Frustration at IGN

[BlackLightning]

Have any of you guys seen that IGN "Top 100 games" list?
That thing is pathetic! Neither Diablo 2 nor Lord of Destruction are on that list! :angry:

Out of curiousity, I also checked the IGN forums, and there were people there saying that Blizzard is absolutely pathetic! I don't know about everyone else, but this really makes me rub my face in frustration.

Not even Diablo, one of the classics, and one of the early juggernaughts, was mentioned. The only games mentioned were Starcraft and Warcraft 2. Where's Warcraft III? Where's Lord of Destruction?

This really bugs me, and I've lost faith almost completely in the people who made that guide. Period. :angry:

[--Pete]

Hi,

Who made that list? How many people's input was used? What did they by "Top Game? Good seller? Something they enjoyed?

If you were to go, for example, to a war-gamers board or a flight sim board, none of the games most people talk about here would even be on their radar.

And, finally, shouldn't this post be in the Lounge?

--Pete

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Pete,

You're on the ball ;) Moved from Atma's...

[Kasreyn]

First and foremost, you should have linked to the list so I can check for myself.

As to my opinions on top 100 games:

Blizzard's only games that would deserve to be in that list are IMHO D1 and SC vanilla. BW and HF are fun expansions, but IMO don't truly count as "games" in their own right. D2 and WC3 are fun for a lark but not top 100 material.

Other contenders in top 100 for me would be Zork, Rogue, Wing Commander 1 and 3, Doom, Doom II, Quake, Half-Life, Civilization I, SimCity, Master of Orion II, Dungeon Keeper I, Final Fantasies 1, 4(j), 7, and 9 (if we're counting consoles - you didn't mention - but 7 has a PC port and 1 and 4 can be found on rom); Myst, Fallout I, Baldur's Gate I, Black & White (mostly for sheer concept elegance), and maybe a few others I've missed. All of those I mentioned, pluis D1 and SC, would be in the top 40 of the top 100, easily, if I made the list.

Don't feel bad though. I lost a lot of faith in a magazine I liked, once, because they posted a "top 100 books" list which I really disagreed with (though they had the sense to include Dune and LotR).

-Kasreyn

[NiteFox]

Top 100 lists are always complete bitches to compose, particulary for those actually producing them.

PC Gamer (UK) has, for several years now, done top 100s, and pretty much the basic rule they allow is "no sequels and expansions" (Though that hasn't stopped GTA3 sharing the list with GTA2, or Quake being just grades away from Quake 3 Arena. Their reasoning is that while they are expansions, they're totally different games) and on the whole they've done well. Not all the games are there purely to satisfy the publishers, with NetHack being in the list for as long as I can remember, and Introversion's brilliant "hacker-game-on-a-shoestring-budget" Uplink receiving placements in the last list (As well as scoring a brilliant ninth place in the reader's poll). Old, abandoneware titles such as Elite+ and the original X-Com are also almost guaranteed a spot every year.

For essentially every year since their release, Half-Life occupied the top-slot with Deus Ex occupying second. This, essentially, was a guarantee. Every year you could always count on those two results, and year in and year out people would complain. There were the die-hard Deus Ex advocates that kept bitching on how their game (Which was infinately better than Half-Life, ITHO) was always bridesmaid and demanded that they get fair play next year. There were those that didn't like Half-Life, saying that it was "too old, and by the way, what the f*** is Ultima 7 doing in the list you old dinosaurs?" and didn't deserve the top slot year after year. "The plot is b-movie substandard," they'd yell, "the graphics engine is crap." they'd whine, and when they had the chance in the reader's poll to ammend it... They'd shut up and let others vote for Half-Life.

All that changed last year. Medieval: Total War was voted in, with Deus Ex in second and Half-Life was third. The backlash was astounding. First of all you had the Deus Ex fans that thought that they were gypped once again. Then you had the "I like Half-Life but not Deus Ex" crowd who were outraged that Deus Ex beat them, after all Half-Life was the better game just last year, why are they now third? And then you had the "I love Half-Life and Deus Ex" group who thought pretty much the same thing without the hostility towards Deus Ex, and would have rather that finish first than Medieval. And then you had those who thought that Medieval was not that good a game, and in many ways they were right - It certainly hasn't had the longevity enjoyed by both HL and DE, and the expansion was treated with lukewarm reviews at best. There's nothing really there to put Medieval at the top of the list. And then the readers results came in, and Half-Life was top yet again with Medieval somewhere in the arse-end of the top ten.

PC Gamer is a fine magazine, but if there is one thing I don't like about it, it's the "we're always right" attitude they exhibit. Every time a letter is published, or a reader's review in the Uncensored section is printed that disagrees with their views, the reply will inevitably contain the words "you're wrong" in that order. The flak they've taken over the Hitman series has been astounding, as it seems that for every bad game there's always a crowd willing to like it. However, even they couldn't have predicted the backlash over the "Medieval is better than Half-Life and Deus Ex" debacle, and even made some concessions. Granted, the most visible was a screenshot of one invincible Blue Shift scientist leaning against a blood-stained wall with the caption "All right, I admit it, Half-Life is the best. Now can you please stop shooting me?" but the concessions were there, as exhibited in the much scaled-down Medieval presence in the magazine in the following months.

Plus, it was noted on several occassions that Jim Rossignol, a former staff writer at PCG was one who went on to actually work on Medieval: Total War, and this somehow influenced their decision. And those who said this were probably right, as PC Gamer always seemed to get preferential treatment whenever any new information was to be released. PC Gamer's impartiality has been soiled with this whole affair, and its probably something that will never happen again.

What? Oh yes, the point of all this. Top 100 games lists are, essentially, like any chart be it for movies or books or music that is based on opinion rather than sales (And let's not claim that sales is a good indicator of quality: After all, if it were then the best game in the whole world would be The Sims) it will only ever express the opinion of the writers. Everyone has their own opinions, and I can honestly and without any malice whatsoever say that each and every opinion in the world is wrong on some level.

[Nystul]

I assume that you mean the list at http://top100.ign.com

Keep in mind that this is an all time list covering not only PC games but also platform games (and I think the emphasis is probably more on the platform than the PC, considering that the #1 game is Super Mario Bros!). Looking at how far down the list a game like Doom is, you know the competition is pretty steep. For Starcraft to be ranked #7 is quite impressive. Now IMHO, Diablo should definately be on that list. Diablo II and WCIII maybe should not make it. I have to say that there aren't many games on that list about which I could say "This game sucks. They should have put Diablo II here instead of this junk." Most of the games on that list that I've played are amongst my personal favorites. Just looking at 91-100, I see many of my childhood favorites!

There are a lot of good games that aren't on the list, but there aren't many bad games that made it. The Legend of Zelda isn't even on the list! Diablo II and D2:LoD were both IGN Editor's Choice award winners, so it's not like they don't like the games. Dungeon crawls are not well represented on the list though, so perhaps they view these games as RPGs with weak NPC interaction :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Having had a chance to see for myself, I'd say that it isn't too bad a list. It does seem to be heavy on the consoles, with both computer games and arcade games being underrepresented. Given how much influence the arcade games had on the consoles, I think there should have been more of them from further back. Indeed, how can any top 100 list of games where "how influential it was in the realm of gaming" was one of the criteria not include Pong? :P

Missing from the list are all the early text based games, all the serious flight sims, all the better adventure games, and all the true wargames. Combining that with what *is* on the list, I'd have to rename it "Top 100 Games for the MTV Generation". The twitch factor clearly outranked the thought factor in compiling this list, but that is just another indicator of the bias that goes into generating any subjective list.

So, no, it's not *my* list. But it's not a bad list, either.

--Pete