crispy4000

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

There's still Super Mario RPG remake and Avatar on the way too.

Enjoying any Wii game that heavily relies on motion controls is an unpopular opinion. Pretty sure we're still in the mintority. The Zelda cycle was a thing, where people love the newest entry, then hate it and bemoan the fact that the old, previously hated one was so much better. I haven't seen that happen so much with Skyward Sword though. Instead, people say older 3D Zeldas are better than BoTW/ToTK but avoid mentioning SS by name.

I enjoy being the voice of dissent. I'll champion games like Skyward Sword when others won't in spite of its flaws. I can also tolerate a good amount of JRPG cheese. But yes, we'll see.

Your disagreement with the critical reception just motivates me more to find out for myself. Absolutely nothing so far makes me want to quit it. I am glad I waited for them to fix the motion blur. That much would have been hard to take on release.

I'll be the judge of that myself.

FFXVI is so my jam. I don't mind the switch to action combat, for this entry at least, and the vibe it strikes is just exactly what I wanted from this series for ages. Graphics mode and motion blur set to 3, the way Digital Foundry recommended. I definitely don't mind 30fps here coming off Zelda.

If your game has to set up a whole system to let the player keep track of and juggle side quests, you probably have too many. And if your game feels empty without that many, you need to find other ways to make your world interesting, IMO. As for the quests themselves I think there needs to be something worthwhile to them to justify their existence. A cutscene that doesn’t feel slapped on, but something you’re truly glad you got to see. A cool item that you’d actually use. A hint for uncovering some other secret in the world. A new member of your party. A super boss. In general, the more that side quests feel like enhancements that better your experience with the game, the more their existence is justified. Xenoblade 3 handled it the best I can think of in recent memory, even with too much arguably. There’s some filler, but also dozens of hours of top shelf content it’s crazy they let you finish without seeing. And that stuff is generally marked as important, whereas the other stuff can be more hit and miss, but it still generally tries to swing for something that fleshes out the world lore.

Booted up both Pikmin 4 and Final Fantasy XVI yesterday. Oddly enough, there's a light-footed, roller-skate quality to the movement that they both share, that I dig a lot.

It’s impossible to be completionist today with all the open world whatnot. I just go for the objectives that feel like they’ll contribute to my enjoyment of the game.

What DF said about them using Raytracing to fake interior spaces in buildings is nuts. First use of RT I can think of that purposefully builds something into the 'reflection' that wouldn't otherwise be there.

@DPCyric Any chance you can go back and click the "Copy" button on the page, and paste from there? If you still have it saved. Makes it much easier on the tallying end for me.

The biggest problem there is they have too few teams willing to tackle projects like that. Rare’s been gutted of its historical competencies, Vicarious Visions can’t even make Tony Hawk let alone a mascot platformer while folded into Blizzard. I’d love to see Microsoft restructure to hit more family friendly content. But that’s what it would take. Can’t just let them continue the status quo if we want to see franchises like these return. Otherwise, it’s all on one studio.

After all these years, Microsoft finally has their mascot platformers. Courtesy Naughty Dog and Insomniac.

Finally beat it, several months after release. Need to go back for a few Shrines and caves, but otherwise I feel done with it. Overall it addresses BoTW's biggest faults, but maybe not quite in as decisive of a way as I hoped. Like a lot of the collectables tucked in the game (yay, no amiibo exclusives!), it feels kind of like a mash up of what the series has done before. Just on a larger scale, with more interesting powers to play with than any Zelda before it. The Shrines and dungeons are much better than BoTW's. They don't hit the series' 3d puzzle highs, but are good enough to get to get on Wind Waker's level at least, while surpassing it in creativity. I really have to give them props for finding ways to not let Ascend break everything. It must have been a difficult design challenge all in itself, not even factoring in all the build-able vehicles. Then there's the enviornmental puzzles, there's multitudes more world-challenge based Shrines than BoTW, and Tears is a better game for it. Getting to the dungeons is also a more interesting affair generally. I felt the sky itself is a callback to Wind Waker's islands, and has all the same positives and negatives. People have criticized the other element of the game I won't spoil. I land somewhere in the middle on it. It's not bad per say, but I don't feel inclined to be a completionist with it. The reason it's a 9.5/10 game and not a perfect 10 for me is the balance and redundant cloathing. So many of those previous game callback costumes do the exact same thing, there's no reason to use one over another beyond which set you have most complete. So seeking them out is pointless. On balance, the best part of the game is the opening, where everything is a threat. But at some point the combat challenge completely dies beyond one or two super-monsters. And sadly, that includes the ending of the game, where a single Silver Lynell on the way is a significantly bigger threat than the final boss in any of its forms. That script needs to flip Nintendo, because what you did otherwise is awesome. 9.5/10 2023 Games Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - 8/10 Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 7.5/10 Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed - 9/10 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 9.5/10

Evil Within 1 free on Epic next week. Now we just need free Skyrim and Fallout 4, and I can collect my free Bethesda games prior to Microsoft collection, lol.

Twilight Princess wasn’t nominated either, right? There’s some Nintendo games I would have voted for in retrospect (Skyward Sword and Metroid Prime 3), too late now. Don’t worry about changing your list.

Metal Slug Anthology at 14 means you're a man of culture. I can dig your list.

Yeah, it's both not the list I'd make myself, but kind of the list I subconsciously feel I should. It forces you to think one game vs another at different parts of the list, when you might not be inclined to do so just slotting each in. Interesting that you have Portal in your top 10. It ended up being #106 for me. Maybe in part because I played so long after release. Differing opinions and such, but its still a fantastic game in my mind.

I’m definitely noticing some games that we missed. At least for me personally. There’s stuff that I thought wouldn’t make my top 100 that actually would in hindsight, like Metroid Prime 3. All is fair though. I think we’ve got a pretty good decent sized list considering 2/3rds of the games won’t make it. I like that ratio. @Commissar SFLUFAN As I thought it might, Psyconauts 2 did end making the cut for me. Good call.

1.) Super Smash Bros Melee No surprise here. The multiplayer game I spent the most time on over the years. It still feels amazing to boot up every once and a while. I've said my piece about it several times, but I'll give a shout out to the camera movement this time. I don't think any platform fighter has been able to fully capture its frenetic quality. 2.) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time I don't think it's aged perfectly, namely the dialogue is a little stilted. (At least the 3DS version cleaned up the visuals and framerate.) All said and done, this game IMO showed more than any other the potential of 3D game design. It's also from a time when secrets still mattered in the series, it doesn't overload you with trinkets, and it still has the best set of dungeons in the series. 3.) Final Fantasy VI (III in US on SNES) It's the very best JRPG out there, for the mood it strikes, the speed of its ATB combat, intelligent handling of topics untouchable by games at the time, and crazed villains. 4.) Starcraft (+ Brood War, Remastered) There's snazzier RTSs out there, and many QoL improvements since. But in many ways I don't even care. Starcraft 1 feels like the apex of a genre, that could very well never be topped. It's perfect as it balance wise, and I'm even more glad the remaster didn't do anything to touch that. 5.) Final Fantasy VII I guess Remake triggered some nostalgia I had for the original, I'm kind of surprised to see it ranked this high. Nevertheless, it's a classic and must play. There's so much packed into to its world, I'm not surprised they were able to expand on it as Remake did. 6.) Super Mario 64 It feels so much more raw and rough than later 3D Mario's. But the unforgiving quality of the physics, wall jumping, etc, is kind of what makes it still great. No one's designing levels like Rainbow Ride today. They don't trust the player to figure it out. 7.) Resident Evil 4 (original or remake) Enough's been said about this one too, but it's immensely replayable for me. Reminds me that I need to get around to the remake and new DLC. 8.) Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES or All-Stars) I kind of wish they didn't have the warp whistles. I think it's a better game when you're forced to see all of it. I'm also kind of surprised it charted ahead of World for me, but with its bosses and airships, I agree in hindsight. 9.) Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (+ Future Redeemed) As a package, it hits everything I could possibly want. Great combat, wonderful world design, huge plot twists I'll think fondly back on, and some great progression innovations in Future Redeemed that I want Monolith (or any open world game / RPG) to take as a lesson moving forward. One of the best soundtracks out there as well. 10.) Xenoblade Chronicles (+ Future Connected) Feels like a coincidence these ended up back to back, but I'm glad it rounded out my top 10. The first game is much more flawed than 3, but its got at least three twists that caught me off guard as places I wouldn't expect a game to go. Amazing soundtrack as well, I think that sells it as a 'classic' from the get go. Larger picture, the game left one heck of an impression on me. Honorable Mentions: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario RPG, Hollow Knight

Man, hit in the gut right out of the gate... And another...

I needed to make some minor adjustments to the list, so consider it current and final as of this post! Thanks all. Edit: Starfox 64 had a duplicate entry. Please keep the "Star Fox 64" entry only. List has been adjusted.

Let's vote! I'll keep it going for about a week unless I see everyone finish earlier. Points will be awarded in inverse fashion (top game gets 100 points, 2nd gets 99, etc). Anything beyond 100 won't factor in. I'll also be doing a best of the rest / snubbed list, which I'd like to weight a little differently. Perhaps bonus points for fewer mentions? With the most awarded for 2? For now, let's roll on. ---------------------------------------------------------- *Quick Disclaimer* Parenthesis () in titles mean its optional to consider, except when marking the year of release. If you've only played the base game that's mentioned, that's perfectly fine. Go ahead and vote based on that. Step 1: Copy this list into a text document: Step 2: Remove any games you haven't played, or haven't played enough to judge in comparison to others. Step 3: Go to this site: https://www.pubmeeple.com/ranking-engine scroll down and select Video Games, copy & paste your updated list into the text entry. *Note* I'd strongly recommend registering an account there to save your progress. It will remember your session if you already started ranking and decide to register, it's a pretty smart web app. Step 4: Click "Add +" then "Rank" and begin ranking games. (arrow keys can speed up the process) Step 5: Click "Copy" once completed. Return here, reply to this thread with a spoiler box with the results pasted exactly. (... if you want to delete entries after 100, that's fine. Use the Source editor.) Step 6: Write out your top 10 and any honorable mentions at the end of your post. You may find it easier to copy these from their website and paste into a plain text document first. Here's where you can go nuts: format it and describe them however you wish. *Entry Example* 1. Armored Core 3 - Here's some words about a game on a randomized list I'm using as an example. 2. Chrono Trigger (any verison) 3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 4. Cannon Fodder 5. Beat Saber 6. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin 7. Cave Story (any version) 8. Celeste 9. Baldur's Gate 3 10. BurgerTime

My last submission: Wario Land 3. 300 entries total, a nice round number, so this is what we'll go with!