Tag: Gaming

Top 100 Games

Jeroen

I enjoy making “Top X” lists, and tempted by a friendly tweet some time ago I decided to make a “Top 100” list of games.

I’ve ordered these games from “Enjoyed the Most to ‘Least'”. How enjoyable a game was to me can depend on a variety of factors, most notably:

  • how much time I spend enjoying the game
  • how much it allowed me to enjoy it together with friends
  • how much the game “stood out” in story or gameplay

I’ve tried as best as I could to compensate for the recency effect and the fact that games from the 90’s are hard to compare to today’s triple-A titles. This is in fact so hard, that you might get a slightly different ordering depending on when you’d ask me. For that reason, everything below the first 20 or so games is in “unordered” buckets.

Let’s get to it!

Top 5! Best of the Best

1. [PC] Commander Keen

All episodes, but my preference would be in this order: 3, 2, 6, 1, 5, 4. (Keen Dreams sucked big time!)

Commander Keen 3

2. [PC] Warcraft 2

So. Many. Hours. Against the CPU. Against my dad. Against my friends. Plain fantastic game!

Warcraft 2

3. [N64] Golden Eye 64

Four-player-split-screen-james-bond-themed-3d-shooter. What more is there to add!?

Goldeneye 64

4. [PC] World of Warcraft

The sheer number of hours of gaming pleasure with this title makes it a must for the top 10. Favorite expansion would be Wrath of the Lich King, mostly because that’s when most of my real life friends also played the game (I’ve played Burning Legion through Cataclysm).

World of Warcraft

5. [N64] Zelda: Ocarina of Time

There’s something intrinsically great about this game that requires me to place it in a top 10.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time

6 – 20: Fantastic games

6. [PC] Dota 2

With over 1700 hours played to date it’s hard to deny that I’ve enjoyed this game. A lot.

Dota 2

7. [PC] Warcraft 3

Great gameplay, great story!

Warcraft 3

8. [PC] Prince of Persia (the original)

I still have dreams and nightmares about this game.

Prince of Persia

9. [Amiga] Impossible Mission

The first Amiga title on this list. Spending weekends at my uncle’s place just playing these games: amazing!

Impossible Mission

10. [PC] Neverwinter Nights 1

A very good game, but it’s on this list because I had some awesome full-weekend complete co-op playthroughs that were fantastic.

Neverwinter Nights

11. [AMIGA] Menace

R-Type clone I absolutely loved.

R-Type

12. [PC] Wolfenstein 3D

Didn’t even play this game that much, if it weren’t for playing the home brew levels my friends made for each other.

Wolfenstein 3D

13. [PC] Hollow Knight

Played only recently, but gameplay was brilliant.

Hollow Knight

14. [PC] Heroes of the Storm

Quit the game multiple times because it was too addictive, so it deserves its spot.

Heroes of the Storm

15. [PC] GTA: San Andreas

Really got me into the sandbox genre.

GTA San Andreas

16. [AMIGA] Klax

Tetris on steroids!

Klax

17. [WII] Super Mario Galaxy

The gameplay of this game was just phenomenal.

Super Mario Galaxy

18. [PC] Whacky Wheels

Yes, I enjoyed this more than Mario Kart. Bite me!

Whacky Wheels

19. [GAMEBOY] Tetris

Dragged me through some long trips that would’ve otherwise been quite tedious.

Tetris

20. [PC] Duke Nukem 3D

Hail to the king, baby! First co-op 3D shooter with amazing level design.

Duke Nukem 3D

21 – 50: Great Games

[N64] Super Mario 64
[AMIGA] Emerald Mine
[PC/RIFT] Robo Recall
[PC] Supaplex
[SNES] Super Mario World
[PC] Assassin’s Creed 1
[PC] Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit
[PC] Starcraft 2
[PC] Super Meat Boy
[PC] Amnesia: The Dark Descent
[PC] Mass Effect 2
[PC] Mark of the Ninja
[PC] Mother Goose
[PC] Trackmania Nations
[PC] Awesomenauts
[PC] Left 4 Dead 2
[PC] Civilization 4
[PC] Fallout 3
[PC] Batman: Arkham City (2011)
[PC] Portal 2
[PC] Portal 1
[N64] F-Zero X
[N64] Wipeout 64
[PC] Reunion
[PC] Guildwars 2
[PC] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
[PC] Assassin’s Creed 2
[SNES] Super Mario Kart
[PC] Fighter’s Destiny
[PC] Fez

51 – 100: Good Games

[PC] Braid
[PC] Fallout New Vegas
[PC] Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009)
[PC] Centurion: Defender of Rome
[WII] Zelda: Twilight Princess
[PC] Jazz Jackrabbit
[GAMECUBE] Soul Calibur 2
[PC] Starcraft 1
[WII] WarioWare Smooth Moves
[PC] Doom 2
[NES] Super Mario 1
[GAMECUBE] Ikaruga
[PC] Quake 2
[PC] Quake 1
[PC] Company of Heroes 1
[PC] Arkanoid
[PC] Lemmings
[PC] Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
[PC] Ski or Die
[PC] Secret Agent
[AMIGA] Marble Madness
[PC] Thomas was Alone
[PC] Sim City 2000
[PC] Batman: Arkham Origins (2013)
[GAMEBOY] Super Mario Land
[PC] Magicka
[SNES] Street Fighter 2
[PC] World of Goo
[SNES] Mortal Combat 2
[PC] Worms
[PC] Skyroads
[PC] One Must Fall 2097
[PC] Boppin
[PC] Divinity: Original Sin
[PC] Duke Nukem 2
[GAMEBOY] Super Mario Land 2
[PC] Killer Instinct Gold
[PC] Captain Comic
[PC] Volfied
[PC] Leisure Suit Larry 1
[N64] Diddy Kong Racing
[AMIGA] Firepower
[N64] Super Mario Kart 64
[PC] Mega Race
[PC] Prehistorik
[PC] Bioshock 2
[GAMEBOY] Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
[PC] Quake 3 Arena
[PC] Sim City 1
[PC] Skyrim

Honorable Mentions

Here’s all the games I also quite enjoyed, but didn’t make the list on the particular day I decided to make it. But it’s a tough call vs some of the 51-100 games.

[PC] Descent
[SNES] NBA Jam
[PC] Dungeon Keeper 2
[PC] Settlers 2
[PC] The Incredible Machine
[PC] Battle Chess
[AMIGA] Micky Mouse
[PC] Hugo’s House of Horrors
[PC] Carmageddon
[PC] Tomb Raider (original)
[AMIGA] Pacman
[ATARI] COMBAT
[PC] Dragon Age 2
[PC] Flatout 2
[PC] Destruction Derby 2
[PC] Age of Empires
[PC] Limbo
[PC] Paladins
[PC] Guns of Icarus
[PC] Primal Rage
[PC] Skunny Kart
[GAMEBOY] Pipe Dream
[PC] Doom 1
[PC] Dragon Age 3 Inquisition
[PC] MDK 1
[PC] Bastion
[PC] Preshistorik 2
[PC] Prince of Persia 2
[PC] Duke Nukem 1
[PC] Virtual Karts
[PC] VVVVVV
[NES] Double Dragon 2
[PC] Warcraft 1
[PC] California Games
[PC] Unreal Tournament
[PC] Resident Evil 7
[PC] Trackmania 2

And that’s it! So, tell me about your favorite games now…

Initial Oculus Rift Top 5

Jeroen

My employer (Infi) has a tradition of providing three (somewhat ridiculous) options for Christmas gifts. One of them this year was the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers. Given that I just built a fresh PC with a GTX-1080 earlier this year, the choice was obvious for me.

After two weeks of playing around with it, buying quite a few games, and trying out most of them, I certainly have my favorites. I’m curious to see how this will evolve. So time to log my current, initial Top 5 Games for Oculus Rift.

Disclaimer: I get VR-sickness quite quickly, so for obvious reasons stuff like TrackMania and Eve Valkyrie (though great games) are currently out for me.

  1. Robo Recall! It was a hard choice between 1 and 2, but replay value (achievements and high scores) sealed the deal. What a brilliant game! Bonus points for the funny story line, option to have multiple saves, diversity of levels, and brilliant sound effects and music.
  2. SuperHot VR. You feel like a BOSS in this game, a true action movie hero! Played through the entire game in one weekend (maybe 4-6 hours), which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Also a slightly more polished meta-interface (save games so I can let others replay a separate playthrough, for one) would’ve been nice.
  3. The Climb. This borders on giving me VR sickness, yet I come back to this game every time. So that must be good?
  4. I Expect You to Die. I’ve only done the first level so far, but I’m kind of “saving” the rest of this game for when I really feel like it.
  5. Arizona Sunshine. A toss up with Killing Floor: Incursion, but I think the zombie shooter should be the last item in my top 5. And I haven’t even tried coop mode yet.

Honorable mentions should go to The Invisible Hours (which my wife loves, and I can see why), Dark Days for giving me a good few scares already, and Oculus First Contact for being a fantastic tutorial.

My Backlog (games I haven’t played enough yet to judge) include Lucky’s Tale and Echo Arena so perhaps they’ll show up on a next installment of this blog series. I’m also looking forward to trying Lone Echo at some point, though I’m afraid I’ll get a heavy case of VR Sickness from it.

Oh, and the absolute worst? Well, Nature Treks VR was something my wife tried, but we asked for a refund just because it was so bad. In addition, not really “bad” but more “no experience at all”: Resident Evil 7 for PC doesn’t seem to support the Oculus Rift. Finally I’m very disappointed that Dota 2 has no good support for the Oculus controllers, making it unusable.

See you in about a year? Hopefully I’ll have a meaningful update by then!

Privileged

Jeroen

I’ve been privileged, both directly (with financial and material support from family) and indirectly (in that I’ve been able to work to earn some extra cash). I’ve used those resources for the great credo:

Spend your money where you spend your time

And so I’ve spent significant amounts of money on PCs. I find it enjoyable to keep a record of my previous rigs, so here it is. Older entries were constructed from memory, newer ones are more reliable as they’re created from a “paper” trail.

  • 2017: Intel Core i7-7700K + 32GB RAM + GeForce GTX 1080
  • 2013: Intel Core i7-4500U (Laptop – Dell XPS-12)
  • 2012: Intel Core i5-2500K + 16 GB RAM + GeForce GTX 560 Ti
  • 2009: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 + 4GB RAM + Radeon HD 4870
  • 2005: Intel Pentium M740 (Laptop – Acer Aspire 1692)
  • 2001: AMD Athlon XP + ?? RAM + GeForce 2
  • 1998: AMD K6-2 + ?? RAM + 3Dfx Voodoo2
  • 1994: Unknown brand 486 (66 MHz) with co-processor + 16 (?) MB RAM
  • 1990: Tulip 286 (10 MHz) + 1 (?) MB RAM

My most recent (2017) build was actually the trigger for this post: I’m very pleased with how it turned out and how well it works (and I’m hoping it will continue working so well).

If you care about the details of the various builds, and some of the backstories: check out my extended PC List.

And you, dear reader? Do you remember your old rigs too?

Finishing DotaGrid

Jeroen

Let’s start off similar to Finishing BattleTop, with the elevator pitch that I would have created for DotaGrid at the start:

I’m hacking a web app together to quickly create a well-aligned grid of heroes for the picking-stage at the start of a Dota 2 match, so I have something to use while dota2layout.com is down.

There’s a few important things to note here:

  • “hacking”: Yes, this is throwaway code, even though it’s open source. Heck, the main code files are called myMonolithicApp.js and tempHeroesJson.js.
  • “well-aligned”: I prefer my hero layout to be aligned to a grid with some very minor spacing between items. I.e. there’s no option to turn off “snap to grid”.
  • “Dota 2“: Yes, this entire pitch and the tool itself assume you know and play Dota 2. Or that you know me personally and are willing to struggle through the Dota 2 specifics of this post.
  • “so I have something“: The key word being “I”. Even though I’ve shared the app and its source, it was mainly something I created to satisfy my own need.

That last point is really rather important here, and it greatly affects the way I want to “wrap up” this project. But before I talk about that, let’s first look at something that seems to be in big contrast with this point.

Reddit

Even though my first ever Reddit post was well-received, Reddit has always felt as a moderately hostile environment. Depending on the particular subreddit, folks can be rather harsh and direct, not always in a well-founded fashion. But there was only one way to test that assumption and face my public-reddit-humiliation-fear: by posting something. I felt my DotaGrid tool was decent enough to be of some use to others as well, so I decided to post it on Reddit. Here’s a screenshot of my post:

DotaGrid Reddit post

This got me some decent votes and upvote percentage…

DotaGrid post Reddit vote count

…some friendly remarks…

DotaGrid friendly Reddit comment

…some suggestions…

DotaGrid add techies comment

…and some low-on-details bug reports…

DotaGrid bug report without info

…but in any case, overall comments felt friendly. So even though I wrote the tool for my personal use, deciding to share it seems like a good idea in hindsight.

The Code

Looking at the code now, a few months after I wrote the tool, I must say I’m not too disappointed. Sure, it’s “hacked together”, and according to Feather’s definition it’s legacy code, as it doesn’t contain unit tests. However, the code’s structured well enough to add those after all and work from there. For example, have a look at this typical view model property:

Not quite great code, especially that final (rather frail) line of code, but at least it’s concise, clear, and potentially unit testable.

If I were to rewrite the tool I do think I’d need to separate things a bit more. Especially the fact that the internal grid model (which hero sits where) and the rendering bit should be decoupled. This would also be necessary if I were to create a more responsive version that possibly doesn’t use a table for layouting the grid (but either a canvas or a div instead).

Then again, I’m not rewriting the tool. Instead, I think I’m going to wrap it up by:

  • Putting a disclaimer on the Google Code project, the app itself, and the Reddit post;
  • Annotating a few bits of the code, should I or anyone else care to continue the thing;
  • Keeping it up to date with new heroes as they come out, but only for as long as I feel like it (which highly depends on the amount of Dota I’ll play).

That last point does remind me to make one confession: I did not anticipate too well what would be needed to add heroes to the app. I feel rather dumb about that, since my tool is a direct response to the fact that dota2layout.com broke precisely for that reason. But oh well, you can’t win ’em all.

In conclusion

So in any case, that’s how I’m going to wrap it up, effectively “closing down” this project. Which clears the way for me to reboot and start finishing my final “open” project…

Stack Exchange Challenge: Full-time

Jeroen

I’ve finished my self-imposed Stack Exchange challenge. What a great feeling: finishing things. Only one thing left on my to do list: create a small epilogue. And this is it.

The epilogue is going to be short, using the same format as the half-time post: a wrap up with links to all the bits of this series.

  1. Episode 1: Cooking Stack Exchange Challenge (March 20th, 2012)
  2. Episode 2: Programming Stack Exchange Challenge (April 2nd, 2012)
  3. Episode 3: Gaming Stack Exchange Challenge (May 14th, 2012)
  4. Episode 4: Android Stack Exchange Challenge (June 20th, 2012)
  5. Episode 5: User Experience Stack Exchange Challenge (September 9th, 2012)
  6. Episode 6: DBA Stack Exchange Challenge (October 8th, 2012)
  1. Episode 7: Area 51 Stack Exchange Challenge (May 13th, 2013)
  2. Episode 8: Area 51 Discuss Stack Exchange Challenge (June 30th, 2013)
  3. Episode 9: Meta Stack Overflow Stack Exchange Challenge (August 12th, 2013)
  4. Episode 10: Stack Overflow Stack Exchange Challenge (September 11th, 2013)

And that’s all I have to say about that. Time for a new challenge?

World of Guild Wars

Jeroen
Asura in Guild Wars 2
Asura in Guild Wars 2

Recently I mentioned there’s just so much to do (in a good way). One of the items on that list I didn’t even pick up, even though I was expecting to be sucked into the thing: Mists of Pandaria, the new World of Warcraft expansion. Instead, the alotted time for WoW went into Guild Wars 2, just because it’s more fun than I expect the new WoW expansion to be.

The game’s even diverted my attention from Stack Exchange (and my corresponding challenge) to Reddit. After helping out my wife converting a Reddit post into a browser bookmarklet, I decided to post it on Reddit as a reply. A few days later I had an encouraging 50+ Reddit Karma. As you can imagine it was with lifted spirits that I decided to start another undoubtedly great post, bound to draw hundreds of Karma points. So I asked about Missing Guild Wars 2 Features, and harvested … a wopping zero points!

Lesson learned? Not so much, I guess. That is, the post wasn’t really meant for Karma-grinding, but more to start a uservoice kind of thing: let ArenaNet know what things they should steal from WoW. Maybe the I didn’t even so much wanted to ask the question, as I wanted to answer it. So for your reading pleasure, here are some things I’d love for them to steal from WoW:

  • Dueling. Not for the top of a prioritized list, but still one of the first things that comes to mind.
  • Proper teamwork, especially in dungeons. Asked about it on Gaming Stack Exchange, and apparently instancing is mostly “soloing together”.
  • Would be nice to be able to mail your own alts, but apparently this isn’t possible (yet?).
  • Addons, plugins, and macros.
  • If the above isn’t possible I would love to see an official DPS Meter or something similar. Just for personal use, I just love optimizing my own playstyle.
  • More emotes! I find myself typing “/palm” and “/violin” just way too often.
  • A way to easily see map progress when you’re not on that map.
  • More different spells available. I loved having 40 different buttons to press when playing WoW.
  • Be more clear on the different roles players can fill. Currently this is too meager, and even though I don’t want or need the classic tank-healer-dps setup I still think GW2 can be clearer about its intentions here, in skills, the UI, etc.
  • End game raiding.
  • Monthly subscription fee and the horrific addiction level. No wait, the other way around of course.

“Wow”… glad I got that off my chest. Now back to enjoy the damn game!

So much to do

Jeroen 1 Comment

So much to do, yet so little time.  Three weeks of vacation have come and gone. Two weeks of work have come and gone. One of those work weeks was even a week #OffsiteCoding, where we went to a great (I’d dare even say luxuruous) location with the whole IT team, to work (dedicated) on a new part of our product.

New computer desk at homeAfter those five summer weeks I’m still full of inspiration, and deep into several projects and new hobbies. If I fail to post on my blog, rest easy knowing I’ll be enjoying myself with:

  • Guild Wars 2, also known as World of Warcraft 2.0;
  • The Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft;
  • Our brand new Open Source project Bieb (on CodePlex), which is now public (yay!), but still needs a release (boo!);
  • Studying for my 70-513 exam on WCF;
  • Cranking up my skills with WPF, which I’ll be using at work a bit more the coming months.

Much of my inspiration for new projects comes from finishing other projects. Have a look at the picture for the most recently finished project: a custom (home) made desk for two workplaces at home.

Problem with this approach for getting inspired: every finished project gives me inspiration for two more! Like I said: so much to do, yet so little time. A luxury problem, I suppose.

Episode 3: Gaming Stack Exchange Challenge

Jeroen 2 Comments
Space invaders wall painting
Space invaders wall painting

It’s been a while since my previous post: Episode 2 in my Stack Exchange Challenge, on Programming. Work, a new table-top RPG experiment, a Twitter vs Voice Recognition experiment, some playing around with MVC 3, and a big-ass painting on our living room wall (see pica) were all keeping me from writing on my blog.

In addition, even though I’ve been mildly active on various SE sites, I didn’t have a real drive to dive deeply into one of them. However, I did experience one peculiar effect of the SE engine last month: you can earn badges while not being very active on a site anymore.

One of the sites stood out the most, awarding me a gold badge for asking a (now apparently) famous question. And that’s as good a trigger as any to grab some more writing experience, et voila: a blog post on Gaming.StackExchange!

Current Statistics

Again, like last two reviews, some of the current facts for the site:

Fact Gaming.SE
Questions 18,629
Questions with no upvoted answers 845 (4.54%)
FAQ (questions with most links) 4,573
Top 3 questions 156 votes, 130 votes, 112 votes
Questions active last hour 8
All-time rep for top 3 users 75.6k, 34.6k, 31.6k
Meta questions 1,240

With 18k questions about as big as Programming, examined in my previous blog post.

Gaming.StackExchange logo
Gaming Stack Exchange

My Questions

At the time I write this I’ve asked a measly three questions. In my previous blogpost on Programming what held me back in asking questions was that I found it hard to ask “good subjective questions”. On Gaming there’s no such barrier, and as you can see in the FAQ they go for a totally different kind of questions here. What held me back in this case is just that on most games (the ones I play, at least) there’s already a ton of information to be found through Google search engines, rendering it useless to ask it again on SE. Of the three questions, these two were most interesting:

My Answers

Wups! Bad, bad community member. I haven’t written any answer yet. I came close once though.

Interesting Questions

Although I guess what gaming-questions are interesting depend heavily on what games you like, there are some questions that stand out if you have a look at the top questions:

Community Wiki

Not too many fun questions in this category at first sight, besides perhaps the Starcraft 2 skill improvement question.

Conclusion

The site is great for browsing through occasionally. It’s probably more fun if you go with the hype and by AAA titles the moment they come out. Surely the site will be flooded with Diablo 3 questions soon. Not intending to play D3 that will probably chase me away though, but perhaps that will push me to another SE site for my next SE challenge?