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gamestm Top 15 Games machines of all time (reader poll)

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
This gen is garbage. SNES shits all over it. I grew up with N64 and have no nostalgic memories of those games. I've played most of those classics through virtual console or GBA/DS ports. Nothing on the 360 comes even remotely close to:

Super Mario World
Yoshi's Island
Super Metroid
Megaman X
Link to the Past
Donkey Kong Country 2
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy III
Super Mario RPG
Earthbound
Super Castlevania IV

Yeah it just got real list warz up in here.

All of those games are great, some of them are immortal, and one of them makes my top ten of all time. The 360 also has great games in a few genres and immortal games in others. You've identified six platformers (Castlevania and Mega Man are action platformers, Metroid is whatever you want to character it as), four Japanese RPGs, and an action-adventure game.

If you try to find things you'll like in the current generation instead of playing garbage, you'll find it. The SNES has nothing half as frightening as Condemned 1, nothing with the scope of Crackdown or Red Faction: Guerrilla, nothing that blends space sci-fi and RPG together as well as Mass Effect, nothing with the sense of rhythm and flow that Mirror's Edge has, virtually no shooters and certainly no good ones like The Orange Box, no party or trivia games like You Don't Know Jack or Scene-It, kids games back then pale in comparison to the polish, effort, and love put into Once Upon a Monster of Kinect Disneyland, there are few great local multiplayer games like Left 4 Dead or Rock Band owing to the rarity and lack of support for the multitap, etc. And yeah, I think there are some pretty great platformers, jRPGs, and action-adventure games too.

I feel like the expand of genres, the expansion of services (yes, I would like achievements in my SNES games, and yes, I would like leaderboards that didn't involve taking photos and sending them to Nintendo Power), and the overall larger scope, scale, and man-effort put into games today has paid dividends. I also feel like, if you are looking for things closer to classic gaming, today's gaming market enables those too, which is a wonderful thing.

I love the SNES, no doubt about it. But I also Love the 360. (and actually, looking at that photo, several dozen of my 360 games are in storage because I ran out of shelf space, hahaha). I think historically I've generally placed the SNES over the 360 but the longer the generation continues and the more games I've played, the more comfortable I feel saying that the 360 has passed the SNES. You could say many of these things about the PS3 as well. The way multiplatform stuff is now (cf Sega Genesis Aladdin not being the same game as SNES Aladdin) and with so much of their libraries the same, although I personally like the 360 library better than the PS3 library, I also happened to buy a 360 before a PS3 and so I do most of my multiplatform gaming on 360. I don't preclude that someone who bought a PS3 before a 360 might make this exact same argument on the PS3's behalf.

All that being said, as an Xbox 360 owner I have to say: This console is so far off the best console of all time, despite all its potential (fantastic controller, great online, very gaming oriented approach in the beginning). It's so sad that the 360 - after some quite varied and good years - turned into a fps, action, kinect & realistic racer machine that is only saved by a few notable (multiplatform!) games like Portal 2.

Feel free to post your library and I'll let you know where all the variety you're missing is. Also, "kinect" as a single genre and used that way suggests that you're not interested in good Kinect games. No one's fault but your own if you'd love Gunstringer if you played it on controller but choose to ignore it on Kinect.
 

sphinx

the piano man
RROD makes the list pointless, and void of any validity whatsoever, to me at least.

that being said, if RROD wasn't a factor, I think the 360 would be somewhere in the middle, far better than the xbox 1 and a nice console to own if you have a Slim and are into what it offers but it definitely does not cover all gaming ecosystems.

Sorry for the term but it's pretty much a "dudebro" console and lacks japanese games, adventure games, platforrmers, RPGs and free online (I now, lol).
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
whatswrong.gif
Do you honestly feel that the Dreamcast is superior to the XBOX360? That would be a very difficult thing to convince me of. I love the Dreamcast as much as the next guy, but its life was not long enough to produce the kind of content we have on 360. Furthermore, thanks to XBLA, we've received a lot of classic Dreamcast, Saturn, and other retro titles with improved visuals.

The Dreamcast library is nowhere near as impressive as that of the 360.
 
XBL automatically makes the 360 my all time fav console. Not to mention Mass Effect 2.
Yes I loved my Sega Master System, SNES, Dreamcast, PS1 and PS2 but honestly, online gaming puts the 360 on another level.
Also the games I loved when I was younger wouldnt appeal to me so much today (cartoonish graphics etc).
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Feel free to post your library and I'll let you know where all the variety you're missing is. Also, "kinect" as a single genre and used that way suggests that you're not interested in good Kinect games. No one's fault but your own if you'd love Gunstringer if you played it on controller but choose to ignore it on Kinect.
Yeah, Kinect is not a single genre, but most good kinect games are of the casual type which I don't like on Wii either. Of course I'm interested in great Kinect titles too, but I don't really see how Kinect could enhance games I like (OK, Rabbids is fun and most of the fitness games are OK too, but not nearly worth the price of Kinect).

OK, here you go, you knwo which genres I like (my examples from above) and which I absolutely do not (the ones which I listed as very present on 360), here are my 360 games:
Kameo
Viva Pinata 1-2
Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed
Sonic Generations
Mirrors Edge
Alice Madness Returns
Orange Box (may as well write Portal, I absolutely hate everything about fps)
Portal 2
both XBLA collections
Assassins Creed
Sonic & Sega Allstars Racing
Sega Mega Drive and Sega Dreamcast Collection
Child of Eden
Monkey Island Collection
(on Wii: Rayman Origins, you don't have to recommend that :))

Xbox games I play through bc:
Conker
Ghoulies
Monkey Ball DX
Psychonauts


I didn't list XBLA games that are only obtainable through download, but I also hate digital distribution, so I only buy download games when they are absolute must haves anyway.

Oh I've forgotten something: If you come around posting a list of recommendations later than tomorrow, it'd be really nice if you could pm me about it, in case I can't find the thread anymore.
 

kswiston

Member
My issue with ranking the 360 near the top of the all time best console list is that it isn't as essential as some of the previous consoles. Taking away multiplatform games that are available on either PS3 or PC, there are maybe 20-30 good-great exclusives that set the 360 apart. Don't get me wrong, some of these are excellent and definitely worth buying the system for, but if you skipped the PS1, PS2 or SNES, you would have missed out on way more worthwhile titles. Ignoring gamers with extremely restricted tastes, a person with a PS3 and a PC could skip the 360 and maybe miss 3-5 games a year that they wished they could play. If you owned a PC, Xbox, and Gamecube last generation, and again loved all genres, there would be at least a dozen great games a year you would be missing out on by skipping the PS2. And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that console ports to PC have really taken a step forward in competency this generation.

If the PS3 didn't exist, and developers weren't porting everything under the sun to PC, the 360 would definitely contend with the best systems of all time. However, platforms are a lot more interchangeable this generation. Something that will continue to be the case going forward. As such, I don't think the 360 is as essential as the PS2 or the PS1 were.

Same applies for the PS3. I give the 360 a nod over the PS3 though due to the large number of multiplat titles that run significantly worse on the PS3 (Skyrim, most early UE3 games, etc).
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
OK, here you go, you knwo which genres I like (my examples from above), here are my 360 games:
Kameo
Viva Pinata 1-2
Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed
Sonic Generations
Mirrors Edge
Alice Madness Returns
Orange Box (may as well write Portal, I absolutely hate everything about fps)
Portal 2
both XBLA collections
Assassins Creed
Sonic & Sega Allstars Racing
Sega Mega Drive and Sega Dreamcast Collection
Child of Eden
Monkey Island Collection
(on Wii: Rayman Origins, you don't have to recommend that :))

Okay, so the common threads here are that you like visually bright and colourful games, you like Sega/Sonic, and you're not a fan of shooting or realistic driving.

Some recommendations--I've played all of these:
The Lego Series - The Lego games aren't particularly deep or complex, but they are funny, colourful, stress-free, and chock filled with content. My favourite is Lego Star Wars Complete, but there are many choices (3x LSW, 2x Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Lego Harry Potter, 2x Lego Batman). Disney Universe is sort of similar to the Lego games but not quite as good, so that's a secondary recommendation.

Adventures of Tintin - This is a side-scrolling 2d puzzle platformer sort of like the old Prince of Persia. I reviewed it more in depth here just yesterday.

Bully - A T-rated open world game. It's like Grand Theft Auto Jr. What I like about Bully versus GTA is that there's less emphasis on combat and the world is a little smaller and more intimate. It's fun to ride around the town. The mission design is great. The story is fun.

Burnout Paradise - Burnout Paradise is a driving game, but it's not a realistic driving game. It's not a kart racer (if you want a kart racer, my recommendations would be Sonic which you already have, and then Blur, which you don't have) but it's very arcadey. It's fun, it's huge, and there's so much to do. Basically you have a big open world map like a Grand Theft Auto game, only you just drive around. Every street has an activity, whether it's beating the times others set on the street, or crashing through gates to side paths or jumping through stunt jumps, or doing races, or doing smash-em-ups. You can drive bikes or cars, and there are tons of different models. I don't like driving games either, but I liked Burnout Paradise.

Crackdown - Crackdown is an open world game with guns. But it's also got a cartoony kind of cel shaded style, and more importantly, it's as much a platformer as it is a shooter. Your character starts as a sort of super human with a huge jump and able to lift heavy objects, but as you progress you can practically fly and throw cars hundreds of feet into the air. The visuals are great, the world is huge and fun to play around in. It's just so fun to drive or jump off buildings or make explosions. Also, there are hundreds (800 in the first game, more in the second) of orbs hidden around the world waiting for you to find them. If you like collecting Jiggies in the platforming parts of Nuts and Bolts, you'll love this.

EA Create - Create isn't perfect and to be honest my girlfriend has played a lot more of it than I have. It's basically a sort of mix between LittleBigPlanet and The Incredible Machine. So it's a bright, colourful kind of puzzle / goldberg machine kind of game. You don't have a lot of puzzle games listed above, but on the off-chance you like light puzzle stuff, you'd probably get some use out of this.

Earth Defence Force 2017 - EDF is a shooter, but it's a very different kind of shooter than other games out there. It's very arcadey. You shoot huge masses of ugly looking bugs with tons of different guns. Your character repeats cheesy one-liners. It has an RPG kind of element where you grind armor drops and weapon drops. You don't need to be good at aiming. It's got split-screen too so great for local play.

Fable (series) - I'd recommend Fable II first. Fable is a very light action RPG with very simple combat. Besides combat, you can buy and manage property, marry and have kids, do quests, play minigames, etc. It's in a very colourful fantasy world. Colour-wise, I'd say Kameo is the closest comparison although Fable II also has some darker areas. It's cheap and I think the first part of the game is available as a free demo. Most of the complaints people have about the series is that they want deeper combat and more deep mechanics, but your taste here seems to tilt towards breezy games, and Fable II is excellent at being that. I had a really good time with it.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix / Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Colourful and easy introductions to open world games. Lots of content and fun stuff to do. Hanging around Hogwarts is kind of like hanging around the summer camp in Psychonauts. Good for a cheap price.

Kung Fu Panda - Light and breeze action / beat em up, great visuals and use of colour, good for a cheap price.

Majin and the Forbidden Kingdom - This is a nice sort of co-operative, puzzle based action-adventure game. It reminds me of a kind of alternate reality, low rent Zelda. It's got a lot of colour, it's very cute, it's pretty easy, and the puzzle to combat balance is very good. I think you can get it for less than $10.

Mini Ninjas - Action-adventure that has some stuff in common with action beat em ups and some stuff in common with Kameo. Nice use of colour. Not too hard, but pretty substantial in terms of content. Really cute.

Overlord (series) - Overlord is about half-way between something like Fable and something like Pikmin. If you liked Pikmin and you like humour, you'd like it. Very bright colours, very British feeling. It's got some light puzzle elements but it's mostly kind of an actiony game.

Portal 2 - If you like Portal, but want more of it, and a little bit less reflex based, with more story and more humour, Portal 2 is a great choice.

Prince of Persia 2008 - Imagine Assassin's Creed (1) only ten times more beautiful, with ten times less combat, and more of an emphasis on platforming and wall running in well designed levels rather than a big empty open world of buildings. It's not a perfect game, and some people hated it, but I loved it. It's so beautiful. If you like the movement in Assassin's Creed but not so much the game, please try this out. (I'd also recommend any of the three other Assassin's Creed games much more than the original, the step up in quality from 1 to 2 is amazing, if you didn't like AC1, you should still try AC2)

Rock Band - Okay, so, you don't have any rhythm games. Those are kind of one of the best thing about this generation. Maybe you don't like them. Maybe you don't have room. I don't know what your taste in music is. I don't know if you have friends over often. But if you want to have a good time with some people, learn some new music and get the chance to play some of the old music that you like, Rock Band is incredibly well made and a major player this generation.

Scene It? - Scene It is a series of three movie trivia games on Xbox 360. The third game is multiplatform, and is easily the worst of the three. You want the first or second one, both are excellent. If you like watching movies, and not just obscure foreign films, even very mainstream movies, Scene It has a great, colourful presentation. It's very fun to play with friends, but even solo is fun too. There are thousands of questions in each. The first and second games are available with a set of "big button" controllers, kind of like remote-style controllers, that make the games more accessible to people not familiar with the 360 controller.

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper - So you don't have any adventure games listed, but I just wanted to put this here to highlight that the 360 has some genres you might not realize. Sherlock Holmes is a traditional, puzzle-based, inventory-based point and click adventure. The colours and story are quite dark (this is the tale of Jack the Ripper after all!) but it's visually different than just about everything on the system. I'm guessing you're in Europe because you say Mega Drive instead of Genesis, so Grey Matter is also available over there.

Thrillville (series, although I think only Off The Rails is on 360) - Thrillville is a weird game. It's kind of like a theme park / rollercoaster building simulation, but it's also got another level--it's got a ton of minigames, some of which are very substantial, certainly moreso than Mario Party, but also it's got this level where you have to talk to people in your theme park with a pretty advanced dialogue system and kind of do sort of vaguely RPG-style quests with them. Very colourful, kid friendly, cheap.

Toy Story 3 - I must be nuts, recommending movie games. Toy Story 3 is probably the best kids movie game adaptation in a decade or more. The main game is your standard action platformer like every movie adaptation. It's over in 4 or 5 hours. It's better than average, but not great. BUUUUUT the real meat of the game is the 15-20+ hour town building simulator mode that's separate from the main game. You build a frontier town, populate it with people, do open world quests and missions, find tons of collectibles. I can't stress how much there is to do, it's amazing. It's not casual crap, it's a really, really good game.

The Burger King Games - I'm not sure if you can get these in Europe. There are three games: Pocketbike Racer, which is basically a kart-style racing game, Sneak King which is a stealth burger surprise puzzle simulator, and Big Bumpin which is an arcade-style bumper-car game. None of them are amazing, but they're all $5 or less. They're so surreal. I can't believe these exist. The last time a company made an advertising game like this, it was Pepsiman on PS1, which is also insane.

This is just to name 20 or so, and it's not an exhaustive list at all. Maybe you'll get through this list and say "I don't like any of it! Pwnd!" Everyone has different taste. But all of the games I've recommended to you here, I've played through personally, I enjoyed, and they definitely hit different niches than FPS or realistic racing.

I didn't list XBLA games that are only obtainable through download, but I also hate digital distribution, so I only buy download games when they are absolute must haves anyway.

To each their own, but realize that when you choose not to play certain games, it's going to negatively impact your impression of the platform. I'd recommend dozens and dozens of games here; Costume Quest, PB Winterbottom, Braid, Axel and Pixel, ilomilo, Adventures of Shuggy, A Kingdom for Keflings, Fruit Ninja, Stacking, Splosion Man, Polar Panic, Mercury HG, Cloning Clyde, Ancients of Ooga, Castlevania: SOTN, Torchlight, Lazy Raiders, Marble Blast Ultra, Worms, Outland, Raskulls, Limbo, The Maw, Scott Pilgrim, Roogoo, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, etc. To say nothing of Xbox Indie games, where I would also recommend dozens of titles.
 
It's pretty clear to everyone that the PC is #1 simply because of its huge game library (and yes, xboxers, we were chatting and fragging with our friends before the first Xbox even was a glimmer in Microsoft's eye)

I can't honestly put the Xbox 360 higher than #5 or so as a "gaming machine".

It's pretty clear that most of GAF agrees the top slot is the PC, followed by either the PS2 or the SNES.

I'd go

1) PC
2) PS2 (close call here over the SNES)
3) SNES
4) PS1
5) Xbox 360

I'm not sure what to do with the Nintendo consoles after the SNES. For all of the hours I played multiplayer with people since the N64 (Mario Kart, Goldeneye), GC (Super Monkey Ball, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers), etc...I'd probably pile them in after that. NES at #6 - there's a lot of crap there but there's also some top-tier stuff.

If you have a BC PS3, and you compile the BC library, I'd have to put it in the #2 spot...I'm playing Dragon Quest 8 on mine now...but it's certainly not because of the PS3 software library.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Okay, so the common threads here are that you like visually bright and colourful games, you like Sega/Sonic, and you're not a fan of shooting or realistic driving.
First of all, thank you for your work :)! Yeah, I like, bright, colorful, I also love difficult (the more the better).

Some recommendations--I've played all of these:
The Lego Series - The Lego games aren't particularly deep or complex, but they are funny, colourful, stress-free, and chock filled with content. My favourite is Lego Star Wars Complete, but there are many choices (3x LSW, 2x Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Lego Harry Potter, 2x Lego Batman). Disney Universe is sort of similar to the Lego games but not quite as good, so that's a secondary recommendation.
I have Lego Harry Potter 2, Lego Star Wars 2 and another one which I've forgotten about. I didn't list them, because I had them as review copies and found them horribly dull and not fun at all, so that I don't count them as part of my "collection", same goes for Disney Universe.

Adventures of Tintin - This is a side-scrolling 2d puzzle platformer sort of like the old Prince of Persia. I reviewed it more in depth here just yesterday.
Yeah, I have this game as a review copy, too (would have bought anyway because of Ancel), also not considering it part of my collection, although it's still way better than those Lego games.

Bully - A T-rated open world game. It's like Grand Theft Auto Jr. What I like about Bully versus GTA is that there's less emphasis on combat and the world is a little smaller and more intimate. It's fun to ride around the town. The mission design is great. The story is fun.
Oh I've forgotten something: I hate GTA, I really hate it (I always put sandbox in one genre with action, but I see how that might be inappropiate). Sandbox gaming is the synonym for "doing everything and mastering nothing".

Burnout Paradise - Burnout Paradise is a driving game, but it's not a realistic driving game. It's not a kart racer (if you want a kart racer, my recommendations would be Sonic which you already have, and then Blur, which you don't have) but it's very arcadey. It's fun, it's huge, and there's so much to do. Basically you have a big open world map like a Grand Theft Auto game, only you just drive around. Every street has an activity, whether it's beating the times others set on the street, or crashing through gates to side paths or jumping through stunt jumps, or doing races, or doing smash-em-ups. You can drive bikes or cars, and there are tons of different models. I don't like driving games either, but I liked Burnout Paradise.
I like Burnout 1-3, but I fear that the open world aspect takes most of the arcade feeling out of this and gives it a GTA feeling. Which I hate, as stated above. Is this the case?

Crackdown - Crackdown is an open world game with guns. But it's also got a cartoony kind of cel shaded style, and more importantly, it's as much a platformer as it is a shooter. Your character starts as a sort of super human with a huge jump and able to lift heavy objects, but as you progress you can practically fly and throw cars hundreds of feet into the air. The visuals are great, the world is huge and fun to play around in. It's just so fun to drive or jump off buildings or make explosions. Also, there are hundreds (800 in the first game, more in the second) of orbs hidden around the world waiting for you to find them. If you like collecting Jiggies in the platforming parts of Nuts and Bolts, you'll love this.
I might consider this, I have ruled it out because of my deep hate for GTA.

EA Create - Create isn't perfect and to be honest my girlfriend has played a lot more of it than I have. It's basically a sort of mix between LittleBigPlanet and The Incredible Machine. So it's a bright, colourful kind of puzzle / goldberg machine kind of game. You don't have a lot of puzzle games listed above, but on the off-chance you like light puzzle stuff, you'd probably get some use out of this.
I didn't know this game, I'll check it out :).

Earth Defence Force 2017 - EDF is a shooter, but it's a very different kind of shooter than other games out there. It's very arcadey. You shoot huge masses of ugly looking bugs with tons of different guns. Your character repeats cheesy one-liners. It has an RPG kind of element where you grind armor drops and weapon drops. You don't need to be good at aiming. It's got split-screen too so great for local play.
Shooters are really out of question, no matter what. I'd rather sit alone in a dark room doing nothing at all than play a shooter. I can't imagine something I consider less fun than playing a shooter.

Fable (series) - I'd recommend Fable II first. Fable is a very light action RPG with very simple combat. Besides combat, you can buy and manage property, marry and have kids, do quests, play minigames, etc. It's in a very colourful fantasy world. Colour-wise, I'd say Kameo is the closest comparison although Fable II also has some darker areas. It's cheap and I think the first part of the game is available as a free demo. Most of the complaints people have about the series is that they want deeper combat and more deep mechanics, but your taste here seems to tilt towards breezy games, and Fable II is excellent at being that. I had a really good time with it.
I've considered Fable before, but is it a good idea to start on the second game instead of the first one?

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix / Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Colourful and easy introductions to open world games. Lots of content and fun stuff to do. Hanging around Hogwarts is kind of like hanging around the summer camp in Psychonauts. Good for a cheap price.
Hm, I didn't like the Harry Potter movies (except maybe the third one, I love time travelling stories), will I still be able to enjoy these games?

Kung Fu Panda - Light and breeze action / beat em up, great visuals and use of colour, good for a cheap price.
I might even have this one lying around here somewhere, I'll look for it :D.



Majin and the Forbidden Kingdom - This is a nice sort of co-operative, puzzle based action-adventure game. It reminds me of a kind of alternate reality, low rent Zelda. It's got a lot of colour, it's very cute, it's pretty easy, and the puzzle to combat balance is very good. I think you can get it for less than $10.
This sounds neat, I'll try it!


Mini Ninjas - Action-adventure that has some stuff in common with action beat em ups and some stuff in common with Kameo. Nice use of colour. Not too hard, but pretty substantial in terms of content. Really cute.
Looks a bit... meh, but maybe it's fun, I may try this.

Overlord (series) - Overlord is about half-way between something like Fable and something like Pikmin. If you liked Pikmin and you like humour, you'd like it. Very bright colours, very British feeling. It's got some light puzzle elements but it's mostly kind of an actiony game.
It's a bit gorey for my taste, but I totally love Pikmin, so I should try this out.

Portal 2 - If you like Portal, but want more of it, and a little bit less reflex based, with more story and more humour, Portal 2 is a great choice.
Actually I bought Portal 2 before I bought the Orange Box and bought the Orange Box because Portal 2 is so great, have I forgotten to list it?

Prince of Persia 2008 - Imagine Assassin's Creed (1) only ten times more beautiful, with ten times less combat, and more of an emphasis on platforming and wall running in well designed levels rather than a big empty open world of buildings. It's not a perfect game, and some people hated it, but I loved it. It's so beautiful. If you like the movement in Assassin's Creed but not so much the game, please try this out. (I'd also recommend any of the three other Assassin's Creed games much more than the original, the step up in quality from 1 to 2 is amazing, if you didn't like AC1, you should still try AC2)
I've still got to complete PoP Warrior Within, as well as Two Thrones and that new Sands of Time game for Wii, before buying another PoP ^^. But of course, this is on my list for the future. I'm a bit worried about the difficulty, if it's even further watered down, it'll be hard to stomach.

Rock Band - Okay, so, you don't have any rhythm games. Those are kind of one of the best thing about this generation. Maybe you don't like them. Maybe you don't have room. I don't know what your taste in music is. I don't know if you have friends over often. But if you want to have a good time with some people, learn some new music and get the chance to play some of the old music that you like, Rock Band is incredibly well made and a major player this generation.
My gf has this for PS2 :).

Scene It? - Scene It is a series of three movie trivia games on Xbox 360. The third game is multiplatform, and is easily the worst of the three. You want the first or second one, both are excellent. If you like watching movies, and not just obscure foreign films, even very mainstream movies, Scene It has a great, colourful presentation. It's very fun to play with friends, but even solo is fun too. There are thousands of questions in each. The first and second games are available with a set of "big button" controllers, kind of like remote-style controllers, that make the games more accessible to people not familiar with the 360 controller.
I'd rather not play trvia games on a console ^^.

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper - So you don't have any adventure games listed, but I just wanted to put this here to highlight that the 360 has some genres you might not realize. Sherlock Holmes is a traditional, puzzle-based, inventory-based point and click adventure. The colours and story are quite dark (this is the tale of Jack the Ripper after all!) but it's visually different than just about everything on the system. I'm guessing you're in Europe because you say Mega Drive instead of Genesis, so Grey Matter is also available over there.
I do have adventures on the list, Monkey Island :). I like Adventures and really was not aware of this game!

Thrillville (series, although I think only Off The Rails is on 360) - Thrillville is a weird game. It's kind of like a theme park / rollercoaster building simulation, but it's also got another level--it's got a ton of minigames, some of which are very substantial, certainly moreso than Mario Party, but also it's got this level where you have to talk to people in your theme park with a pretty advanced dialogue system and kind of do sort of vaguely RPG-style quests with them. Very colourful, kid friendly, cheap.
OK, not my cup of tea.

Toy Story 3 - I must be nuts, recommending movie games. Toy Story 3 is probably the best kids movie game adaptation in a decade or more. The main game is your standard action platformer like every movie adaptation. It's over in 4 or 5 hours. It's better than average, but not great. BUUUUUT the real meat of the game is the 15-20+ hour town building simulator mode that's separate from the main game. You build a frontier town, populate it with people, do open world quests and missions, find tons of collectibles. I can't stress how much there is to do, it's amazing. It's not casual crap, it's a really, really good game.
Is it also good if you don't play the simulation part of the game? As I don't even like Sim City particularly much, I doubt I'd have any fun with this.

The Burger King Games - I'm not sure if you can get these in Europe. There are three games: Pocketbike Racer, which is basically a kart-style racing game, Sneak King which is a stealth burger surprise puzzle simulator, and Big Bumpin which is an arcade-style bumper-car game. None of them are amazing, but they're all $5 or less. They're so surreal. I can't believe these exist. The last time a company made an advertising game like this, it was Pepsiman on PS1, which is also insane.
I don't remember Burger King offering any 360 games here. I'm living in Germany, so 360 isn't exactly all too popular around here...

This is just to name 20 or so, and it's not an exhaustive list at all. Maybe you'll get through this list and say "I don't like any of it! Pwnd!"
Why would I, I might really like some of them, although I'm a bit septical due to the high amount of movie adoptions. Maybe they really are great, but I only really like DuckTales 1 and 2 as far as movie adaptions go. Nevertheless, according to this list, 360 seems to have quite a solid amount of B-tier games in the genres I like (this is not to devalue what you have said, just measured by the few games you've listed that I've actually played through myself). What I wanted to say and I may have worded it poorly is, that I miss really great games of this "different" kind, more of the kind of Sonic Generations, Rayman Origins or Kameo.

Everyone has different taste. But all of the games I've recommended to you here, I've played through personally, I enjoyed, and they definitely hit different niches than FPS or realistic racing.
Yup, thanks for your effort (I hope this is not sounding bad, I really mean it)!
 
It's pretty clear to everyone that the PC is #1 simply because of its huge game library . . .
How is that clear? Not everyone values a platform's library size above all because most people don't buy tons of games and stick to a much smaller number that they can afford to pay for as well as make time to spend with. There are things to consider, like convenience level, settings and interface standards, friend availability, and cost to consumer. And, yes, all platforms still have important exclusives that drive many people one way or another. Still, library alone isn't enough, IMO.

It's pretty clear that most of GAF agrees the top slot is the PC, followed by either the PS2 or the SNES.
How is that clear if most of GAF hasn't posted in here?

Doesn't seem clear at all to me. Sorry, I just don't agree with your phrasing is all.
 
My issue with ranking the 360 near the top of the all time best console list is that it isn't as essential as some of the previous consoles. Taking away multiplatform games that are available on either PS3 or PC, there are maybe 20-30 good-great exclusives that set the 360 apart. Don't get me wrong, some of these are excellent and definitely worth buying the system for, but if you skipped the PS1, PS2 or SNES, you would have missed out on way more worthwhile titles. Ignoring gamers with extremely restricted tastes, a person with a PS3 and a PC could skip the 360 and maybe miss 3-5 games a year that they wished they could play. If you owned a PC, Xbox, and Gamecube last generation, and again loved all genres, there would be at least a dozen great games a year you would be missing out on by skipping the PS2. And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that console ports to PC have really taken a step forward in competency this generation.

If the PS3 didn't exist, and developers weren't porting everything under the sun to PC, the 360 would definitely contend with the best systems of all time. However, platforms are a lot more interchangeable this generation. Something that will continue to be the case going forward. As such, I don't think the 360 is as essential as the PS2 or the PS1 were.

Same applies for the PS3. I give the 360 a nod over the PS3 though due to the large number of multiplat titles that run significantly worse on the PS3 (Skyrim, most early UE3 games, etc).
I owned a gamecube and xbox last gen. Aside from jrpgs, mgs3, dmc, and Sony games, I don't feel like I really missed much. After KOTOR I more or less stopped playing jrpgs altogether aside from Tales of Symphonia. After Splinter Cell, MGS lost its must-have appeal. Most PS2 fps were pretty worthless compared to Halo/Halo2/Riddick/Rainbow Six3/HL2, and the online was a joke. My favorite 2D fighters (MvC2, SF3, Super Turbo, CvsSNK2) all came over with online play. And Ninja Gaiden was a very serviceable stand-in for DMC.

Madden, Tony Hawk, GTA, True Crime, RE4, and NBA street had better graphics on GCN/Xbox. GCN of course had all of Nintendo's franchises plus PSO.

So no, I don't really feel that the PS2 was an "essential" console. I never owned one and had plenty of great games to play. Honestly, I think a multiplatform owner could make the case against any one console being a must buy, as time and money are finite.
 
How is that clear? Not everyone values a platform's library size above all because most people don't buy tons of games and stick to a much smaller number that they can afford to pay for as well as make time to spend with.

The real problem here is that PC is just on another level from the console systems being compared. And I don't mean that like it's got some rarefied, special quality that makes it suitable only for the most elite, I just mean that by virtue of being a single uninterrupted platform with 30 years of history it's operating in a very different mode than these systems that come out, get a five-year window of support and attention, and then fade out to develop their legacy.

If it's important (or just fun) to rank platforms in historical comparison to one another, I personally prefer to break up the PC into eras that roughly correspond with the console generations, because then you can really talk about real trends and groups of like titles. Even broken up this way, I'd still probably put the 1995-2001-ish era of PC near the top all on its own, but I'd throw 2001-2006-era PC to the dogs.

If you don't think that gaming-related things like online services and community features may have a strong impact on one's perception of a game system... Well, I don't know what to say, except that you're wrong.

I think online services might well have a legit impact on one's perception of a a game system in the context of the games that use it; if someone puts extra emphasis on a given console because of their positive experience playing Halo, say, then that's a completely legitimate contribution to the system's library quality.

I certainly think it's possible for someone to judge the historical legacy of a console based on its out-of-game social features or whatever, but such a judgment is pretty much the equivalent of judging a console based on its physical design; sure, it may make some measurable difference in the "quality" of the system, but judging on that is still very much missing the point. You might as well say the PC is the obvious #1 gaming system of all time because it's the only one you can use to make a spreadsheet.
 

kswiston

Member
So no, I don't really feel that the PS2 was an "essential" console. I never owned one and had plenty of great games to play. Honestly, I think a multiplatform owner could make the case against any one console being a must buy, as time and money are finite.

I did preface my post by mentioning that people with restrictive tastes would not find the same value. I also didn't mean that you NEEDED to have any one console. Plenty of people got by a few generations back with just an N64. Personally, I think they missed out on a ton of great PS1 and Saturn games, but they were happy with the N64 as their sole gaming experience.

It's pretty easy to write off any console as non-essential when you start throwing away entire genres, or if you are mainly interested in 1 or 2 specific genres.

Bottom line is, if you ignore the term essential, and focus solely on games that can't be played anywhere else (during the lifespan of the console. Emulation or BC don't count), it's hard to argue that either HD consoles have more unique titles than the leaders of previous console generations. The vast majority of HD games this generation have been 360/PS3, or 360/PC, or (most commonly) 360/PS3/PC. Furthermore, a larger percentage of the generation defining games this gen have been multi-platform compared to previous generations.
 
Bottom line is, if you ignore the term essential, and focus solely on games that can't be played anywhere else (during the lifespan of the console. Emulation or BC doesn't count), i's hard to argue that either HD consoles have more unique titles than the leaders of previous console generations.

Well, that's definitely a unique problem to this particular generation. Looking at any previous go-round, you could really just think of the multiplatform titles as a net neutral and judge each system on its immense, worthwhile collection of exclusives. Now when you knock out those multiplats, you're not left with much. I almost want to judge 360 and PS3 each on their (fairly paltry) selection of pure exclusives and attribute the big mess of titles hitting some subset of PS3/360/PC to the Splorgenborg.
 

Cwarrior

Member
Let the rage begin!

15. Game Boy
14 NES
13 ZX Spectrum
12 Commodore 64
11 Gamecube
10 PC

9 Amiga
8 Playstation 3
7 Dreamcast
6 Mega Drive
5 Nintendo 64
4 PlayStation
3 PlayStation 2
2 Super Nintendo
1 XBOX 360


Taken from GRCade

How the fuck did this piece of shit make the list?
 
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