Ocarina of Time is the best game ever. Halo is the best game ever. Super Mario 64 is the best 3D platformer of all time. Final Fantasy VII is the greatest RPG ever made.
Wii Sports is overrated. The Wii is overrated. Ocarina of Time is overrated. And what’s so great about Halo, anyway? Goldeneye is better.
Goldeneye is so overrated. It sure hasn’t aged well. I can’t wait for the Wii remake – I just wish it was on a real console. Everyone knows the Wii is overrated.
Etc. Now, listen. I’ve got something to say.
No game has ever been the best game ever, in any category, ever. There is no best RPG, there is no best shooter, and there is no best motion controlled sports-themed mini game collection (OK, in that category Wii Sports might actually be the best, but only until Sony’s Move comes out).
Likewise (and it may be shocking to hear this), there are no overrated games. There are simply games that garner a lot of attention, people who hyperbolize about those games, and people who can’t understand, for the life of them, why.
But games that attract enough attention to in turn attract the attention of people who like to criticize games that attract a lot of attention – well, they attract that attention for a reason.
And, well, there are only so many reasons a game might attract attention. Some games are given undue attention by the media, like Grand Theft Auto. Some get attention because they’re either nearly perfect (Portal) or pieces of crap (Kane and Lynch); others do it by completely betraying people’s expectations, like Dark Void and Alpha Protocol.
There is another reason why some games get a lot of attention, though: when they do something new. It’s these games that occasion the most hype, homage and hyperbole, and they’re the ones most often written off as “overrated” by those who simply fail to understand their significance, often years later.
Super Mario 64 isn’t the best game ever, nor is it the best 3D game, the best platformer, the best 3D platformer, or even the best game starring Mario – but it sure as hell isn’t overrated.
For people my age, it’s sometimes hard to remember that at the time of Mario 64‘s release, the mustachioed one was already insanely popular. The side scrolling platformer thing was working. The dude practically saved US gaming in the 80s, and it took decades for the Western game industry to catch up with the Rising Sun in the East.
For Mario to make the jump (ha) to 3D was unnerving. No one knew what to expect, and plenty of people probably thought it would be the end of the chubby plumber’s glory days. For the game to be so damn good – that was revolutionary. The simple fact that players could walk forward, or backward, or left, or right, and that it was fun to do so, meant gaming would never be the same.
Halo: Combat Evolved is far from the best game ever, as are Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach (which I played to death last week – and yes, it’s an excellent game). Why all the hubbub, then?
Think about it; comparisons with Half-Life or Quake III: Arena or whatever else was popular on PC at the time are irrelevant. Half-Life fans weren’t buying Xboxes. The big black boxes were being purchased by gamers who had only recently been acquainted with the concept of the first person shooter. Goldeneye started the revolution on consoles, Perfect Dark bested it in every way, and then, a year and a half later, Halo sent millions of console shooter fans to the hospital with severe cases of bleeding from the eyes and ears.
The jump from Perfect Dark to Halo was, for many, many people, an indescribably awesome experience. Halo and the Xbox brought countless innovations to the console shooter: dual analog controls, recharging health, the two gun limit, the grenade button, vehicular combat, physics, a plot that made sense (more than that – the plot was compelling), ingenious A.I., huge environments, layer upon layer of strategy.. the list goes on.
Halo 2 sweetened the pot by adding online matchmaking, oiling the wheels of the Xbox Live experience, which until then had far too closely resembled the online play found on PCs. Halo 3 brought the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion, ODST was a moody spinoff, and Reach perfects the whole formula. People love Halo because it was different, new, and lovingly crafted.
If you still don’t get it, you’re not trying hard enough.
Final Fantasy VII, while rife with imperfections, inconsistencies and, in general, a whole lot of nonsense, brought RPGs to the Western hemisphere, among countless other accomplishments. Can the value of that gaming triumph really be quantified?
Wii Sports gained the attention of thousands – perhaps millions – of people who would have never given gaming a second glance. It may be trite at this point, but your mom and dad, girlfriend, and co-workers playing video games? That’s significant. It’s a huge deal. The Wii (and Wii Sports, which to many is synonymous with the system itself; “I’m so drunk, let’s play Wii!”) has generated more revenue for our thriving little hobby than anything, ever. If you’re wondering why Nintendo’s lineup right now is so incredible, you can start thanking Wii Sports for the very existence of Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Metroid: Other M, yada yada yada.
Yeah, I got over it after a month, too, but can you really call that legacy overrated?
Ocarina of Time ushered adventure gaming into the 3D era, much as Mario 64 did for 3D itself. Goldeneye was the first console shooter that was even worth anything at all, much less a challenging, engaging, diverse experience. And four player split screen multiplayer? Get out of town!
Petty squabbling and nitpicking aside, there are similar things to be said about any game that’s ever been called overrated. Games don’t warrant that kind of veneration for no reason, and calling classic games overrated comes off pretty ignorant. So next time you feel the urge to drop the O Bomb, try examining a game in the context of what it accomplished, rather than how your jaded gamer’s brain sees it now. We’ll all be better off.
