Wednesday, February 18, 2009

PC Magazine's Lousy 10 Best List

Top 10 lists are often arbitrary but by any standard PC Magazine's 10 Best PC Games Ever is saddled with some glaring omissions.

Sure, they get Civilization, Starcraft and Doom* but they also include the far less impressive Trade Wars 2002, Rogue:The Adventure Game and most notably World of Warcraft on that list. (If you're wondering why I'm hating on WOW- I like MMOGs but consider them more social chat rooms than games. There are better online gaming experiences, IMHO, including the recent Left 4 Dead zombie shooter.)

Just some of the games that should have been included-

Ultima 3

As a role playing game this was unsurpassed at the time. It had a strong sandbox flavor that made the game seem much bigger than it actually was.



Monkey Island 3

Actually all the Lucasarts adventure games were sublime, but the Monkey Island games had a wicked sense of humor and beautiful background artwork.



Wing Commander

It may have been a rip off of the Traveller rpg world but it was still a great space shooter. I can still hear the midi music when you took off in your fighter.



The original Castle Wolfenstein

My favorite bit was stealing nazi guard's uniforms.



Not to mention Might and Magic, Fallout 2, Grand Theft Auto 3, Planetfall (Infocom), Half Life 2, The Bard's Tale, Pirates!, Zoo Tycoon, Leisure Suit Larry, Oregon Trail, Tie Fighter, Test Drive, Interstate 76, Star Trek 25th Anniversary and about 100 other games I can think of off the top of my head.

Those guys at PC Magazine were just phoning it in.

(* If Snabalus reads this- I haven't forgotten the time you hacked Doom and stuck my wedding pictures in there. Having to look at yourself in a tux kind of distracts from killing mutants.)

8 comments:

ladybug said...

Well, since I don't play any games at all...(I mean you haven't mentioned Pinball, Ms. Pacman or Myst)...so I'm just gonna have to take your word for it.

Now you know how long it's been since I actually gamed...

Randal Graves said...

I think the last PC game I played was Bard's Tale III. We usually stuck to table top 1st edition AD&D (assassins!) and the NES.

Dean Wormer said...

ladybug-

Ms. Pacman? Wasn't that popular about the time of Nero? :)

randal-

Assasins? I could see you more as a hobbit. Maybe a hobbit assasin.

Arkonbey said...

He hacked Doom for you? That is wonderful.

The only thing I did was put my boss' face on the skins for the hostages in Counter Strike (which the whole office, including the boss would play on the network starting at 4:30 on Fridays).

Swinebread said...

No Fallout? ridiculous

Don Snabulus said...

My top games would include Crowther and Woods "Adventure" and Zork, both text adventures. I spent way too much time playing Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, a little bit of Descent (which finally had action on the Z axis), and then I burned out on computer games.

Blogging is a game isn't it?

PS - I loved the Doom and Wolfenstein editors. Great fun. I went looking for that copy last night and couldn't find it. Probably sitting on a backup CD somewhere.

Somewhere a hollow voice says, "Plugh."

The Moody Minstrel said...

Awww...now I'm starting to regret the fact that I never tried that "Duke Nukem 3D" editor that came on the disk in the edition I got.

A lot of those old DOS games were fun. I wish I could play them now.

Anonymous said...

NDOS??!?