The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

[osmosisch]

Woops. You two are kind of a two-headed entity in my mind. Sorry.

[Ben X]

30 minutes ago, Henke said:

So, what's the verdict? What's THE BEST FPS GAME?

 

Hmm, let's see. Well, thanks to my having kept my list updated with colour-coding (and direct links to the first post discussing each game!), these are the ones I enjoyed most (spoilered for space):

 

Spoiler

 

DooM^TM (10/12/93) 

Quake (22/06/96)

Half-Life (19/11/98)

Gunman Chronicles (20/1/00) 

Serious Sam: First Encounter (23/03/01) 

Unreal II (03/02/03) 

Jedi Academy (17/09/03) 

Far Cry (23/03/04) 

DooM³ (03/08/04) 

Half-Life 2 + episodes (16/11/04) 

Star Wars: Republic Commando (17/02/05) 

Prey (11/07/06) 

BioShock (21/08/07) 

Portal (09/10/07) 

TimeShift (30/10/07) 

Crysis (13/11/07) 

Left 4 Dead 2 (17/11/09)

BioShock 2 (09/02/10) 

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den (31/08/10)

Portal 2 (19/04/11) 

Call Of Juarez Gunslinger (21/05/13) 

Superhot (25/02/15)

 

 

Out of those, I'd boil it down to DooM^TM, Quake, Half-Life, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, BioShock and Portal. Next I'll get rid of Far Cry (too many funnels and difficulty spikes), Bioshock (for the filler and the RPG rough edges) and Portal (not really a shooter). So that leaves the two id games and the two Half-Life games. It's tough, but I think the game I'd personally most want to replay is Half-Life 2, so I'll go with that one as the Official Objectively Best FPS Of All Time.

 

EDIT: no worries, osmosich, we pretty much are

[Laco]

Congrats Ben! People talk about wanting to get through backlogs but I've never seen anyone actually plan it out, let alone stick with the plan for so long without getting side-tracked. Thanks for the years of entertaining write-ups!

[Ben X]

Thanks!

 

Okay, one small final question to everyone. Through this process I've gained a lot of (often spoilerific, immersion-breaking) Steam cards, all of which I traded in for gems. So I now have 1,415 gems, along with a Broken Age booster pack containing three cards. Is there any process I can go through to turn these into actual store credit or free games? Or am I just going to have to hope that they do another gem-based auction sale at some point?

[osmosisch]

I think the play there was to sell them on the steam marketplace instead of gemify them? That's what I always do, made me abour EUR50 over the years. It does add up. No clue what to do with gems.

[Ben X]

I have the options "Pack Gems Into A Sack" or "Create Booster Pack..."

Also, my booster pack starts at $0.12 on the market, apparently, but maybe if I unpack it I can sell the cards separately for more?

[Henke]

I've sold some cards in the past but as they've made the process more complicated over the years I'm not really sure the work put into it is worth it any more.

 

18 hours ago, Ben X said:

It's tough, but I think the game I'd personally most want to replay is Half-Life 2, so I'll go with that one as the Official Objectively Best FPS Of All Time.

 

Yeah, I think I'd agree with that pick.

[thepaulhoey]

5 hours ago, Ben X said:

Thanks!

 

Okay, one small final question to everyone. Through this process I've gained a lot of (often spoilerific, immersion-breaking) Steam cards, all of which I traded in for gems. So I now have 1,415 gems, along with a Broken Age booster pack containing three cards. Is there any process I can go through to turn these into actual store credit or free games? Or am I just going to have to hope that they do another gem-based auction sale at some point?

 

I leave them to sit in my inventory because it's not a business model I like at anymore, so I'd rather not take part in it. Even when I did sell them(pre convoluted gem system) I was lucky to sell one for more than €0.12 before Valve's cut so it only ever really amounted to a few euro off a game at some point. I know they've made trading more laborious over the years so maybe you can't sell cards directly anymore?

[Ben X]

I decided to trade most of my gems for a booster pack then unpack that plus my existing one and sell the resulting six cards (once Steam has waited for a week to approve my laptop or whatever). That'll only get me, like, 30p, and I'll have an annoying leftover pile of 200ish gems, but at least it's cleared my inventory up a bit. I just need to keep trading any new cards in for gems then, once I get to the lowest amount of gems I can get a booster pack for (600ish?), do the same again. Maybe I'll get it up to a quid some day and get a free game!

[jennegatron]

you can definitely directly post your cards to the marketplace still. they're rarely worth more than $.03 - $.05. It is a pain though, you need to post them for sale, pick a price and then approve the posting via their terrible phone app.

[Laco]

I wanted to come in and be all like "nooo don't convert to gems, the exchange rate is awful", but honestly the rate of return even selling on the marketplace makes expending any effort in the whole system pointless. The odd card will sell for $0.30, maybe $1+ for foils, but $0.03 is normal and to discover the outliers you have to click through every last card. A single button to sell everything at once at a fair price would be the only way to make it all remotely worthwhile.

[Ben X]

Yeah, looking back, I converted loads of cards into gems and only got three back (could have got six at least, though, now I come to think of it). I probably lost out on a quid or two there, ah well.

[SecretAsianMan]

Are you still open to revisiting any of the games or are you sick of FPS's for the time being?  Namely I'm thinking of Left 4 Dead, TF2 (which we never did get around to playing), and maybe a handful of other co-op/multi games.

[Ben X]

I'd definitely be up for co-op, but it's going to have to be mainly restricted to times when my partner is away..!

[Salacious Snake]

Congrats, Ben.

[Roderick]

 

You did it! What a show to follow you all those years. Those many, many years. Congratulations! But maybe all of these games will feel very differently when you revisit them all, one by one, systematically, in a year or so?

[Ben X]

Thanks everyone! And Roderick, you're right, plus it'll be interesting to hear what you think of them as you'll be playing along with me.

[Roderick]

This calls for a good old-fashioned

[eot]

Congrats Ben, I enjoyed seeing your updates along the way, even when you ditched my favourite games

[Jutranjo]

You did it Ben, congrats!

[Salacious Snake]

I don't know what to do now, this was the only thread I was following on this forum. 

 

bye... thanks for... stopping by...

[Ben X]

Start your own one!

[Erkki]

Congrats!