Actually, I think that this list is a bunch of crap. Maybe they have a good reason for a couple of those games, but for the most part they just thought of every AAA game they could think of, and then stuck them on this list. Probly just to be controversial. I mean, Mario 64 overated?? Everybody knows what that game did for the industry. Halo?? HL 2??? Overrated?? Sorry, don't think so

This guy has a lot wrong.

I can see HL2 as being slightly over rated, but not top 10 most over rated of all time. It was a great game, those spaces should be reserved for shitty games that somehow gained popularity.

Halo was revolutionary- it introduced the fps genre to millions of people in a very effective way, even if a agree that it had some flaws and generally wasnt as good as some comparable PC fps games.

But my main argument with this list is with the inclusion of MArio 64- which was truly a great game, the best 3D platformer ever created. Yeah, it was hard to walk in a straight line- but it was also the first game to give people so much freedom in a 3d environment with great huge worlds. And the platformer isnt dead at all. Super Mario Sunshine was a good, game, and the Paper Marios have been great.

What's with Joystiq suddenly linking to all these articles that were obviously written by people who have no freaking clue what they are talking about?

First, there was the Mario article claiming him a sellout for making such fantastic games as Super Smash Bros and Double Dash... now we get this load of crap.

Please stop feeding this absolute garbage, if I wanted this crud I'd go back to readng IGN.

Wow these games.net people must be living in some sort of quantum-scientificy-big-hole....or something....because again they are way off the mark.

Mario 64 over-rated!? I still play it today for god's sake and it's still amazing!

Halo was repetitive I agree with that, but calling Halo 2 a masterpiece is a bit fo a stretch. What about the framerate drops in that? Or the extremely crappy in-game cutscenes (you mean cut-in scenes?). Halo 2's only redeemings factors were the online play and the fact that Microsoft is so big that no assembled army of little nerds, of any size, would be able to fight their way to the door of Bill Gates' palace, somehow find him in there and tell him to stop ripping us off and give us the REAL conclusion to Halo 2!

GTA:SA....of course it was over-rated, but everyone knows that by now.

I actually have to agree with a lot of this list. The only one that I would disagree with is Mario 64, which is still great to this day. I played through the entire game twice and still wanted more. Just fying around outside the castle and the first level is fantastic. Otherwise I think this list is spot on.

I actually have to agree with a lot of this list. The only one that I would disagree with is Mario 64, which is still great to this day. I played through the entire game twice and still wanted more. Just fying around outside the castle and the first level is fantastic. Otherwise I think this list is spot on.

OK, this list sucks!

Mario was the FIRST REAL 3D Platformer Game

Halo and Half Life 2 also do not belong on the List, Maybe Halo 2 but not Halo 1.

I kinda agree about GT4, I see screens that look amazing but when I bought the game it didn't look as good as the Movies and Screens That sony released. The gameplay is good but I think Forza is slight better but thats just my opinion. GT4 is still a good game.

Halo revolutionary, and for "introducing" the FPS? Goldeneye, which sold nearly as well for the Nintendo64, did that years before that genre got stale.

Pretty sorry list, except for GTA:SA which is a sorry game. Nothing new except for music and the ability to work out and eat. WOW. What leaps and bounds improvement over Vice City.

Opinions are like...etc etc. But I do agree with his assessment of MGS-2.

And Im a MGS junkie.

I agree with the list and with Jon. The list is pretty accurate except for Mario 64.

Don't get me wrong, alot of these games are very good, but overrated.

I agree with Jon, the list is pretty well done except for Mario 64. Being the biggest FPS geek ever, I could spend days telling you how horribly dissapointing Doom 3 and HL2 were. But I won't, because I don't have to. Time will speak volumes more than I ever could.

Sam writes: Halo was revolutionary- it introduced the fps genre to millions of people in a very effective way...

No, Halo was not revolutionary in any way. I'm sorry, but 4 player DM was done by Quake about uhm, 6 years prior. Halo was simply the flagship title for the Xbox. If you had an Xbox, you had to have Halo. That isn't a testament to Halo, that's a testament to how shitty the game selection was at launch for the Xbox.

While Half-Life 2 was bound to be overrated (any massively hyped and hugely anticipated game/movie/album/etc. will be) I don't feel it belonged in their top 10. Even more distressing on this point is that it also showed up as #4 in their "Ten Modern Classics Every Gamer Should Own" article. This terrible, terrible site really needs some editorial control. It's overrated... but it's a modern classic that you must own!

MILES: You don't have an HDTV do you? The game is absolutely gorgeous in 1080i... of course, you have to turn that on EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PLAY THE GAME which is a titanic pain in the ass... and it suffers from the same "Please please please watch a replay" user interface crap that the GT series is known for.

I'd definitely take Forza over GT any day. And I was a huge fan of GT3. The small car roster did not bother me much. The way GT4 is organized, the interface... lots of it is just ruining the experience and making getting to the next race a bigger chore than it needs to be for the sake of being different. Forza has its own issues in the interface market, but they are much less than that of GT4 (I gave up on a racing game with a competent interface years ago, now I just settle for it not being entirely bad). If you want a true travesty of a racing game, get your hands on the steaming turd that is Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition. Sweet crap, if they could make an interface any worse they'd have to try pretty hard.

Half Life 2 had to be overrated. You guys are thinking "wait, Half Life 2 was a great game" and thinking it's wrongly on this list... not so. You're forgetting the "overrated" part of the equation. It's not a list of bad games. It's a list of overrated games. Half Life 2 was heralded as the panacea of gaming, the last game that would be made. Every game coming after HL2 was going to be a mod based on the HL2 engine, remember? It was a great game, but it certainly didn't live up to that.

What I want to know is where is every game released by EA in the past 5 years? They should have owned that list.

Halo had huge Landscapes, vehicles, great weapons, great action, incredibly fun game play, great A.I (both Team and Enemy A.I) and it had a great atmosphere (Even though some of it was a bit repetetive.. But woulden't all of the Places on Halo look the same if they were built by the same race?). How was it not revolutionary? Back in 2001 there wasn't a single game like it. Nowadays there are...so Halo influenced these games and influenced the revolution in FPS game. So yea.

Oh and the Multiplayer in Halo was good, all the different game types and the many different maps that looked great. Not to mention the Vehicles in Multiplayer.

Halo MP was made to be played on Lan, how many other games at the time ON CONSOLES could be played with 16 players?

i think its funny that they say these games are all over rated but they still have an option to buy the game from their site.

Steve, I have a request: stop going to this site. Personally, I don't even care about the games on the list. I don't have any emotional investment in a single game on there. So what is my complaint? The writers on games.net are simply bad. That's all there is to it. The first guy didn't seem to know the definition of the term "sellout," and this second guy, though I didn't think it was possible, is even worse.

Look at the list: SIX of those games were released less than a year ago. Two were in 2001, and two were in 1997-ish. What a sampling! I'm having trouble picking some better ones off the top of my head, but if I were tasked to write an article, I'm sure I could be pressured to either mine my own memory banks a little deeper, or at the very least do a little research. Here’s one: Phantasmagoria. There! I thought of one that’s a better example than a bunch of sequels for which nobody ever believes the hype anyway.

So again, please stop posting articles from this site. It is no good.

Playing both GT4 and Forza at the moment

Forza 100% arcade 78% carrer
108 hrs online

Gt4 48% carrer

I have to say GT4 with the steering wheel and surround sound is the best auto sim for a console.

Forza is great on XBL but i find the physics to be a bit to forgiving. i still love it and will play it till forza2.

GT4 is still the KING in my book

Personal opinion.

Well of course everybody argues with something on a list like that. They wouldn't be over-rated if they didn't have any fans. That being said I disagree with the Mario 64 inclusion. Just because it hasn't aged particularly well doesn't mean it's over-rated.

Halo belongs... give it up. I don't know about Gran Turismo and Half-Life 2 though it seems there was a lot of hype right at launch but it seems to have faded which says to me that everybody came to their senses.

Not like Halo where people keep defending the revolutionary premise of driving vehicles, shooting aliens, a second rate sci-fi story and a boring single player campaign, but you know... multiplayer is fun. Games like Golden Eye and Perfect Dark were more fun... I think Halo is too low on the list.

San Andreas is the king though... and I'd say I'd have to agree. I don't know if Vice City was just better or if I'm just tired of blowing up ambulances.

Eh? Halo is not boring in any way, I could play that game for hours and not get bored.

OK, put it this way.

How many people do you think bought Halo when it first came out 4 years ago were dissapointed with it?

I absolutely disagree with the inclusion of Super Mario 64. That game is still playable today. The DS version also sold over 1 million copies. That game was revolutionary, not Tomb Raider. He says Tomb Raider innovated more than Mario. That's a joke. In fact, 3D games became popular after Mario 64 was released. The game was ahead of it's time for it's time, and is still great, even today. This guy obviously doesn't know what he's talking about; and like someone else said, it's funny that he has those games for sale on his site.

THis was actually a good list. I was expecting to see a bunch of games that just were not liked by critics. I also understand most of the arguments for the games on the list.

Halo, HL2 Doom3, Duke Nukem.... a FPS is an FPS is an FPS. Once you've seen one youve seen them all. I hope the producers at G4 are listening...i don't like the game any more because Morgan Webb says she likes it.

Super Mario 64, was a good game in the sence of it being a mario game but was a bit bland. Donkey Kong 64 held my interest much more and was more fun with the same basic gameplay.

GTA:SA is really GTA:3 part 3. They haven't made a major graphical upgrade or gameplay change since gta3. I had more fun the first time through it. You run around shoot people, blow up some cars/trucks and bang ho.... I mean have hot coffee.

i think the Halo and Halo 2 campaign modes are horrificly dissapointing for all the hype they recieved, and that DEFINES overrated.

please bear in mind, people, that this is not a list of BAD games (and had you actually read the paragraphs associated with each selection you'd know that). it's simply a list of games that recived too much hype for all they really are.

BTW: I think Madden deserves a place on this list. Every year we get this huge promotion of "just another Madden game" It been the freakin same since it hit the PS2.
The rest of the EA Sports title all follow suit but Madden is by far the biggest offender.
The best thing that happened to sports gaming was the 2k games but EA afraid of some competition ruined that.

The very inclusion of Mario 64 releases any sense of credibility this list has. Thereby making his arguments of the other games null.

GT4 was awesome due to the new tracks, missions (I still can't beat mission 34) and cars. There are a few grips I have with GT4 (but they are not the AI or damage modeling) but overall it is a kick ass racing game. Forza is not the King yet.

MGS2, too many codec dialogue and the stupid story behind Otacon is the only complaint I have. Gameplay was awesome though.

These guys just want to attract attention by spewing controversy.

How does this moron have a job? MARIO 64? Maybe if that was a list of some of the greatest games ever....

I agree: GDA SAN Andreas No 1
But i Disagree with MARIO 64
For me Halo 2 was the biggest disapointment. It would be for me as No 2 in the list.

Halo 1 single player was great, Halo 2 single player wasn't. Halo 2 should be in the List Not Halo 1.

Anyone that thinks Halo 1 single player is rubbish needs to die.

Frankly I personally think that Mario 64 is overrated. Not that it's a bad game, just that it's very overrated. I remember the first time I played it I felt it was merely ok. They'd tried to translate a Mario game into 3d for no applicable reason other than the fact that they could do it and ended up with something that didn't really feel that much like a traditional Mario or platform game. It had strong platform elements, but the goal-based levels made it feel more like a sort of platform/puzzle hybrid.

On the other hand I also tend to favor 2d to 3d whenever possible. It's just my heritage I guess, but I don't see the point of cramming games into 3d unless there's a compelling and well-defined reason to do so... far too many modern games seem to be 3d just because the system can make them 3d... not because it actually contributes to the gameplay.

here is what Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear UK) thought of GT4:
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1722790,00.html

Someone should tell Jeremy Clarkson about Forza and that the N?rgring was in PGR2 - 2 years ago.

Hey, look at me, I'm going to disagree with EVERYBODY:

GTA: SA shouldn't be number 1 on that list, it shouldn't even be on that list, but I won't argue that it is overrated. I really expected a bigger map (one that rivals True Crime, it takes a good while to explore that LA) and better ally A.I., and the working out + eating was just inconvenient, not to mention the inability to use your own cars in the street races. However, it did have more depth than the V.C. and GTA 3. Just go look at the GameFaqs guides.

I'd have to agree with Dignan17, there are so many other games that should be on this list. I don't even know why I read the link knowing it was games.net.

For starters. For someone that asked "Why are they posting these bullshit articles?" Here's why.

"Posted Aug 11, 2005, 2:00 PM ET by Steve Parsons"

Steve Parsons is an extremely negative ass. Basically anything negative that comes up here is spawned from him. That James Ransom-Wiley dude is pretty solid though.

Heh, I disagree with a few. Mario64(i didn't hear any hype about this game, no one talks about it really, but it was an agreed solid game that sold the N64).

Half life 2... Over-rated? Yeah fuckin' right. That game is amazing. Don't believe me? AIAS gave it a ton of achievement awards. That's the top of the top american awards for games(to my knowledge). It's a REALLY fun game that actually brought me into it. I normally don't ever give FPS the time of day for single player, but that game was just too great to pass up.

I'm sorry man, but Forza + Component Video Cables + HDTV = instagasm.

WORST
LIST
EVER!
Nothing else needs to be said.. :/

Also an MGS-junkie, and MGS2's plot isn't half as bad when you see it all again. Head on over to my site if you want the full 4-hour movie experience: http://www.newzealandstory.com/mgs/

The only real flaw I see with the list is that ZELDA:Ocarina of Time is not #1. Gamerankings.com has it calculated as the number one game of all time. Spinning hearts for health and an economy based on slashing the grass with your knife, or throwing rocks. One of the first tasks you are asked to do is help a man move some stones. Instead of him giving you money for the work you did, gems pop out of the rocks. It would have been so easy to make the economy and health system more appropriate to the genre. It is like they went out of their way to make it cute/stupid. I wished that wasn't the case because I had pre-ordered the Gold cartridge and wanted to love the game.

I agree with many of the readers about Mario 64. I do not believe it was overrated.

Just trying to be controversial.
I totally disagree with GTA-SA, the HUGE map with NO loading was a HUGE improvement, and while there wasn't any huge changes to gameplay I think of SA as the final masterpiece in which the previous games were the works to reach that masterpiece.

Agree with TombRaider SEQUELS, original was just a good game at the time.

Agree that GT4 was all hype with no substance, I'm still upset with giving Sony $$ for that game, TRUELY dissapointing.

Choosing mostly sequels (although tough to find original games these days) is just too easy, of course they're not going to be as innovative as the original great games, but you don't mess with what garnered you the hype in the first place!

Come on, Joystiq. First that horrible Netjak list, now this? These sites are obviously just trying to drum up hits by posting "controversial" (read insulting crap) articles, and you're playing right into their hands.

Please don't feed the shock jocks!

Ok, the person who wrote this obviously didn't really think about it too much.
His plan it seems was to pick the top games on all platforms and nitpick all the little things that he may not like.

How about the god awful games that somehow remain exremely popular?

Although they are not crap, I think the Diablo games should be on this list, for the snore factor.

How 'bout every PS1/PS2 Final Fantasy game? Sure the stories may be nice and complex, but they still use the same basic play mechanics from the Nes/SNES days. Oh lets just walk around till we randomly encounter a battle with a monster thats completely invisible till we run into it. I know that the next one looks to alleviate this, but it should have happened long ago, in FFVII.
Oh and the Tenchu games were never that good, a fact that is just NOW coming to light.
Brute Force on Xbox was given a lot of high scoring reviews, it was just average.
Morrowind, Given great reviews for being huge and immersive. Was actually huge and lacking variety.
I could write more but I'm running out of space .

Wow he put Half Life 2 and mario 64 up there and halo 1, but not halo 2? What fucking idiot, he should just stop writing right now he's proven he knows nothing about games.

There's no Final Fantasy 8 or 9 up there? No EA crap products like Battlefield, Def Jam Vendeta, EA sports crap, or any other highly overrated EA money making trash? Give me a damn break.