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

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