Escapist Expo: My Favorite Game

Team Hollywood

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My Favorite Game

Everyone has that one game that they put on a pedestal. The one game that you measure all other games against. The Escapist contributors talk about their favorite games and why they will always compare new titles to the one game that provided the perfect mix of character, story, and skill challenge.

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purifico

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Oct 29, 2009
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I could listen to Yahtzee and Jim talk games all day long.

Also i finally know what Susan looks like!
 

Best of the 3

10001110101
Oct 9, 2010
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Loved this. It was nice hearing these guys talking about what they loved, especially after the panel of love which was talking about what they love in what they hate.

Got to say though, for a game I'm embarrassed to say that I do love, probably the Sims series. I know, I should probably just play out my own life, but I don't know what it is with the Sims. Making them do well, or causing them utter harm or death, something about that I find really addictive and interesting.
 

Andy Shandy

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Jun 7, 2010
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What I thought of when I saw the title.

Anyway, loved this one along with the other two. Could listen to them talking about games all day actually.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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I am with Gav on FF. I don't get it. I tried, but I just don't fuckin' get it. What is supposed to be fun about Final Fantasy games?
 

Mordekaien

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chkdsk1991 said:
Thanks for uploading all this panels, sucks to be 7000 km away.
My sentiments exactly.

Also, on a side note, the panel looks like last supper painting :D
 

Scrustle

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Apr 30, 2011
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Interesting Graham said FF7 was his favourite. I remember him making a joke on Checkpoint at how it didn't deserve its reputation and was actually pretty average and that the only reason it was revered so much is because it was the first time a lot of people had seen a game like that. I guess that's pretty much what he said here too. But still, it's weird to say it's his favourite when before he seemed to be not so hot about it.

I also don't think CoD is hated in the Escapist community. We generally don't like it but we won't hate someone for liking it. Every so often you get people on these forums professing their affinity for the games. They don't get shouted down, in fact it often brings up a discussion that's usually pretty civil.

Jim's summary of FFX was hilarious too. I love that man.
 

Torrasque

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Aug 6, 2010
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purifico said:
I could listen to Yahtzee and Jim talk games all day long.

Also i finally know what Susan looks like!
I would love to listen/talk with Yahtzee and Jim about games all day long, and would be more than willing to provide alcohol :D

captcha: MAKE IT SO
Its a sign!
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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Scrustle said:
Interesting Graham said FF7 was his favourite. I remember him making a joke on Checkpoint at how it didn't deserve its reputation and was actually pretty average and that the only reason it was revered so much is because it was the first time a lot of people had seen a game like that. I guess that's pretty much what he said here too. But still, it's weird to say it's his favourite when before he seemed to be not so hot about it.

Jim's summary of FFX was hilarious too. I love that man.
You're an imaginary man who needs to vanquish a whale that's also his father. How difficult to follow is that? :D

I love Final Fantasy VII for the same reason Graham does, really, because it was the first one I ever played and after growing up on Sonic the Hedgehog and Banjo-Kazooie it was really something new and different. But I also had Jim's reaction to his comment about FFIX because I think that was the highest quality Final Fantasy that's been released. It was just a masterpiece in terms of character development, story and world design, area design, soundtrack, combat, everything about it was superb. But then, I also liked VIII, X, and XII...

I love watching these panels, even with how lengthy they are the time just seems to fly by.

I know it wasn't asked of us, but my favorite game would probably be a tie between Sonic 3 and Final Fantasy IX, my 'shameful secret' would probably be Halo I guess, or Crysis 2, games I wish people would stop trying to get me to play would be... eh, I dunno, I'm not a social butterfly right now. :D

Games that I think should've been more popular - Okami for sure. Sonic Generations as well, a lot of people have written it off just because it's a modern Sonic game, but it's a really good game. And Alice: Madness Returns. It's a little bit repetitive, but I'm loving the creepy aesthetic, character designs, and how the plot is being carried out. It's a lot different from standard run-of-the-mill AAA games, and a platformer to boot.

Most hated game - To pick a pair of games that aren't just flat-out terrible because they're broken, buggy, and generally have ridiculously low production values, Final Fantasy XIII and Pokemon Black/White. And I hate them all the more because I love so many of the previous games in both franchises, which makes me feel bad about despising them so much.
 

Moeez

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May 28, 2009
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Fuck yeah to Yahtzee giving a shout-out to Spec Ops The Line (currently my fave game of the year) and its similarities to Silent Hill 2 as a psycho-drama.
 

Li Mu

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Oct 17, 2011
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Susan actually looks pretty much how I imagined her to. Although in my imagination she had black hair.

How old are these guys? I don't think I'm much older than them...but my first game was Flimbo's Quest on the C64!
 

Graham_LRR

Unskippable, LRR, Feed Dump
Nov 13, 2008
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Scrustle said:
Interesting Graham said FF7 was his favourite. I remember him making a joke on Checkpoint at how it didn't deserve its reputation and was actually pretty average and that the only reason it was revered so much is because it was the first time a lot of people had seen a game like that. I guess that's pretty much what he said here too. But still, it's weird to say it's his favourite when before he seemed to be not so hot about it.
All those things are true.

I still love that game though, I even said it in that CheckPoint episode. It's nostalgia, logic has no place here :)
 

Arif_Sohaib

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Jan 16, 2011
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I am also one of the people who liked Kane & Lynch 1.
It probably helped that it was my first 'next-gen' game but there was also the fact that this game allowed you to play as someone you are supposed to hate and who hate each other. Then there were some of the levels like the bank robbery that bleeds into a chase scene and then a firefight was great. And there was the nightclub level where all the people behaving normally and then something goes wrong and you see them fleeing and the environment changes completely right in front of your eyes. As I mentioned it was my first game from this generation (and also Eidos' first game from this generation as Blood Money was on the PS2 as well) so it was the first time I saw something like that.
And I had high hopes for Kane & Lynch 2 but, there was the terrible camera, the stupid lens effects, the shooting was bad and it was all wrapped in a terrible story.
 

Scrustle

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shrekfan246 said:
All this talk about Final Fantasy recently has got me wondering whether I should have a stab at getting in to JRPGs again. I've never had a particularly good relationship with them, especially FF, but there's something about them that makes me feel like I should like them. I guess I should get around to finishing the few JRPGs I've found I do like before I start looking for more, namely Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Story. I'll probably not bother with the former though. I do enjoy it but it's been so long since I played it I literally have no idea what's going on with the story and I've gotten to a point where I need to do a lot of grinding to past a boss.

I was thinking about what I would say if I was on the panel too. I often feel like I want to chip in with panels and podcasts I hear. Sometimes it can be annoying when they're missing something that's so obvious to me, but I digress.

I can never pick a single favourite for anything, but I guess I would pick something like Okami, the Zelda series, or the Forza series. I can't even narrow down to a single game in each series either! I just finished Darksiders 2 today and I really loved that game, even if the end boss was a kind of disappointing cakewalk. That seems to be a trend with games recently. End bosses are relatively anti-climactic and pretty easy.

As for games I think should have been more popular I also have to mention Okami. I feel like such a scratched record saying that though. It seems pretty much everyone knows about that game now. It's gotten round thanks to word of mouth a lot recently. Hopefully that'll help it to finally get the success it deserves on PSN (Bring it to XBLA! Grrr!) even if the money for it will no longer go to the people who created it. So sad that Clover was shut down. We'll never get a true Okami 2.

If I wanted to pick something a bit less obvious I guess I would go for something like No More Heroes or Muramasa. NMH has captured my attention more than any other Suda51 game by far, and I think the IP is brilliant. It really deserved a lot of attention. I guess part of the reason it didn't do so good was because it's a Grasshopper game (they tend to be obscure) and that it was on the Wii, even if the control method was actually suited to the console. Muramasa probably didn't do great because of its platform either. It might have found more success on XBLA or PSN. The game also has pretty much zero publicity behind it and the production run was minute. I actually had to order it twice because the first place didn't actually get it stocked even though they said they would. That place wasn't a small shop either, it was Amazon! Really glad I got it though. More people should try it out.

My most hated game was Fable 2. No contest. I've talked about how much I hate that game at length many times, and I've already done a lot of talking so I won't cover that ground again. I'll just say it felt like a massive betrayal to me as a lover of the first Fable and I hated pretty much every aspect of that game. I have a very special loathing for it.

I don't really have any games I'm ashamed to like. I have games that I like that I know are technically bad, but I still enjoy their good aspects and I feel no shame in doing so. I know they're not perfect, but they still make me happy. I guess the closest thing I have to a guilty pleasure does actually fall in the same category as games I like even though they suck. SRS: Street Racing Syndicate. The game has a lot of problems but it has a charm to it that I enjoy. One aspect of the game I really don't like though is the "girlfriend" system. You do these special events to impress a girl (who is a real glamour model of some sort) and as you win them you unlock progressively provocative dance videos featuring them. That part of the game can go die in a fire. It's stupid, pandering, condescending and completely pointless. Perhaps the pointless aspect is actually a plus, because it means that you can ignore the whole thing all together and just concentrate on the rest of the game and it won't effect any other aspect of it.

I don't have any games people keep pestering me to play. I guess for a short while my friend tried to get me to try Borderlands, and I did. I was in a really crappy mood at the time so I only gave it like five minutes before giving up. I really wasn't interested. Borderlands has always seemed disinteresting to me for some reason. But seeing all this stuff about Borderlands 2 recently has kind of got me interested in it.

But why do you say Halo and Crysis are shameful? I enjoy Halo, I feel no shame. They're really good games. I've never played Crysis, but I thought that was supposed to be a pretty well respected FPS. Visually stunning and mechanically interesting.