Is Edge Dead Yet? - The Bear and Badger

Tempy

The vagaries of liking things

[Deleted User]

Narrowing it down to the ones I've played...

Super Mario 64
Gran Turismo
Halo: Combat Evolved
Half-Life 2
Halo 3
The Orange Box
Grand Theft Auto IV
LittleBigPlanet
Rock Band 3
The Last of Us
Grand Theft Auto V
Bloodborne

I'd say only Super Mario 64, Gran Turismo, Halo: Combat Evolved, The Orange Box and The Last of Us encapsulate what a [10] was supposed to mean. The others, not so much.

retroking1981

Dinostar77 wrote:

The first four games in that list were revolutionary, gta3 should have been the 5th. After that the list becomes a bit hit and miss.

Agreed.

Looking back I think Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter II, Doom and from what I hear from those in the know Virtua Fighter 2 are probably deserving.

The rest of their list is stellar for sure but I don't think refining what came before means a game is deserving of a 10.

Didn't a large chunk of those 10s come in quick succession to? It was around that time I felt edge lost their aura of elite gaming journalists.

jdanielp

A surprising number of direct sequels... I used the old model of the exclusive EDGE 10 as a basis for my ratings of films on IMDb. I have awarded fewer than ten 10s out of the ~3000 films that I've seen.

Escape

The more 10s there are, the fewer people agree with them all. It's why they should've stuck to awarding them once in a blue Moon, but even when they had four, most of us disagreed with at least one.

At least with the ‘revolutionary’ aspect, I understood Halo's. (It was a personal 7 or so, but we know how daft scores are in these parts.)

JonB

A lot of the 10 games have clear flaws but are outstanding in some way and redefine the limits of their genre. In that sense I can kind of get behind things like TLoU and LBP, and even HL2 and GTAV to an extent, despite finding them heavily lacking in some respects (I mean, I think the mission and character design in GTAV is mostly abysmal but I can't argue with the scope of the game and how much detail there is in the city). But then I think Gran Turismo and Halo also fitted into that category, although they were much more my thing, so not that much has changed.

Also in that sense the one game on the list that still falls well short is Skyward Sword. It's massively dull in numerous places and doesn't push the Zelda formula anywhere significantly new.

Tempy

Skyward Sword sticks out for me as well, and although Bloodborne is easily my favourite of that series, and in some aspects utterly sublime, I don't see it as a [10]

Dinostar77

In terms of "revolutionary" games I think the list would have to have the following. Which Edge seemed to deviated away from after 2004.

GTA3: ground breaking sandbox.

COD4: bought mutiplayer online shooter to the masses.

WOW: never played but best example of stupidly popular mmo.

DarkSouls: Almost created it's own genre

League of Legends (MOBA): don't play them but they are responsible for Esports craze right?

Tempy

The king of the MOBA is and always will be DOTA

JonB

Tempy wrote:

Skyward Sword sticks out for me as well, and although Bloodborne is easily my favourite of that series, and in some aspects utterly sublime, I don't see it as a [10]

Dark Souls is the clearest of 10s in that series (but I would say that), BB is debatable - the weapons and combat make a good case for it.

TBH I think most of the retrospective 10s are pretty deserving, so perhaps more a sign Edge should've been more generous in the past than anything else.

Dinostar77

Tempy wrote:

The king of the MOBA is and always will be DOTA

I stand corrected, as I know nothing about them

Tempy

@JonB

I agree.

JonB

It's all a strange argument in the end though. It's one thing to say 10 should mean something, but then the difference between 9s and 10s may ultimately be minuscule.

Tempy

Dinostar77 wrote:

Tempy wrote:

The king of the MOBA is and always will be DOTA

I stand corrected, as I know nothing about them

DOTA was out before LoL. DOTA2 is, for my money, the most complete package. All heroes available, not F2P, a brilliant replay/spectator suite, an item market that makes sense, a progressive patch mentality that is seeing them move to a new engine that will help them undo some of the odd stuff that has hampered them in the past, and it's also the biggest single eSports tournament in the world with The International, although globally I think CS:GO is bigger. A lot of it is down to taste, but for me DOTA2 is always gonna be the king.

Dinostar77

Just a thought, revolutionary games have a correlation with improvements in technology. The last gen was over ten years in duration before we had the ps4 and xbone which probably explains the evolution rather than revolution of games. I wonder whether the next revolutionary game(s) will be VR related or will we have to wait to see if nintendo and the NX can do something different?

Paul the sparky

I don't like the revolutionary bit. A game could absolutely nail everything it sets out to do in an existing genre and be worthy of a [10], it doesn't have to revolutionise anything for me.

regmcfly

JonB wrote:

It's all a strange argument in the end though. It's one thing to say 10 should mean something, but then the difference between 9s and 10s may ultimately be minuscule.

JonB wrote:

Tempy wrote:

Skyward Sword sticks out for me as well, and although Bloodborne is easily my favourite of that series, and in some aspects utterly sublime, I don't see it as a [10]

Dark Souls is the clearest of 10s in that series (but I would say that), BB is debatable - the weapons and combat make a good case for it.

TBH I think most of the retrospective 10s are pretty deserving, so perhaps more a sign Edge should've been more generous in the past than anything else.

Agree and agree. There's a real whiff of nostalgia cum gatekeeperism about the chat in here, as if modern games haven't, yknow, got better or something. I'm not going to argue every single one of them is a stone cold 10, but the increase may be to do with the rise in general quality, the mainstreaming of games, the fact there's more games out now, or just maybe opinion. Find the whole 'an edge 10 use to mean something' argument bafflesome.

regmcfly

Paul the sparky wrote:

I don't like the revolutionary bit. A game could absolutely nail everything it sets out to do in an existing genre and be worthy of a [10], it doesn't have to revolutionise anything for me.

And again, agree

cockbeard

I didn't realise that Dark Souls didn't get a 10, but in the same spirit of "revolutionary", I'd argue that whilst Dark is by far in many ways the superior game. Demon's Souls, for me at least, defined a whole console generation. It brought online into a new place where community though invisible was a massive influence

I (along with Edge I believe) spent those years waiting for Torico to define that generation and it never did, otherwise I've no idea how well over 300 hours, when let's be fair there's nowhere near that amount of content, didn't justify it. On the flipside, I probably put similar amount into Dark, and yet I don't think I've ever finished it, just enjoy restarting so often

edit: Damn you all posted to say fuck revolutionary whilst I was posting, but hey it's got to mean something, especially if it's the top

Dark Soldier

Bloodborne is a ten for me as it handles exactly how I play Souls but rewards me for it, and marry that to a Gothic horror world and incredible world design and it'll stand for some while as my favourite single player campaign. Although not one I really return to but those 50 hours or so will always be cherished.

Yossarian

Dinostar77 wrote:

COD4: bought mutiplayer online shooter to the masses.

Sorry, Halo 2 did that.

JonB

Paul the sparky wrote:

I don't like the revolutionary bit. A game could absolutely nail everything it sets out to do in an existing genre and be worthy of a [10], it doesn't have to revolutionise anything for me.

I think there are some like that as well. Bayonetta and Mario Galaxies, for example.

Yossarian

regmcfly wrote:

Agree and agree. There's a real whiff of nostalgia cum gatekeeperism about the chat in here, as if modern games haven't, yknow, got better or something. I'm not going to argue every single one of them is a stone cold 10, but the increase may be to do with the rise in general quality, the mainstreaming of games, the fact there's more games out now, or just maybe opinion. Find the whole 'an edge 10 use to mean something' argument bafflesome.

I'd argue that there are fewer revolutionary games now because tech and the practise of game design (at least as far as a screen and a controller are concerned) have matured to the point that most boundaries that can be pushed have been.

Diluted Dante

Paul the sparky wrote:

I don't like the revolutionary bit. A game could absolutely nail everything it sets out to do in an existing genre and be worthy of a [10], it doesn't have to revolutionise anything for me.

That's Rock Band 3.

WorKid

The Orange Box can fuck off with its 10.

Putting two 9s and an 8 on the same DVD does not make a 10.

EvilRedEye

I guess one issue with modern gaming is whether games-as-services are going to be 10-worthy when they're reviewed at launch. Seems like a lot of MMOs, even eventually well-received ones take a good long while to reach their apex. Tempy's praise for DOTA2 features a bunch of online-related features like approach to patches that don't fit in with the whole review-at-launch system.

I guess in that sense it's unhelpful that Edge no longer has a website in that they can't do the whole ongoing update of reviews thing that the online outlets can.

Escape

Paul the sparky wrote:

I don't like the revolutionary bit. A game could absolutely nail everything it sets out to do in an existing genre and be worthy of a [10], it doesn't have to revolutionise anything for me.

As true as that is, the quality of nails is a bit more subjective than ‘We haven't seen this before’.

Gamermike

GTAIV, Skyward Sword and Little Big Planet shouldn't be on that list of 10's.

hylian_elf

Skyward Sword was a 10 for me. The only ones I'd knock down are the GTAs, LBP and GT.

hylian_elf

WorKid wrote:

The Orange Box can fuck off with its 10. Putting two 9s and an 8 on the same DVD does not make a 10.

Yes, Ep1, Ep2 and Team Fortress don't make a 10. I'm guessing the 10 was cos of HL2 and Portal.

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