P&B Ranks: The Top 42 Video Games of All-Time

[senorsoupe]

Goldeneye may not have aged all that well, but in terms of sheer enjoyment factor it had to be in my list.  A game doesn't have to be good by 2021 standards to have been a great game for it's time and Goldeneye was a great game for 1997.  I spent many a weekend playing it with my mates as a teenager

[Dunning1874]

6 hours ago, NotThePars said:

I think the oldest FPS I could say you could go back and play and not have to accommodate for the length of time since it was released is Halo 2. That still plays incredibly well. The larger 8v8 multiplayer maps are probably too big but anything else is still class.

Unfair on Halo IMO, although I guess there is the argument that's had a remaster you can go to instead now while Halo 2 hasn't.

[54_and_counting]

1 hour ago, Dunning1874 said:

Unfair on Halo IMO, although I guess there is the argument that's had a remaster you can go to instead now while Halo 2 hasn't.

The original halo was an absolute masterpiece, 

[DA Baracus]

Aye Goldeneye is an absolute horror to play now, but it was fucking amazing back in the day.

I never even had an N64 but spent so many hours playing death matches with pals. Glorious, glorious stuff. As has been mentioned, it really was the first time that such a multilayer experience for that style of game was so widely accessible. You didn't need to have a pricey PC, you didn’t need an internet connection, you didn't need multiple copies of the game; you just fired the fucker up and were playing almost right away. Immense.

Also the single player story mode was good fun, except for Natalya, the daft boot.

Goldeneye is one of the finest Bonds too. I think that the movie being so popular helped the game. It was Brosnan's first in the role and the first one in years, and blew away much of the pish that had come recently before it. Top theme tune as well.

Edited June 4, 2021 by DA Baracus

[DA Baracus]

8 hours ago, NotThePars said:

I think the oldest FPS I could say you could go back and play and not have to accommodate for the length of time since it was released is Halo 2. That still plays incredibly well. The larger 8v8 multiplayer maps are probably too big but anything else is still class.

Quake 2. Still immense.

[NotThePars]

5 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

Unfair on Halo IMO, although I guess there is the argument that's had a remaster you can go to instead now while Halo 2 hasn't.

The levels are still TOO big and filled with pointless wastes of time. A landmark moment tho of course. I just think Halo 2 is an incredibly tight combat experience that is remarkably like 17 years old now.

[NotThePars]

Expanding on my last post but Silent Cartographer, Two Betrayals, the first level on Halo and the level with 343 Guilty Spark (Library?) are all decent levels with far too much unintuitive level design or annoying backtracking or repetition to be really good in a way that virtually none of Halo 2's levels have. That game is wall-to-wall great and condensed level design.

[BFTD]

Quake 2. Still immense.

See, I cut off at Quake 2, as it was trying to be a bit more advanced than just 3D Space Invaders, but the mechanics look hilariously dated now.

Don't get me wrong, still fun to play, but you have to be prepared to give it a lot of leeway!

[DA Baracus]

39 minutes ago, BFTD said:

See, I cut off at Quake 2, as it was trying to be a bit more advanced than just 3D Space Invaders, but the mechanics look hilariously dated now.

Don't get me wrong, still fun to play, but you have to be prepared to give it a lot of leeway!

It's my boy, so it gets all the leeway it wants!

[djchapsticks]

On 04/06/2021 at 14:22, GiGi said:

£1600 was mid range?! You could get something approaching high end for that money these days (if you could get the components, that is).

Albeit this is without any kind of peripherals.

£1600 was definitely mid range level for a PC in late 90s and turn of the century. The price of electronics in the subsequent 20 years has truly plumetted. 

[JamieT1314]

Aye i paid 1400 for a pc that had 2gb of memory. Bonkers.

[BFTD]

Other than economies of scale, I think part of prices plummeting in the PC market was due to people discovering that the big-box high street retailers were making an absolute fortune by selling PCs at those prices. By the late Nineties, you could get your local PC shop to build you a perfectly adequate machine for a fraction of the price, and it would've been more upgradable than the PCs from the big-name manufacturers.

And that's before you got on to building your own. The first PC I built myself cost £350 all-in, albeit reusing things like monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and I remember pricing a similar spec machine at about £1,200. Crazy.

[Miguel Sanchez]

IN 4TH PLACE, WITH 40 POINTS FROM 6 VOTES

Game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Platform: All
Release date: 11 November 2011
Gameplay:

 

Zero Punctuation review:

 

User comments: 

"The OG. Since been released on 500 formats, and will likely be released further almost a decade after it originally went out.  It looks really dated now, and it wasn't long before other games got released and did things better, but back then the universe was great, decent enough story, soundtrack massively underrated."

"Dragons, Dungeons, Magic & trolls and elves? Nah not for me, yet it somehow works, a brilliant game."

"Fallout with dragons. Do I need to say any more? Another game massively enhanced by an amazing mod community."

Lasting cultural impact outside of video games: I used to be [description], but then I took an arrow to the knee!

f**k. Off. 
 

[BFTD]

I sunk hundreds of hours into that motherfucker, barely started the main questline, and only ever assembled the Fus Ro part of Fus Ro Dah.

Felt like I was enjoying myself at the time.

[Fuctifano]

I voted for this the last time P&B did this poll but not this time, must have been so long since I played it.

Was probably the first game I was influenced to buy by P&B with so many folk raving about it even though it was not the style of game I'd normally play, at that time anyway. 

Definitely sunk loads of hours into it and enjoyed the character building bits and the side quests ;looking back the main story with the dragons was a bit rubbish though. 

[forameus]

Pretty sure it was on my list.  It's another "at the time" choices, as it has dated pretty badly.  It's riddled with bugs, it looks relatively poor, but at the time it was a world you could just get lost in. Soundtrack was lovely too.  Deserves its place IMO.

[Lofarl]

Oblivion’s better imo.  Didn’t care for the northern tundra look that a lot of it had.  This might as been as I was playing wrath of the lich king and had my fill of bleak snowy wastes.

Cyrodil?  Whatever was called looked a far more nicer place.

[forameus]

3 hours ago, Lofarl said:

Oblivion’s better imo.  Didn’t care for the northern tundra look that a lot of it had.  This might as been as I was playing wrath of the lich king and had my fill of bleak snowy wastes.

Cyrodil?  Whatever was called looked a far more nicer place.

Decent example, as after loving Skyrim, I went back to Oblivion and just couldn't get into it with how much worse it looked and played.  Had I got to it at the time, I'd probably have been similar blown away.  

[Homer Thompson]

Decent example, as after loving Skyrim, I went back to Oblivion and just couldn't get into it with how much worse it looked and played.  Had I got to it at the time, I'd probably have been similar blown away.  

A bit of this for me too. I keep meaning to look up oblivion mods to see how good it could get and giving it a go.

Skyrim was near the top of my list but I accept, like fallout, I played such a heavily modded version that my experience is probably quiet different to others.

[Stellaboz]

Oblivion was a bag of shite compared to Skyrim. The only thing better was the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild stories.