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zameer

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Evergreen games

There are just some games that are immortal in my eyes. My criteria are two pronged: whether it's a great game, and whether the 2011 gamer can stomach its dated visuals. This sadly precludes a few early 3D classics like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Ocarina of Time, etc. The chief assumption is that most people will agree with me that 8 and 16 bit graphics are easier on the eyes than the first generation of polygonal games.
 
It's a very personal list so there is an obvious bias, and this is by no means an authoritative list. 
 
Still a work in progress, will add more to the list when more spring to mind.

List items

  • Starcraft manages to be an accessible yet deep and rewarding RTS game for anyone. I've enjoyed it from both ends of the spectrum; as a dweeby 11 year old abusing "power overwhelming", and as a college student forgoing books for memorizing builds, watching the OSL/MSL, and cursing in romanised Korean on strange foreign ladders. There's a good reason why this 640 x 480 game is the father of eSports and a legitimate spectator sport; it's peerless.

  • I remember failing hard at this (to be fair I was four when it came out), but I spent hours watching my older brother play this. It ain't my earliest gaming memory (watching him suffer in Prince of Persia takes that honour), but this is the one that sparked my interest in video games. Oh, and Kuribo's-fucking-Shoe.

  • Played this masterpiece pretty late, and it took me quite a while to appreciate the freedom it afforded players by letting them dictate the boss order. I also probably developed a strange masochistic complex after playing this for hours.

  • It's a stellar game for reasons known to almost anyone reading this, but letting you play the chief series antagonist's son was mind-blowing at the time. MGS2 did that whole protagonist bait-and-switch to greater effect, but my head spun when I realized I barely used a Belmont in a Castlevania game. And releasing a sprite game when polygons were starting to really take off? Ballsy.

  • It's crazy that the Neo Geo was supported until 2004, and that die-hards never whined about the dated visuals during the latter half of those 14 years. There's still a thriving competitive community for this game; logging onto GGPO will tell you that much.

  • I was confused growing up because kids in school were raving about Final Fantasy VII and never mentioned this. I love the idea of D&D rules and the mythos surrounding it, but never had the patience for tabletops; so this was mind-blowing. I also think it's one of the few games to handle romances semi-maturely. The soundtrack's very evocative too, definitely some of Inon Zur's best work.

  • I loved Shogun but it never satisfied my desire to be a world beater... this easily did. I remember feeling I had accomplished everything during my first Grand Campaign... until the Roman Senate declared war on me, lasting several in-game decades. A 4X game with a PLOT TWIST? Just unreal. I still fire this up every year, without fail.

  • Greatest Civ game. There is also nothing funnier than nuking someone as a Jewish Sitting Bull, while Spock's disembodied voice calmly proffers advice to me.
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