Per, #5 is a red X. Please fix it, because now I can't follow the story!
Ratty counts down his favorite games
- Thread starter Ratty Sr.
- Start date
#5 looks fine to me. Must be your Polish computer, Jeebs
The Vault Dweller
always looking for water.
That was hilarious Per! Besides showing off your experties with the Fallout 2 editor thingy.
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
Jarno Mikkola
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Yes, I am going insane here, and that's a lot to torture me with. But then again, I already know the jist of this treat.Ratty said:
Much has changed in the mean time, my friend.
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
Considering half that list has already been mentioned, it seems there will have to be some changes... assuming we ever actually have the rest of the list 
.
.
I guess it's a good thing this list isn't being continued - considering #13, it'd only be tears and horror anyway.
The list *is* being continued. Just not right away. I know it's hard to believe, but I have hobbies and obligations *outside* of NMA.
There's a LARP convention in the former Yugoslavia?
Still Life. Nuff' said.
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
The ending was vile, though.
TheWesDude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
zac mckracken and the alien mind-benders reference?
where is this on your list eh! eh! quick! grab the pitchforks and torches!
where is this on your list eh! eh! quick! grab the pitchforks and torches!
Ratty said:
C'mon Ratty, tell us how much you liked 'Barbie at the barbers'.
Ratty won't post on NMA anymore, mostly because he's afraid that once he starts he can't stop anymore
This thread was abandoned, tho'
This thread was abandoned, tho'
D
Deleted member 53669
Guest
Holy fucknuts. I was reading this thread thinking it was recent.... got me jizzed up in joining in on the possible flame carnage...
Then I looked at the post dates...
Then I looked at the post dates...
The Vault Dweller
always looking for water.
Brother None said:
Pfft...I regularly browse five forums...two with many members, one with some, and two with only a few. It takes about half my internet time and I spend about one hour online a day.
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
12. Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, Illusion Softworks / Gathering of Developers (2002)
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gamer. To me, being a gamer was better than being the President of the Chess Team. Even before I wandered into GameSpot to download a mod, I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there that I knew I belonged, and to me, it meant being somebody on an Internet that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else, I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-posted in front of a moderator and nobody ever gave them a strike. In the summer, when they played World of Warcraft all night, nobody ever called their parents.
If you're an old-school gamer whose early gaming experiences consisted mostly of 16-color side-scrolling shooters where you controlled a stiff-as-board blotch of color that vaguely resembled a humanoid, Mafia is the kind of game you probably fantasized about while whacking off. It is a free-form action behemoth that combines open-ended driving shoot 'em up gameplay of GTA with a story that puts the best of adventure games to shame, all wrapped in a presentation that leaves you agape and wondering how something so mind-bogglingly awesome can exist. Mafia is the alpha and omega of immersion, a game where state-of-the-art 3D graphics, marvelous art, talented voice acting, perfect soundtrack and, above all, obscenely massive and realistic game-world, come together to form what is without doubt one of the most immersive experiences in the history of gaming. And it's damn fun, too.
The story of the game is <strike>a blatant rip-off</strike> cleary inspired by Martin Scorsese's excellent (and highly quotable, as my intro plainly illustrates) gangster movie Goodfellas. Most of the prominent characters are directly based on those from Goodfellas, and though neither the protagonist Tommy Angelo nor his fellow mafiosos Paulie and Sam possess the charisma of Scorsese's Henry Hill, Tommy DeVito and Jimmy Conway, they are nonetheless sufficiently developed to carry the story. The characters are also portrayed as far more sympathetic (and family friendly) than their Goodfellas counterparts. Unlike Scorsese's Henry Hill, who, in his own words, "always wanted to be a gangster", Tommy is initially an honest taxi driver who barely scrapes by in the bleak economic climate during the Great Depression, but by a stroke of bad luck ends up in the employ of a local mafia boss named Don Salieri. The game chronicles Tommy's rise through the ranks of Salieri's organization, depicting various missions he is required to perform for the Family and the moral qualms he experiences as he is forced to kill not only the Family's enemies, but also numerous innocent bystanders and even his own friends who for various reasons got on Don Salieri's bad side. When Tommy himself is marked for death by the Family, it is not just for an unsanctioned bank robbery he participated in, but also the numerous prior lapses that occured when Tommy let his compassion get the better of him. And when Tommy goes to the police and enters the witness protection program in an effort to save the lives of his wife and daughter, as well as his own, he does so without regret, unlike Henry, who laments having to "live the rest of [his] life like a schnook".
But while Mafia is unquestionably strong storywise, it is in the fields of gameplay and presentation that the game truly stands head and shoulders above others. Illusion Softworks managed to craft a sprawling, realistic and gorgeous-looking gameworld consisting of the massive city and the surrounding countryside. Though newer GTA games have matched or even trumped Mafia in terms of world size and interaction possibilities, Mafia still stands unique because of the more realistic and immersive experience it delivers. For example, in Mafia you can get fined or arrested even for "trivial" offenses such as speeding, running red lights or brandishing a weapon in public. Vehicles handle far more realistically than in GTA and an unaccustomed player might get frustrated by how slowly they scale slopes, how tough they handle at high speeds (and by "high speeds" I mean "anything above 60 mph", which seems somewhat laughable compared to performance normally achieved by GTA's wheeled jet-fighters) and how easy it is to die if you happen to crash them. I'm pretty sure there exist support groups for people who suffered nervous breakdowns while fruitlessly attempting to beat the racing circuit mission (I once tried writing gameplay tips for the benefit of these people, but most of it boiled down to "Stop sucking so badly, dweebs", so I decided against it). But us Mafia aficionados know that Mafia's charm lies precisely in these so-called "annoyances", and there has yet to be a driving action game that offers a comparable experience. GTA is fine and dandy, especially if you're the sort of person who doesn't experience violent convulsions when in proximity of a video game console, but if you're like me, you just can't get that kind of gratification from a game where cars can make perfect 90-degree turns without slowing down from 100 mph.
I could go on and on about how wicked awesome Mafia is, but I don't see how even highly impressive efforts of an esteemed gaming connoisseur such as myself could do this game justice. Mafia is probably the first game on this list that I have yet to find a single significant flaw in. Simply put, this is the kind of game that makes gaming worthwhile, as well as one of the most conspicuous proofs of undisputable superiority of PC as a gaming platform.
To become a member of a crew you've got to be one hundred per cent PC gamer so they can trace all your relatives back to the DOS era. See, it's the highest honor they can give you. It means you belong to a forum and clan. It means that nobody can fuck around with you. It also means you could fuck around with anybody just as long as they aren't also a member. It's like a license to gank. It's a license to do anything.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gamer. To me, being a gamer was better than being the President of the Chess Team. Even before I wandered into GameSpot to download a mod, I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there that I knew I belonged, and to me, it meant being somebody on an Internet that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else, I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-posted in front of a moderator and nobody ever gave them a strike. In the summer, when they played World of Warcraft all night, nobody ever called their parents.
If you're an old-school gamer whose early gaming experiences consisted mostly of 16-color side-scrolling shooters where you controlled a stiff-as-board blotch of color that vaguely resembled a humanoid, Mafia is the kind of game you probably fantasized about while whacking off. It is a free-form action behemoth that combines open-ended driving shoot 'em up gameplay of GTA with a story that puts the best of adventure games to shame, all wrapped in a presentation that leaves you agape and wondering how something so mind-bogglingly awesome can exist. Mafia is the alpha and omega of immersion, a game where state-of-the-art 3D graphics, marvelous art, talented voice acting, perfect soundtrack and, above all, obscenely massive and realistic game-world, come together to form what is without doubt one of the most immersive experiences in the history of gaming. And it's damn fun, too.
The story of the game is <strike>a blatant rip-off</strike> cleary inspired by Martin Scorsese's excellent (and highly quotable, as my intro plainly illustrates) gangster movie Goodfellas. Most of the prominent characters are directly based on those from Goodfellas, and though neither the protagonist Tommy Angelo nor his fellow mafiosos Paulie and Sam possess the charisma of Scorsese's Henry Hill, Tommy DeVito and Jimmy Conway, they are nonetheless sufficiently developed to carry the story. The characters are also portrayed as far more sympathetic (and family friendly) than their Goodfellas counterparts. Unlike Scorsese's Henry Hill, who, in his own words, "always wanted to be a gangster", Tommy is initially an honest taxi driver who barely scrapes by in the bleak economic climate during the Great Depression, but by a stroke of bad luck ends up in the employ of a local mafia boss named Don Salieri. The game chronicles Tommy's rise through the ranks of Salieri's organization, depicting various missions he is required to perform for the Family and the moral qualms he experiences as he is forced to kill not only the Family's enemies, but also numerous innocent bystanders and even his own friends who for various reasons got on Don Salieri's bad side. When Tommy himself is marked for death by the Family, it is not just for an unsanctioned bank robbery he participated in, but also the numerous prior lapses that occured when Tommy let his compassion get the better of him. And when Tommy goes to the police and enters the witness protection program in an effort to save the lives of his wife and daughter, as well as his own, he does so without regret, unlike Henry, who laments having to "live the rest of [his] life like a schnook".
But while Mafia is unquestionably strong storywise, it is in the fields of gameplay and presentation that the game truly stands head and shoulders above others. Illusion Softworks managed to craft a sprawling, realistic and gorgeous-looking gameworld consisting of the massive city and the surrounding countryside. Though newer GTA games have matched or even trumped Mafia in terms of world size and interaction possibilities, Mafia still stands unique because of the more realistic and immersive experience it delivers. For example, in Mafia you can get fined or arrested even for "trivial" offenses such as speeding, running red lights or brandishing a weapon in public. Vehicles handle far more realistically than in GTA and an unaccustomed player might get frustrated by how slowly they scale slopes, how tough they handle at high speeds (and by "high speeds" I mean "anything above 60 mph", which seems somewhat laughable compared to performance normally achieved by GTA's wheeled jet-fighters) and how easy it is to die if you happen to crash them. I'm pretty sure there exist support groups for people who suffered nervous breakdowns while fruitlessly attempting to beat the racing circuit mission (I once tried writing gameplay tips for the benefit of these people, but most of it boiled down to "Stop sucking so badly, dweebs", so I decided against it). But us Mafia aficionados know that Mafia's charm lies precisely in these so-called "annoyances", and there has yet to be a driving action game that offers a comparable experience. GTA is fine and dandy, especially if you're the sort of person who doesn't experience violent convulsions when in proximity of a video game console, but if you're like me, you just can't get that kind of gratification from a game where cars can make perfect 90-degree turns without slowing down from 100 mph.
I could go on and on about how wicked awesome Mafia is, but I don't see how even highly impressive efforts of an esteemed gaming connoisseur such as myself could do this game justice. Mafia is probably the first game on this list that I have yet to find a single significant flaw in. Simply put, this is the kind of game that makes gaming worthwhile, as well as one of the most conspicuous proofs of undisputable superiority of PC as a gaming platform.
To become a member of a crew you've got to be one hundred per cent PC gamer so they can trace all your relatives back to the DOS era. See, it's the highest honor they can give you. It means you belong to a forum and clan. It means that nobody can fuck around with you. It also means you could fuck around with anybody just as long as they aren't also a member. It's like a license to gank. It's a license to do anything.