Ctrl+f ‘jagged’. 500-401 - nothing. 400-301 - nothing. 300-201 - nothing. 200-101 - nothing. 100-1 - nothing. Is this a fucking joke? I bet the new fucking Xcom is on that piece of shit list.
Fucking hacks, I actually regret giving them clicks.
edit: But of course the Firaxis’ abomination is there. And it’s even ahead of the old one, lmao.
As if I needed any more evidence of what a joke Polygon is.
I kind of exaggerates the problem of sequencing, too. Like, what makes a game worth placing at 99, rather than 98? Or, what makes a game 1% better than the next? You make a top 500 list, sure, I guess I could think of 500 games to put on a list, but it’s going to start to look kind of ridiculous at its upper end. And what makes a game at 367 .2% better than the game at 368? Probably best not to think of such things, I guess. Not like there’s any inherent meaning in them.
I guess I solve that by implicitly considering every entry after, say, #20 to be tied for 21st place.
Anyway, the fact that neither of the Baldur’s Gate games manages to crack the Top fucking 500 videogames ever makes this list automatically invalid. Thief sneaks in at 401. Even Planescape Torment only get a look in at #170.
Polygon can lick me.
I’m confused. Why is a website about politics making a list of the top 500 games?
Man, I knew it was a good decision to stop reading the list beyond looking for my favorite game. Your examples made my forehead vein pop.
The fun way to approach these lists isn’t to look for your favorite game, it’s to look at all the ridiculous choices ahead of your favorite game.
Like, um, Sonic Colors, whatever that is.
(Now’s not the time, Dave.)
Not to be pedantic, but if you date gaming from the Atari 2600 (and you can date it further back than that if you like), we’ve already passed 40 years!
Uh oh – Depression Quest made the list. Get ready for Gamergate 2.0!
Lol, I guess Polygon had to choose at least one game their reviewers had the skills to get past level 1.
At 466, while Railroad Tycoon is at 467. It makes sense, because there’s a lot of games called [Something] Tycoon, but there’s even more called [Something] Quest. Depression Quest must have had even more influence on the history of gaming.
You guys do realize they are click bait articles, designed to generate traffic?
I enjoy these lists, not because I agree with them, but because they’re a fun peek at other people’s opinions. And of course they’re wrong, yours, whoever you are, would be wrong too, there’s no way to do them right.
And most old games, I don’t think they old up. What we expect from games have changed. Maybe the graphics are crap, and that’s okay, we’ve seen where the “realistic graphics” lead us, but there are loads of modern conveniences that we expect now, that make the games better.
Also, how can the real game compare to your memory of the game? I remember a old game I played as a kid, racing in the future, you equip weapons, one was a road drone that would seek out the next car, etc. We’re talking CGA time. I was young, stayed home because of a cold, proper cold, fever and all. Still played the game, it was that “awesome”. I’m not playing any god damn game with a fever now, I don’t care how great it is.
Polygon is all about consent.
On topic, if they can’t be bothered to include a screenshot for every game, I can’t be bothered to read their list. The whole project felt half-assed or understaffed or both.
Definitely half-assed (as is usual in most things Polygon). I don’t think Polygon is understaffed. It might well be overstaffed for all I know.
I mean it’s a “best of” list article with 500 entries. That’s insane even with a dozen contributors.
Not a single Amiga game in the top 100; knew it was more popular in Europe than in the US but that’s just crazy. Oh well, polygon being polygon I guess. (3 in 400-300, 5 in 300-200, 0 200-0), and Powermonger isn’t even listed. … jees, at least they had Sensible Soccer there (not even SWOS?) and it was way high on the list. Thanks Russia.
But both Powerstone 1 and 2 are on the list! That’s got to be worth something.
I don’t agree that most things are half-assed there. Their feature articles are some of the best on the Internet. They don’t do them as often anymore, but when they do they’re top notch. They cover all the major news reasonably well and yes, they’re very political, but that’s just their thing.
I think a Top 500 is just a dumb thing to do. Stick to Top 20s or Top 50s. Make it meaningful. 500 just become a reason to mention everyone’s favorite game that’s making the list.
Yeah, they had some pretty great feature articles there. But it always felt to me like it was not enough to make up for the dozens and dozens of things in the site that gave me this feeling of “let me get rid of this stupid thing that we have to do, since feature articles is really all we really want to do and these are getting in the way”. That’s why I feel most things there are half-assed - it seems there’s no heart to any of them, except feature articles and the occasional heartfelt review.
That said, I haven’t visited Polygon in ages now, so maybe that changed.
I use it to get my gaming news outside of game forums because the site design is easy to read and news/reviews are chronologically categorized right on the front page with big headlines and to the point breakdowns when you click through. I get tired of the heavy handed lefty political bent, but again, that’s their thing. I just deal. If nothing else, it gives me perspective on that part of gaming.
Jeremy Parish contributed to the Top 500 and he’s had a hand in some things there lately. He’s good with retro.
Anyway, the features are still usually very good. They just had to pivot away from them being a bigger part of things because you can’t make money with features unfortunately.