Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

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Pick 2 lots

Poll ended at Thu Oct 17, 2013 11:38 pm

Lot A
11
21%
Lot B
18
34%
Lot C
23
43%
No vote
1
2%
 
Total votes: 53

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Hipolito
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Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Hipolito »

Per our nomination round, we have 38 games with 3+ votes and 36 with 2 votes. The purpose of this "bye" round is to cull the 36 down to 26, so that we end up with a 38 + 26 = 64 game bracket.

Inspired by evil math, I randomly selected three of the 1-vote getters and added them to the 36 two-vote getters to have a total of 39. I then randomly divided the 39 into 3 lots of 13 games each. We just have to pick two lots to get our 26.

So look at the lots below and use the poll function above to vote for 2 of them. You do not have to have participated in the nomination round to vote in this or any future round of the tournament!


LOT A

Starflight
Super Mario 64
Everquest
Command and Conquer: Red Alert
Max Payne
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
Quest for Glory I
Sword of the Stars
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Guitar Hero
Rune
Half-Life 2


LOT B

Gothic II
Total Annihilation
Oblivion
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father
Europa Universalis II
Mass Effect
Half-Life
Fallout 3
Silent Hunter III
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday
Heroes of Might & Magic III
Command & Conquer
Pool of Radiance


LOT C

Doom
Diablo II
Civilization
Ultima IV
Mafia
King of Dragon Pass
Wing Commander
Super Mario World
Falcon 4.0
Master of Orion II
Bastion
Wasteland
Final Fantasy VI (FF3 on SNES)
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AWS260
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by AWS260 »

Come on, Lot A! You can do it!
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LordMortis
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by LordMortis »

But if you beat out Lot B, you kick out HoMM III. That's unacceptable.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Carpet_pissr »

I'm having a hard time voting for a group that suggests that "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!" should even be considered for one of the best games OF ALL TIME?

WTF? There must have been some mind blowing levels that I didn't get to before I uninstalled and put that in my "archived, DNL" list. :P

Sorry, Half Life 2 - I think you should at least be in the running, but your fellow members are too mediocre for me to vote for your group. :D
Last edited by Carpet_pissr on Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Archinerd
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Archinerd »

Carpet_pissr wrote:I'm having a hard time voting for a group that suggests that "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!" should even be considered for one of the best games OF ALL TIME?
You wouldn't know a good thing if it fell in your lap. ;)
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Ralph-Wiggum
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
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coopasonic
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by coopasonic »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
These are the 1 and 2 vote getters. There is a reason they are in the wildcard round (despite it being called the bye round).
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AWS260
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by AWS260 »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
I can say with confidence that they are all superior to the games you posted in the nomination thread. :wink:
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Hipolito
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Hipolito »

I was expecting Lot C to win, but am surprised that Lot A is losing. I know there's some hardcore appeal in Lot B, but damn, Lot A has some serious classic gaming muscle.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Daehawk »

Cant decide,...something i love in each of them.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Zenn7 »

One possible flaw in your distribution. There are 4 games that are Nintendo games in Lot A, 2 in Lot C (though FF6/FF3 was apparently cross platform so maybe that's only .5?). None in Lot B. Although there are a lot of console game players here, I think this is still a predominantly PC gaming forum (certainly, the fact that the by far and away vast majority of the games are PC games would at least seem to suggest that the PC platform is the preferred gaming system (or at least had the best games) to the people who nominated the games). That seems like it might give Lot B a leg up on the other two.

Some food for thought as you go further along here.

I appreciate your work and effort to provide us with this chance to nominate our preferred games and ridicule the uncivilized barbarians we hang out with on this forum who do not recognize the greatness of our personal favorite games. Oh, and Lot B and C will win by a land slide (for those of you thinking A should win... I'd ridicule you for being uncivilized barbarians, but I think the fact that your lot is going to lose is punishment enough for now :P ).
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Hipolito wrote:I was expecting Lot C to win, but am surprised that Lot A is losing. I know there's some hardcore appeal in Lot B, but damn, Lot A has some serious classic gaming muscle.
Classic? Yes.
"Greatest of all time"? Not so much, IMO.
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Hipolito
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Hipolito »

Zenn7 wrote:One possible flaw in your distribution. There are 4 games that are Nintendo games in Lot A, 2 in Lot C (though FF6/FF3 was apparently cross platform so maybe that's only .5?). None in Lot B.
Thanks, Zenn7. The distribution was totally random, though, and that's just how the games landed.

For those of you not voting for Lot A, consider this: if your favorites are already locked into the bracket, they'll have a better chance of winning against the least-liked games. So maybe you should change your vote to A and make it easier for your faves to win.

In 1972, a group of classic games was sent to prison by a military court for the crime of having a lot of console games. These games promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still despised by hardcore PC gamers, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a tournament, if you want your favorites to win easily, and if no one else can help, maybe you should vote for ...

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Archinerd
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Archinerd »

Flawed bracket? Yes.
Any chance of really determining the greatest game of all time? Not likely.
A fun distraction and an excuse to argue about video games? Absolutely.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by wonderpug »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT TOTAL ANNIHILATION!!!

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Lordnine
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Lordnine »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
I’m actually curious now. Name me 10 RTS games that are better than Total Annihilation!

Personally, unless I include sequels, I’m not sure I can fill a list of 10 stellar RTS games…

I think these lists divide people based on how they perceive voting in general. Are you voting for your all-time favorite games or are you voting for the most influential games? There is a big difference there. Any time I see something like the original Civilization on these list I have to assume people are voting for the later, because while it may have been a great game for its time, I can’t imagine anyone would play it over one of its own sequels.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Lordnine wrote:I think these lists divide people based on how they perceive voting in general. Are you voting for your all-time favorite games or are you voting for the most influential games? There is a big difference there. Any time I see something like the original Civilization on these list I have to assume people are voting for the later, because while it may have been a great game for its time, I can’t imagine anyone would play it over one of its own sequels.
Agree. The qualifier is "BEST games of all time". Obviously subjective, but still, you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people that think Civ 1 is better than Civ IV. Classic? Yep. Groundbreaking? Obviously! Best of series? Nay.

OTOH, I would vote for Fallout 1 or 2 before I would vote for Fallout III, and I think many people would contend that choice. I guess some series' "best" are more obvious than others.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by wonderpug »

Yeah, there's lots of different ways to interpret "best game".

In the case of Total Annihilation, I don't really have as much of a desire to play it today since the multiplayer community is long gone, but no RTS game before or after has brought me as much enjoyment as I got out of Total Annihilation. That makes it (my) best RTS game ever, which makes it a prime candidate for (my) best game ever.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

Lordnine wrote:
Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There are a whole lot of not-worhty-to-be-considered-even-close-to-the-best-game-of-all-time games on these lists. Bastion as best game of all time? Max Payne? Total Annihilation? These aren't even the top 10 games of their genre. You guys have terrible taste. :P
I’m actually curious now. Name me 10 RTS games that are better than Total Annihilation!

Personally, unless I include sequels, I’m not sure I can fill a list of 10 stellar RTS games…

Ok, so there may have been some hyperbole in my statement. And I haven't played RTS games in awhile, but the games that immediately come to mind that were better/more genre defining are: Dune, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Company of Heroes, The Total War games. And there are even more if you consider the sequels to some of these series.
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Ralph-Wiggum
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

Carpet_pissr wrote:
Lordnine wrote:I think these lists divide people based on how they perceive voting in general. Are you voting for your all-time favorite games or are you voting for the most influential games? There is a big difference there. Any time I see something like the original Civilization on these list I have to assume people are voting for the later, because while it may have been a great game for its time, I can’t imagine anyone would play it over one of its own sequels.
Agree. The qualifier is "BEST games of all time". Obviously subjective, but still, you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people that think Civ 1 is better than Civ IV. Classic? Yep. Groundbreaking? Obviously! Best of series? Nay.
But invariably, newer games, especially sequels, are objectively "better" if the question is whether you would prefer to play a newer game vs. a classic game. There are only a few classic games that I can think of that I still go back and play (e.g. X-Com, Star Control 2). I think a better metric would be "how much did you enjoy the game when it came out". If I put in 200 hours into Civ 1 but only 100 hours into Civ V, I would consider Civ 1 the "better" game.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by coopasonic »

Best game of all time, not best game of all time on the day it came out. I thought Pong was incredible the first time I played it on my 13 inch black and white TV. Then how freaking amazing was Star Raiders? It happens over and over again, but only a few of them are still incredible.

Once it has been eclipsed it isn't the greatest of all time anymore. Important, sure, but you need some serious blinders to see most of the stuff above as greatest of all time... Excluding Mafia anyway. ;)
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by wonderpug »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:Ok, so there may have been some hyperbole in my statement. And I haven't played RTS games in awhile, but the games that immediately come to mind that were better/more genre defining are: Dune, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Company of Heroes, The Total War games. And there are even more if you consider the sequels to some of these series.
Total Annihilation had a lot of firsts.
  • You could queue up infinite commands for as many different units as you wanted, something that should have become an RTS standard but didn't.
  • It had regularly released new units for download, "DLC" before the term even existed
  • I think it was one of the first RTS games to have procedurally generated combat, or whatever you want to call it. When a unit fired a weapon, a hit wasn't guaranteed or based on some lookup table; the game actually calculated the projectile arcing through the air and you just had to see if it hit its target or not
  • It was one of the first to have infinite resources instead of tiberium/gold/whatever that could run out
  • I think it was one of the first to have line of sight affected by terrain through actual math
  • First with 3d-rendered units?
  • Waypoints
  • And more! ;)
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:But invariably, newer games, especially sequels, are objectively "better" if the question is whether you would prefer to play a newer game vs. a classic game. There are only a few classic games that I can think of that I still go back and play (e.g. X-Com, Star Control 2). I think a better metric would be "how much did you enjoy the game when it came out". If I put in 200 hours into Civ 1 but only 100 hours into Civ V, I would consider Civ 1 the "better" game.
:think:

Ummm, but the question is not whether you want to play a newer vs classic game. Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but again, the question is pretty straightforward as far as I am concerned. Best game of all time. Whether it was the best in 1997 or not, or how much time you spent on it, or even how much you enjoyed it when it came out, is not relevant.

Are you saying you think Civ 1 is better than V simply because you played it more? I put insane amounts of time into 1 (probably more than IV and V combined), but that was because I HAD insane amounts of time on my hands when it came out. No kids, no wife, no worries! :D Also genres come into play with that scenario...some games have finite play through, so by definition, the hours played would be less than say, well a Civ type game which can be played over and over. And over. And over.

Gabriel Knight for instance. Awesome series of games (not sure which one is "best", but one of the early ones for sure), that IMO should be nominated as at least a possible choice in the BGOAT. But you aren't going to rack up hours in their finite, story based formats compared to an RTS or a 4x4.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

Maybe hours spent on the game isn't the best metric. But when voting, I usually try to go by which game I obsessed more about when I first played it. For that reason, I would probably vote Dune higher than, say, the newer Command & Conquer games. But by any objective measure, those newer games are "better" (better graphics, improved AI and GUI, etc). The original Dune just did something for me that the later RTS game didn't do.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:The original Dune just did something for me that the later RTS game didn't do.
And IMO, that is a great reason for nominating it for a BGOAT. There was some Quality about it that was not present in other RTS games you played, even if it was technologically inferior, clunkier, etc.

I would argue it's that "X factor" of fun, that makes a BGOAT nominee, not better graphics, better sound, better UI, or even AI. It's also that same characteristic that allows old titles to compete with modern ones.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by wonderpug »

When someone says Michael Jordan or Larry Bird is the best basketball player of all time, you generally don't get responses of "but they wouldn't play very well at all if you put them on a team today!

"How could Babe Ruth be a greatest of all time? He doesn't even move when I throw a ball at him!"
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Lordnine »

coopasonic wrote: Once it has been eclipsed it isn't the greatest of all time anymore. Important, sure, but you need some serious blinders to see most of the stuff above as greatest of all time... Excluding Mafia anyway. ;)
This is pretty much my stance. I still hold that some old games have yet be to bested in their respective genres (Thief 2, System Shock 2, Fallout 2). But other games, like Warcraft II, certainly have been.

Things become more complicated when you consider games whose follow-ups may have improved almost every element but the new elements don’t make as cohesive of whole as the original. This is where I stand with Alpha Centuari, which I still feel is the best game of that type despite newer civ titles expanding on interface, gameplay and graphics.
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

wonderpug wrote:When someone says Michael Jordan or Larry Bird is the best basketball player of all time, you generally don't get responses of "but they wouldn't play very well at all if you put them on a team today!
Not to derail, but this argument gets made pretty often against Wilt Chamberlain as the GOAT (i.e. he was great, but much of that had to do with no real competition in his era).

But I agree with Carpet_pissr: there's an X-factor of fun that really is the decider for me. And for me, some of that fun factor comes from novelty of not having played something similar before. That is why I would vote for Civ I over Civ IV. Sure Civ IV improves massively over Civ I, but it didn't have the "wow" factor of the first game.

So, to summarize, Total Annihilation blows. :violence-smack:


:P
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Re: Best Game of All Time Tournament - Bye Round

Post by wonderpug »

In conclusion, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Wilt Chamberlain all suck at Total Annihilation.
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