I agree that the Halo2 matchmaking/party system is the most useful type of system to coordinate and play with a group of your friends.

Its all handled so easily and quickly, you end up spending more time playing and less time trying to communicate and organize to make it happen. Why every team based multiplayer game since Halo2 doesnt have a similiar feature is beyond me.

Quake 2: Yeah the multiplayer was great. But every review raved about the single-player game as well, which was quite frankly dreadful.

Half-Life 2: It's good. But nowhere near as good as all the critics say. The story is hopelessly lacking. The vehicle bits are rubbish. The gravity gun is ridiculously over-hyped: it's only useful in situations which have been particularly designed for it to be useful. It's useless otherwise. And my biggest gripe: the AI. It isn't very good; it's actually a step back from Half-Life 1. Enemies rush you, making it all too easy to just stay in cover and shoot them as they come.

Oblivion: A fantastic technical achievement. But like Morrowind it has a lousy storyline and lacks personality. And the combat's still kinda crap.

World of Warcraft: Kill things. Buy armour and weapons. Kill more things. Buy slightly better armour and weapons. Repeat until you hit level 60. Well not me, I quit after a month, tired of the incredible tedium. I honestly don't get why people love MMOs so much.

First post on this forum, I used to be a lot bigger gamer than I am now (this poker thing has gotten in the way) but I still consider myself fairly knowlegable... so here are my takes-

Deus Ex- Fantastic revolutionary game. I can get people not liking it because they dont like that type of game or whatever, but to say its bad, poorly designed, or has a bad story is just heresy.

Halo and Halo 2- I had a good PC and a PS2 when Halo came out and I was sorta late on the bandwagon. I really enjoyed the console link in the first one but found the single player repetitive and stale. Wasnt a fan of Halo 2 either although I wouldnt call either a bad game by any means. I just dont think either are near as revolutionary and amazing as the masses do. The PC did it just as good and better before xbox.

GTA: SA- Fantastic game along with the rest in the series. Agree with almost every positive thing said about it so far.

Zelda Ocarina- Im in the minority here apparently, I loved this game and its probably one of my top 10 favorites. I played the hell out of the original when it came out and thought they did 3D damn well.

Other games I agree are overrated- All of the PS2 final fantasys. Im not much of a pure RPG fan so consider my biased here though. I never "got" ecco the dolphin.

Games I really really love that I dont think get enough- I played the [censored] out of rogue spear and rainbow 6. I havnt played it in years but I sunk a ton of time into that game on gamespy doing matches. I also played the hell out of Diablo 2, Im not much a fan of hack and slashers and this game still hooked me.

Didnt read the entire thread so i might be repeating some people...

I'd definitely agree here. Oblivion's a great game, but has too many flaws for all the credit it gets. It's a rather buggy game, is horribly unbalanced, has a completely broken leveling system, the combat is just sad, the hundreds of dungeons and areas are basically just slight variations on about 4 generic molds, there's very minimal variety in the monsters, etc..

I love the game and have spent over a hundred hours playing it (and still am) - but it just it really does come up short in alot of ways. This is in regards to the game as was released/modified by the developers - as community mods do work on alot of its shortcomings.

I'm really hoping Two Worlds might be what Oblivion could have been.

OP is a moron, the most overrated game is probably tony hawk.

I love the argument behind your claim.

Rome Total [censored].

Wtf? Explain

Don't get me wrong it's by no means a bad game and the 3D look was great but in terms of gameplay it wasn't always as functional as the overview look was. Therefore i was struggling through the whole game and not enjoying it as much as i did with LTTP. They did a great job at transferring Zelda to a 3D world and i give them an A+ for that but i.m.o. it's better suited as an overview game.

I have to say i haven't given it a propper chance, i played it for like half a day on normal mode (or whatever default was on) and was bored as hell. Given the hype and raving reviews i was nothing but dissapointed, despite it being the best looking PS2 game i've ever seen.

halo 2 online is not as good as you say it is. Once you get past level 30 or so in matchmaking you will be playing every single match against a modder, bridger, or standbyer. For this reason nobody good takes matchmaking seriously and rankings mean nothing in terms of skill level. Anybody who plays MLG and is past the pub level plays custom games, which brings up the other problem.

There are host / clients in halo, and whichever player is hosting has 0 ping and has a huge advantage. If you are in a BR fight across lockout with a host he will 3/4 shot you every time and only the host can hit people across levels like midship or warlock.

halo is a fun / easy game that lots of ppl can play but cs is a better competitive game.

I've played MLG for halo and cal-m for cs, as well as local tournaments for both btw

So totally dumbed down compared to the TWs that had come before. Units all moved to fast, war dogs lol. The series went from being about being the best tactician to being a twitch fest for kiddy gamers.

I haven't played the other 2, didn't realize Rome wasn't as good. I'll have to give them a try. Which is better (ignoring graphics). Shogun or Medieval?

Though your milage may vary. MTW MP was great, real depth to the gameplay. Not sure how big the community playing it is now, there are still some die hards about I think, will take you a long time till you can compete at their level online.

The sp campaighn is still excellent though, but again your milage may vary as one cant help getting used to improved graphics, though I think the gameplay is still good enough to shine through.

I can't believe I'm the first person to say Madden.

I love football as every true American, but I just cannot get into these games. Maybe it's the automatic touchdowns when you go for it on 4th & 32 from your own 1, or the 100% completion percentage, but out of all the sports games, it's just the least realistic sim.

I can't believe someone mentioned Quake3. That's an underrated game if anything.

I think OP is right on about MGS. I've been playing video games all my life and I couldn't ***** figure out how to play that damn game.

I think the original Half-Life doesn't get enough love relative to Halo. I've played a lot of both and I prefer HL.

For reference, some of my all-time favorites:

RBI Baseball
Half-Life
GTA Series
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
Street Fighter II
Madden Series
Dragon Warrior Series
Goldeneye
Doom II

Seriously? The entire series or just the first game? Do you have some hatred toward skateboarding? For what it is...a skateboarding game...the series is really, really good. Maybe you sucked at it because once you get good, they are all fun as heck.

There are actually people who prefer Halo to Half-Life? In it's hayday, HL was widely regarded as the best game that had ever been made. Esp. with the extra legs given to it by Counter-Strike, I'm surprised there would be a reasonable number of people who could claim that Halo even holds a candle to HL.

qft. i came over during the beta from a high end eq guild (when the wow end game was doing the scarlet monastery over and over at level 39, the cap), bought the game near release and rushed to level 60 only to find there was no end game that came anywhere close to eq. i free'd the sleeper in velious, and the best wow could offer was one ridiculously easy raid zone and a seriously broken molten core? lame.

Forget about the moves, Street Fighter owns tekken. Mortal Kombat is pure garbage though. It's fun for a few matches but gets old very fast. I downloaded both of these games on Xbox live and doubt I will play MK3 again(waste of $10). I have played 1300 live matches on SF and many more to come, the game is such a classic.

I agree 100%. The AI in the Total War games is ******ed and any kind of diplomacy is non-existant. Each and every game boils down to all AI empires ganging up on the player but the player kicking ass because the AI's armies get slaughtered in mass frontal charges.

Lame.

Also on my list...

Halo: Maybe not very fair coming from a computer gamers perspective but this game is laughably pathetic compared to anything that apeared on the PC 5 years before Halo even came out. I felt sorry for my friends playing this game constantly. It was like watching someone from Somalia get all excited over running water. It was pathetic.

Starcraft: Not a bad game just an overrated game. What is so special about this clickfest? The only strategy involved is figuring out your build order then its all about who can click the fastest. Why not play Command and Conquer or Total Annihlation for some sort of depth to your gameplay?

Jesus [censored] christ you ******s put me on life tilt.

Most overrated? Pretty much any 3D fighter ever.

Also the original Mortal Kombat. Compared to the sequel it was terrible (and compared to SF2, the sequel was poor)

I'm with OP on FFVII, although I think time has given most people a clearer perspective on it. Deus Ex has aged terribly but was very cool in its time and did try to innovate, so I don't know that it's fair to call it one of the most overrated ever. But of course GTA III is the undisputed champion of overrated games.

Among recent releases honorable mentions go to the Gran Turismo series, The Sims, Okami, Final Fantasy XII, Neverwinter Nights.

I'm not gonna go into MMORPG territory because even though most of them seem super overrated to me, I've never had the high-level/endgame guild experience in any of them, so what do I know.

Never managed to make it through any of the Metal Gear Solid games but I can see them REALLY being someone's cup of tea, so meh.

I'm sure there are some good candidates from the golden age of gaming as well but I'm blanking right now.

I think you answered your own question...a game "holds up" by continuing to be fun and addicting even when the production values no longer impress. Games like FFVII don't tend to hold up well because their actual gameplay mechanics are pretty dull and repetitive, so once time makes their graphics dated, there really isn't much left except Nobuo Uematsu's excellent music.