More controversy fodder! Their approach was “best games you can play today.”
I’ll start with the criticisms: Where the hell is Star Control 2?! PC Gamer used to be very good at giving it its due. 100% still playable today!
This explains why the last couple years have been so bad. Didn’t they used to get a bunch of people in a room? That would curb some of the excess.
And for crying out loud, can we please never put Anachronox in a top 100 list of the best games to play in 2016? Come on, guys.
It dropped 25 positions since last year, so I as it gets even older next year, I bet it will be gone.
The link doesn’t really work for me. I tried, but the page is full of pop-up ads, and it keeps jumping the page to the bottom when I try to scroll, and when I try again, it keeps popping the page back to the top.
So the only numbers I can really read are 100, 91, 90, 81, etc.
I’ll try it with an adblocker, maybe then I can read it.
It’s not an awful list, but I think they didn’t go pure “best 100 games to play today” and that hurt its integrity.
Now that I’ve seen the whole list using an adblocker, I agree with this. I can’t believe the stuff that’s on there that’s fairly old, but not Star Control 2. I didn’t spot MOO2 on there either, which is absolutely super-playable today.
I feel like the Time Top 50 was better at it being the list it was than this list is at being what it claims to be, for sure.
Two Bioshocks and no System Shock 2? This list is dead to me.
Sad to see PC Gamer resorting to disputatious clickbait lists to get views.
The amount of popup ads was even sadder. Just trying to look at the list was an exercise in frustration until I turned off everything in Ghostery.
#94 - Dragon Age II - what?
#87 - FNV - a little low, don’t you think?
#85 - Path of Exile - same as FNV.
#65 - VtmB - same as FNV and PoE
#58 - Bioshock Infinite - wow, just wow. The fact that it’s just ahead of Pillars of Eternity is extra salt on the wound.
#37 - Fallout 4 - seriously? It’s a good game and I really enjoyed it but it needs to swap places with FNV.
#35 - Stalker: Call of Pripyat - cheeki breeki. At least it ended up on a list for once. GJ PCGAMER!
#32 - Diablo 3 - wouldn’t be controversial if Diablo 2 and Path of Exile hadn’t been roughly 30 and 50 places down the list
#29 - TES IV: Oblivion - personally I don’t care but I imagine some die hard Morrowind fans flipping their shit when they see that Oblivion beat it by 30 places or so
#21 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution - notbad.jpg
#18 - Mass Effect - now we’re talking
#16 - Alien Isolation - holy shit, this list is becoming good
#13 - Deus Ex - denzel.jpg
#5 - Dishonored - solid game but way too high on the list that doesn’t even feature System Shock or Thief
#4 - Mass Effect 2 - where’s the subscribe button?
#2 - Dark Souls - sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit. 10/10 list
#1 - Witcher 3 - eh, a little overrated
Not the worst list I’ve seen, my blood pressure didn’t go as high as it usually does when reading such lists.
Also, I feel like they forgot their objective halfway through the list. I spotted quite a few titles that are still in a very sorry state today if you don’t apply fan patches (pretty much all Bethesda titles, VtmB, etc). I wonder how many simply refuse to run out of the box on modern systems.
Of course this is all subjective, but as someone who ignored all the hype when it was released but recently picked it up: it’s not even a little bit overrated. Not without its faults, but I haven’t had this much fun with an RPG since Ultima IV.
Fun list, as they all are to me. I liked seeing favorites like the Portals, Deus Ex: HR, Alien Isolation alongside the sacred cows like Planescape and Half-Life. I think it would have been nice to have either Star Control 2 (or my personal pick, Starflight) but that would be my list, I guess. Man but that page is an ad and pop-up riddled mess though.
Give it some time. When I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition I really thought it was a solid game. Couple months later I wouldn’t even use it to protect my desk from coffee cup stains.
Witcher 3 isn’t nearly as bad of course (it’s a great game in fact), but it’s (imo) a mechanically very weak RPG with little replay value. It all comes down to how much you value various elements in a game.
Little replay value? My 500 hours on Steam would have a word with you (although that is across only two playthroughs, second of which I am still going through). Even this second playthrough is more enjoyable than any other game I have ever played, and I have no doubt I will replay it in a few years again.
Then again I do enjoy its combat and gameplay mechanics in general, even if the real meat for me is the narrative, dialogues and quests.
Comparing it to Inquisition is…eh. I admit I hated that one and dropped it after 6 hours or so. Terrible writing in those starting hours, shitty quest design, vastly more boring combat than in TW3. And I liked Origins and paid full price for Inquisition :(
As for the list itself, apart from the correct number one pick, I do have a lot of disagreements. Fallout 4 and DA2 should be nowhere near it, Vampire and New Vegas belong much higher, etc.
There are some interesting looking games I haven’t played yet, so I guess it did its job though.
At the risk of derailing the thread further (j/k, I love doing that)…yes. *You always play the same character/personality, there aren’t that many side quests where you get an alternate choice and in almost every case the choice is binary and somewhat self contained with little to no impact on the big picture. And there are what, 3 major focus points for each ending? And they all hinge on relatively minor conversation bits that you can trigger regardless of what you do in the other 99% of the game. The game is humongous (in this case it’s a plus because the game is so good) so sticking with a single playstyle can get old pretty fast - I tried all 3 specs during the course of my vanilla run (which was near 200h, holy shit) and that pretty much covered the diversity in mechanics.
- All this applies to the vanilla game, I haven’t tried the DLCs yet, but I genuinely look forward to starting a fresh run in the near future (probably after the GOTY version comes out) to experience the whole game again, this time with enhancements.
I get where you’re coming from though, I really do. I felt the same when Mass Effect first came out. I played it 4 times back to back, with identical decisions and the same character. If anyone asked me back then about replay value I’d probably tell them it was off the charts, even though that wasn’t really the case.
PC Gamer can’t let that one go.
Hahaha I didn’t notice the score and order before :)
Ok this excuses its inclusion, good troll :)
If there’s one thing I got out of that list, it’s that I should eventually play Kentucky Route Zero and Dragon Age 2. I was planning on going straight to Dragon Age: Inquisition, but now I’m re-thinking that.
I’m currently playing it for the first time and it’s sustained my interest more than Pillars of Eternity and Skyrim, both of which I ditched after 20-30 hours. By that merit, I think it deserves a spot if they do!
My own 3.14 cents of crying: Alien: Isolation is on the list, and SOMA is not?!?!?! WTF?
But seriously now, why do people tend to think that in videogaming, “I like it” equals “it is good”? Why don’t we have a concept of ‘guilty pleasure’, like in other media?
And to describe the list as consisting of “the best games to play today”, and then put Doom II on it is more than a little strange.
The funniest part of putting Oblivion on the list is that it actually gained ranking since last year. I guess it ages like fine wine!
Great catch on the DA2 94. Haha!