This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the "BEST GAME EVER!!!" Project Top 128 Brackets!

You can vote for 1-4 games in this bracket. Vote carefully—you can't change your votes after submitting them. The top 4 games at the end of the week will advance to the Top 64.

5 - Sid Meier's Civilization V - 2010 - PC
28 - Ico - 2001 - PS2
37 - Duck Hunt - 1984 - NES
60 - Mark of the Ninja - 2012 - PC/X360
69 - Track and Field - 1983 - Arcade
92 - The Guardian Legend - 1988 - NES
101 - Space Invaders - 1978 - Arcade
124 - Paper Mario - 2000 - N64

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

These are all kind of throwaway votes for me at this stage in the competition. Used all four votes, minimal passion for any.

Lol what a shit bracket. I'm not voting I haven't played Ico or Paper Mario they seem like the only ones I'd play.

None unfortunately. If I'd have played Ico for more than the 20 minutes I have, then I'd probably vote for it. Same with Paper Mario.

Sid Meier's Civilization V and Space Invaders get genre exemplar votes from me. The former is one of the current pinnacles of grand strategy gaming, and of course there are so many ways to play it. The latter is a pure shooter with immense influence that's still worth a few quarters of fun to this day.

My other two votes, Ico and Mark of the Ninja, are innovators in action subgenres. Ico is a beautiful game that turns 3D action into a puzzle. The setting is well-designed, and the atmosphere and pace amp up the tension without making you feel overloaded. Lightning in a bottle game design. Mark of the Ninja is maybe the best stealth game ever made. The fact that they managed to fit so many interesting stealth mechanics into what looks at first glance like a typical 2D platformer is amazing.

As much as I love Paper Mario, I voted for only Civilization V. With the current expansions and the wide variety of mods, consecutive turn multiplayer and plethora of options to customize your game, it is arguably the best Civilization game. Some people like Civilization IV better, but I hated everything related to war in that game. Civilization V handles war much better by making it penalizing (since there are opportunity costs for not investing in other things) but not crippling.

Civ V is actually a very deep game despite being fairly easy to get into and play. I've sunk hundreds of hours into it with no regret, and could see myself revisiting it some time in the future. It is one of my favorite strategy games, if not my favorite.

Sid Meier's Civilization V, Space Invaders, and Paper Mario have secured a place in the Top 64.

A tie-breaker between Ico and Mark of the Ninja will be posted soon.