Random Gaming Thoughts

[Jmustang1968]

I think the Metacritic one offers a wide and more interesting set of genres. However, it has no limits on how many times one game can end up on the list, so World of Warcraft has four slots, 1 for the base game and 3 for expansions.

Yeah, I noticed that too. :\

If you would prefer something different, I'm sure you could just go into the PC board and ask members for their Top #100 lists. Then start going through the lists to see what people came up with. I'm sure you'll get a lot of variety, some overlap, and a lot of really interesting responses.

Eh, I actually prefer the route of just picking pre-made list and attacking it. Meaning, asking anyone to help me compile such a list - they would already know why it was being made. Strange as it sounds I like the sort of randomness of some pre-made list.

So I guess I'm still between the PCG and Meta ones... but probably leaning towards PCG because too much WOW.


HMM... I clicked on "add excluded" on Meta and it added a bunch of games to that list. What the heck? Why were games excluded? The list got even more varied this way.

We could get some of the PC gamers from Racket and form a team that compiles the top 100 PC games. That is basically what PCGamer did...

[Damm64]

For the last couple of days i been playing darksiders 2, ps3, and each day i had one or two freezes in between loading zones or just at random, i was just going to buy stuff from Vulgrim and the game freeze there. This is starting to annoy me so is the PS3 port a bit buggy or just my copy of the game? Also my game is already updated to the latest patch.

[BoneSnapDeez]

That's odd. Never had Atari or NES games freeze during "loading zones."

[MrPopo]

That's odd. Never had Atari or NES games freeze during "loading zones."

That's because you don't try to speedrun. So many ways to hard lock those old games (and even more ways to soft lock them).

[Flake]

That's odd. Never had Atari or NES games freeze during "loading zones."

That's because you don't try to speedrun. So many ways to hard lock those old games (and even more ways to soft lock them).

Yeah. It depended a lot on how well the developers had handled their memory management. A complex game that pushed the NES hard and/or used a lot of tricks to utilize memory that functionally outstripped what the machine should have been able to do could lock a game up easily. Metroid and Kirby's Adventure are great examples.

Metroid because the developers used (in my opinion) a genius way of creating such a huge world by dynamically generating each room as you entered it based on your position on the game's map. It's really easy to push the game into territory where it generates a play space based on variables that shouldn't be there and either puts you into a "room" outside of the map or straight up crashes.

Kirby didn't abuse the NES' memory so hard (also had advantage of being on the last gen NES mapper) but it had so many variables and assets in play at any one time that the NES CPU could get overwhelmed.

But the difference is that the NES had almost immediate access to game data since the box itself was really just a glorified BIOS chip that gave you access to the software on the cartridge. Later games were more at the mercy of what disc speeds could be achieved by whatever CD rom was commercially viable for use. Great example is to compare a first gen NeoGeo CD game (like Art of Fighting) with the same game on AES. Literally, they are exactly the same but the AES will load the assets immediately and the NeoGeo CD gives you time to go make a sandwich between fights.

But you can't win because as soon as disc drives become faster (or unnecessary) games become so complex that the CPU or GPU becomes the bottleneck. It takes time to decompress that game code on the fly and only so much game play data can be front loaded into buffer memory.

[Luke]

The problem with Doom 3 is they named it Doom 3.

The real problem is that they made a video game based on a terrible movie.


I have the original release of Sonic The Hedgehog, which includes a debug mode where you can place any object in the game, anywhere, at anytime. It's very fun to play around with, but also a huge time suck.

[Erik_Twice]

What are you smoking? Arkham Asylum is an amazing Batman simulator; it recalls all those times when you watch Batman: The Animated Series and the mooks and wandering around trying to find Batman, and then he pounces on them one after another.

Nothing. I don't even think it's a controversial opinion at all

I simply do not think that being an "amazing Batman simulator", which is debatable, and recalling a decent, but artistically unimportant series is enough for me to consider a game to be great, much less one of the best ever made.

The problem with Doom 3 is they named it Doom 3.

No, that's not true at all, it's a very flawed game on its own terms. The constant repetition of tired "gotchas" like spawning monsters behind you after moving to the center of the room or picking up ammo, the tired art direction or the obnoxious flashlight mechanic are pretty good reasons to dislike the game.


But still, when it comes down to it, I don't think there are one hundred truly great computer games. There are only a handful of games I would feel comfortable putting on the same level as the best novels or films and I feel that often gamers put good, but not great games as representative of the medium simply because that's what they know about.

I mean video games have only existed for the better of 35 years and the overwhelming majority of them have only been made in two countries: Japan and the United States. There are really not that many of them and much less enough of them made with enough maturity to compete.

[fastbilly1]

The problem with Doom 3 is they named it Doom 3.

The real problem is that they made a video game based on a terrible movie.

You have your years wrong. Doom the Movie (2005) is based in part on Doom 3 (2004).

[dsheinem]

I just spent the last 2+ hours trying again and again without success to beat the final boss of Geometry Wars 3.

He is a bastard.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I reviewed PC Gamer's 2014 list, and while I can't hate any list that contains Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, it is - IMO - weighted bit too heavily toward modern shooters, Bioware RPGs, and LucasArts adventure games (i.e., where are King's Quest VI, Minesweeper, Star Control 2, Syndicate, TIE Fighter, and other classic PC games I would expect to see on this list?).

Noise: I have been working through EGM's "best video games of all time" lists for years. (It published three of them. One in 1997, one in 2002, and one in 2006.) Although I still have about 80 games to go, I have beaten most of them. A lot of games I played when they were new releases, and the Summer Gaming Challenge hasd helped me get through a lot more (like R-Type Delta). I suggest just keeping a copy of the list somewhere, checking off the games you have already beaten (or played), and then, whenever you are looking for something new to play, consulting the list before you look through the rest of your collection. If something on the list strikes your fancy, give it a shot, and if not, choose something else (and put the games you are "dreading" on your summer gaming challenge" list.)