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.

 

[whitechocolate]

One genre, one game per developer list:

Battle Garegga - Raizing
Dangun Feveron - Cave
GG Aleste 3 - M2
Flying Shark - Toaplan
Psyvariar Delta - Success
Gundemonium Recollection - Platine Dispositif
Game Tengoku - Jaleco
Ginga Force - Qute
Detana!! TwinBee - Konami
RayForce - Taito
Fighter & Attacker - Namco
GunNail - NMK
Trouble Witches Final! - Studio SiestA
Image Fight - Irem
Strikers 1945 II - Psikyo

This strategy would surely at least get me into a play in.

 

[Warhawk]

With the 57th pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Special Edition) [2016]

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Game Director: Todd Howard
Musical Score: Jeremy Soule
Genre(s): Action RPG; Open World RPG
Platform: PC

My draft is starting to feature a certain kind of game. This wasn't really by design. I didn't have much confidence that Elden Ring would be on the board for my first round pick, yet there it was. And I didn't imagine that The Witcher 3 would last as long as it did, either. So here I am doing something that's very out of the ordinary for me in a Desert Island Draft; despite things getting a bit weird in here, I'm scooping up another "value pick", though I'm doing so because it represents a formative adult gaming experience for me.

After returning to video games with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I had a burning desire to find other exploration-heavy games like it. A good friend of mine is an avid gamer, so I asked him for his recommendations of where to go next. He sent me a long list that had my fourth and fifth picks in this draft at the top. We discussed the merits of gaming PCs, of which I had exactly zero familiarity, and I went out to purchase a modest gaming laptop. Then I began my journey into PC gaming with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

While I enjoy a great many narrative games that feature much more linear level design, I find that the gaming experiences I'm most drawn to are built into worlds that allow me to make my own fun, to move at my own pace, to chart my own course through them. And I'm a bit surprised that we've made it to the fifth round of our draft and not a single Bethesda game had been selected, since I'm certainly not the only one for whom this kind of game design speaks loudly. It's one of player freedom, to point in a direction and travel, and to create your own story of what those travels ultimately signify to your character.

There is much to critique about Bethesda's approach to game design, of course. Studio head Todd Howard has earned a considerable amount of scorn over the years for his tendency to over-hype Bethesda's products, which are often very buggy upon release, as well as thin on systemic depth, narrative heft, and character development. And yet... there is nothing in the gaming marketplace that quite resembles the experience of playing a Bethesda game. Other studios create more reactive worlds, or develop more engaging gameplay systems, or craft better characters and stories, but in a Bethesda world, you truly feel like you get to shape the character you inhabit. It feels like proper role play, and not in the crunchy sense of tracking stat distribution and optimization for archetypal character builds, but in the creative manner of being whoever your imagination wants you to be.

This appeals to me. I am not someone for whom a defined character is required in order to engage with a game world. I loved inhabiting Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3, but there's an inflexibility to "role playing" such a character. You can tune your approach to make Geralt more cynical or more open-hearted, but at his core, Geralt is Geralt. Whereas, in Skyrim, I can create a mage who has traveled to Skyrim from distant lands to discover its secrets. Or a warrior who is native-born and wants to reclaim Skyrim's glory for the Nords. Or a hunter who roams the wilds and wishes to commune with the Daedric Lord Hircine. All of that "flavor text" lives inside my head. It's represented nowhere on the screen. But the world invites me to craft a character whose motivations are their own.

Some players are repelled by this kind of game design, because they need the screen to contain everything necessary for the gameplay experience to justify the purchase. But I adore when a game invites me to fill in the natural gaps left by the developers with whatever I hope to conjure in my imagination. It makes me feel like a kid again, and the world of The Elder Scrolls is so strange and the world-building is so dense that it's phenomenally easy to imagine any number of stories for your time in each of the realms represented in each game of the series. I would not say that I'm any kind of expert on the lore of The Elder Scrolls, though I have gone back to play the two entries that immediately preceded this one. And while Skyrim may not be the most unique of Bethesda's game worlds, it was certainly the most timely.

Skyrim arrived at the perfect moment for PC gaming. It's original "vanilla" release was actually in 2011, just as PC gaming was becoming more popular. Its flexible and accessible approach to game design was also a keenly-struck balance that spoke to gamers, and those design principles are still speaking to gamers today via Skyrim's robust mod scene. The vast majority of Bethesda's games feature modding tools that allow the player community to make and share modifications to the games themselves, and Skyrim is without question Bethesda's most richly-modded game. The extraordinary variety of available mods allows the player to tune the experience even further to what their imagination can conjure. You can modify the game's aesthetic presentation, its weather systems, its gameplay systems, and you can even mod entirely new buildings, regions, land masses, quest lines, and characters into the game. Are you, for example, put off by the cardboard cutout quality of Skyrim's stock followers? Inigo, the Khajiit mercenary trying to kick his skooma addiction, is waiting for you in a Riften jail cell.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is not my absolute favorite video game. That distinction goes either to Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring, depending on the day and depending on my mood. But Skyrim is undoubtedly the game in which I've logged the most time. My Steam play time tracker counts an embarrassingly high 817 hours logged. And that's on the low-end for those who love Skyrim as I do. It's a game that draws the player back into the land of the Nords time and again. It's a game that invites you to completely ignore much of its content so that you can play it as you wish. Many will tell you that they've never completed the game's main questline. I am not among those players, but I do love modding the game to allow me to engage with the main questline at my own pace. Such is the flexibility of Skyrim, a nearly 14-year-old game that will continue to morph and shift as its player base finds new ways to shape it to their liking. It's special in this way. Communal. And an all-timer.

This is available in Steam for $9.99 right now. Or, you can pick up the Anniversary Upgrade along with the Special Edition for $16.49 total. Is the extra content in the Anniversary Upgrade good stuff or just fluff? Anyone know?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition on Steam

Winner of more than 200 Game of the Year Awards, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition brings the epic fantasy to life in stunning detail. The Special Edition includes the critically acclaimed game and add-ons with all-new features.

store.steampowered.com

Going to pick up a copy for play later....

 

[Padrino]

This is available in Steam for $9.99 right now. Or, you can pick up the Anniversary Upgrade along with the Special Edition for $16.49 total. Is the extra content in the Anniversary Upgrade good stuff or just fluff? Anyone know?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition on Steam

Winner of more than 200 Game of the Year Awards, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition brings the epic fantasy to life in stunning detail. The Special Edition includes the critically acclaimed game and add-ons with all-new features.

store.steampowered.com

Going to pick up a copy for play later....

The Anniversary Upgrade isn't really worth it on its own. Very little that it adds is essential or well-integrated into the world. That said, if you have any intention of modding Skyrim, even a little bit, it's probably a good idea to get the Anniversary Upgrade. If you don't think you want to mess about with mods at all, you can probably forego the upgrade without worrying that you're missing much (or just punt for now and purchase the upgrade later). Mods, though, are dependent upon your game version, and most popular mods conform to the most recent game version of the game. Some mods will offer multiple forks for different game versions, but in 2025, it just tends to be easier to mod the Anniversary edition of Skyrim.