Topic: Team [404 - Team Name Not Found] Deliberation Station

@Jaz007 thank you. Happy Easter buddy.

@Jaz007 Thanks for locking this in, Captain. I fully support the lower ranking for History Civil War: Secret Missions considering you've actually played it. Direct experience will always trump second-hand research, so I'm glad that the final weighting called it "Pointless" even if I didn't get back in time to change my vote.

In future, however, I still cannot support or elevate the ranking of a game like Hannah Montana for simply having an easy platinum. Trophy culture has become an important part of modern gaming, I'll grant you, but I've played plenty of abysmal games that I'd want recognised as abysmal, regardless of whether their trophy lists are ridiculously easy or insanely difficult to complete. The idea that a truly pointless game will get played thousands of times more than it should be, basically for digital bragging rights, is a little insane to me personally. Especially considering that a lot of early PlayStation3 games didn't even have trophy lists because of the late implementation; so what, would we give bonus points to something like Sonic '06 if it came with an easy platinum?

At some point, we'll be debating the NCIS game and I'll happily rush to provide my first-hand experience of a truly pointless game, despite it giving you its platinum trophy for simply seeing the end credits after about five hours of insultingly-simple gameplay. I didn't play it for that, I played it because I liked the TV show and wanted it to be a good game, and it wasn't.

I guess this is opening up the whole "Are trophies really part of the actual game?" debate which is perhaps best had elsewhere, and that's not my intention because I'm actually really supportive of trophies and have grown to love them since their implementation.

These are just my own thoughts on the subject. Hurrah for the democracy of the team and I'll still support the final, locked-in rankings each week.

I admittedly made a case for it as it seems I'm the only person who's seemed to have played it out of all the teams in this PS3 listing thing and I'm not all that bothered (I said myself it could be existing or important as i wasn't too sure)

But how come Guitar Hero Metallica is listed as existing if Mcnoisy, RogerRoger and Th3solution all labelled it as important? Just curious @Jaz007 as I don't know how your team does things

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I’ll check that count again later today.
@rogerroger Not important was the majority of the votes for Hannah Montana. I didn’t do anything but use democracy there.
@Themcnoisy @Frigate @Th3Solution @Towaheeschel7 If any of you think a game’s ranking is funny, I’ll double check and explain how the ranking was decided.
It goes as follows: majority of points is the first thing used. If you’ve played the game your vote is two points. If there’s a tie, the one with more people who have played it wins. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll look at the arguments made and if someone supporting a category has presented more of a case. This is when my judgement comes into play, and I could put a marker next this so it’s open to opposition if you all want. This wasn’t used for any of the games in this list though.
Also, there a a bit of bleed over in categories. Example: if there are two, important votes, two existing votes, and one very important vote, the very important vote will be counted as important and important will win.
I hope that all made sense.

@RogerRoger I appreciate your candid and logical words, as always. And I actually do think that this is a good place and time to discuss whether the trophy list should factor into the overall judgment of a game’s importance, influence, and ultimate space it occupies in the halls of video game history. If not here then where? 😄

My take on it is that, for the most part, the trophy list should be a very small piece of the overall perspective on a game. In fact, so small that for the vast majority of games I would argue that the trophies shouldn’t factor in at all. As you alluded to, some of the games we are judging don’t even have trophies if they came out before implementation (2008 I think?). Metal Gear Solid 4 for example, didn’t have them initially, but they were added years later. Did that increase or decrease MGS4’s status as one of the great games of this generation? Probably not. It did motivate many to play it again for the trophies, but likely it would have still been a top tier game without them.
However a few games have become almost totally identified in the gaming sphere because of their trophies. Most of the earliest easy platinums would come to mind here. Hannah Montana chief among them, along with Terminator Salvation, and maybe a couple others. These games, although mostly garbage, set trends and influenced gaming culture. Although I never played Hannah Montana (and never will) I know about the game because it was discussed on podcasts like Greg and Colin’s “Beyond” back in the PS3 days, and still pops up on internet list for easy platinums. I completely agree with you that it is ridiculous to elevate a garbage game just because of an easy trophy list, and most easy plats nowadays aren’t really influencing the culture like those early ones did.
Don’t get me wrong, Hannah Montana isn’t splitting the atom, so to speak. It’s mostly a piece of rubbish by all accounts, but there’s no denying that it moved the needle, ever so slightly, amongst gamers and trophy hunters clamored to play it for the shiny digital prize.
Per @themcnoisy ‘s well crafted criteria with his four categories, in order of weight:
1) Importance to gaming as of today, 2)Technical achievement, 3)Artistic Merit and 4)Personal opinion
Unfortunately there is a small, but very real, level of importance to gaming that at least makes it not ‘pointless’. And again, it’s still garbage and a dud on the other 3 categories, so definitely ‘not important.’

“so what, would we give bonus points to something like Sonic '06 if it came with an easy platinum?” — my opinion is No. That is unless by virtue of that easy platinum the game garnered a bunch of fans and a bunch of discussion, boosted sales and created copycats due to the trophy list.

Anyways, I don’t think we’ll run into this kind of issue much. Like NCIS, I barely knew there was an NCIS game and I definitely didn’t have any idea what the difficulty of the platinum was. And so it should be for nearly all the other games we come across where trophy list are unlikely to factor in.
But I do think it is important for us to establish this. A game’s trophies should be a non factor in its rank, unless there is a special case like Miss Montana.

@Th3solution Excellent write-up. I agree wholeheartedly. @Rogerroger Also, I figured you meant that in general (not towards me) but wanted to clarify just in case.
But yeah, Hanna Montana was the first real easy platinum I think for the most part, or the first one to catch on, and now it’s still influencing some games today. It’s created a series of “easy platinums” so to speak. And people keep buying them for the same reason.

@Th3solution Was Hannah Montana really that important or influential to gaming culture as a result of its easy Platinum? It's perhaps worth remembering that long before PS3 trophies there were Xbox 360 Achievements and games like Avatar. Obviously here we're talking about PS3 games, but trophies and the impact they had on gaming culture were an area that Sony was very much playing catch-up.

@RogerRoger @mookysam @Jaz007 @Th3solution Another way to look at it - is it one of the worst games according to the criteria?

According to importance it can defo be bumped up to not important in the trophy capacity - compared to some of the dross which doesn't stand out in any way.

Also Hannah Montana was notorious on xbox also.

I'm personally OK with either.

@mookysam Well, compared to other ‘pointless’ games, yes. I define “pointless” as a game having literally no value to humankind. It should not exist, or rather if it did not exist, then we wouldn’t even know the difference. It’s not that Hannah Montana, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, or Terminator Salvation affected the entire industry or single-handedly started a revolution, but they were discussed and played more than they should have been because of the trophies.
Yes, PS3 trophies were late on the scene, but even more so why some of these early trophy games influenced PS3 culture but not Xbox because XB achievements were already a couple years into its life by 2009. In contrast, PS3 trophy hunters had fewer games to choose from to hoard trophies, so they bought this garbage.
Again, these lousy games are by no means ‘important’. They have no redeeming value as far as art, gameplay, or design, other than to inspire many people to play them for a platinum. And personally I think that’s worth something. And that something is to be not quite ‘pointless’. Anyone who used to listen to “Beyond” knows they talked about these games a fair amount. More so than any of the other games we would place in the pointless category.

@themcnoisy Yeah, and that’s the thing, by criteria, I think we unfortunately need to give a nod to Hannah Montana. The technical achievement, Art, and personal opinion are largely subjective. The influence on gaming is a little more objective, and it’s your highest weighted criterion. I does pain me to reward a poor game and not deemed it pointless because it was one of the first that people actually went out of their way to play it, knowing it’s a bad game (and possibly still do even now).
I sound like a crazy person on this point and honestly I don’t care that much about the dumb game, lol. It’s more the principle of the thing for future reference. 😄

@Jaz007 Oh, absolutely meant in general terms, yes. Apologies if I didn't make that clear.

My post was simply "this is what I would've done if I were back before the final lock-in" based on your responses to my research, which I wanted to acknowledge; I'd have changed my vote for History Civil War, but not for Hannah Montana. As I said, hurrah for democracy and I fully support whatever conclusions the team draws, even if they run contrary to my own personal opinions (and for the record, I wasn't questioning the outcome or arguing with the ranking; again, I was just saying "this is what I'd have argued for, were I back in time").

And the beauty of having all this diversity on the team is that, whilst I still do hold my specific opinion over trophies and their impact / integration on the games they accompany, I totally understand where you, @Th3solution and @themcnoisy are coming from because you've all kindly taken the time to explain your position when I said what I said. Which is awesome.

Still gonna rank NCIS as pointless, though.

@Th3solution Further thanks for your detailed thoughts on this issue, too. As somebody who doesn't tend to engage with online communities (aside from PushSquare, of course) or watch their content, I had absolutely no idea of Hannah Montana's reputation before I did the research about it, and even then it was a small aside in a review which alerted me to it having an easy platinum, which I then mentioned in my summary.

It's fascinating to me that there are all these folks out there who play games so totally differently to me, and to others. I think that speaks a lot to the brilliance of gaming as an art form. You can only really read a book one way, or watch television one way, but pick up a game and you've got multiple ways of enjoying it. Do you hunt for trophies? Play for story? Increase the difficulty and play for challenge? Do you replay over and over, to learn it inside-out, or play once and trade in? Given that each approach would (I assume) have quite a large set of fans, both participating in online communities / podcasts / forums, etc. and perhaps not, it's important to recognise every possible angle... which is tough when I'm just me, doing ten minutes of Google work to stick a label on a game I've never heard of before!

So yeah, on the basis of that, I can appreciate that a game's reputation for having an easily-accessible platinum trophy could count for some people, even if it doesn't count for me personally.

@RogerRoger Well said. There is a remarkable diversity of gamers out there, of which we are a slice. Although I think we (and I speak of the collective user base of Push Square) are a fairly diverse bunch, but probably are not a perfect representation of all facets of the gaming populace. I’m sure we’ve missed some games so far that we’ve deemed ‘pointless’ that have a rabid fan base out there somewhere or that, unbeknownst to us the game had some major role in influencing another product which became a smash hit. I suppose it’s impossible to know all the ins and outs behind every single one of these 1442 games. But one of the wonderful things about being engaged in Push Square is that because of the user recommendations I’ve been exposed to games I would have never given a second thought to.

@Th3solution I reckon PushSquare does alright, especially with the good core of diverse regulars but yeah, it's something I had to keep in mind when we started this rather significant undertaking; when finished, this will be "The PushSquare Community's Ranking of PS3 Games" and not "The All-Time Global Definitive Ranking of PS3 Games, Fact" so there are gonna be some outcomes that are a result of our personal opinions, no matter how objective we try to be.

I know I've thought twice about a couple games mentioned already, and I look forward to hearing from anybody else who goes away and plays something they never thought they would.

Speaking of rabid fans, I'm just glad we won't have to rank Gravity Rush.

These are our games people!

Just Dance 2015 Ubisoft Paris
Just Dance 2016 Ubisoft Paris
Just Dance 2017 Ubisoft Paris
Just Dance 2018 Ubisoft Paris
Kung Fu Rider SCE Studios Japan
L.A. Noire Team Bondi
Lair Factor 5
Last Rebellion Hit Maker
Legendary Spark Unlimited
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole Krome Studios
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Nihon Falcom Corp
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 Nihon Falcom Corp
The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon Étranges Libellules
Legends of War: Patton Enigma
Lego Batman: The Videogame Traveller's Tales
Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Traveller's Tales
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Traveller's Tales
LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack Traveller's Tales
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 Traveller's Tales
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 Traveller's Tales
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures Traveller's Tales
Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues Traveller's Tales
LEGO Jurassic World Traveller's Tales
The LEGO Movie Videogame Traveller's Tales
LEGO Lord Of The Rings Traveller's Tales
LEGO Marvel's Avengers Traveller's Tales
Lego Marvel Super Heroes Traveller's Tales
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game Traveller's Tales
Lego Rock Band Harmonix / Traveller's Tales
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga Traveller's Tales
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens Traveller's Tales
Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars Traveller's Tales

@Jaz007 @RogerRoger @Th3solution sorry for not being too active recently. I have been in work pretty much none stop. Combined with kids and stuff it's pretty hectic.

I'm off work for 2 days now so will defo contribute to this list, which I think is actually really good.

One thing I noticed running the fifa list is if you have all of the games In a franchise you can better rate them according to our criteria. Especially with Lego games.

Telltale Lego games are very much enjoyable if you like the franchise they are based on. I love Star wars and the Marvel hero ensemble so Lego Star Wars - Fantastic. Marvel Super Heroes - Fantastic. But I don't care for Lego Harry Potter - so it's counterpart game is rubbish. Lego Jurassic Park - Rubbish etc.

Running all the Lego games in one go will give us better appreciation of the games in question without being allied to a particular franchise. It goes without saying once we have locked in the result it will probably be challenged for the reason I stated above. Let's wait and see

It’s hard for me not label almost everything past LEGO Batman pointless. The series became very stale last that point. Way too many of them too. 3-4 a year.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel ~ Very Important: The storytelling and gameplay is absolutely incredible, the music is absolute ear candy, and the characters feel like real people. The fact that even the NPC's have massive backstories is one reason of many why the game is so important and that more games should mirror this way of storytelling.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II ~ Very Important: Same as the first, however this game is a better game overall and is easily the best JRPG released on the PS3 in the Western Hemisphere. Also the feels you get when a certain end-game cutscene occurs, let's just say that you grow attached to the characters in a way that no other game I've ever played has accomplished before.

@Jaz007 @Th3solution @Frigate @themcnoisy @TowaHerschel7

Comrades, I reckon @themcnoisy is absolutely right in his comment about the LEGO games; namely that if you're a fan of the franchise they're representing, they're great and if you're not, they're kinda not. There have been incremental improvements and examples of growth, however, when you look beyond the fan service. I'm gonna do a rundown of the ones I've actually played and talk about the reasons why I'd rank them accordingly, but if you feel at any time that I'm being less than objective, step in and say so, please.

For the record, I'm a huge fan of Batman, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, and I like Jurassic Park (although to a much lesser degree). The other franchises represented I'm pretty cool towards, even if I have ended up playing the associated LEGO game for a while anyway.

First up, though...

L.A. Noire is an underrated gem. Granted, I've only played the PS4 remaster and I understand that the PS3 version caused a lot of consoles to overheat at launch (particularly PS3 Slims) but the groundbreaking facial capture technology deserves a huge nod, even if its implementation in the gameplay was a little wonky and therefore tough to "get right" when interrogating a suspect. For having a stellar cast and delivering authenticity, I'd praise it, but a relatively-empty Los Angeles and rough edges limit that praise. I'd call it a low Important but if anybody wants to categorise it as Existing, that'd be fine with me.

Okay, LEGO time!

Never played the first LEGO Batman game. I'll do some research on it (and all the other games on the list I haven't played) and come back to you tomorrow.

LEGO Batman 2: DC Super-Heroes was the first LEGO game to include an original script with full voice-acting. Whilst this may seem like a small thing, it opened the door for the LEGO games to be more creative in their storytelling (up until then, everything had been dialogue-free grunts, sighs and laughs, which had its own charm but had peaked with LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars). The game's funny, well-paced cutscenes were polished up and released on DVD and Blu-Ray, the huge popularity of which paved the way for Batman's inclusion in The LEGO Movie and ultimately his own spin-off film. This originality bled into the gameplay, leading to some spectacular and imaginative levels that weren't constrained by "but we have to replicate what happened in the movie". It's a big, bold sandbox with a lot of detail, released right at the height of the franchise's popularity (because yeah, after this, things started to go downhill on a regular basis). I'd call it Important.

I played LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham on PS4, but did sample the PS3 version at a friend's house and so, in terms of technical performance, there were some drawbacks; the framerate is less stable, load times are longer, pop-in can be frequent. It also isn't as coherent as its predecessor. The Watchtower hub feels claustrophobic and a little confusing, and there are also the seven Lantern Worlds which are cute but crowded. The once-simple abilities of different characters have started to feel overloaded and there's a lot of stop-start to the gameplay, as you frantically switch between multiple versions of multiple characters to find that one thing you need to proceed. The story (once again an original effort) is still decent, but anti-climactic and not a patch on what came before. It's perhaps the greatest for fan service, not least because the late Adam West is given a beautiful starring role and his own hilarious Batman '66 level, but that can only do so much of the heavy lifting. Not Important for this one, I'm afraid.

I've never played LEGO Dimensions, nor the LEGO Harry Potter games. Skip!

Alas, I got the first LEGO Indiana Jones game on Nintendo DS and so never felt the urge to get it on a main console; I'll research that one later. LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues, meanwhile, tries to do a few new things but doesn't quite stick the landing. It's the first licenced LEGO game to offer a level builder, where you actually place LEGO bricks and construct a simple platforming challenge to overcome... but the mode is limited, and too fiddly to really be enjoyable. In fact, that's this game all over, really. Levels are short, stop-start affairs (because they rehash the original trilogy, which had gotten a full game the year before; they've only added in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but they had to follow the pattern established, so it's all broken up into bits) and the hub worlds are compressed and difficult to get your bearing in. It's all perfectly fine, but nothing more. If this is the only LEGO game you've played, then you have chosen poorly. Not Important (a boost for at least remembering the point of LEGO and trying to let you build with it).

LEGO Jurassic World is another which I played on PS4, but got to see the PS3 version elsewhere, so same again; increase the loading times, decrease the framerate. It's also one of the first LEGO games I played where it was developed by the "B Team" from Traveller's Tales (to meet demand, the summer LEGO game is usually pushed out whilst the core developers work on the Christmas release, and that year it was LEGO Dimensions). Unfortunately, this difference in development team really shows with Jurassic World. More than half the voice clips are samples ripped from the original films, and there are very few new gameplay ideas on display. It does the job as a cute, playable take on the franchise, but doesn't make any extra effort or innovation and therefore feels like a cash-in. This is the first where I'd agree with @Jaz007 in calling it "very stale" and so yeah, I'm gonna have to categorise it as Pointless ("Don't you mean extinct?"). Huge fans of dinosaurs can boost that if they like.

Only played The LEGO Movie Videogame on PS Vita and it's a totally different game, so will have to look into that one properly tomorrow. Have never played LEGO Lord of the Rings or LEGO Marvel's Avengers, either, so they join the research pile for now.

Gonna break this into two posts, just in case I overload something.

LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes is a game I never thought I'd play or like, because I'm not really a fan of the Marvel property, but my friend is and so we spent a long weekend playing the PS3 version. I've gotta admit, as somebody who doesn't know his Spider-Men from his Ant Men, it's a really good game. The hub is vast but accessible and the original script, just like LEGO Batman 2, is imaginative and genuinely funny. It does start to suffer from that aforementioned "ability overload" (where you have to stop and search through your party for the one character that can do the one specific thing you need; gone are the simple days of "this guy jumps high, this guy uses the Force and this guy is small, so can fit through vents... and that's pretty much it, go nuts") because they're desperate to represent every superhero's powers, but it never felt too intrusive. Whilst I'm certain it'd be a smoother experience on PS4, the PS3 version held up really well and was hugely enjoyable. The only thing is, unless you're a die-hard Marvel fan who refuses to play anything but Marvel games, you can pretty much replicate the gameplay experience in several other LEGO contemporaries. For all my praise, therefore, there's little to call this game unique beyond the franchise itself, so I'd call it Existing.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean and LEGO Rock Band? Skip!

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is the game which started it all... well, at least half of it is. Combining the original LEGO Star Wars (which translated the prequel trilogy into brick form) and the sequel, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, it adds in a few new bonus features and restores levels that were cut for time / budget, like Anakin Skywalker's assault on the Droid Control Ship from Episode I and the Coruscant speeder chase from Episode II. It also returns to the prequel vehicle levels and tweaks them with new controls and better layouts. The gameplay is the purest form of LEGO platforming; none of it is confusing or sprawling, and whilst there's replay value in all the usual forms (Free Play, Red Bricks, Minikits, etc.) everything is still quite slow-paced, even moreso by today's standards. So being honest? This is a remastered re-release. It's a good one, with some thought and care put into it, but it's still the second or third chance folks had to play it. Feel free to disagree, but I'd call it Existing.

LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens reeks of trying to make a quick buck. Released after only one new Star Wars film, and therefore stretching sequences out to their absolute limit to justify deserving a twenty-minute level, it's a bit of a slog. In your downtime, you'll fly between large and confusing hub worlds to roam around, taking note of things you can't do yet because you haven't unlocked the right character with the right ability. The DLC was pretty good, adapting canon comic books to give the core story more context, but some of it falls way beyond fan service and plummets into obscurity (or doesn't explain itself well enough to make sense to casual players). The new film simply wasn't established enough to make it iconic, and so LEGO didn't have much to work with. The one new gameplay idea is essentially a "Baby's First Gears of War" cover-based shooting gallery mechanic which does little to advance the imagination LEGO could potentially offer. At least they got Harrison Ford in a recording booth to say "Wookiee Cookies", even if a lot of the other dialogue is lazily ripped from the film. I'm heading towards calling this one Pointless, I'm sorry to say.

Save the best 'til last, though.

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars isn't just an excellent LEGO game, it's an excellent game, period. Adapting the first two seasons of the animated show, the episodic structure provides truckloads of variety which the game takes full advantage of. Gameplay is evolved in multiple key ways, all of which work brilliantly. There are sprawling tactical land battles reminiscent of Command & Conquer, with hundreds of LEGO figures in play at once to encourage strategic thinking. Space combat levels invariably have you landing on capital ships, mixing things up with some excellent pacing and seamless transitions. Even the traditional on-foot platforming levels occasionally ask you to not only switch characters, but to switch to characters in entirely different locations, giving you picture-in-picture monitoring to achieve your objectives simultaneously. Unlike later LEGO games, none of this is confusing; everything was built upon to a point where it was impressive and accessible, but not overwhelming. That's thanks to a fluid progression system via Gold Bricks, meaning you can't unlock new areas of the (absolutely stunning) hub world until you've completed enough of the story, ensuring that whatever's beyond the door will make sense when you see it. Whilst this was also one of the last "mute" LEGO games, the entire voice cast of The Clone Wars records original grunts, sighs and laughs for their characters, and the cartoonish nature of the source material makes that traditional LEGO humour a perfect fit.

I'm forever frustrated that the gameplay advances demonstrated in LEGO Star Wars III were all-but-abandoned in future releases, and that LEGO has settled into repetitive mediocrity for its licenced titles (one or two exceptions notwithstanding). Now, I'm gonna personally rank LEGO Star Wars III as Very Important because of what it could've represented and what it should've done for the reputation of LEGO games. If anybody feels like that isn't working to the criteria, then I'll lower that down to Important.

Phew!