[Broco]

Overall this thread made me a bit depressed about the quality of the whole medium. Is that it? These are the best games over all three decades? Where's the actually great stuff, not just the "ambitious effort, hasn't aged that well" or "awesome when I was a kid" (1980-2000) or "polished AAA title" or "charming/artsy indie adventure" (2001-present).

[negativedge]

2010 is

Peace Walker
Starcraft 2
Minecraft (MUST PLAY THIS GAME MORE)

apologies to: Desktop Dungeons, Super Street Fighter IV, Kane and Lynch 2

this makes my FINAL GAMES OF THE YEAR LIST look something like this:

Missile Command, Kaboom!, Oregon Trail, Bomberman, Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, Castlevania, R-Type, Mario 3, Strider, Smash TV, Sonic, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Doom, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Chrono Trigger, Diablo, Final Fantasy Tactics, Half Life, Soul Calibur, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Ico, Metroid Prime, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Half Life 2, Resident Evil 4, Mother 3, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Braid, Left 4 Dead 2, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

GO ME I VOTED FOR EVERY YEAR

[remote]

[lucky lipstick]

super meat boy is definitely the game i had the most fun with but there is a lot of stuff i would probably like that i haven't played.

dog days certainly has the best campaign of any cover shooter i've ever played. if i liked the genre it would almost certainly be my choice.

[The King]

[username]

Can I split my vote 3 ways or is that simply cheating? Either way I go with Super Meat Boy, Pac-Man CE DX and Red Dead Redemption.
_________________
http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip1.mp3

[Talbain]

Gonna say 2010 was a shit year. Not that I can't find good games in 2010, just nothing I think I'll be talking about in 20.
_________________

[Rud31]

[remote]

Amnesia, too.
_________________

letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[handsomenattou]

2010: Hero Core
runner-up: Infinity Blade

[Felix]

[T.]

[starblood]

[CubaLibre]

[protoblax]

I have been saving up all my votes for this point right now. 30 votes for Nier in 2010 please.

What, you didn't know you got rollover votes? Well, live and learn.
_________________

[Talbain]

[costel]

[Broco]

[analogos]

Guys I think [the] Street Fighter IV [series] deserves a little better than "well at least people are playing fighting games again.................."

[CubaLibre]

It's hard to make those analogies though because of games' mechanical element (some would say essence). Even if you see games as holistic aesthetic objects for which the mechanics are only a part, as I do (unlike essentially rule-based experiences for which all the aesthetic stuff is so much cruft, pleasant or otherwise), the difference that interactivity makes can't really be overstated. I think Dog Days is a seriously great piece of art about the depravity of violence - yeah, as good as Kafka or whoever (Homer) - and at least half of that effect comes from how the game is informed by, and rejects a large chunk of, the history of shooter mechanics. That can't be fully experienced via youtube, any more than a sculpture or building can be fully experienced via a photograph.

This isn't anything new for sb but, I dunno - I understand your use of the word "perfect" but think you might be taking it a little too literally. There may be novels that not one word could be changed without making it worse, but aren't there games with similarly perfect rules?
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[Talbain]

I think I may need to replay Dog Days 2.
_________________

[klj5j6li]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

SF4 is smooth and snappy (unlike Super Turbo!) and stylish, and nowhere near as horribly unbalanced as a million other fightmans. With a good opponent it's incredibly entertaining most of the time, and while I'd have preferred a true successor to Third Strike, I have no qualms with naming it among the best games of 2008. The new characters are also much more interesting and fresh than a lot of people give them credit for being, aside from the failed experiment of Hakan.

[negativedge]

for all SF4 may or may not be, I think we're getting to the point where it's hard to shake off the fact that it's not as good as the fifteen year old game it is an unabashed clone of (Super Turbo).

[klj5j6li]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Regardless, I've had some amazing times with SF4 (starting with the arcade cab in 2008) that no one can take back from me. It's hardly the pinnacle of the genre but it's just really playable and likable, at least by little casual old me.

I really can't play SF2 seriously, the hitboxes just feel so wonky like nothing else and movement seems really stiff, moreso in the CPS2 versions. Attacks don't flow together in a satisfying manner even when I combo correctly. Even the notoriously clunky Art of Fighting 1 is more comfortable in my hands.

[field balm]

a vote for reach, the best online console game so far. Gotta fall in with the sentiment that the latest few years have been a little disappointing.

Cuba, I didn't really enjoy the first k&l but that makes me want to play the new one - i find games discussing other games through their mechanics intriguing. I loved the first no more heroes discourse ib the state of modern gaming, is dog days as intentional in what it does?
_________________

[analogos]

[Felix]

Broco, while I absolutely see your point about Ender's Game and Kafka, I think you may just have higher standards for the medium than I do -- and even that doesn't sound quite right, because (while I certainly don't have the same expectations of videogames as I do other narrative art forms), I think the difference is more of a lateral one. I'm almost tempted to offer the (previously intellectually-bankrupt seeming) "genre vs. format(?)" example up as a point against The Search For The Fuller Videogame.

I grant you that I'm perhaps too satisfied by harmony of that 1995-2007 list that I produced, though.

[Dracko]

[Toptube]

[The King]

I actually came out of this reminded of how VIDEOGAMES ARE AWESOME.
I think it helps I tend to like, umm 'simpler' games?

There are a number of games I'd consider "perfect". At least on par with the number of books possibly even exceeding, and certainly exceeding film.

Tetris The Grandmaster 2 plus
Lunar Lander, Stargate Defender, Donkey Kong, Joust, Phozon, Missile Command
Doom, Super Contra, Lethal Crash Race, LSD, Change Air Blade, Ketsui, Psyvariar 2

to me those are all games that can't be bettered, and that isn't even a complete list. :3

By contrast my lit list would be
a Sōseki, a Camus, a Kafka, a Fitzgerald, 3 Nietzsche, and a play by Shakespeare.


Of course granting designations like "perfect" is only an amusing game, if we ask questions like is a "perfect" game equal to a "perfect" book, we unravel the absurdity of what we've done, there's no answer, it's a silly question.
_________________

[The King]

The literature list:

Kokoro, L'Étranger, Die Verwandlung, The Great Gatsby,
Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, Götzendämmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, Der Antichrist
Hamlet

three of which are philosophy texts by the same dude, and one is a goddamn play.
_________________

[handsomenattou]

[shrugtheironteacup]

DOG DAYS GOTY 2010 MAYBE 2011 MAYBE EVER
_________________

[The King]

[Dracko]

[diplo]

[The King]

Diplo, I'm gonna let you finish but,
Kokoro is the greatest book of all time: Books are over.
_________________

[diplo]

The Greatest X is the most boring myth humans have yet thought up

[The King]

Not any more!
now 'X is the most boring myth' is the most boring myth humans have thought up
_________________