Topic: The Definitive Best Game of All Time Forum Megapoll!

Super Metroid - 1 point
Tetris - 2 points
The Last Of Us - 1 point
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - 4 points
Witcher 3 - 4 points

Surprisingly easy round for me. Two top contender in here for me, and I had to award two points to one of the industry's breakthrough games. The two remaining points I used to tip my hat to two very different, but special games.

Also, something went terribly wrong here. We didn't get The Last Guardian in here? I feel dirty right now!

Wow, it's really gonna heat up after this. Let's just hope there's a little less counting in the next phase (although this has been on the side of maths I can actually do... just). Anywho, my points allocation for the current round is as follows.

4 points to Tomb Raider II

3 points to Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

2 points to Tomb Raider
2 points to Tomb Raider (2013)

1 point to Tetris

Personally, I can't bring myself to allocate points to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, simply because I think every amazing moment it boasts is countered by a moment that drags it back down, and I really feel that it's hugely overrated whenever people refer to it as the franchise's finest hour. It gave us Chloe (yay) but also gave us Flynn (boo). There's barely any Sully (that should be a crime, an actual crime), Nate's character seems out of sync with his portrayal in every other game, and the chapters between the convoy chase and the finale constitute a long, drawn-out trudge that brings any story or gameplay momentum screeching to a halt.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 5 points
The Last of Us - 5 points
Uncharted 2 - 1 point
Uncharted 4 - 1 point

@Gamer83 yes mate. Knew Yakuza could count on you!

@Simon_Fitzgerald good to see you voting again Si.

@RogerRoger @kidfried @crippyd Nice points for Tetris they could make a huge difference!

@Dichotomy I only played super metroid properley for the first time properley this year on snes mini. Awesome game.

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past - 5 points
The Last Of Us - 3 points
Tetris - 2 points
Uncharted 4 - 1 point
The Witcher 3 - 1 point

Tetris got me into gaming, I had to chuck it a couple of points.
@themcnoisy good to hear you're fighting fit again, sounds like we're all going to need to be on top form for this next round...

@RogerRoger With you on Uncharted 2. Replayed the trilogy recently because my wife only got into them at U4, so she wanted to catch up. Uncharted 2 kind of left me wondering why it is regarded as being so much better than the others. Still great, like.
The fourth one is my favourite, but I started The Lost Legacy last night and if it carries on at this rate, it could be the best one...

@RogerRoger Glad to know I'm not the only one who was underwhelmed by Uncharted 2. I mean, it's still leagues better than U1 and Golden Abyss, but sections like the one where you have to lure the tank around, the section with the yeti, or the terrible final battle drag it down for me.

Uncharted 3 was much better at being a constantly moving thrill fest, with some of the best setpieces in the series. And Uncharted 4 managed to perfectly marry fantastic action gameplay to a great plot that really deconstructs Nathan Drake and explores themes that have hidden under the surface of the series the entire time.

Of course, even the worst Uncharted game is more interesting than The Last of Us, which is probably the most bored I've ever been playing a big AAA game. People talk about how moving and meaningful it is, and I have to wonder if those people have ever watched horror movies or TV series or read a piece of post-apocalyptic sci-fi in the last ten years. Absolutely the most overrated game I've ever played in my life.

@Ralizah I am with you on the last of us. It was a nicely told story but I found the videogame sections to be pretty average 💤

I too was left underwhelmed by Uncharted 2!

@Feena Naughty Dog isn't great when it comes to pure gameplay, but they're second-to-none when it comes to spectacle and "cinematic" gameplay, which is why I think the Uncharted games still manage to be pretty fun. It's easy to get caught up in the moment when you're constantly escaping from firefights, burning houses, crumbling cliffs, explosions, etc. They're like big, dumb action movies crossed with the Westernized exoticism of something like Indiana Jones.

TLoU slows down, though. It still has set-pieces, but they don't overwhelm you, so you're free to see the seams in ND's game design.

I also think that ND's writers are good at writing dialogue, but struggle to create genuinely compelling conflicts in their games.

Basically, I think Uncharted plays to their strengths, and TLoU exposes their weaknesses.

@RogerRoger @Gremio108 @Ralizah Interesting thoughts on Uncharted 2. I remember thinking it was the best because of it's balance between story segments and gameplay, a good antagonist, and good character writing. But...it has been some time since I last played it (haven't touched it since I got the platinum in 2015), so I may have to look at it again along with the rest of the trilogy. Maybe then my opinion on Uncharted 4 would improve.

Last of Us didn't click with me either (I'm in the middle of replaying it but it's still doing nothing), but it's probably going to win if Witcher 3 doesn't.

@DerMeister I would say that those reasons you listed are why I actually really enjoyed Uncharted 4. It has a good balance of strong narrative segments and pretty decent action/puzzle gameplay, the villain is not only believable this time around, but also an interesting reflection of Nathan Drake himself, and the character writing, imo, is the best in the series.

Only things I didn't like about it was the reliance on the "long lost sibling that we've never heard about" trope and Nadine being pretty forgettable but still prominent during much of the game, but those things can't ruin an otherwise stellar game.

@Ralizah I enjoyed going through the trilogy remasters and playing the "This Would Be A Good Time To Bring Up The Long-Lost Brother" game during the quieter moments.

@Gremio108 It's not as distracting with the first two games, but his absence makes Uncharted 3 pretty awkward at times, considering how big a part of his life Sam apparently was. It's almost like ND is making up things as they go along.

@Ralizah Sam actually did drag Uncharted 4 down for me. I just thought he felt shoehorned into the game, even after they try to justify why nobody knew about him. It could have been worse, but I didn't think he was handled as well as he could have been.

I could be wrong, but I think he was meant to be a villain in 4, which was probably the plan when Amy Hennig was still writing it. There was likely going to be a different reason why he was never brought up.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II - 5
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - 5
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past - 1
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - 1

@Ralizah Weird, because even though I agree that Uncharted 4 is the best of the bunch, I thought that The Last of Us was still the better ND game. It's tense, not horror, but slightly scary at times. The gameplay is comparable to Uncharted, but there's a crafting mechanic on top of it all. Crafting parts are scarce, so there's a tactical aspect to managing your items. Do I go for a molotov cocktail or a health kit? And it's impossible to rambo through an entire group of clickers.

The story? It's what I wanted from The Walking Dead but never got.

@Octane Clickers are incredibly cheap, as they're designed to be 'special enemies' that trigger an insta-kill animation if they get too close to you, making the artificially more challenging than other enemy types. The fact that you have to manipulate sound to get around them is interesting, but there aren't enough sections of the game taking advantage of their AI.

Also, there is indeed a survival horror-ish resource management aspect to the game, but it doesn't give you enough operational freedom to make much of a difference to me. The combat is basically an inferior version of what you got in Uncharted 4, except it forces the worse stealth mechanics more often and has a rudimentary, tacked-on crafting system. I just don't feel like it adds too much to the game (as opposed to, say, Resident Evil, where it's a crucial aspect of the gameplay).

Story-wise... it's just super unambitious. The Walking Dead has major issues, but it also has the benefit of being a long-form work that explores multitudes of different scenarios and where the major characters have long and sometimes very interesting character arcs. TLOU has fungus zombies and a tropey relationship between a younger innocent and an older man who is working through issues related to the death of his daughter. That's it. Well, and the usual, unimaginative post-apoc stuff where rabid gangs of people prowl the streets looking for people to rob and kill, societies have become overly-controlling because of how much the zombie apocalypse destabilized the world, and there's some secret cure for the outbreak that entails an enormous sacrifice. It's an Oscar bait version of a bog-standard zombie narrative. I think it only really stood out because of how cinematic and realistic the game was.

The Last Of Us - 2
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 4
Witcher 3. - 5
Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1 - 1

I must have changed the top 3 a gazillion times. But in my eyes TW3 is closer to perfection than the other 2. I know some people had issues with the combat but I certainly didn't.

It’s interesting to read some thoughtful critique of UC2 and TLoU. I voted each highly, mostly because of the impact I got when playing them at the time. It’s probably true that the plot of TLoU and the gameplay of UC2 doesn’t live up to the praise it garnered at their respective releases, but each game did seem to push gaming forward, i think. Although none of us have played it yet, I suspect God of War to owe a lot to the Naughty Dog formula, for example. UC did the whole cinematic action game play thing before it, but UC2 really polished it. And the AI companion stuff had been done before TLoU, but I think it seemed to take it to another level, both in gameplay and it story/emotional investment in that companion. I think of all the escort missions I have done in single player games before and how annoying they are, and then you have TLoU, where Ellie is just kind of there for most of the game, and yet the game would definitely feel empty without her and she has become one of the PlayStation icons, despite her not being the true protagonist. I probably need to go back and play both games again (I think I’m fairly close to the UC plat) and it might expose those weaknesses more to me, but for now I have these rosy memories of what they did for me at the time.