Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: I tried making a top 10 list like 8 times

[quote name="Zsenitan"]and each time it was basically a list of RPGs, which makes me feel sad. I like RPGs a lot, which is considerably more womanly than menstruation. <b>Top 5 RPGs: 1. Morrowind 2. World Of Warcraft 3. Wizardry 6 4. FF9 5. Legend Of Mana (6. Diablo 2, the RPG that turns you into a high-functioning autistic.)</b> Morrowind had the best ambiance and in-game culture of anything ever. A lot of the gameplay was infuriating, but mods and patches fixed that. No mod or patch was ever able to improve on Ashlanders, ancestral temples, the Ghostfence, corrupt gods, warring houses, and colonial antipathies (the best mods just let you interact with those things more fully.) I think both the culture and the incredible mod-ability are key; it would be hard to recommend this game if it weren't possible to alter the gameplay almost completely, and to one's specific desires. WoW used to be great. Remember that?! I had more fun grinding in WoW than I had in finishing all kinds of other games. Of course, I picked Tauren right out of the gate, and hunter right out of the gate. So I got the best starting zone in the game and the easiest gameplay, which probably did more to cement my WoW career than anything else. The Tauren starting zone is basically like the best camping vacation ever, and then you go to the Barrens! Remember how great the Barrens was before you had to spend 1,000,000 obligatory hours there?! Your first time seeing a thunder lizard! Wizardry 6 - one of the few times my mother ever went completely psychotic with rage was when I accidentally saved over her W6 savegame. Then she kept all her saves on 3.5" floppies! In special MOM'S SAVE GAMES colors (green.) Bane Of The Cosmic Forge is basically my Bard's Tale, in any event. FF9 pandered, but was perfect. Even Chocobo Hot And Cold was awesome. Battles were satisfying, party composition really mattered, and the setting took the best parts of Legend Of Mana's commedia dell'arte Europe and gave them a cinematic heft and balance. Tons of people hate this FF! I know I did at first, especially following my heartfelt favorite FF8, but this was a better game. Legend Of Mana is more like a giant min-max engine than an RPG; rather it was like the Persona games in that you were actually playing several different games at the same time (min-max crafting game, board game, RPG, point and click adventure game.) Queerest of all were the stories whose courses you influenced: they were either sad or slapstick, but in either case the characters and art design and timing suggested, more than any other game ever, a puppet show - big tragedies on miniature scale. I thought it was completely charming. <b>Top 5 Not RPGs: 1. Master Of Magic 2. Qix 3. Gran Turismo 3 (stealth RPG) 4. Soul Calibur 2 5. Mechwarrior</b> MoM - why is this not on everyone's list. You guys are stupid. The only 4x where you can do something radically different from game to game within the first 10 minutes. The best 4x. While I was a Tetris master, I didn't find it as compelling once I had beaten the entire planet at it. Qix on the other hand stayed fresh forever. I took it really personally. That helix monster scared me! And I would carefully inch across the darkness in increments so small as to be meaningless to create a tiny tiny jail for it. VICTORY. This was the most dramatic of the puzzle games. GT3's biggest problem was that it was just a racing game. Not racing + physics, not racing + destruction derby, not racing + politics - just racing. For most players this meant that it was behind the times and consequently unlikable, but I took it really seriously and played the shit out of it. Probably the only game that I really <i>trained</i> for. SC2 was SO FRESH after Dead Or Alive 2 (which I loved by the way) and Tekken. It was better in every possible way. Although DOA2 was the first fighting game where I could pull even with or even beat other (human) players, SC2 was a peak impossible to turn back from - going from SC2 to DOA2 was an exercise in frustration. I can't run?! It's so slow! There are only like 4 moves! SC3 brought the random character generator, which was genuinely lovable, but it also regularly deleted its own save games and had that abortive campaign mode. SC2 was consequently better. Mechwarrior doesn't need an explanation. You know and I know that we're all waiting for a sequel true enough to go back to. I will bet you that anyone on Caltrops can name 4 out of 5 Mechwarrior houses and their favorite mech chassis without looking them up. Again, this should be on everyone's list.[/quote]