The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

[whitechocolate]

You’re certainly the king of the obscure …

Except, no. You only have 3 titles (Fight’N Rage, Battle Garegga Rev.2016, and Gungrave G.O.R.E.) of which I had absolutely zero knowledge, probably because they appear to be more modern, niche, genre specific titles with seemingly intentionally obfuscated names.

But EarthBound, while initially a resounding failure-turned-cult-classic is now one of the most celebrated titles of the medium.

Then you have Diablo, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Star Fox, VirtuaFighter, THE proto-Souls-like, a Contra in everything but name, The Legend of Freaking Zelda?! I’d say you’re losing your hipster street-cred.

Even your other indies: Furi, Hotline Miami, and Kenshi are super exciting for the gaming community as a whole and not just hardcore fans of specific genres.

I understand why IF’s data still has you on the far end of the obscure scale, but in my mind this is the most mainstream you’ve ever been.

EarthBound is no Trout Mask Replica.

Agreed. But give me some credit for playing EarthBound and Demon's Souls when they were first released.

 

[whitechocolate]

Similarly, metacritic rating is questionable in the best of times, and is more and more unreliable as you go into games in the 90s and 80s.

Metacritic ratings do not correlate with quality. They correlate with production costs, and the presence of trending game elements. Regarding graphcis, critics value fidelity over artistry. Rather than learn to play games that don't play like a typical modern AAA title, they criticize the controls instead of finding value in a different experience. Then they have to audacity to treat past eras' art and gameplay as obsolete. They are often utterly inept, making them unable to even perceive good gameplay. They need games that hold their hand, and complain when they don't.

At the end of the day, they don't actually appreciate what videogames have to offer. Their reviews lack substance. They conform to each other's opinions. They knock games for not having trendy design elements like Hollywood style acting, crafting, stat upgrades, exploration, no matter how unecessary they would be to the game's intention. Not to mention they constantly read off talking points given to them by developers. It's a total farce. There's a reason basically every small studio game, whether just okay or a masterpiece scores in the mid to upper 70s. Critics are closed minded, undiscerning, unskilled, lack knowledge, and are unqualified for their positions.

 

[Löwenherz]

Agreed. But give me some credit for playing EarthBound and Demon's Souls when they were first released.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Metacritic ratings do not correlate with quality. They correlate with production costs, and the presence of trending game elements. Regarding graphcis, critics value fidelity over artistry. Rather than learn to play games that don't play like a typical modern AAA title, they criticize the controls instead of finding value in a different experience. Then they have to audacity to treat past eras' art and gameplay as obsolete. They are often utterly inept, making them unable to even perceive good gameplay. They need games that hold their hand, and complain when they don't.

At the end of the day, they don't actually appreciate what videogames have to offer. Their reviews lack substance. They conform to each other's opinions. They knock games for not having trendy design elements like Hollywood style acting, crafting, stat upgrades, exploration, no matter how unecessary they would be to the game's intention. Not to mention they constantly read off talking points given to them by developers. It's a total farce. There's a reason basically every small studio game, whether just okay or a masterpiece scores in the mid to upper 70s. Critics are closed minded, undiscerning, unskilled, lack knowledge, and are unqualified for their positions.

I think it's folly to try and review games on a single numerical scale, and I agree metacritic is subject to manipulation. It feels more reasonable to accept that reviews are inevitably subjective.

I'm not so harsh on the critics themselves, I don't think anyone needs special credentials to have an opinion on entertainment. Ultimately critics serve the audiences that can support them. Someone deciding to aggregate your review into a score somehow shouldn't mean you have special responsibilities. I don't care for the pressure on critics to not give negative reviews to iterations on popular franchises, (like the Washington Post reviewer that gave Uncharted 4 a negative review). If you're a critic and you don't like a game for whatever reason, you should be able to just say it.

Indication of production costs, (and production quality) has some value to me. One of my favorite games (X4: Foundations) has a low-ish metacritic rating. It is a game that had a super janky release; and I'm fine with that, because I know that every game the developer releases has a janky release, which they gradually patch into something that's great. Not everybody is into that style of game, and it's good to have a bit of warning.

I mostly look at outlier reviews on the rare occasions I check it out. Maybe if metacritic did box-plots instead of a a score...

 

[whitechocolate]

I'm not so harsh on the critics themselves, I don't think anyone needs special credentials to have an opinion on entertainment. Ultimately critics serve the audiences that can support them. Someone deciding to aggregate your review into a score somehow shouldn't mean you have special responsibilities. I don't care the pressure on critics to not give negative reviews to iterations on popular franchises, (like the Washington Post reviewer that gave Uncharted 4 a negative review). If you're a critic and you don't like a game, you should be able to just say it.

Professional critics should have special qualifications. Otherwise their reviews have little merit and are based on poor foundations; and aggregate scores have no meaning. Maybe that's fine if you understand why things are the way they are and can make judgements based on that knowledge, but what these unqualified critics desire shapes the industry. They shape the conversation. They shape games. Away from creativity, away from originality, away from challenge, away from art, away from integrity.

I know what you mean by outlier reviews. Critics complaining about controls and difficulty is practically guaranteed for any good action game. So if those games have players who actually know the genre and took the time to understand the gameplay give it a thumbs up, it's a good sign.

 

[hrdboild]

Most of (50%) of the picks should be contained inside the box, looks like most of your picks were in the single digit millions, which is pretty successful, (but not mega successful like Pokemon GO, selling (downloading) 1 billion copies, which is why I needed to use a log scale).

Sales data is particularly squirrely, though. I'm using it as an imperfect indicator of popularity and familiarity. But sales don't mean much for arcade games.

Similarly, metacritic rating is questionable in the best of times, and is more and more unreliable as you go into games in the 90s and 80s.

Should downloads count on the same scale as sales though when Pokemon GO is a free download and generates revenue through microtransactions while some AAA games now cost as much as $80 if you buy them on day of release? It probably should just be put into a whole separate category. Though if there are that many people downloading it and a chunk of them still play it regularly, presumably overall revenue must still be really high. I really have no idea though. If I play mobile games at all I refuse to pay for anything in them so I have no concept of how much other people are spending (or why).

 

[hrdboild]

...

1: Hrdboild

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

- Lots of good choices here, and I’m tempted to take one of the two with which I’ve already toiled away many adolescent hours in Rollercoaster Tycoon and TIE Fighter (although technically, I more watched my friend fight rebel scum for the glory of the empire as I shouted encouragement like an overzealous side-seat flyer), or even take a spin with a super cool title I have less or even no experience: Deus Ex, Fallout, Interstate ‘76. But taking the one I actually own, stopped playing after an hour because I got distracted by something so important I can’t remember what it was, and just never came back to game, but by all accounts is otherworldly awesome.

PS; I HAVE clawed and scratched my way through both discs of Xenogears and there is no amount of desert island bananas you could offer me to do that again.

...

For Black Flag, you should at least play up to Sequence 6 : The Siege of Charles-Towne. That will take you on a pretty good tour of everything this game has to offer -- an assassination mission at the Spanish fort in Havana, stalking Red Coats through a sugarcane plantation, an introduction to naval combat, and then finish off with the best mission in the game (imo). After that it starts to get tedious.

I suppose if I'd actually tried to finish Xenogears when I first played it and made it to Disc 2 I would have had a very different impression of that game than the one I have now. Part of what I like about it though is that Tetsuya Takahashi worked as a graphic designer on both Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger (peak Squaresoft!) then pitched this game as the concept for Final Fantasy VII but was instead allowed to develop it as a separate game, burned through his budget and couldn't finish it, then left to found his own studio and keeps releasing revised versions of this same game over and over again, getting a little bit better at it every time. The history behind the development is just a great story on its own.

 

[hrdboild]

@Padrino scooped the most picks from me, I didn't think the board would let one list take Disco Elysium, and Witcher 3, and Skyrim and Mass Effect. But that's where we are I guess

But I think Breath of the Wild is the best game I missed

@Padrino was the San Antonio Spurs of this draft -- just found money all over the place. I haven't played any of these though (well, I have played Disco Elysium but only for about an hour) so I'm excusing myself from responsibility if he wins the overall vote.