@danielkempster: Thanks! I had dabbled with Morrowind a tiny bit, but Oblivion was effectively my first Bethesda game. I did have some experience with some Bioware games like KOTOR, and I did play pen-and-paper D&D. But I was largely coming from JRPGs like you. I think the time and place of, getting it near release, and having a summer break to really dive in, helped me really get into it. It probably is a harder game to go back to after the fact. I do remembering really enjoying The Shivering Isles though!
@csl316:Ha! It did the same for me. I grew up on Goldeneye for first-person controls on consoles, and stuck with that scheme for as long as I could, which Halo had an alternate option that matched Goldeneye. Oblivion didn't have any alternate options for analog stick setup... It was painful at the time, but in the long run it was a boon. Oblivion's a long game, and not one that requires a ton of precision, so it was an effective and gentle way to adapt to the now-default scheme. I've stuck with it since. Still an inverted y-axis guy though :)
This is a nice nostalgia trip and a fun list! Man, the GBA had a great run with a ton of really cool games. As I was recently making a list ranking handhelds and consoles, and thus looking at games for each platforms, I was surprised at just how many really neat original games the GBA had. I'll toss out Fire Emblem (extra important as the series' western debut), Astro Boy: Omega Factor, and FFT Advance as some other GBA games/series I liked not on your list. Good stuff!
@slag: I really struggled with the bottom of this list, lol. My original draft had the Vita 3 or 4 spots higher, because I did genuinely enjoy my time with it, probably more than some others on this list. But the more I stared at it, and the more I realized how much my enjoyment was anecdotal based on never owning a PSP, it was just hard to deny the Vita's poor/shallow library as you noted... it's great hardware without a great use case.
The PS4 is a console I played a TON, and I really do like a lot. This is a competitive list :) I think mainly that having a pretty good PC for most of the generation made it feel somewhat obsolete more quickly than previous generations. You may have liked some of its exclusives more than me too? Regardless, the PS4 truly does have a great library, and if I pretended PCs didn't exist, it might be near the top.
@daavpuke: Thanks! And I'd be curious to see your own list if you make one :)
The N64 is one of those Nintendo consoles where if you didn't truly love a couple of its games -- and I mean love in a "greatest of all time" kind of way -- it just really didn't have much. It almost lives and dies by games like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, lol.
@slag: Yeah, mostly thanks to Game Pass I have been just trying out a lot more games lately, even if I don't stick with them for very long. Game Pass in particular makes it easy to do that in a way I don't feel guilty about, like you mentioned. There are a lot of games on this list I only played an hour or two :)
@slag: Re: FF Tactics, it certainly matters what year a game comes out in terms of its competition, and 1998 was a competitive year. I often think about how both StarCraft 1 and 2 are some of my favorites games, top 20 all time if not higher. But neither is my favorite game in their respective year just due to the coincidence of coming out in an abnormally competitive year.
Do you think DQ5 is one of the best DQ games? I picked up that DS remake years ago, but have never set down to really play it. I'd also like to play DQ11 (which is now on Game Pass), but time is the main factor on that one. DQ8 is the only DQ game I've played much of, which I finished and really liked.
Thanks again re: my ranking of years list! Speaking of that and the desire for notifications for list updates on the site, I did just run 2020 through my process and added it to that list ;)
@amlabella: Thanks! I'm also more of a turn-based guy, which meant I paused the action in Desperados III ALL the time. So while technically it's a real-time game, the way I played felt more or less turn-based if that makes sense :)
Yeah one feature I really wish GB had and I suspect never will for a variety of reasons, was something to notify people when a list gets updated.
I think it'd give people more incentives to keep their lists current etc if they did. Which given how long the site has run for now, could be pretty neat if we had a sub-culture around that.
I've wanted this exact thing for a long time. I have multiple lists that I maintain and update regularly, but realistically I know they will never be read again without something to point them out. And I'm sure others do the same. It's just impossible to keep up with without any sort of notifications.
majormitch's comments