Greatest Games of All Time

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-25 01:31am

Durandal wrote:How the fuck did Doom beat Marathon? Doom had absolutely jack-shit next to Marathon. Marathon was the first FPS to allow for aiming on the y-axis, had a motion sensor, almost perfectly balanced weapons, an incredible story, actual missions to go on with objectives pertaining to the story and kick-ass multi-player with real-time voice communication. Marathon 2 introduced the WSTE-M combat shotguns, which are the best weapons ever conceived of in any first-person shooter, ever.

What did Doom have? Blood and a pitiful attempt at a storyline. The only thing it has over Marathon is name recognition. Marathon smacks Doom around in literally every department from technical merit to fan obsession.

There is the small matter of Marathon being a late 1994/ early 1995 game and Doom being a 1993 game- this makes Marathon's superior technical merit not so amazing or noteworthy- sentimental, genre-busting firsts count in this; like it or not, Marathon and all the others followed the trail blazed by Doom. What Doom may have lacked in storyline, it made up for with incredible atmosphere and addictive gameplay. *Everyone* remembers the terror of going up agains the Cyberdemon, for example. As for fan obsession- well damn, Doom has been done again and again and modded and rereleased countless times. Also, Marathon was not the first fps to allow for y-axis aiming, the original System Shock (1994) was. It was also the first game where you had to play with mouse and keyboard. System Shock also did the rampant AI thing (SHODAN) first, and had a kickarse story, though admittedly the two games came out so close together it doesn't mean much.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-02-25 01:38am

AnimeJet wrote:Bah, gamespy.. can't match Gamefaq's Summer Character Contest, pffft =P

We will not mention that given I was on GFaqs when that thing hit the fan...and suddenly GFaqs had apparently over 300K in members........somehow.

Overall this is and always will be a contest of popularity and not content since...if it was SF2 would not be there, and SF3:3S would be in it's stead at the very least.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-02-25 01:47am

Hmph, no mention of Nethack or Angband. Not that they ever cover those on Gamespy, anyway, since most fans of those games post on Usenet.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-02-25 05:12am

Durandal wrote:What did Doom have?

Smooth, fast gameplay. I still play it every now and then. It just feels so fluid and I can play at generally any pace I want... I can take it slow and cautious, or I can go in guns blazing, or somewhere in between. Around every corner is another battle, with few tedious pauses for puzzly shit.

I haven't played Marathon, but Doom is still a good game. With a slightly updated engine (I like to use Doom Legacy, myself), it's still very playable.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-02-25 08:49am

Vympel wrote:What's wrong with that? TIE Fighter shits all over Freespace. It's timeless, and despite the technical excellence of Freespace, it actually has a soul. Did you give a toss when you got medals in Freespace? I sure as hell didn't.

I played both, TIE fighter left me wanting, was quite boring.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus · Post by **Lucius Licinius Lucullus** » 2004-02-25 08:54am

I saw no mentioning of either Pirates! or Civilization II on that site, so I say its utter crap.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-25 11:49am

Crayz9000 wrote:Hmph, no mention of Nethack or Angband. Not that they ever cover those on Gamespy, anyway, since most fans of those games post on Usenet.

I could have sworn I've seen Nethack mentioned on Gamespy occasionally.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-02-25 12:45pm

Vympel wrote:There is the small matter of Marathon being a late 1994/ early 1995 game and Doom being a 1993 game- this makes Marathon's superior technical merit not so amazing or noteworthy- sentimental, genre-busting firsts count in this; like it or not, Marathon and all the others followed the trail blazed by Doom. What Doom may have lacked in storyline, it made up for with incredible atmosphere and addictive gameplay.

IMO, another thing going against Marathon is that it was designed for the Macintosh. Back in 1994, Intel was starting to see the benefits of Moore's Law (as the 386 and 486 came out, each having roughly double the speed of the processor before) and computers built on those were relatively cheap. So you started to have a big flood of Wintel boxes hitting the market, and DOOM ran on those.

I'm not implying that Marathon should have been designed for the PC, though. With DOS4GW being so cranky, and Windows 95 not having been released yet, if it had been released for the PC it probably wouldn't have been as good as the Mac version.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-25 02:31pm

Well, the IA32 world didn't really pull away from PPC until the P3/K7 speed race.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-02-25 02:44pm

Vympel wrote:There is the small matter of Marathon being a late 1994/ early 1995 game and Doom being a 1993 game- this makes Marathon's superior technical merit not so amazing or noteworthy- sentimental, genre-busting firsts count in this; like it or not, Marathon and all the others followed the trail blazed by Doom.

Marathon was in development well before Doom came out. It didn't "follow" it; it just took a little longer. If anything, both games followed Wolfenstein. While Doom was basically a rehash of Wolfenstein with an added y-axis, Marathon took the concept to a different level. In Wolfenstein and Doom, it seemed like the developers considered the story to be a necessary evil, so they just threw something together. In Marathon, the game was based around advancing the story. That made it far more interesting than Doom ever was.

Bungie delayed the release quite a few times, and the demo didn't come out until November in 1994. Doom hadn't even been announced to the public when development on Marathon started. Marathon would have been released regardless of whether or not Doom ever came out.

What Doom may have lacked in storyline, it made up for with incredible atmosphere and addictive gameplay. *Everyone* remembers the terror of going up agains the Cyberdemon, for example. As for fan obsession- well damn, Doom has been done again and again and modded and rereleased countless times.

Yes, and each iteration of Doom was a repetition of the last one. Not an ounce of creativity went into the game itself. Doom is like a popcorn flick; Marathon is more like an engaging thriller. Overall, a lot more effort went into Marathon than Doom, in graphics, sound, gameplay, the story, et cetera. Saying that Doom is a "classic" doesn't make it better. Sure, I enjoyed Doom's atmosphere, but I don't get the feeling that it was lovingly crafted down to the last detail like Marathon was.

Uranium235 wrote:I haven't played Marathon, but Doom is still a good game. With a slightly updated engine (I like to use Doom Legacy, myself), it's still very playable.

I'm not saying that Doom sucked, but it's not even close to being in the same class as Marathon. The fact that id keeps milking the "Demon invasion of Earth" idea over and over kind of cheapens the series, in my opinion. The Marathon Trilogy had a sweeping storyline with mystery and suspense. Unlike most other FPS's, your player was not really the central character; Durandal was.

Ace Pace: TIE Fighter, boring?! Heathen!

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-25 02:46pm

Bah. Everyone knows that Gravy Trader is the best game ever made!

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-02-25 02:55pm

phongn wrote:Bah. Everyone knows that Gravy Trader is the best game ever made!

Aren't you forgetting about Oregon Trail?

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2004-02-25 03:01pm

Lucius Licinius Lucullus wrote:I saw no mentioning of either Pirates! or Civilization II on that site, so I say its utter crap.

Civ II got beaten by Civ III in the pre-vote

Post by **RogueIce** » 2004-02-25 03:58pm

Durandal wrote:
phongn wrote:Bah. Everyone knows that Gravy Trader is the best game ever made!
Aren't you forgetting about Oregon Trail?

Indeed. If that doesn't make it, then I give up on this generation.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-25 04:15pm

Gravy Trader was PC Gamer's old joke-game for Coconut Monkey back in their heyday.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus · Post by **Lucius Licinius Lucullus** » 2004-02-25 04:47pm

2000AD wrote:
Lucius Licinius Lucullus wrote:I saw no mentioning of either Pirates! or Civilization II on that site, so I say its utter crap.
Civ II got beaten by Civ III in the pre-vote

Thus my last hope of mankind dies. Can either the US or the Russians please nuke us into oblivion, as the human race is to stupid to endure. Better to kill ourselves while we still retain a shred of dignity.

How the hell could an utter crap game like Civ III beat one of the best games ever created?

Is UFO in the contest? Didnt see it either.

Robin · Post by **Robin** » 2004-02-25 06:24pm

No UFO, no Total Annihilation and possibly more importantly, no Elite.

Even worse is that they've got Myst in there. MYST! Myst aint no game, it's a frontal lobotomy.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-02-26 02:36am

We should start our own greatest games ever, because Gamespy's sounds like it's turning into a passenger train wreck.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-02-26 03:08am

They didn't define 'greatest' very well! Games like Elite are sure genre-inducing technical masterpieces, but noone wants to trade potatoes for .1c profit and dock manually. Marathon is, overall, much better than Doom, but Doom has got everything (and everyone) else going for it.

To break with tradition, I much prefered Freespace to both TIE and FS2. TIE because I hate all the stupid lameness that got trotted out every SW flight sim of that vintage, and FS2 because the story was unoriginal and the end didn't make sense. BTW, has anyone else noticed whenever someone says 'I like FF7', someone ALWAYS says 'no no no FF6 is better'. Its like there's a CULT or something.

They should do a retrospective on the origins of popular games. Like every second FPS being Doom/CS with different guns, every RTS being Dune 2 with a single small new feature (or a load of broken ones), every dungeon crawl being rogue (even lame crap like diablo), etc. Its a shame these days that I can look at the EB wall and see three games.

[EDIT - And, of course, MYST being a stack of unrelated postcards looked at in random order, challenging you to form connections and 'solve' 'puzzles'.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2004-02-26 07:38am

Crayz9000 wrote:Hmph, no mention of Nethack or Angband. Not that they ever cover those on Gamespy, anyway, since most fans of those games post on Usenet.

Robin wrote:No UFO, no Total Annihilation and possibly more importantly, no Elite.

Even worse is that they've got Myst in there. MYST! Myst aint no game, it's a frontal lobotomy.

Nethack, TA and UFO were all in the pre-vote, but didn't make it through.

I think i'll make a statement here to try and avoid stuff like this:

IF YOUR FAVOURITE GAME ISN'T IN THERE, CHECK THE PRE-VOTE. CHANCES ARE IT DIDN'T MAKE IT THROUGH. THIS IS ESPECIALY TRUE IF YOUR GAME IS PART OF A SERIES, FOR eg FINAL FANTASY GAMES !

Unless your favourite game is Championship Manager in which case you should bitch like hell!

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-02-26 08:25am

Any "Greatest" poll is full of shit. I'd rather have my own favourite games and label them as the greatest than have some strange group of people I've never met throw some obscure shit my way and say "Play it. It's great, as voted for by the ignorant masses."

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2004-02-26 07:01pm

Looking ahead here's my picks for "Tightest matchup" :

Metal Gear Solid vs GTA VIce City - Assuming todays poll results stay the same, that's gonna be a tough one.

Starcraft vs C&C:Red Alert - Two RTS masterpieces going up against each other.

Halo vs Goldeneye - Though i think Golden eye is the better game, i'm betting there'll be quite a lot of X-Box fanboys

Countrstrike vs UT / BF1940 - I'm betting CS will breeze past Raven Shield leaving it with a tough one to fight.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2004-02-26 08:13pm

Starcraft vs C&C:Red Alert - Two RTS masterpieces going up against each other.

GO STARCRAFT!

Its a much more enjoyable game to play than Red Alert ever was. Although RA was good, Starcraft IMHO had a better plot, was better-balanced, and had a truly kickass multiplayer.

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2004-02-26 09:00pm

Am I the only person in the world who didn't like Starcraft?

RAII on my SNES [or was it Playstation?] gave me hours of fun. Obviously I wasn't as good a player of RTS back then, but my battles would last for hours on larger maps.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2004-02-27 04:55am

No. There's a horde of Total Annihilation fanatics who will happily agree with you, although they're mostly bitter that Starcraft is the more popular of the two.

I've played Starcraft. I think it's okay, but I personally don't care for it.

The fact that id keeps milking the "Demon invasion of Earth" idea over and over kind of cheapens the series, in my opinion.

I think that's a conflict between paradigms; the "game is an interactive story" camp, and the "game is a fucking game, with some filler bullshit to give context to the battle" camp.

Personally, I enjoy being able to just go into a game and play it and play it and play it without having to stop for an update on why I'm blasting this particular set of polygons. I also like to play games with a storyline, but I think there's room on the market for both, and I personally think that the presence or absence of a compelling story in a FPS is a minor aspect.

In Wolfenstein and Doom, it seemed like the developers considered the story to be a necessary evil, so they just threw something together.

That was (and has long been) exactly their attitude. (Masters of Doom is a good book.) In fact, I think Doom 3 is the first game they've ever made that's supposed to have anything resembling a decent storyline. I have no problem with this attitude.