This Old Neon Forum

Round 6: The Cattle of Geryon

You can vote for 1-5 games in this poll. Vote carefully—you can't change your votes after submitting them. The top 5 games at the end of the week will move on to Round 7: The Top 128 Qualifiers.

1986 - Metroid - NES
1991 - Lemmings - PC
1993 - Shadowrun - SNES
1994 - Doom II: Hell on Earth - PC
2001 - Halo: Combat Evolved - XB/PC
2001 - Wario Land 4 - GBA
2004 - Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - PC
2007 - BioShock - PC/PS3
2011 - Batman: Arkham City - Multiplatform
2011 - Super Mario 3D Land - 3DS

You are encouraged to discuss your choices and your reasons for selecting the games you did.

I feel like I should be voting for Vampire, but I never played it.

Wario Land 4 is one slick puzzle platformer. It's only flaw is how short it is. But I guess that happens.

3D Land as before.

I've also voted for Halo. I generally have absolutely no interest in Halo these days. But back when I got my Xbox not too long after launch, Halo was mind-blowing for my 11/12 year old self. The story was still grounded and great, co-op was unbelievably fun and it really had some set-pieces that I had never seen in games before.

Doom II gets my sole vote. Quite simply one of the true great games ever made.

Doom II is obviously getting some love, but I had to vote for Halo. I'm not a faithful fan of the series, but I have played through all of the games. Typically I've found I don't care to play the multiplayer without friends, and anytime the story introduces the Flood I just lose interest (yay, space zombies /s). However, while it doesn't have the best story of the series, I'm voting for it strictly for one reason: the introduction level with the ship boarding action has and continues to be one of my favorite gaming experiences to this day and I still look for something similar in most of the scifi games I play.

Halo helped revolutionize shooting-the-dudes games on consoles. I couldn't really get into it as easily as I got into Destiny. The controls are still a bit clunky (or is it me that's clunky), and I didn't like the vehicle sections, but I appreciate the scope and ambition.

Doom II got a vote from me based on how excellent it is overall.

I also voted for the amazing Shadowrun (SNES). This game has one of the most interesting implementations of a P&P RPG system in a video game that I can think of. Great controls and interface, fun story, feels like it gives you lots of freedom even while being fairly linear, and excellent atmosphere. Of course, since this seems to be what I'm doing in this round, I have to sing the praises of the game's understated soundtrack, which perfectly complemented the game's dark cyber-tone:

Oof. There might be one too many games in this bracket that I wish I'd played but haven't for me to feel good about voting.

There are a ton of games that are borderline for me. In this bracket... Shadowrun SNES is great (as is Shadowrun GEN, interesting to see two different implementations of the same system turn out so well) and so is Vampire, but while they're both great games I'd heartily recommend to someone, I have a rough time calling them "Best Game Ever" in my mind.

I need to get into the mindset from when I wrote for a website that had a jokey "Best Game Ever" category - it's not that it's unequivocably the best game ever, but rather that it has something to offer that is unique and worthy of recognition.

Still working on that.

Boy I want to vote for 6 here. Leaving out original metroid because I don't really find it fun even though it sparked the franchise.

I have very fond memories of beating Wario Land 4 over and over.

Also I'm surprised to see VTMB doing poorly. I thought that was a well liked game. Or maybe i've only ever seen anything about it on /v/