Features & News

Don’t be Listless: My List of Lists

December 31, 2012, Author: Matt Parker

Wowza. It’s the end of the year and every gaming website has gone and made a list of things that are important. I blame Santa. He started this whole ‘making a list’ craze.

The thing is, with all of these lists, how are we to know which ones to pay attention to? Fear not, my overwhelmed brethren, I have created a list of lists. You ready for this to get real meta, real fast? Here we go.

These lists are in no particular order as they’re all really important. Well, some are more important than others. It’s up to you to decide.

They do, I feel, summarise the year we’ve had, the issues we’ve dealt with (still are dealing with, in most cases) and maybe point towards the year we’re going to have.

Giant Bomb’s List of Top Ten Games (and then some)

Giant Bomb is known for its ‘Quick Looks’ that last over an hour and a weekly podcast that can be over 2 hours long. They provide content and a lot of it.

Their end of year round-ups are no exception to this. Every team member creates their own top 10, then they produce a top ten for the site as a whole. There’s awards for all sorts of categories and to top it all, every single deliberation is recorded and then released as a podcast. 5 of them. They’re all over an hour long, so get comfy.

If you need any other ‘Game of they Year’ content, you’re mad and the rest of the year must be very empty for you…

Best Wii Games

I’m no Nintendo fanboy. In fact, I’m not a ‘fanboy’ of anything. I just like good games.

So it’s sad to see that the Wii fell off the face of the Earth in the last few years of its life, with people often claiming that it ‘had no real games’ and that it ‘was for kids’. To top it off, the WiiU is out now, so the Wii is now officially no longer a real concern for Nintendo. The Wii is dead, long live the Wii(U).

I want you to look at these lists, dust off your Wii and re-sync your controllers. If you don’t, you’ll be missing out on some great games and doing a disservice to a console that introduced a whole new group of people to gaming. The games on these lists go someway to explaining why I feel the console was harshly and falsely judged to be a console for people that don’t play games.

Go on. Play with your Wii. Don’t worry, your Xbox Live ‘Friends’ will never know…

IndieStatik’s Top Ten Indie Games

Indie games are here to stay. They’re no longer ‘little oddities’ but instead they now offer some of the most unique gaming experiences out there. The thing is, there’s a whole lot of them and a whole lot of them vary in quality. Who has time to play through all of these games? Luckily, Josh from Indie Statik has done just that.

He’s even gone and made his list into a video. So even the laziest people out there can be made aware of the best that indie had to offer this year.

tl;dr – Indie games are good. Here’s a video of the best from this year.

Best Mobile Games

Another area of gaming that’s here to stay and is growing in quality is mobile gaming.

So, keep your negative comments to yourself. We all know that Angry Birds isn’t better than Skyrim. It’s not meant to be. Stop telling me ‘they’re not real games’ because the 20 hours I sunk into Football Manager Handheld tell me otherwise.

Have a look at some of these lists;

Not too shabby. Now if only people would stop ringing me and texting me I’d be alright. It’s like they should make a mobile, that plays games and doesn’t have the phone bit attached. Imagine that.

Free-to-play Games

This isn’t a fad. It’s not going away any time soon. You’d better learn to love free-to-play games. Or at least tolerate them.

In their defence, the makers of free-to-play games are getting their heads around how to best implement the pricing model and are now starting to produce some truly worthwhile results.

Are these games perfect? No, of course not. But they’re better than some games that expect you to pay full RRP. So don’t be so dismissive. Go on, give ’em a go. They’re free!

Game Making Tools

What the what? What have these lists got to do with anything?

Well, let me explain. You see, gaming is opening up. More people are making games and making games is becoming easier. It’s becoming more ‘normal’. If someone says to you that they like to write, you wouldn’t really bat an eyelid. If they said they liked to make films or music, you probably wouldn’t think them strange. Making games is getting to that point also.

There are huge communities out there dedicated to making games and dedicated to making the making of games more accessible. So that’s why these lists of game making doodads is here. Maybe next year you finally make a game. Maybe you don’t. The fact is, it’s never been easier.

PLEASE NOTE: I never once said making games was ‘easy’. Seriously, go re-read it. I know it’s hard. I KNOW. It’s just that it’s easier now. Not easy. Easier. So don’t bother making any snarky comments. At least not about this part of the list, anyway…

Best Comments on Anita Sarkesian’s YouTube video

Women are playing videogames. It’s a fact. More and more of them are joining in with the communities, commenting on, writing about and developing games. Yet, some male gamers don’t recognise this and certainly some male developers, publishers and advertisers don’t recognise this.

In a year where the whole ‘Tomb Raider’ thing, the whole ‘Hitman’ thing and the whole ‘Street Fighter guy’ thing happened, you’d figure that most gamers (male and female) would be happy for someone to want to tackle the subject of women and video games. Especially someone as eloquent as Anita Sarkesian who has a track record of producing quality videos. Here’s a lis of the topics she’s going to cover;

Whilst a little ignorance can be forgiven and then fixed through education, the sheer amount of bile spewn in the comments section of Anita’s YouTube video is downright gross. I was going to create a list for you, to highlight the best/worst and to make it truly clear how much her videos are needed. I was…

After some reading of the utter rubbish being posted, I figured the list would be too stupid to be funny, too offensive to be entertaining and too depressing to actually bother posting. Instead, click on the video and have a look if you really want to go into black hole that is a YouTube comments section.

On a positive note. Anita’s Kickstarter got funded. In your face, haters!

Companies We’ve Lost This Year

Some of the biggest issues facing the games industry today are the transition to a new generation, the introduction of the ‘free-to-play’ pricing model, the rise of mobile gaming, the…

Crikey, I could go on forever. A lot of issues, a lot of changes and a lot of mismanagement. As a result, a whole lot of casualties. This year, more than any other, we’ve seen long established companies disappear.

It’s not a passing phase though, with THQ and their long running troubles, they’d do well to make it through the next year. EA have had an up and down relationship with their stock prices the past 12 months. Sony are desperate to get back into profit making shape.

Don’t be surprised if another list like this pops up this time next year.

Next Year’s Most Anticipated Games

Wow. That got dark and depressing pretty quick. Shake it off people, there’s still plenty to be looking forward to. Remember this simple fact, because it’s easy to forget;

“Games are fun and they’re great and I like games and hooray.”

With that in mind, check out these lists where are hopes and dreams for the future are flamed. Flamed as in ‘encouraged’ and ‘excited’, not flamed as in ‘being an idiot on a forum’.

Chin-up people, there’s a lot to look forward to. Like DmC, which is a contender for next year’s GOTY. You heard it here first!

Next-Gen Rumors

Next year. Next-gen. It’s got to happen, right? It’s just go to!

This current generation of consoles is getting on for 8 years old. That’s ancient in technology years and PC ports, even half-baked PC ports, are starting to totally embarrass the console playing masses.

So, rumors aplenty, these lists go over what whispers have been heard by those in ‘the know’. Not all of the rumors are positive, mind. I mean, who came up with that ‘no more second hand games’ nonsense.

Grasping at straws? No concrete information? Desperate for some real news? Yes to all, but for now, rumors and conjecture are all we have to go on. Maybe I’m easy to please, but it’s all making me excited and I’m very much looking forward to next year and the first pieces of solid information we receive.

With that, the list of lists is over. Now hold on a second whilst I check it twice. I hear it’s the thing to do…