50 Greatest Games of all time - P&B decides

[GingerSaint]

GTA: Vice City.

[Fuctifano]

Enjoying the write ups so far even if I've played less of the games than the OP. Monkey Island was my first pick to make it into the top 50, was going to go for the second one but there was too much disk swapping (11 disks!) and it was at points just too bloody hard (for me) in the pre-google era, so the original made it in The Tales Of series was 7 years ago now so sadly I think we've seen the last of Guybrush. 

Related to that, would it be possible to get  "where to play it now" info for every game with every review,  e.g. emulators or if it's possible to buy some of them off of PS4 / Xbox stores for older games? Half-Life 2 is one I've always intended to get round to playing.

[Gaz]

Enjoying the write ups so far even if I've played less of the games than the OP. Monkey Island was my first pick to make it into the top 50, was going to go for the second one but there was too much disk swapping (11 disks!) and it was at points just too bloody hard (for me) in the pre-google era, so the original made it in The Tales Of series was 7 years ago now so sadly I think we've seen the last of Guybrush. 
Related to that, would it be possible to get  "where to play it now" info for every game with every review,  e.g. emulators or if it's possible to buy some of them off of PS4 / Xbox stores for older games? Half-Life 2 is one I've always intended to get round to playing.

Ron Gilbert is practically begging Disney to sell him the rights back to MI.

Easiest way to play HL2 is get a super-cheap copy of The Orange Box on the Xbox 360. It's a masterpiece.

[Francesc Fabregas]

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Perhaps a good idea would be to ask people who nominated games to post about why (particularly at the top ten or so since people are sporadically doing that now anyway) rather than have so many entries accompanied by "I've never played this and don't know why anyone else did"

[Jack Burton]

Perhaps a good idea would be to ask people who nominated games to post about why (particularly at the top ten or so since people are sporadically doing that now anyway) rather than have so many entries accompanied by "I've never played this and don't know why anyone else did"

Three of my top 10 have recently appeared Mass Effect 2, Secret of Monkey Island and Gears of War.

Mass Effect 2 has a great story, voice acting and locations. The fact that your decisions not only matter but carry over in each game is another plus point. The combat was improved and was as good as other 3rd person shooters. The story of assembling a bad ass crew of aliens to take down the enemy is good fun. The end act is great and with the split second decisions you make determining the outcome in a big way, it sucks you right in and makes it feel personal to you.

Monkey island is the first point and click game I played. I loved the setting, music and humour. You get great satisfaction from solving the puzzles, especially ones that had you stumped for days on end. Monkey Island got me into the genre and since then I've also got at least one of these types of games on the go. Admittedly, it's much easier as you can just look up the solution on the Internet but I try to resist doing that unless I've been stuck on the same part for a few weeks. It's the type of game you can still be running through in your head while away from the pc. There's plenty of times I've had that eureka moment while on the bus, on the bog etc.

Gears of War is just great fun. It was one of the first 3rd person, cover based shooters and the controls are really tight and responsive. Chainsawing somebody in half or getting a head shot from halfway across the map never gets old. The campaign and multiplayer are equally great. The plot is fairly basic but gets the job done but the characters are memorable and have plenty of personality.

[Dindeleux]

Some of the bitching going on in this thread, honestly .  

Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy.........

  PIE AND BOVRIL - 50 GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME

28 Place

 

 

HALO 3 

 

Here's a shock for you all - I have owned this game, played this game and completed it!!!!

In spite of this I never really got it when it comes to Halo.  The game was a bit too much run'n'gun for me.  In fact I think I pretty much cheated my way to completing it by just going past most enemies towards the end of the game.

Halo really is an iconic Xbox series and it is well liked millions of people.  Halo 3 concluded the story that carried through the first 2 games.  Halo 3's story centers on the interstellar war between twenty-sixth century humanity and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant. The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a supersoldier, as he battles the Covenant.

Halo 3 was also a very successful online multiplayer with up to 16 players per game.  The online play was very enjoyable and I felt better than the campaign mode of the game.

Halo 3 was a very extensively marketed game with Microsoft spending over £40 million to try and get more people interested in Halo and in turn Xbox 360.  Halo 3 sold over 14 million copies and averaged over a 9/10 with critics.

Halo 3 is our first game that sits on its own in terms of votes, picking up 24 points and being ranked by you guys as:

• 1 x 2nd place
• 2 x 5th place
• 1 x 8th place

 

 

[Dindeleux]

2 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Perhaps a good idea would be to ask people who nominated games to post about why (particularly at the top ten or so since people are sporadically doing that now anyway) rather than have so many entries accompanied by "I've never played this and don't know why anyone else did"

Please show me where I've said this.

 

ETA - I have been encouraging people who nominated to share their views on why, a lot of people have done so.

[The Grass Is Greener.]

4 minutes ago, Dindeleux said:

Please show me where I've said this.

 

ETA - I have been encouraging people who nominated to share their views on why, a lot of people have done so.

Carry on Dindeleux youre doing a great job, I'm enjoying the thread even though I forgot to send in my vote.

[Dindeleux]

PIE AND BOVRIL - 50 GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME

27 Place

 

Fallout : New Vegas 

 

Not a game that personally I have ever played but I am a major fan of the Fallout series and I have just started playing the game prior to this in the series - Fallout 3.

Fallout New Vegas is set in a post-nuclear war America, primarily around the state of Nevada.  The nuclear fallout (if you see what they did there) leads to some interesting characters, challenges and threats from extra-wild wildlife.

In Fallout New Vegas players take control of a character known as Courier 6. While transporting a package across the Mojave Desert to the city of New Vegas for the Mojave Express delivery service, the Courier is ambushed, robbed of the package, shot in the head, and left for dead. After miraculously surviving, the Courier begins a journey to find their would-be killer and recover the package, makes friends and enemies among various factions, and ultimately becomes caught up in a conflict that determines who will control New Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland.  As with all Fallout games you get a variety of ways you can follow the story and a variety of endings depending on which side you choose to take during the game.

Fallout New Vegas won many awards including RPG of the year in 2011.  It followed on from the vast success of Fallout 3 which I am reliably informed by reading through this thread is the best of the Fallout series.   Fallout New Vegas sold over 12 million copies worldwide and took 25 points in our poll being ranked as:

 

• 1 x 1st place
• 1 x 4th place
• 2 x 7th place

[mrcat1990]

Halo 3 for me is where Halo ended. The story was tied up very well and some the set peices were great. Not as good as the original but better than two, plus the multiplayer was fantastic.

Fallout New Vegas still remains my favourite of the Fallout series. Being an absolute arsehole was never more fun than on that game. The writing in it is also the best of the series imho.

[Jamaldo]

New Vegas was absolutely ruined by glitches unfortunately, certainly on PS3.

[Dunning1874]

Halo 3 was the weakest of the first three IMO: there's a debate to be had about its merits compared to 2, but it doesn't come close to the first. Still a decent game which rounded things off nicely, I had no interest in playing any games in the series which came after it.

[Dindeleux]

PIE AND BOVRIL - 50 GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME

26 Place

 

Tetris 

 

Not sure if people will agree but I think this is our first real CLASSIC of the list so far.  I know we've had a bit of Sonic,a bit of Mario and some of the late 90s/early 00s great games but Tetris, in my opinion, is a proper gaming classic that almost everyone will have played.

Developed by Russian Alexey Pajitnov back in 1984 Tetris was very complex for the time but looking back is a very simple puzzle game.  You are faced with an empty box with different shaped blocks dropping in.  The objective of the player is to create a line by joining the blocks together, this then deletes the line and creates more space to allow the player to achieve higher and higher scores.  As you level up the blocks start to drop quicker and quicker which in turn makes it more difficult to clear the bricks and inevitably you just throw your Gameboy out of the car window in frustration.

The Gameboy version of Tetris really helped both brands.  The game was almost built it seems to be played on a basic handheld device.  The Gameboy in turn required something that could show of its skills both as a gaming machine whilst not being to the detriment of the game.  The Gameboy/Tetris bundle was very very successful.

Sadly for the developer Pajitnov, Tetris was created within the USSR Academy of Science and as such they held the rights to the game which stopped him from profitting from it.  He did though share the software with as many colleagues and people with similar interests in the Soviet Block.  Through this networking the game eventually came to the attention of a man called Robert Stein who saw the potential and immediately sought to license the game.  In 1988 Tetris made it to the USA and was an overnight success.

Tetris is still being sold in various formats today across multiple platforms.  It is estimated that the entire Tetris range, including mobile. has sole over 170 million copies in various formats.

Tetris scored 26 points with Pie and Bovril, scoring being:

• 2 x 1st place
• 1 x 7th place
• 2 x 10th place

[Fuctifano]

Also, if we're talking best music... Tetris 

[Ulises de la Cruz]

Halo 3 got second spot on my list. It's the most fun I've ever had on multiplayer with any game. The custom games were brilliant. Completed the campaign countless times as well.  

[GingerSaint]

Fallout: New Vegas was my favourite Fallout game. Many people don't like the more linear exploration to begin the game but it makes up for that in so many different ways. I thought the story was much better than Fallout 3.

[RandomGuy.]

New Vegas 

I'll be flaming if Fallout 4 ends up higher in the list than it. The Courier is easily the most bad-ass Fallout main character on the go aswell, most have shitey, mewling reasons like finding their father or son, whereas he destroyed the Wasteland purely to get back at one guy who shot him.

[BFTD]

Like most Bethesda games, New Vegas is a huge, delicious meal that's best consumed slowly. The setting wasn't as compelling to me as Fallout 3, but the gameplay's similar, and the story/world is never less than interesting. Unfortunately, I started the DLC with the foggy casino and the treasure, and just couldn't force my way through it to get back to the main world. Maybe one day; it'd be a shame to add it to the list of unfinished games, along with Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 4.

Tetris on the GameBoy was the forerunner of the whole casual mobile game market, although it surprised me that some folk could play it for hours, as it gets quite samey before long. The original Russian designer/programmer never made a lot of money out of it due to the Communist regime he worked for, but no doubt the game's massive global success bought quite a few fancy foreign cars for the apparatchiks in the Kremlin. Hopefully he's obtained some decent financial reward since the end of the Soviet Union.

[Dindeleux]

PIE AND BOVRIL - 50 GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME

=23 Place

 

Final Fantasy 8 

 

As per the screenshot Final Fantasy 8 was a long winded epic game - stretching across 4 discs.

Released in 1999 on the PS1 it is of course the 8th game in the series and the second FF game to utilize 3D graphics. I remember almost all of the Final Fantasy games being patiently waited on by friends at school and they were always delighted with the games when it came out, with this one being no exception.  Final Fantasy 8 sold over $50 million in 12 weeks of release which shows the demand for the game.

I really don't have any knowledge at all of the Final Fantasy series so please do come and discuss if you have voted for it.

Final Fantasy 8 won the E3 RPG of the year award in 1999 and was voted by IGN as the 7th best game overall for the Playstation.  Final Fantasy 8 took 27 points in this poll and was ranked by P+B as:

 

• 1 x 1st place
• 1 x 2nd place
• 1 x 3rd place

 

It is the only game so far to receive all of its votes in the top 3 places.