The Top 50 games of the Decade (or "Hey, Destructoid, go fu** yourselves!)

Who didn't know Destructoid was a bunch of shitheads? I mean shitheads in real life. Screw the list, they can go fuck themselves for that.

Destructoid pretty much represent everything wrong with gaming fans, especially Sterling who is perhaps the most odious human being on the internet. Even the best of them, Anthony Burch, is a whiny douche at times.

I don't even know their names or even read their work.

A bunch of them and I were at a press event a few years back and they acted like a bunch of immature douchebags. That was pretty much it for me.

Is there some better place to get up to the minute gaming news? I actually think Jim Sterling is one of the more interesting writers on Destructoid. Not only is he willing to buck trends, but he is the only writer that isn't so indistinct that I can recognize his articles by the writing alone.

How does he "buck trends?"

Didn't you just say you don't even read Destructoid? Anyway, he is willing to take unpopular stances, which seems uncommon of the hive mind in the gaming media.

By "willing to take unpopular stances", I assume you mean "plays the contrarian for the sake of hits."

The same could probably be said about Devin, either way valid points are made.

I wasn't trying to be snarky so much as I was curious how much of his complaining about mostly well-received games was honest criticism and how much was hit-baiting.

He is pretty candid about his brand of blogging.

From here

Destructoid is pretty johnny-on-the-spot news wise, but that's rapidly becoming their only saving grace. Aside from Reverend Anthony, (who I disagree with more often than not but I acknowledge he is capable of expressing his points coherently) the writing staff is pretty lackluster (including Sterling, who is far less clever than he thinks he is) and the community is the kind of group that IMDB and AIC users can point to and say "At least we ain't as stupid as those fuckers."

Top whatever lists are rampant this time of year as the non-gaming masses flock to the intertubes to find out what to buy their offspring. I've learned to kinda tune them out.

As far as other sites, I go to Giant Bomb a lot more often, but their content tends to be a lot less immediate and a lot deeper. The Bombcast is still a wednesday ritual for me, and the quick looks are always entertaining.

Joystiq is a decent games news/review blog, and Eurogamer has a solid news feed. Both somehow manage to operate without being a bunch of stupid assholes or creepily fawning over Ivy from Soul Calibur's tits like Destructoid and Kotaku do on a regular basis.

The problem with Sterling is that he's an obvious shtick writer, and I'm glad he at least admits he has no journalistic integrity. He's ignorant, his reviews are slapdash and rely more on foulmouthed whining than any kind of actual critique, and worst of all he's not a good writer in any way, shape or form. He seems to have no kind of real intelligence backing up anything he does, just ego and a desire for attention. I guess he's the perfect poster child for the internet gaming community in that sense.

I'll second Joystiq and Giant Bomb as sites I visit rather often. Joystiq has the cleanest layout of the video game blog sites, and their writing is usually at least good if overly snarky sometimes. Giant Bomb isn't necessarily the promptest website out there, but the content is usually worth it. Their video content is also pretty good, especially the Quick Looks they do.

I still go to Kotaku for news, but for quality writing, it's pretty much just Eurogamer for me.

Quality was inconsistent, but a good portion of the crew who used to write for 1UP.com before EGM went under were solid and were pretty gung ho about journalistic integrity after Dan Hsu told (I always assumed) Eidos to go fuck themselves. I miss those guys for that alone.

I like Gametrailers' video reviews; they're pretty thorough and intelligent, methinks.

No love for Gamespot or IGN I take it?

My favorite video game sites are...the-magicbox.com, neo-geo.com, playmagazine.com and fightersgeneration.com. I also visit, Ign, Gamespot, Kotaku and Gametrailers.

I've become a pretty big fan of Giant Bomb lately. All the video content helps slow work days go by, and the 20-30 minute quick looks are always interesting.

I used to like IGN, but I eventually realized it was run by idiots. Bad writers, too.

Seeing how this has devolved into "name your favorite gaming website". Put me down for 1up.

Oh and I gave up on gamespot a few years ago when they seemed to be upset with any game that didn't have whatever the top graphic engine was at the time.

There would be a game like puzzle quest and the review would be going off on how it should be using the latest unreal engine.

DerekT, This thread didn't...Devolve, It...Destructoided!

I never really payed attention to destructoid, the site I visit most often for straight up video game news is Kotaku. If I'm in the mood to discuss something I come here to this forum.

Any site which proudly declares itself to be for Hardcore Gamers is always going to be suspicious. The fact that Destructoid as 'the gamers blog' is little more than 4Chan headlines, crude MS Paint header images, and Jim Sterling being utterly clueless as to how the world works/the rest of the staff being just sort of ridiculously arrogant and being sort of not their, speaks really badly of gamers. I mean I actually read Destructoid every now and then for one reason, and it's to watch Sterling continue his bizarre personal crusade against Bobby Kotick.

Also, fuck are their readers reactionary. I just had a quick look over at the site and clicked on the comments for the Assassin Creed 2 DLC news and of course we have the usual bleating about DLC being the death of gaming and how developers are holding back content to nickel and dime people. It's like their readers don't have any idea how the game making process works or how selective production works.

The big blogs like Kotaku, Joystiq and Destructoid being US based are just too console centric to be of any major use to me. For news I mostly check out Eurogamer, for industry stuff Gamasutra and for commentary Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Especially RPS since Kieron Gillen is probably my favorite games writer still publishing stuff.

But more to the point, although I'm always willing to mock Destructoid it's too early. I think I'll wait until they fuck up the top ten.

The Edge used to be a great magazine, it went a little downhill eventually. They were also they toughest reviewers, they would absolutely destroy some games.

I don't mind some of the IGN-AU writers. Cam Shea writes for them. He's is ex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_(magazine) which has remained a great magazine for 16 years, though it now faces extinction along with other print media for games.

I'll visit IGN, Gamespot, 1UP, Eurogamer, Gametrailers and ZP on most games I consider buying. Oh yeah, and Good Game (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/) though I've been browned off by the sacking of experienced reviewer Junglist .

(Also, that destructoid list doesn't look that bad)

Pretty perfectly crystalline example of why Jim Sterling is a piece of shit, and why Destructoid's commenters should be ethnically cleansed.

http://www.destructoid.com/microsoft....phtml#comment

Exactly, that's why I wouldn't know. Sorry if someone asking a question sends you into a state of butthurt.

If you really want insta-news and don't mind sifting through a lot of chaff, there's probably nothing faster than the NeoGAF forums. It's still filled with flame wars, overreactions and animated GIFs, of course, but it's actually heavily moderated. A lot of industry insiders and devs read/post there, too.

Gifs...boy, I don't know.

While the Modern Warfare 2 Airport Scene was a hot topic, someone sent me a link to a Destructoid article defending the scene as an evolution of gaming. And while the commentors were utterly retarded (but when you look at some of the comments made on Chud in the new age of Comments, you wonder if any useful discussion can be had in that format), the major issue I had with the article was analytical skill of the writer was at such a basic level that it screamed "this site cannot produce commentary of any advanced degree." They might as well put a recommended age (13-18) on the main page.

That is sort of troublesome of lost of videogame media. There isn't much heavy well-written analysis out there that doesn't read like a boring textbook. I'm not sure if it's intentional for hits or that the people who tend to succeed longterm (and don't move on to writing about other topics or quite writing altogether) are just not great writers.

And yes, its self-serving, but I think every MCP writer who has ever been involved with this site has attempted to think at a level beyond they typical videogame website.

There was literally not even an ATTEMPT to see the other side of the issue with the Airport Scene fiasco. Same with the Resident Evil 5 might kinda be a little inappropriate issue. They don't want to see it, because they just want it to be taken for granted that it's always the fault of someone else for getting offended.

And I liked that their hilarious little "rebuttal" to Sterling was to basically have a guy post an big long "I WON'T PLAY MODERN WARFARE 2 BECAUSE I'M A LIMPWRISTED PRANCER THAT CRIES MYSELF TO SLEEP!" article and call it reasoned debate.

You asked the question in an asshole manner. You don't even read the site and yet you were challenging my opinion of the site for no reason. I guess I am not enlightened enough to dismiss a site based on the personalities of its members.

Yeah I can't stand the commenters either, but I was never a fan of the talk backs either.

If you can't stand the personalities of writers who so blatantly insert their personalities into their writing, why wouldn't you dismiss the site?

I dare anyone to sit through five minutes of their Retro podcast. Chad Concelmo is a hyperbole-spouting flamboyant douche. The site's filled with the LOOK WE'RE TOO HARDCORE FOR HALO "hardcore" mentality that always comes off as immature.

This is my favorite site-specific Google search:

"mixed bag" site:ign.com

I asked "How does he 'buck trends?'" I cannot imagine how anyone takes those five words as asshole-ish, let alone challenging you, unless they are hypersensitive.

Given that this is CHUD and the dogpile commenced immediately thereafter, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable assessment. I probably overreacted, but the me too dogpiles that always occur whenever someone has a dissenting opinion gets pretty old.

I just use Giantbomb for all my gaming needs now, and I think the quicklooks have been the best thing to happen to gaming websites since...whatever the last best thing was.

Just so you know, this is exactly the kind of post that gets people dropping the term "butthurt".

Wow, they called Shenmue 2 the 28th greatest game of the decade. I thought everyone had gotten over Shenmue by now.

If being able to acknowledge I over reacted makes me butthurt, so be it.

I fucking LOVE Shenmue, less so the sequel, but 28th seems preposterous for either.

I love the Shenmue games, but did not really expect them at all in this kind of list.

One game I really did want to see (and was impressed that it made the list) was Skies of Arcadia. To this day I can still think of few games that were as fun as that one. It's got an amazing charm.

I'm not so sure about Skies of Arcadia. First of all it had a very specifc colour based rock/paper/scissors/system that made it hard for me as a colourblind person to use effectively.

Secondly, some of the cutscenes + battles took forever. I remember a ship battle above a pyramid going on for llike 40 minutes. It wass too drawn out.

Third off I felt it was the same anime bullshit stories that plague JPRGs. It wasn't that bad but it certainly wasn't that good either.

Anyway, I gave up just after the jungle type island.