The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Sid Meier's Civilization IV - PC - 2005

Picking up a classic here. Civilization IV was the ultimate version of the series for me personally. I played this so much that it became hard for me to play the sequels, so I don't know if later iterations have improved things beyond the presentation.

The things from this version that stood out to me:

• Diplomacy mechanics were more visible, and religion was added as essentially a viral force that affected relationships in diplomacy and civ happiness and almost nothing else. (The attempt to not make any value statements about any particular religion was in itself a value statement about religion in general).
• Strategic resources (e.g. Oil) were revealed in later eras (after civilizations were mostly already set up.) resulting in shaking up the world's stability

I think lots of the ways Civilization games represent human history that are a bit silly in how abstract they are, but it is interesting to think about them as reflections of the time in which they were made.

Would have been my Number One overall pick, had I participated. I still play this game almost daily.

 

[Turgenev]

Kingdom Rush. Android.



Tower defence game. I'll come back and wrie something more later.

 

[Warhawk]

I haven't ever played the Civ games, but I've been tempted to try them out once or twice. Maybe there's no time like the present...

Same here.

 

[Sluggah]

Title: Team Fortress 2
Format: PC
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Valve

The game closest to my heart, TF2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter and the sequel to a mod of an already picked game (Quake) which was later packaged with another already picked game (Half-Life)…hence some of my pre-draft hand-wringing about the rules.

Building on the team-based gameplay of the original (capture the flag, control point), they added new game modes, an amazing aesthetic, humor, and injected tons of personality into the 9 player classes.

18 years after release, it continues to receive official Valve server support, and I’d still be on them if I wasn’t already sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day.

Pre-twitch and the legitimacy of esports, and for my own nostalgia, here’s some dudes casting a league match where my team rolled another a million years ago:

 

[SLAB]

Pick 7: Diablo III Eternal Collection (PS4)

Yaaaaaa, I’m going with the black sheep of the Diablo franchise. Was its original launch abysmal? Yes. Did it ditch the dark grimy look for a brighter more polished look? Also yes.

But you know what? Once the game got past its rough start (Sup real money Auction House), it flourished, and still has a healthy enough community going to this day there are still active new seasons. It may not be the best Diablo, but I sank so many hours into these characters. I definitely played it way more than I did 4.

The Eternal Collection adds on more story, more bosses, more loot, and more playable characters! A game I can still go back to for my dungeon crawling. I couldn’t imagine being stuck on a desert island without the dopamine rush of a new dropped legendary or set piece! Still pops me today!

ALSO; it’s the only Diablo I’ve ever put in the time and effort to beat in Hardcore mode. That counts for something!

 

[Warhawk]

Unreal Tournament 2004
Developer: Epic Games / Digital Extremes / Psyonix
Year: 2004
Platform: PC

I couldn't let this one fall any farther.

UT2004 is the multiplayer game I played the heck out of (solo). Nobody cares about the thin story. This game is all about constant multiplayer action. While playing a multiplayer game solo sounds weird, its only because this game includes so many game modes (that you can play with pretty good bot enemies!) and a crapton of maps. It NEVER gets old. Especially for those of us that wanted to play deathmatch-type games but really couldn't due to internet connectivity "issues".

UT2004 looked absolutely beautiful for the time, generally eschewing the dark and grimy Quake-type atmosphere (not that there is anything wrong with it!) for a brighter, more vibrant color palette that made it distinctive. The Unreal engine used for gameplay was quick and flexible with large and varied environments, including gravity modification.

All the weapons had distinct alt fire modes that really changed up the way you viewed each one. The flak cannon could also launch flak grenades. The rocket launcher could build up and launch multiple rockets flying in formation. The shock rifle could shoot an instant plasma beam, or a slower plasma ball that does damage (and, if you were good, you could launch the plasma ball and then shoot it with the plasma beam for a massive explosion). Lather, rinse, repeat.

The game also included vehicles for a couple of game modes, including both flying and ground-based vehicles to use in your attacks. Some required a driver and gunner, some were manned by a single player. Zipping across terrain with these was LOADS of fun.

But the main attraction here is the 100+ maps and all the gameplay types! You could play Assault, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Invasion, Double Domination, Last Man Standing, and Mutant. The game just never gets old because the variations of gameplay combined with all the map options are just outstanding.

The game received outstanding reviews all the way around for fast gameplay, great visuals, and challenging environments.

Epic also kept providing the goods, including the free Mega Bonus Pack download for the game, which included new maps, etc., previously only contained in the Editor's Choice Edition.



















@Löwenherz - back to you!

 

[Löwenherz]

The last Metroid is in captivity.
The galaxy is at peace …

Super Metroid (SNES) - 1994



I feel so very fortunate adding this to my roster here in the seventh round. Not only was I ready to take it in the fourth round had Hollow Knight not been available (still a round or two late in my opinion), but for several decades, Super Metroid was something of my gaming unicorn.

Despite it being among the most groundbreaking, famous, and popular titles on the Super Nintendo, I could never seem to track it down and play it for myself.

In the spring of 1994, this was Nintendo’s new “Killer App,” potential system seller, and I suppose Game of the Year candidate if that was even a thing back then. The buzz in the gaming community was palpable as giant displays of Samus battling Ridley stood at the doorways of toy stores and game rentals, while magazines and word of mouth thrilled at just how monumentally awesome this game was proving to be.

And I petulantly rejected the hype. I had played the original NES Metroid and its GameBoy sequel and found them clunky and frustrating. How could the third one with a fresh coat of paint on better hardware be that much better?

Super Metroid went on to define and inform an entire genre, its game design mechanics are still studied and utilized by AAA studios and indie creators alike, and it is still played by professional speedrunner streamers and competitively at gaming tournaments often as the main event.

Even the map is used as the template for games of the genre more than 30 years later.



As I saw Dead Space and Alien: Isolation taken in the picks just before this, I couldn’t help but wonder about Super Metroid’s influence on those games as well. Nintendo is of course the family friendly company, but the Metroid series, inspired by Alien with Samus as Ripley (that’s why Samus’ purple pterodactyl nemesis is named Ridley for Ridley Scott) has always been the outlier. A tense, atmospheric space action, borderline horror adventure with an anti-social badass bounty hunter protagonist that opens with a corridor of corpses and ends with a battle against an H.R Giger influenced monstrosity.




I had “retired” from gaming for more than a decade, before coming back to the hobby in the early 2010s when I was a bachelor, living alone, with a 4/12s work schedule on the ambulance that gave me a ton of free time.

One of the first retro titles I tried to track down was Super Metroid, being convinced that having it as a gaming blind spot was the equivalent of a film fan having not seen Casablanca. And I soon discovered it was difficult to track down in retro stores because seemingly people simply didn’t resell it often on the secondary market. If they owned it, they kept it.

I even purchased a cartridge only to discover it had been corrupted, making Samus spawn in a ceiling and immediately cycle through her death animation rendering it unplayable. I returned it in exasperation, and went home empty handed - it being the only Super Metroid cart the store had. See what I mean? Unicorn.

Context is key. By the time I sat down with Super Metroid properly, nearly 2 decades had passed, I rejected it outright as an overhyped fad at release, ignored it completed, and then been constantly thwarted when I finally did decide to give it a try. I could only describe my attitude as “this better be good.”

And was it ever. Samus moves like a dream, with an embarrassment of weapons and techniques in her arsenal, some even secret that you can go through the entire game never even knowing existed. The areas, enemies, and bosses are brilliantly designed and memorable. There’s even a semi-fake mini-boss just to set-up a perfectly executed and earned jump scare a minute later. You thought dogs jumping through windows of a corridor you just ran through was scary? Try Crocomire’s skeleton breaking down a wall to long at you after you watched it boil to death in a pool of lava acid.

What other action game has you explore the opening area, including the first game in the series’ final stage and climatic battle, devoid of enemies in almost complete silence just to build tension?

There’s a reason gamers still shout out “Deer Force” during the end credits. It’s the utmost sign of respect.

Thank you Samus for finally including me on the mission.