzzlements:
SimCity 2000 was the only real Sim game on the list. Was a little surprised that none of the more recent Sims made it - but then, maybe they're not very good?
Also, wasn't Black & White supposed to be both (1) very good and (2) the very first 'god game'?
That's it from me.
Personal game news: I have all the non-minigame pieces of heart (except the presumed 2 in Hyrule Castle), and am thinking of starting the final dungeon soon. The huz beat Super Paper Mario on Saturday (on his second attempt, armed with many more healing items and a better sense of how to beat the end), and started Super Mario Galaxy, which has gotten stellar (ha ha!) reviews from *everyone*. It's sooooooooooo pretty!!!!!!! and really pretty playable. We got a quick hands-on in the local GameStop when we were browsing for a 'next game,' and I think that's part of what decided him. Minor peeve: you only get to save when you've completed a given mission. One sincerely hopes there aren't any really long stages!
Looking forward to: Endless Ocean, Okami, maybe NiGHTS depending on reviews. Was sad that Raving Rabbids 2 got mediocre reviews from both IGN and GameSpot - no rabbids at Christmas for us!
