Let me give you a proper introduction and spare you from Tony's slander of a fine, fine game.
This is the Untitled Gaming blog. Those of you who have been following our podcast for a while know what to expect, roughly. Imagine this as sort of a non-stop literary form of our podcast in which Tony and I will just post whatever the fuck we feel like (relating to gaming) whenever we feel like it.
We honestly have no idea what to expect from this, but it struck me as a good idea over the weekend, and I informed Tony that we were doing this last night, since it wouldn't be right to take on this venture without him.
I think that this will be a daily thing, if not multiple times a day. Some posts will be three sentences, while others will be overly bloated reviews, others will be commentaries on gaming news stories, and still others will be nearly pornographic in how extremely they satisfy your brain.
At first, this will serve as our running discussion on the top 10 games of the 00s.
Before I assert that I am above even pretending that Tony's hatred of a landmark game based on its unforgiving save system is worth validating via a response, I'm going to reveal some of the games that have been in our discussion, so that you all can make cases for and against, if you'd be so kind.
Here's the short list, in no particular order:
Bioshock
Final Fantasy XII
Grand Theft Auto III
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect
Guild Wars
Diablo II
Fable II
Fallout 3
Orange Box (this isn't even a game, but I didn't pick it, so whatever)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
MVP Baseball 2005
Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
Final Fantasy IX
Gears of War
Gears of War 2
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Lost Odyssey
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Dragon Age: Origins
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (PC)
Indigo Prophecy
Shadow of Destiny
So, that's the short list, and that's even missing a few that both of us wanted to put on there.
Hell, I just realized that Tony didn't put any racing games in there. That's surprising. I thought for sure that we'd see a Codemasters game from him somewhere in there.
One thing that will be interesting to see is how Tony and I come to a consensus on criteria for the decade's top ten games. It's clear to me, at the moment, that we have slightly different criteria. For example, multiplayer matters little to me. I do enjoy multiplayer, but I haven't quite figured out how important to me it is. It's important enough to keep Modern Warfare 2 and Forza MotorSport 3 out of the discussion, since both have extremely severe problems with their respective multiplayer experiences (though Forza 3 has a far better single player experience than the laughable MW2 single player.) I do enjoy both games but both are cases of diminishing returns on a franchise.
So, what do you guys think? What's your criteria? What would you champion for our list, and what did we leave off? Don't forget to tune in this weekend when we post our first podcast of this series!
-Blaine
Posts
Dragon Age Day 2023
5 months ago
Why post an introduction when it will just get pushed down the list as we post? Pfft is right!
ReplyDeleteAnd my criteria was simply how fondly I looked back at the experience. Bioshock is one that I played for maybe 12 hours total, but the story made a huge impact on me as a gamer, as did the environment. And Orange Box WAS a game release, and it allowed me to mention both Team Fortress 2 on PC and Portal in one breath - even though I apparently am not credible due to not really enjoying Half-Life 2 those two games were an incredible amount of fun to play through.
The flip side was something like Guild Wars, which I have the hardest time 'ranking' since the game can be quite boring. At the same time, I have put probably over 100 hours easily into it, mixed between single player and multi.
Orange was a product release that featured a game, two expansions, & two mods. Kinda like those discs that ship with a 360 that have something like a racing game and an action game on 'em. Or something. I haven't played HL2 since I didn't finish HL.
ReplyDeleteGuild Wars is great, and maybe I should yield on that one.
Bioshock is a great game. No shit. Thanks for the, um, pro-tip.
-Blaine
I find it interesting that you guys are going to tackle this list before some heavy hitters come out early next year that could possibly change the list dramatically. Well, if we're lucky. Was that intentional?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the significance of specifying the PC version of KOTOR II? I have a general idea, but I'd like to hear the full story.
Do you think there will ever be a time that you would refer to a franchise opposed to individual games in the series - like Gears of War or Mass Effect? What I mean, is since they were planned as trilogies from the beginning, will we look back at them as one cohesive experience or will we always talk about them individually?
I'll hang up and listen to your answers - or something like that.
@Laurance - Well, this is going to spill out over more than one podcast, so we're getting the early start so that we can properly devote some time to this. Where most outlets are going to just look at their top advertising doners, or top NPD data over the decade, or (gasp) listen to the wretched answers of the unwashed masses, we here at Untitled Gaming care more about not fucking it up, so we a) make sure to take our time and b) make sure to name only RPGs to the list. The PC version of KotOR II can be a) patched and b) modded. In regards to franchises, that is something that has been discussed and will be discussed. The only difficulty comes in cases like Tony & I have w/ Guild Wars. If we talk about it in this list or on the podcast, he can only talk about half of the experience since he only bought and played half of the titles that make up the full experience, whereas I've bought all four. We've both put in well over a hundred hours with the game, but have had wildly different experiences because of his arbitrary dislike of asian decor. Thanks for the questions, caller.
ReplyDelete