The Fourth Annual Coint and Plick Video Games Poll - Part Four: #21 - 52

#29: Dead Rising 2 / Dead Rising: Case Zero – 360/PS3/PC – 33 pts – 4 votes
Official Game Site

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2009/03/dr2smash2.jpg

Mordy: Remarkable and awesome. The psychopaths are scarier, the zombies are more plentiful, the cell phone doesn't cripple you when you pick it up and -- probably the biggest and most significant change -- the survivor AI is great! You can run all over the place with a train of survivors following you who will protect themselves and, if you equip them with weapons, even help you! It's startling how a few mechanics changes can take a fun but flawed game and make it great! It has basically taken the DR1 mechanics, tweaked them to basically get rid of everything annoying (no more stupid paralysis-inducing cell phone calls!) to just leave the kernel of sweet arcade goodness. It feels like a classic Capcom game.

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2006/201/928326_20060721_640screen002.jpg

Gamepro review

CraigG: I don't have a lot to say about this, as I haven't played it loads, but it's impossible to not have fun when scooping zombies up in wheelchairs and beating them with whatever is lying around. Even the most basic of weapons, like a baseball bat with nails through it, is so satisfying to dish out some pain with. I really wish there was a free mode, as I don't like the time constraint, but the game is a lot more forgiving than the original, and infinitely more fun as a result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUdA2VVNY3w

1up review

Will M.: Case Zero was a spectacular bit of DLC/Arcade game and got me completely stoked on this title, which lived up to the hype I built in my head. Hilarious game and fun and removed a lot of the excruciating shit from the first one. Except for the kill 3195810980 zombies in one playthrough thing. I guess SOMETHING about it needed to be awful. The Case West DLC left me sour but DR2 and Case Zero? Amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMx48GXwEAc

Kotaku Case Zero review

http://www.acparadise.com/cosplayers/100/100-13147-3.jpg

#28: Vanquish – 360/PS3 – 35 pts – 2 votes - 0.5 top game votes
Official Game Site

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2010/10/vanquish_review.jpg

VANQUISH

cozen: P.N.03 and contra and viewtiful joe in HD. vanquish is genuinely brilliant but I will say I'm glad I waited for it to drop in price: I know much is made of the game's vaunted replayability but I was surprised the main campaign only clocked in at 4 and a half hours. no unlockables either, which this game is crying out for even just some cheats, badass guns and suit upgrades (even if just cosmetic). online co-op would be awesome too

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_c8NhpyO413Y/TL3YN2NevuI/AAAAAAAAAII/8AkAXBzIUik/s1600/vanquish-sega-new-screens-11.jpg

Gamesradar review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5wg51JB8w

Guardian review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYWRIFmRcU

Eurogamer

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4704796454_a482798e75.jpg

the neck buttons can be popped off and cleaned if that's the problem

No, the problem is that the strum piece just stopped registering. On all 3 of them. For no fucking reason. Yes I changed the batteries.

I loved watching my friend play Vanquish. I didn't enjoy playing it (not my thing) but it was gorgeous in the hands of someone who was good at it.

two way tie for 26

#26: Nier – PS3/360 – 35 pts – 3 votes
Official Game Site

http://www.gameranx.com/images/updates/1296462823_nier.jpg

so NIER and yet so far: itt "a game from square enix"

zappi: biggest surprise was Nier, has huge flaws but i loved the world & the way it kept switching up the gameplay - at one point it even becomes a text adventure!

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/02/nier-0203_1-660x371.jpg

Destructoid review

abanana: decent plot, decent fighting, fast walking speed. that's good enough for me.

http://fourplayercoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nier-1024x575.jpg

polyphonic: Nier is reminding me more of Deadly Premonition than I would've guessed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsWZ27odqRQ

lol ny times

"Nier does many different things at such a high level of sophistication and accessibility that I cannot think of another single game of recent years that more faithfully represents the sheer intellectual breadth of modern video games."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYHEBUTNviM

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/750/91057882.jpg

^^ replayed it over xmas and it was still as good as the first time. plus i knew to skip all the dumb sidequests :p
this guy recently discovered some interesting details in the game, huge plot spoilers of course http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=28132837&postcount=7755

is Nier the one that made one reviewer go insane because of a quest that had him fishing for like 3 hours because he was standing in the wrong spot

ya, he didn't look at the big red X on the map.

tbh I almost bought the game solely because of that review

much lolling

#26: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – PC/Mac – 35 pts – 3 votes
Official Game Site

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sc2.jpg

Starcraft 2: Mothership Connection

MattD: I can't speak for the single player campaign, as I generally only play RTS titles for the competitive multiplayer. It's the same game it was a decade ago, and it isn't - there are more options, tricks, tactics and polish, but the gameplay is still fast, tense, rewards intensive macro and micro level decision making / planning, and causes severe levels of stress and cardiac palpitations when played at the peak of my skill level. Which is why I stopped, because progressing beyond that point would take an inordinate amount of devotion and probably give me a heart attack. But there's no RTS out there that has such broad appeal or is so accessible yet rewarding. It is possibly the best way to earn the grudging respect of the teenagers your friend teaches; by 2v2 tandem 4-gating them into the dirt over and over and over again.

http://www.thewebtechreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/starcraft2_1.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgyL08nhtkw

Wired review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcxg4ylQJ6o

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/51168115-7e31-49f7-955e-0b3686f250b7.jpg

PC Gamer

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b380/TheHan/StarcraftLove.png

yeah this is ace. but i didn't pick it up till 2011 so no vote from me.

cozwn's description of Vanquish intrigues me....

surprised that some of the big guns placed this early too

#25: Darksiders – 360/PS3 – 35 pts – 4 votes
Official Game Site

http://ve3dmedia.ign.com/images/06/19/61974_Darksiders-14_normal.jpg

Lamp: a derivative game made by people who take manga too seriously darkstalkers is also p fukken rad, you get to be a horsemen of the apocalypse preventing a premature armageddon and there some shit with sexy angels and forces of evil and who cares. there's puzzles! and gory-ass swordplay! its zelda with blood!

http://static2.videogamer.com/videogamer/images/xbox360/darksiders/screens/darksiders_80.jpg

Giant Bomb review

jjjusten: Bash dudes, find treasure, bash dudes, retrace steps, boss battle, more treasure, cutscene, rinse repeat. It's better than it sounds, but no point in lying about it. Main character design makes me wish they would take everyone who has ever been artistically influenced by Gears of War and drown them in a well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHzEGeiMbg

Eurogamer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Cch1QE--w

http://www.freshcharacters.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/darksiders_by_derrickSong.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORCuR84-_8

woo!

#24: Persona 3 – PSP – 39 pts – 3 votes - 1 top game votes - TOP PSP
Official Game Site

http://gamesareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/shin-megami-tensei-persona-3-1541.jpg

Kids, shoot yourself in the head and gain super powers! The SMT / Megaten / Persona thread

Will M.: I feel weird voting for an old game first overall (one I may have voted for in the past) but this is finally the first version I've completed, and apparently, the best version (discluding its discluding of the epilogue) and goddamn if it didn't actually rekindle my love for jRPGs. Not that any others will make me want to play like this did, but damn. 70 hours and I'm on my SECOND playthrough now.

1up review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB4WyHe-HRM

if: Playing this for the first time after P4, there were a couple of spots where I could see how things were later improved on and there wasn't the same novelty value to its social mechanics or its particular line in lightly gothic weirdness. Despite that, the actually interesting and likeable story and characters (ok, likeable apart from Junpei, but I guess that's deliberate), the perfectly streamlined old school combat, and the endless options to spend your days as you choose and advance both stories and abilities as a result still make it stand out as a class apart from other JRPGs. There's also still the fun of having one bizarro alternate world of Shadows and Personas ('The Midnight Hour') built on top of another bizarro alternate world where you get a day off school to respect your elders and getting high exam marks makes you more popular ('Japan').

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0R88xG-pc

Eurogamer

Lamp: atlus's persona 3 FES is a gothic-tinged rpg that came out in the waning days of the PS2. the player takes on the role of a silent, mysterious transfer student to a japanese high school. on your 1st night in your new dorm you and your housemates are attacked by a slinking inky mass of arms and faces called 'shadows'. after shooting yourself in the head you summon an otherworldy spirit guide - classically allusioned and perfectly art-designed - to defeat the shadows & save yourself and your housemate. all of this takes place after about 35 minutes of introductory cut-scenes, expository dialogue and cryptic visitations.

so persona 3 divides its time btw the world of shadows & the day-to-day life of a japanese high school student. & as you make way through both of these worlds, studying for exams, building friendships, occasionally venturing into the shadowlands to defeat monsters and gain strength the two worlds begin to build inwards upon each other, permeating their counterparts in strange & unexpected ways. like twin peaks P3FES does an incredible job of portraying a mundane world that is constantly under threat from the unknowable & mysterious horrors that underlie our everyday world. but unlike twin peaks the 'regular' existence never feels like an afterthought, the pleasures of simply being in this world & the social link mechanic are equal to the pleasure of dungeon crawling & the story-driven mystery elements of the game that mostly take place in the hidden shadow world.

it seems kinda crazy that a part dungeon-crawler rpg part japanese dating sim game can be summed up using em forster's famous maxim 'only connect' but persona 3 FES is above all about the longing for contact & the terror of isolation. its most meaningful moments take place in the spaces btw how we see ourselves & how the other characters see us. i think its a mistake to want the game's dialogue trees and social interactions to function in the same way as they do in d&d-influenced western rpgs. in a western rpg the focus is on developing a character & so the best games give a sense of true possibility and naturalism. whereas with persona there is always a right answer, a correct path. the point isn't to give the player a blank slate to write his intentions on, to chose a 'good' or 'evil' path & then make descions based upon your character's intentions. in P3FES your character is a mirror held up to the npcs. you reflect their vanities & insecurities, their hopes & fears. and so the player is forced to consider them, who they are & at best you can understand and help that person. your goal, your job is to build relationships, not a character.

finally - finally! - the combat in P3FES is one of the most tactically interesting mechanic of any turn-based rpg. every npc is self-directed and their actions will often - frustratingly - shadow their reallife personalities. as battle leader you can give them directives but you cant control their actions perfectly. so combat begins to double the social link aspect of the game, you're forced to predict the actions of your comrades to know their strengths & weaknesses & so to understand them as people. the difficulty of this makes what is a very grind-heavy game both more fraught and more engaging. never a game to miss an opportunity death literally haunts the game's dungeon & his shadow is always present in P3FES. even regular combats are perilous & you will die. a lot.

the best that i can say for P3FES is that unlike almost any other game the memory of its events stayed with me. although its mechanically frustrating, overlong & exacting it manages to create a plausible, engrossing world like no game before or since.

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/galleries/2010-06-20/persona-3-portable/persona-3-portable_1277089256.jpg

http://visublog.mechafetus.com/system/images//persona3c.gif

nice writeup, lamp

Yeah really enjoyed reading it, gets at a lot of the best things about the game (meanwhile I managed to confuse the Dark Hour and Midnight Channel).

Since P3P gives the option not to, I didn't play it with everyone else controlling themselves in battle though, that's just too frustrating. Also I was only about half way through the game when I voted (I mean, it is 80+ hours long) and am pleased to say that the rest of it did live up to expectations!

[SPOILERS ahead]

I played as the female main character and was a bit disappointed not to end up daying anyone - Akihiko was kind of boring and Junpei was amazingly even more annoying than Yosuke in P4 so I was pleased when Shinjiro started turning out to be likable, and then he very soon died. Oh well.

im kinda o_O that 3 other ppl voted for darksiders i didnt think anyone else on ILG had even played it!

I played the first hour of it at a pal's house

its funny that i voted for it i think id probably finished it so recently that i was still pleasurably immersed in the gameworld but five months later its just as forgettable as all the other junk i played last year.

two way tie for 22

#22: Super Meat Boy – 360/PS3 – 40 pts – 3 votes
Official Game Site

http://vegetarianstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Super-Meat-Boy.jpg

if: Beyond basic functionality, I actually don't really care at all for the aesthetics of SMB (now there's a deliberate acronym). I think I may also, finally, have reached the point where I see '<Item> get!' and 'Sorry but the <person> is in another <location>' and feel absolutely nothing in response. Fortunately the controls, jumping/walljumping mechanics, sense of speed and level design were near perfect. The replays in which you watch a cloud of your failures gradually and harshly narrowed down to your success were also rightly praised. The number one thing above all of that that made this stand out and be so addictive, though, was the simple but ingenious idea to make all the levels so short. Coupled with NO RELOADING TIMES and the aforementioned speed and responsiveness, this meant that the difficulty could be ramped up to the level where winning often feels exhilaratingly like achieving the impossible, whilst barely ever suffering from un-fun frustration. And each level offering multiple routes with rewards for quick times meant that even if you spent twenty goes repeating the same first section of a level: i) it was really short anyway ii) It wasn't time wasted, as it could be used to whittle an extra 0.05 seconds off the time for that part and increase your chances of opening up a more sadistically hard level!

SUPER MEAT BOY!

http://media.rundlc.com/editorial/2010/10/Super-Meat-Boy-33.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZeQSaXwR8

Giant Bomb review

silby: Only managed to spend a few minutes with this game so far, but since it combines brilliantly designed puzzle-platforming with an insane glut of content, by the time it's finally out on a platform that I have regular access to, I might actually bother to beat it.

MTV review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N874LFeLhYs

http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Super_Meat_Boy_Dave_Rapoza_Cover-600x539.jpg

#22: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood – PS3/360 – 40 pts – 3 votes
Official Game Site

http://www.pwnage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/acb2.jpg

EZ Snappin: ACII was my game of the year last year. This is better in many ways -- the new additions to combat and collecting things to unlock items spring to mind -- but Rome is no Venice.

Assassin's Creed

http://pinoytutorial.com/techtorial/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/assassins-creed-brotherhood.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNs4-kRLaE

Gamespot review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevxWc50yw8

Guardian review

MattD: This is sort of a half-vote, as I havn't touched the single player, but that speaks volumes about the fantastic multiplayer. At its heart it's just a it's simple cat-and-mouse game to see who can sneak up on whom (everyone is simultaneously playing both roles). The better you do, the more people hunting you. It's tense and frantic, and maybe the only competitive implementation of a sneaking mission that works well for both the hunter and hunted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leivk4O7_Qc

http://ijustwanttofitin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Assassin__s_Creed_cosplay_by_Ectheo8.jpg

#21: Civilization V – PC/Mac – 45 pts – 2 votes - 0.5 top game votes
Official Game Site

http://www.cyberstratege.com/magazine/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/civilization-5-header_38.jpg

Civilization V

Gravel Puzzleworth: I think this will be an amazing amazing game when it's finished (2/3 years from now) but I'm not sure I'll ever love it as much as IV; it's a too little too facebook in a way I can't quite put my finger on - I really & honestly like almost every design decision they took and the 100% unifying thread of them seems to have been 'remove the things that aren't fun' - I'm just not certain I like fun as much as the game's target audience?

http://www.gamingsurvival.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Civilization-5-2.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRoYEBfM_3A

Eurogamer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBspBEKjTps

PC Gamer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCY09s-c41A

That's it for this batch. My plan is to do 20-16 on Monday. Forks, open invite to jump in!

can i reserve the top 10? still slammed here (doing a conference call while i type actually) but would like to home stretch.

It's a deal.

civ 5 was my vote for most disappointing game of 2010 - too easy, and too easy to run out of shit to do. it'll be better after a few expansions though

What if you play it on the tougher difficulty levels?

two things -- one, Civilization (Danny Kaye + Andrew Sisters) is one of my fave songs ever so awesome. second -- I haven't played Civ 5 yet (tho I've played so many epic campaigns on Civ 4). I've heard the AI is basically totally broken. True?

no, it's not broken. before they patched it the AI didn't seem to understand how combat works when positioning its units, which was a big early gripe, but they fixed that. i haven't encountered anything egregious since.

i disagree with PTT's comments but there is something of an issue with game balancing that i don't think is fixable the way the game is designed. i tried playing a game on slower speeds and you really do end up with nothing to do for stretches. i played one game on marathon - i was on a continent with 2 other civs. early on i had totally explored everything i could access and was still a long way off transoceanic travel. i expanded a bit and conquered one of the other civs, but i reached a point where to do anything more would've killed my civ because of happiness constraints that i was powerless to remedy without access to other civs, luxuries, etc. i did literally f all for a few hours waiting to crawl along the tech tree before i canned it.

but if i play on normal speed, or even better, fast, it's usually p frantic, with plenty to juggle exactly as you would hope. and if you keep to normal or smaller sized maps, the strict happiness-forced restrictions on growth at the highest difficulties levels are mitigated somewhat. but it's definitely contrary to how i have played civ in the past tho.

What if you play it on the tougher difficulty levels?

― polyphonic, Sunday, June 5, 2011 4:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i beat it on emperor, which i could never do with the previous games

the combat is good and the design is good - which is why i think it'll be a much better game with a few expansions under its belt

Which games are you all most surprised didn't make the top 20?

I thought ACII: Brotherhood would've been in the top. Really one of the best open worlders out there. They've really got a handle on this engine and bugs were few and far between.

we can't tell without seeing the top 20... unless you mean out of games that have already placed... in which case... none of them...

xp all i heard about it really was the PC DRM was atrocious

Games I was at least a little surprised didn't make it to the top 20, given either general popularity, or even just their popularity on this board: Starcraft II, Assassin's Creed, Super Meat Boy, Dead Rising 2, Minecraft

esp. the Crafts, Mine and Star II

observations/predictions looking at the ballot as we move into the home stretch:

- by my count there's four missing heavy hitters from the iPhone alone left: 9 Innings, Angry Birds, Carcassonne, & Game Dev Story (which I assume will set the record for "most quotes & screenshots included with a C&P entry")

- shocked to see Mario Galaxy 2 cracking the top 20, that game seemed completely unnecessary to me after the first one

- looks to me like the big multiplatform titles left are New Vegas, ME2 (listed as 360 on the ballot but wasn't this on PC too?), Bayonetta, Just Cause, Blur (maybe? the only racing series I pay attention to is Motorstorm) and Pac-Man CE DX (which I think will end up placing really high since it was still fresh in everyone's mind when voting was going on)

- looks like a potentially strong finish for the DS - still no sign of DQ9, Picross 3D, Pokemans, Strange Journey, Golden Sun (maybe?), or Miles Edgeworth (ditto?)

- hoping Joe Danger makes it into the top 20, that game is fun as shit and I wish I could have found room for it on my ballot

- lol zero votes for Peace Walker

- I never would have picked Bejeweled 3 to be top PC/Mac exclusive but it looks like the only remaining candidate. ditto for Heavy Rain (COME ON) as top PS3 exclusive.

chatter on the DS thread was pretty low this past year, I have a feeling only DQ9 and Pokemon will show, if even

Peace Walker was last year? feels like much longer ago

heavy rain not a surprise, there are still some fans here

i voted for civ 5 on my truncated ballot this year partly to acknowledge that i spent a bunch of time playing it & partly because it gave me a lot of pleasure. im not really sure how i feel abt the game design itself if only because like 15 years of playing civ has created this impossible mental tangle of 'how a civ game should be' that no civ game every really manages. but i liked the basic feel of 5, the look of the maps in particular, but the interface and the streamlined cityscreen. i had a fair amount of fun playing the game, especially at first, almost uncompetitively & just letting the game wash over me - the simplicity & the downtime were enjoyable to me idk

otoh it is too easy & too neutered - i never really felt the same sense of possibility that earlier civ games gave me, there are really only a few ways to win & only a few ways of managing your empire. its much too limited a game to be truly challenging or worth thinking abt imo

xpost 3D Picross got votes on 2009's poll in import form so there's definitely some sentiment for it

civ 5's ok but its no epic mickey or final fantasy xiv

lol i wonder if i can find my 'most disappointing' writeup for final fantz

also iir my ballot c u shld be pretty pleased by whats still 2 cum

when are we doing most disappointing?

nobody voted for carcasonne btw