<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nCivilization is one of those games that seemed to spring fully-formed from the mind of its creators. It took us several years of iteration to figure out adventure games, or shooters. But the essentials of Civilization were there from the earliest stages: Cities,taxes, tech tree, accelerating timescale, diplomacy. Since then it’s been a matter of balance and refinement. <\/p>\n
Any of the Civ games would be worthy of this list, and I debated whether Alpha Centauri should be counted as a Civilization game. Clearly it’s of the same lineage, and the only reason the name is different is because of business reasons. And when you’re compiling a list of “top games”, the last thing you care about is the politics of idiotic IP wars between ninny publishers. From a purely gameplay standpoint, Alpha Centauri fits in the series better than Civilization V, which greatly altered the combat by moving to hex grids and removing unit stacks. <\/p>\n
But ultimately I think I want to give the top honors to Civ IV. It’s a stellar entry in the series (although they’re all pretty good) and it has Baba Yetu<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n15. Sim City 4<\/h3>\n
 <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nIn contrast to Civilization, Sim City is a series that seems to have struggled to nail down which elements worked and which didn’t. Is this supposed to be a simulation of something realistic? Or is this really just about creative building? Or is the player here to build a city that can survive random disasters? Is the player looking for options, or challenges? <\/p>\n The first game was pretty shallow and doesn’t hold up well at all today. The next three gamesSim City 2000, Sim City 3000, and Sim City 4, because sequential numbering is for people who can count.<\/span> were all fine entries, but I’m giving the place of honor to Sim City 4 because it’s the last one that was good. <\/p>\n This game isn’t nearly as smart as it pretends to be, but it’s pretty smart for a shooter. It’s not nearly as deep, complex, or open as its “Shock” forebears, but it’s practically an RPG sandbox compared to its contemporaries. Everything after the meeting with Ryan is pretty much a dumb waste of time, and the final boss fight is stupid and infantile in both a mechanical and narrative sense – but the Ryan meeting is still one of the best in modern gaming. And its atrocious DRM<\/a> was the first of a bad breed of obnoxious customer abuse, a trend that lingers to this day. <\/p>\n And now that I’ve said all that, I have no idea what this thing is doing so high on the list. Ultimately I guess I have to give BioShock credit for keeping the flame of “smart(ish) exploration-driven shooters” alive. Also it was very pretty and the water effects still look glorious seven years later.<\/p>\n Batman has been in a lot of videogames, and most of them are not goodProbably due to the fact that most of them were terrible movie tie-ins.<\/span>. In fact, superhero games in general have always struggled to reconcile the need for challenging gameplay with the inherent empowerment of the superhero genre. But the Arkam Batman games did for superhero games what the Marvel Movieverse did for superhero films. They didn’t just top everything that came before, they did so by a long shot and made it look easy.<\/p>\n Sure, you could button-mash your way to victory like a thug, but the game made you feel like an ass for taking the lazy way through. It was exhilarating to get the rhythm of the game down and dispatch a whole crowd of mooks without taking a single hit. The animations were both fluid and brutal. Add in exquisite art, the best voice acting in the business, some serviceable puzzles, and a solid grasp of their source material, and you have a formula that no other team has been able to match, not even when they were handed the blueprints<\/a>.<\/p>\n |
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