Is there a particular video game you’re dying to tell us is the most space awesome game ever? We’ll be doing a brief series here starting the third week of June. We’re looking for posts giving an in-depth analysis of an individual game with an explanation of why it’s the best video game ever. If you’d like to submit a guest post for consideration, please shoot me an email with the specific game you have in mind: darthlinguist (at) gmail (dot) com.
Kyle Cupp
Kyle Cupp is a former regular here at Ordinary Times who lives in a small rural town about two hours southwest of Portland, Oregon with his wife, kids, and dog. He enjoys studying and writing about the world of employment, which is good because that's his job. You can find him on Twitter.
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Too many to choose from.
Seriously.Report
I’ll be writing a post on Bastion.Report
Excellent choice.Report
I might try to make the case that the best were the kind you had to play at 7-11 for a quarter. Asteroids, Spy Hunter, etc.Report
#SlatePitches:
1. “You’ll never guess who spawned the best video games ever (HINT: they also make a mean Slurpee)”
2. “How 7-11 saved the video game industry (and why they’ve been lost ever since)”
3. “10 best video games that cannot be played”Report
I put in for Minecraft.Report
I could write up a case for either Portal or Civilization 4.Report
I will do my best to meditate upon Fallout.Report
+1 to Civilization (Civ V is a mulligan?). But Alpha Centaruri is a sort of a spin off and was brilliant.
How about the Total War series? Total War: Rome II will be the decider on that late this summer. It’s probably the only game I will buy this year. Life get’s busy.
Elder Scrolls (Bethesda’s take on Fallout was great, too) … or Baldur’s Gate? Especially if we can consider Planescape: Torment a spin off.
And just for the grognards: Europa Unversalis and it’s direct spinoff’s Crusader Kings and Victoria.Report
If I’m not mistaken, it’s a series on the best video game, not the best series (also a great topic, though!)Report
Ack. The vicodin is turning my brain to mulch this weekend. You are absolutely right – as I reread the OP for the third time.Report
o, wait -write a guest post for? Then nevermind Elder Scrolls (Eric Kain has done that already and far far better than I could) or Civ (Don Zeko has dibs). I haven’t played Baldur’s Gate in over a decade. And I don’t think anybody else plays the grognard games but me. “It’s um, all just numbers?” was one friends instant review.
I would give the Total War series a go, though.Report
I find it hard to think of Erik writing about anything other than Dark Souls.Report
Personally, I enjoy Civ V quite a lot.Report
OMG me too! I play multiplayer online obsessively. What’s your favorite civ/strat? I’m a complete sucker for wonders and cultural victories so of course I play Egypt and am so excited for the new expansion I can barely breathe.Report
I’m pretty eclectic with my Civ choices. I’m definitely looking forward to the expansion since it should help with the late game, which is fairly boring unless you’re trying to take over the world.Report
Populous.Report
Seeing as my preferred gaming genre is one that I doubt anyone else here has much interest in, I would be wasting my time arguing why the IL-2 Sturmovik series is the greatest video game ever. However, it’s a great idea for a series and I’ll submit a post giving the game its due in its respective genre.
I really like Tod’s idea.Report
Actually I think that would be a great entry, precisely because it’s one I have no experience with!Report
I can see an argument for IL-2, I remember playing a lot of it way back when. I never stuck with the later installments/expansions but it remains a towering achievement of gaming.Report
All of you, please stop being ridiculous: the answer is Super Metroid.
What’s next?Report
The “Thief” Series
First person “sneaker”.
I also liked Half Life, Deux Ex, and the Elder Scrolls.Report
Hmm.
How do you define “best”? Ground breaking, or inspiring new genres? Unique and unforgettable?
Masters of Orion 2, Civilization, Command and Conquer, Ultima Online — all created or advanced entire genres.
Baldur’s Gate revitalized an entire genre that had been effectively dustbinned. Planescape: Torment is one of the most unique and best told RPG’s I’ve ever played. Deus Ex and Half Life are excellent shooters that should be the bar to aim for.
Portal is, well, Portal and just space-awesome in every respect.
Then there’s “Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic and after” RPGs, which are all similar and all sorta the default for excellence. Or Blizzard with Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo I and II, and World of Warcraft — again, setting a bar or creating a genre. (Admittedly, the Dune game actually came before Warcraft for RTS).
Still…Portal or Planescape Torment. The former is such a unique concept and gameplay that my wife — who loathes shooters, enjoyed the snot out of it and spent a good hour talking my ear off about how it was this excellent example of how to teach complex concepts iteratively and naturally (the fact that, well, you end up thinking 4 dimensionally and ‘with portals’ is proof of that), and the latter is such a good story and concept that people won’t stop talking about it what, 15 years later?Report
I don’t know if Portal is the best game, but it’s sure as hell some of the best writing in a game ever. I couldn’t stand the “playing” part but my buddies and I watched Portal and Portal II played through on Youtube like it was a movie. And it was a -damn- fine movie.Report
You obviously never learned to think in Portals. Honestly, by the end of that game, I was shocked at the concepts that came rather naturally. “Oh yeah, let’s go ahead and mutilate space time. Casually. On the fly. While falling through the air, so I can use my momentum“.
It was a great game for that. By the end of the game, you were literally solving puzzles that you couldn’t even have grasped at the beginning.Report
Yes I’m sure it was a fine puzzle solving game; I just don’t find puzzle solving that groundbreaking. Lord knows I don’t like explicit puzzle solving games myself. Then again, since I don’t partake in explicit puzzle solving games I have no context to make a determination that the puzzles in Portal (or 2) were that amazing. So maybe it was the worlds most amazing puzzle game. It certainly was the worlds most interestingly written puzzle game.Report
No game is for everyone, that’s for sure. 🙂
I, for one, was personally thrilled to see a shooter turned into a complex, spatial puzzle solving game with multiple solutions. Topped with ridiculously awesome writing and voice work.
In terms of shooters — Team Fortress 2 also stands out as just ridiculously fun. 🙂Report
One should also nod to a particular subset of puzzle games. Games like Tetris or Bejeweled that play on the back of your eyelids right before you fall asleep.Report
I was going to write one about the best game for non-gamers. But then my laptop croaked. I aint doin it on my phone.Report