Welcome to the second in an ongoing series of Golgotron Panels; where we ask our lovely group of writers to answer a question about their personal gaming habits and opinions.

What game do you judge all others upon? What is your benchmark video game? There are some games that aren’t really good, but aren’t really bad either. These mediocre games were good, but the really didn’t do anything well. Because of this, when you play another game, the statement “Well it was better/worse than X” helps you sum up the experience.

Alexander
For me, Donkey Kong 64 was that game. At the time, I wasn’t able to get many games outside of my birthday/christmas. Because of which, I would play pretty much anything I had. After memorizing the DK rap and finishing the game, I realized that I wasn’t sure if I actually had fun playing it. I did beat the game though, so I know it was worth playing. It just wasn’t anything special.

Tristan
I have two, one for handheld gaming and one for console gaming. For handhelds, I hold most games up to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time on GBA. I bought this in my early days of gaming, when a quote on the box made me believe it had to be good. In reality, it was not that great of a game, but it was decent. The controls were mostly solid, the combat wasn’t very advanced, and the story was the very definition of mediocre (at least when translated to the GBA, I can’t speak to the console versions). For consoles, it would have to be Gun. The graphics, while good, were not anything to write home about, the story was essentially just a loose framework to justify merciless killing, and the combat/controls were both just under par.

Josh
Secret of Mana, I can’t really expound on it though.

Cory
It’s really a tough question to answer because I have different
benchmark games for different genres. If you look at RPG’s I tend to
compare everything to Persona 3, which in my opinion encompassed all
the great reasons to play an RPG. It had a fantastic story with great
character development, and it had an intuitive battle system. If you
look a platformers I’m going to go old school and say SMB3; to this
day a perfect piece. No major flaws or glitches, diverse worlds,
inventive power-ups, the works. I guess if I just based the question
off fun, and overall enjoyment of a game, the pinnacle would be Shadow
of the Colossus. Again, I recognize that its tough to compare some
games to others, but I do more often than not find myself asking, “How
does this game compare to SOTC?” There was some kind of black magic in
that game that I can’t describe, it just sucks you in. Its the single
embodiment of everything I stand for in video games. Hell, it inspired
me to get a “weak spot” tattoo, and its doubtful any other game could
make me do that.