Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Why did I not post the first time around. You'd think I don't like to talk abou

[quote name="Rafiki"]t games or something. Normally I wouldn't suddenly jump in to a year old thread everyone's probably bored of, but since Caltrops is dead (I guess [ >:( ] ) then whatever. I hate trying to come up with a precise order for a top 10 anything, so here's my number 1 plus 9 others in no particular order: <b>1) Super Mario 64</b> Later platformers, including Galaxy, corrected certain minor flaws with the game, but the feel of this game still tops all of them. I don't know how better to explain it, but the way this game controls feels better than all of the others. Independent of any goals, moving Mario around is just fun. It's fun to dick around and do nothing. And then the levels are fun and exciting. What a great game. It's available in the Wii store, but is it as good with the classic controller? I'm skeptical. <b>Duke Nukem 3D</b> After I spent a million hours on the single player, my best friend in high school and I got the modem connection working and started playing co-op and deathmatch. We both had 2 phone lines, and our computers were connected to one and then we'd call each other on the other while playing. I couldn't play and hold the phone in my hand at the same time, so I'd pin it between my shoulder and my ear by tilting my head to the side. I did this for hours. Every day after school. I developed some kind of krick in my neck, and to this day I still feel like I overextended something and am constanty adjusting and stretching and popping my neck because it never feels comfortable. I'm terrified of what this might develop into when I get old and my body starts falling apart. Duke Nukem 3D was one of two games so good it may have crippled me. <b>Blood</b> This is the other game. I only stopped playing D3D because Blood came out. I only stopped playing Blood because I went to college. I still don't know why Quake was so popular when there was Duke 3D and Blood. Was it the internet play? The Quake games were so dull and lifeless in comparison to D3D and Blood. Not that Duke Nukem and Caleb were compelling characters, but D3D and Blood had the better weapons, better levels, and piles of enemies to tear apart. Build engine levels were crammed full of interactive items and secrets, which made them more fun to be in than levels that were mostly just a technically superior backdrop for blood and guts to squirt around in. The flare gun is still one of the best weapons in an FPS ever, and the cultsists are still one of the best enemies ever because of their hysterical screaming. There were also little touches that were fun, like crouching down in front of a cultist and firing both barrels of the sawed-off shotgun to send the corpse rocketing into the air across the level. <b>Resident Evil 4 (Wii)</b> I hope they rerelease this forever. I'll still buy it. I wish it had RE5's co-op (thank you to everyone who told me to only play RE5 co-op, you were right), but they'd have to give Ashley a gun since player 2 would probably get pretty bored if all they had to do was press the "crouch behind Leon" button. <b>Super Mario Kart (SNES) </b> Every time I buy a new Mario Kart game it's because I want it to be the old one. It was perfect. <b>World of Warcraft</b> I almost don't want to list it because I don't want to get Steam messages asking how long my beard is or how many pairs of mantits I have, jerks. I've had an account for 5 years. I still play it every once in awhile. Eventually I'll get the new expansion. I've spent more money on this one game than some entire systems (I have never paid for the stupid pets and mounts, just the subscription and games). I still have fun playing it. I've been considering doing a huge longpost chronicling how fucked up this game used to be to the present, but that would take a long time and I hate writing. This game has gone from a clusterfuck of bad design, to steady improvements to the point where I can now say the worst thing (and sometimes best) about it is the other players. If you can find a good group of people to roll with, the game is pretty fucking laid back and fun. If you find shitty people, then you end up with <a href="http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php">spreadsheet wielding assholes</a> and people demanding you quantify <a href="http://wtfismygearscore.com/">your ability as a number</a> like you just bought a monthly subscription to Mensa: The Game. <b>Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past</b> I played it a million times. Years later I played it a million more times on an emulator. It will never stop being fun to me. <b>Goldeneye</b> Revolutionary! If Caltrops weren't dead, I'd make a thread where we examine the FPS genre and find out how many firsts Goldeneye was responsible for. I think it's a lot! It was so ahead of its time I think it was even the first dual-analog game. You could plug in two N64 controllers and play that way in single player (which I did, and it was incredible). Everything about this game was great, even its flaws. There were no provisions for an enemy dying mid-animation, so an enemy would have to complete its current animation before going into it's death animation. There was one rare animation where an enemy would crouch down and roll across the floor to dodge your attacks, and then stand up again. It would take roughly 35 seconds to complete, but that motherfucker would not stop rolling until he was done. He rolled like it was his job. He rolled like it was the 11th commandment, and when you walked into the room the heavens opened up and God said, "THOU SHALT <i> ROLL</i>"," and he would roll like it was the pathway to heaven. And only when he was done, and you had fired 96 clips of ammo from 6 different guns into him, did he finally die. His purpose fulfilled. It also had one of the best cheat systems ever. Other games tried to replicate it, but completely missed the point. Goldeneye was first and foremost an amazing game. The challenges to unlock cheat codes were just something to do when you were done it with but still wanted to play. They weren't vital, they didn't unlock bonuses with story or items that should have been included in the game in the first place, or artwork and promotional material you don't care about. They unlocked cheats that broke the game. Once you were done with the real game, you could then have fun exploiting its limitations. It was a good system. <b>Grand Theft Auto 3</b> Everyone says Vice City is better. I don't know, I never did finish it. I barely got into San Andreas, and haven't played much of 4. There's a point where virtual worlds get so big that they become overwhelming and tedious. GTA3 was just big enough to feel like a huge city, but small enough that it didn't feel like it was a chore to play through. It was also really fucking fun. <b>Final Fantasy III (SNES)</b> My list probably reads like a list of clichés, but fuck you it's my list. There's a reason these games top "best of" lists, and it's because they're great. RPGs used to be my favorite genre, but now they've become my least favorite. I don't know if they've gotten worse, or if I just tolerated more bullshit when I was a kid. I do know I still have fun with FF3, and spent a billion hours playing and replaying it. I haven't played many modern JRPGs, because they started trying to include all sorts of DEEP. MEANING. to the point that they just became insufferable, and many modern American RPGs bloat up the game with customization and dialog trees so it takes 10 hours to get to anything fun. In the first 5 minutes of FF3 I was driving a mech and casting cool spells in combat against people and weird-ass monsters. In the first 45 minutes of every American RPG in the last 15 years I'm allocating stat points and clicking through the worst written, boring-ass dialog. Then I go fight a rat. I fought a train in FF3. You were fighting to stop one of the best and most fun villains in any medium since the Joker. Yeah, FF3 was pretty great. There's a lot of honorable mentions, but these are the 10 games I probably had the most fun with. I almost feel like the NES is underrepresented since I spent a ton of time playing those games growing up, but since many of the genres and styles were so new they also suffered from major design problems. There's a lot of good games I'd recommend to people, but they're just not top 10 good. I also didn't own a PC until the late 90s, so I missed out on all of PC gaming before that.[/quote]