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Shamus Young's Top 64 PC Games

Eyeball

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Didn't he play bass for AC/DC?
 

felipepepe

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For some reason Shamus website always blocks me. For the past 2-3 years I've always needed a proxy to access it. :|
 

Carrion

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I get no such impression. He seems like a complete, utter retard.
Based on the list so far, no doubt. I think he's a big fan of Thief, System Shock 2, Fallout and the likes, though, and he bashes many newer games (like the sequels to said games) regularly on his blog despite also embracing the popamole every once in a while.
 

Allanon

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Shamus is a nice guy, making a stupid list to ridicule lists. How very edgy of you to take it seriously and make fools of yourselves.

It's cool that he's a nice guy, but if you work "for weeks" on a list and it turns out to be shit you can't claim the "I was just pretending to be retarded" defense.

His point is that all lists are shit, so it's no wonder his list is shit too.
It's not a serious attempt at all and it is clearly intended for his usual readers. I was quite surprised to see it posted here...
 

Lyric Suite

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His point is that all lists are shit, so it's no wonder his list is shit too.

The problem is that that's total bullshit. I can clearly claim that all lists are invariably flawed without having to purposely make a shitty one. What the fuck is the point of that? Attention whoring?
 

groke

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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera BattleTech I'm very into cock and ball torture
Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool that clicks on the fools shit article and gives him ad revenue

Infinitron

Well, you should judge a man by his craft:
5PcQu7W.png
 

DraQ

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Shamus is an interesting guy in that he's a rare example of an outspoken "high-brow casual". That is, a fairly smart guy, who can recognize poor storytelling when he sees it, who is nevertheless a "lightweight" and not a hardcore gamer. That gives him a...unique perspective on things.

(If you don't believe me about the storytelling, search for his opinion on Fallout 3)
So, in other words, he's a pretentious dolt?
 
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More like a proud casual. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't want to convince me your popamole is actually really deep or want casualization of everything, we all can be friends. It's the "All lists are shit so mine is immune to criticism" defense when he clearly put time and effort into it that makes it look like one of those "controversial" youtube videos that have comments and ratings disabled. What's the point of saying something and refuse to listen to the reply?
 
Unwanted
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I bet his list is not bad at all compared to what the average game journalist would give. I disagree with lists being pointless. They are the easiest way to figure out if someone is an idiot or at least doesn't share same tastes. So it's a great way to determine whether it's worth listing to someone at all.

Ooh. Now I feel like I have to make a list.

I believe there might have been some extremely subtle instances in 1 (for example I recall some resource packets that were disabled or enabled based on player's funds and fleet), but nothing even approaching ridiculousness of HW2's scaling.
Or maybe I just never moved far enough from one end of the scaling spectrum (upper one, I believe, because I don't believe my OCD shenanigans were anywhere close to reasonable way of playing the game, especially given that on a subsequent playthrough my fleet extended beyond accessible play area, with some ships inaccessible or at least hard to reach without alt-select camera calisthenics).

Anyway, beating Homeworld when playing close to optimal was viable regardless of scaling or lack of thereof, while playing HW2 near optimally resulted in overwhelmingly massive fleets steamrolling you seconds after the hyperspace exit cutscene ended, and the only cure was restarting and playing it just so-so, which is, along with derpy patchwork plot, idiotic retcons and auto-completion the most damning thing about HW2.

Which is a shame as I actually enjoyed a lot of both mechanical improvements (simplified formation management excluded) and ship design (banana 2.0 excluded) from 2 and wouldn't mind remake or "Tru" sequel mod using HW2 assets and mechanics.

If HW 1 had some scaling I missed it. I had some giant fleets of captured ships by the end, too.

For HM 2 the scaling was incredibly annoying but it was if anything easier. You could just run your ships around out of range of the enemy and hit and run ad nauseum. That's a pretty boring way to do things, though. So overall it's not really worth playing.
 

DraQ

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He's not trying to do a "best games list" or "most meaningful games list" or anything of the sort, and he goes into detail about all the problems that arise when trying to arrange those games on a hierarchy.
That's why, if I ever do such a list:
  • I won't be aiming for any particular number in advance of actually putting stuff there
  • I will feed the ordering of entries through an RNG and explicitly state that not only are the entries are in no particular order, but that their order has actually been randomized so there is no point trying to infer any sort of information from it. I may even refrain from numbering the list in conventional manner.

More like a proud casual.
So... a pretentious dolt?
I don't see alternative explanation for knowing that you're a casual and trying to make it into some sort of higher ground.
It's like arguing that being casually interested in an area of science or engineering gives you access to some sort of insight professionals lack.

What's the point of saying something and refuse to listen to the reply?
:troll:

If HW 1 had some scaling I missed it. I had some giant fleets of captured ships by the end, too.

For HM 2 the scaling was incredibly annoying but it was if anything easier. You could just run your ships around out of range of the enemy and hit and run ad nauseum.
Really? I haven't tried that (anyway *the* RTS where hit&run really works as it should would be the old Dark Reign). As for HW1 and game-breaking capture-fest - ever captured swarmers?
Sometimes Shamus is interesting, usually he is terrible.

The sometimes interesting part does make him better than most though.
The "sometimes interesting" part would be, for example, his article regarding plot holes - while not groundbreakingly insightful, it was nevertheless something that needed to be written, a well put together train of reasoning and a decent read as well.

Unfortunately, Shamus has pretty much cemented my opinion on him with his Witcher "review".
It's not that he disliked or criticized it, it's perfectly ok to dislike or criticize games I personally consider good.
No, it's that he seemed to have effectively ragequit it because it was too complex which runs into two serious problems:
  • ragequitting a game because it is complex
  • considering Witcher a complex game
Which pretty much confirms "Shamus" as appropriate name for him as it nearly describes the emotion that should dominate his life.
 

Allanon

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That's why, if I ever do such a list:
  • I won't be aiming for any particular number in advance of actually putting stuff there
  • I will feed the ordering of entries through an RNG and explicitly state that not only are the entries are in no particular order, but that their order has actually been randomized so there is no point trying to infer any sort of information from it. I may even refrain from numbering the list in conventional manner.
You are not too far off from each other:
  • So for my own self-edification I made my own list of top games. Since everyone does “Top 50″ and “Top 100″, I thought I’d be all base 16 fanboy and do a list of 64 games.
  • And once you figure out some system to figure out what belongs on the list, how can you possibly put them in a meaningful order? Different games appear for different reasons. Like, how do you put these items in order: Polio Vaccine, Agriculture, ice cream, your mother, music, Marvel Movies. You can’t sort those without knowing what we’re sorting for. Enjoyment? Personal importance? Significance? Popularity? What? Who made this list? This bullshit is an argument waiting to happen.
  • Try not to stress out too much about the order of the items on this list, what games made it and which ones didn’t. This list is just PC games, limited to the ones I’ve played and I thought were worth discussing. If you rage out because I left out your favorite game then you’re just making a fool of yourself. Also remember the rule: A particular franchise can only appear in the list once, so if Resident Evil 4 makes the list then Resident Evil 2 can’t.
The number of the games was chosen arbitrarily, for lolz. The order is explicitly not important.
 
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More like a proud casual.
So... a pretentious dolt?
I don't see alternative explanation for knowing that you're a casual and trying to make it into some sort of higher ground.
It's like arguing that being casually interested in an area of science or engineering gives you access to some sort of insight professionals lack.

Well, I didn't mean "proud" in the bad way. More like saying that being casually interested in an area of science is a valid position and there are gradients between "total ignoramus" and "PhD". If you believe what the internet says, being a casual is worse than eating babies, even though the problem isn't casual games or casuals themselves but the casualization of all games (because we supposedly "need" a game that appeals to both Jimmy and his grandmother).

For some reason Shamus website always blocks me. For the past 2-3 years I've always needed a proxy to access it. :|

Same. I think he doesn't like HUEHUEs. Pretty smart guy, I'd say.

but not smart enough to make a list that isn't shit olololo
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
56-49: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=24410

56. Assassin’s Creed


top50_assassinscreed.jpg



I hate what Assassins Creed has become: A shallow dose of action schlock, built around a premise the writers don’t know what to do with and with a story that never goes anywhere. The present-day meta-story is a dumb waste of time, the overarching battle between assassins and Templars is a sophomoric mix of ideas with no theme or message, and the entries themselves became patronizingly Euro-centric[1]. The story of Ezio is the worst case of Marty Sue I’ve seen in a AAA game. If you have the nerve to put a spoiled rich selfish simpleton as the central character of your game, and then have the audacity to have him out-smart Leonardo da Vinci, then I am angry at you and we must fight.

So why is this on the list?

The core mechanics are solid, and I’ll always appreciate the seeds planted by the first game. And the series has a few good ideas sprinkled around out there, such as Black Flag’s naval combat. The series isn’t irredeemable, it’s just far short of what it could have been.

55. The Walking Dead


top50_thewalkingdead.jpg



I’ve already said everything I could possibly say about the game, but in case you missed it: Telltale Games The Walking Dead is a powerful experience that proves you don’t need “Photorealistic graphics” to have “more emotions”, and in fact the reverse might be true. Lee, Kenny, Clementine, and the rest of the cast were able to enact scenes with subtle facial expressions and things left unsaid, while staying far away from the tar pit of photorealism.

54. City of Heroes


top50_coh.jpg



The best superhero MMO. One of the best MMO games, period. The genre has been in free-fall since then. Champions Online was stupid and filled with self-defeating gameplay design, DC Universe Online was shallow and dull and the interface wasn’t just dumbed down, it was lobotomized. Marvel Heroes is something else entirely, and has nothing to do with making your own hero and punching bad guys for fun.

53. FUEL



Link (YouTube)


I don’t have much to add beyond what I said in the video, except that I wish someone was using this technology to make something sprawling and Bethesda-ish.

52. Planescape: Torment


top50_planescapetorment.jpg



This game is held up as one of the classics of the RPG genre, and used as an example of just how far we’ve fallen and how shallow games have gotten. The game supposedly has more than a novel worth of text in it, every single dialog is brimming with options that put the Mass Effect dialog wheel to shame, and the game wonderfully realizes a strange and exotic world very unlike the usual swords & dragons RPG fare.

But the sad fact is that the game has a lot of ugly flaws. I thought the combat was a slog and a time-sink. The story is actually quite linear[2]and far too many puzzles and challenges have only one solution.

It’s a good game, but it also demands a lot of you. It comes from a brief moment in history when storage was big enough to cram tons of text into a game but before computers became fast enough to depend on cutscenes. I’d love to see an alternate history where Moore’s Lawran a little slower and so developers had spent more years depending on text to tell their stories rather than making the jump to movie-style storytelling. As much as people praise Planescape: Torment, I’d love to see what developers would give us after a few iterations on the idea.

51. Outcast


top50_outcast.jpg



Another odd look into a history that might have been. Outcast used voxel rendering[3] to realize its world. This means it didn’t use graphics acceleration.

Is it a shooter? An adventure game? An RPG? It defies modern categorizations. It’s a talk-heavy game on a fantastic alien world. There’s crafting and inventory managements. There’s shooting. Lots of shooting. It has quests and sidequests. There’s tons of worldbuilding, including an invented language with over a hundred vocabulary words. The main character is named Cutter Slade, an ex-military guy with some kind of haunted past, who shoots hundreds of guys during the course of the game.

I have no idea. You figure out what genre this is.

50. No One Lives Forever 2


top50_nolf2.jpg



No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s way is playful and fun. It came from the golden age of PC shooters between 1998 and 2005, when graphics were just good enough to be stylish and awesome[4] but still primitive enough that we could afford non-linear environments and a more cartoon approach to violence and bodycounts.

In a lot of ways it was ahead of its time: Lots of action set pieces. Animated, voice-acted cutscenes. In-game cutscenes instead of BINKvideo. Stylized visuals influenced by cinema.

This is something that would feel right at home on the shelf next to the latest Uncharted game. Why hasn’t this franchise been revived?

49. The Sims 2


top50_sims2.jpg



I’m not the biggest fan of The Sims. The sims themselves are too abstract for me to feel a lot of personal investment in them, the “socializing and hoarding” gameplay runs pretty counter to my personality, and the needs-balancing gameplay never rose above dumb busywork for me[5]. The underlying engine has always been offensively slow, requiring many times the horsepower it should and with loading times that transcend merely “annoying” and venture into “abusive”. The personalities are shallow nonsense[6] and the AI was so bad[7] the sims often crossed the line from “avatar” to “adversary”.

Having said all that: This game is certainly… uh. Popular? For some reason?

Okay, it’s not just “popular”. It’s one of the best-selling games of all time. Still, I could never get over the notion that the only reason it sells well is because nobody is trying to compete with it. This formula could be done much better. I can see how having a little suburban ant farm of simulated consumers can make for a fun game, but this is an idea in desperate need of refinement.

And no EA, that doesn’t mean “even more DLC”. Jackasses.
 
Unwanted

CyberP

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49. The Sims 2
top50_sims2.jpg



I’m not the biggest fan of The Sims. The sims themselves are too abstract for me to feel a lot of personal investment in them, the “socializing and hoarding” gameplay runs pretty counter to my personality, and the needs-balancing gameplay never rose above dumb busywork for me[5]. The underlying engine has always been offensively slow, requiring many times the horsepower it should and with loading times that transcend merely “annoying” and venture into “abusive”. The personalities are shallow nonsense[6] and the AI was so bad[7] the sims often crossed the line from “avatar” to “adversary”.

Having said all that: This game is certainly… uh. Popular? For some reason?

Okay, it’s not just “popular”. It’s one of the best-selling games of all time. Still, I could never get over the notion that the only reason it sells well is because nobody is trying to compete with it. This formula could be done much better. I can see how having a little suburban ant farm of simulated consumers can make for a fun game, but this is an idea in desperate need of refinement.

And no EA, that doesn’t mean “even more DLC”. Jackasses.

The writer of the article includes a game he doesn't even like in the list, just because it's popular. Oh wait, games "journalism", nevermind. Nothing to see here.

And Infinitron, you're meant to promote the incline!
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
He's not a journalist. (no, really)

Also, I have a secondary role of promoting drama. +M
 
Unwanted

CyberP

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"He's not a journalist. (no, really)""

Blogger, whatever. The quality & principle of writing is almost identical, but perhaps I'm prematurely judging by this one piece.

"Also, I have a secondary role of promoting drama. +M"

:negative:
 

DeepOcean

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He seems to be doing this list to troll people, Sims 2 on a better position than Planescape Torment? I sometimes read shamus blog and he is a casual guy with a little liberal poisoning on the head but he isn't Fallout 3/Biodrone fanboy level of dumb. This list is just to generate controversy and to Infinitron harvest a new crop of butthurt.
 

Lyric Suite

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*Sigh*

The underlying point of the list is that it is all, liek, our opinion and all lists are perforce arbitrary, and to show this he made a list where he ranked a bunch of games at random.

Apparently, all this is considered "wisdom" according to some people.
 

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