Votes sent and this is one of the most exciting years for me. Over half of my list all reside within my top games of all time list and one of my HMs is actually a pretty bad game (and shouldn't make the countdown), but I'll explain that one once this countdown concludes.

I'll just go on record to say between the two, I would like to just keep going in order with 2006 because we only have six left. 2000 was an outlier at the time, so if we stay on track like we've been, we could end on 2001 before evolving to something different.

But that's just me and I'm good to participate in any way decided.

@shoulderguy I really like that idea.

@dipset I'm in that same boat, as I can compile at least four games up until '97. Earlier than that, I don't have much and what I DO have is one, MAYBE two games in a given year.

(At the top, I started this meaning to leave a couple paragraphs, and come to find out I had a lot to say. Apologies for this wall.)

As always, I'm personally down to keep going with GOTY countdowns at the pace everyone else seems fit.

And on that point, I believe the reason why the "other" topic list ideas have been/are a little more difficult to inspire enthusiasm/interest is many topics might be a little too focused and not as many people have as much experience/knowledge about them.

To better explain, I'll use DIPSET's examples of Rockstar games or Arcade Racers: These are two categories I can't speak upon, and because I only know me, myself, and I, I DON'T know if anyone else is like me and can't comment on these picks. So if there aren't enough people to focus on a topic, it wouldn't make logistical sense for the organizer. Now take that approach and apply it to all kinds of other ideas. Some out-of-thin-air examples: Best Fighting games, Wii games, Final Fantasies, Endings, etc. These are more singular to certain groups and while I could go on about Final Fantasy, I would be completely ill-equipped to discuss best games on a console I didn't own, or a genre I have NO experience in (but I would still enjoy reading such a list!)

And this is why I think the GOTY countdowns are (and have been) the strongest: It's a definitive, and most crucially, unmovable set criteria (the year), and ANY game applies. This allows someone like me who'll barely scrape together four or five games for the 2021 list equal enjoyment as someone who has played more than 10, while simultaneously not needing 50 people to participate (though the more, the better), but can still survive off of 20 or so. Topics like best characters, beginnings/endings, best weapons, etc. are all intriguing, but we would be dealing with practically ALL games at that point, and I fear those kinds of things would be too spread out with the little amount of activity this place has. So there would need to be some form of a restriction or qualifier (more on that in a moment).

Which brings me to the top 100 list. Again, I would love to try, but I stand firm in my original point of participation because the more people, the more games, the more accurate it comes across as. So I'm with DIPSET here as well: It's a novel idea, we just don't have the bodies to make it worth it.

So: ALL of this post to put out an idea: For anyone who wants to (and it's completely OK if no one does), we put down AS MANY topics of a countdown as possible. If any ideas and topics are of interest from multiple people (whether it be people can put together a substantial ballot or are just fascinated to see what such a list could be), we can take up that idea. Now some topics would have to be adjusted in the voting process, but here's a few of what I'm thinking to hopefully explain:

Best games on (Insert console here)
Ranking every (Insert franchise here)
Best Melee weapons/"Gun" weapons/"Other" weapons
Best games from (Insert Publisher/Developer/one of the Big Three)

To come up with the above, I did something I would like to suggest you all can do as well to get your ideas flowing: Go to the search screen, and type 'Kill Your Babies!' for "Titles and Posts." There are a TON of those threads I ran years ago (Jesus... Years... was not expecting that...) and there are MANY topics there. Keep paging through (or not, no pressure) to find any ideas that you think would be good enough for the current Countdown format our GOTYs are.

So, to wrap all this up: I'm completely down with continuing on to 2006, taking a break (like we're doing for our own Hall of Greats at the moment), or pivoting to a new topic/idea, but if we DO pivot, we need to workshop/brainstorm the topic and how it'll work.

If anyone cares, thanks a ton, and if you're so inclined, please leave your thoughts/ideas as well!

Funnily enough, this topic is what I've chosen to spend my Community Showcase submission on. But I go not just through 2022, but beyond that as well. And instead of five, I have 16 (not counting games already in Early Access on PC I want to get console ports). So once the Showcase is over, I'll come back with the complete list (Console ports included).

@shoulderguy I normally would take some (or all) of my post to make mention of it, however, my submission for this month has already been written up and the topic I've chosen has no room for me to squeeze it in. I might be able to say something next month (if no one does for this coming Showcase), but I'm unsure right now.

@shoulderguy This was super insightful! Thanks for the recap.

@dipset I just looked it up and the video review GT has it at a 9.2. Still an excellently rated game by the reviewer though.

And there they are! Both Mass Effect and Portal are incredible games and I would say practically any game in our top half of the list could have a case being the 2007 GOTY. I'm already going to get out ahead of tagging fellow voters before going in-depth about both games, because there are a LOT of you, so I'll just say a lot of great tastes! Also, apologies for the massive wall of text and because of that, I just want to give my thanks to @Shoulderguy for taking up the mantle on these lists at the top here so you don't have to scroll to find out why this massive post has your name in it.

As for the games, first I'll start with Mass Effect. Now, while I've said a couple times I didn't get into the trilogy after the fact, I do want to go into detail why the first is my favorite of the bunch. To get the obvious negatives out of the way first: Yes, exploring planets is kind of pointless because they're mostly empty spaces with an infamously unwieldy vehicle. And yes, finding sidequests can be a chore, as I always have to go back to the Citadel several times more than necessary to see if anyone new populates somewhere. But despite that, I LOVE the origins of the crew of the Normandy.

Getting to meet and know characters for the first time who are iconic to not just Mass Effect but gaming as a whole was an incredible experience for me. It felt like a small, tight-knit group with Garrus, Wrex, Tali, and Liara being the standouts, and the conversations and adventures I felt were the strongest whereas Mass Effect 2 balloons your team to being twice the size it needs to be with some redundant characters. Not here. Even with the two weak links of Ashley and Kaidan, they don't stick around long with how quick you can recruit Garrus, Wrex, and Tali. And the DEEP amount of world building and lore with a fully voiced Codex does a WONDERFUL job at engaging you with key concepts, terms, and the history of the galaxy up to that point.

Beyond that, I'm one of the few that actually PREFERS the heat sink to the guns as opposed to the ammo system that pivoted at ME 2. Granted, with my New Game Plus file, I have like an exceptional Assault Rifle outkitted with mods that pretty much one-hit everything, but still, the base gameplay is solid. That, and I feel the RPG elements give the most freedom in ME 1 because in ME 2 and ME 3, progression feels more and more limited and there's less incentive to personalize your team the further the series goes.

And the story is incredible. Hunting down Saren, becoming the first Human Spectre, rescuing Liara, fighting Benezia, Virmire and Ilos all are the most standout moments to me. Going around and looking at just absolutely BEAUTIFUL planets with such a calming track of music has always made me wish there was a program that could randomly slideshow all the ME 1 planets with their descriptions as a screen-saver. Sure, many instances it's just selecting a planet, reading a prompt, and MAYBE get to land might be tame, but I've burnt out on constantly holding down a trigger to scan for minerals the older games have you do. It sits inside my top 20 games of all time at 18th.

Moving on to Portal, this was something I tried when I saw the demo available via the XBLA, and it HOOKED me. I remember feeling super smart (which, for the record, I'm most certainly not) being able to get through the whole game in a single sitting. I knew about the meme, but not about seeing the inner workings of Aperture. That was probably the thing I loved most. Going around, nosing into the darkest corners and finding the dens of Rattmann. The thing that probably hinders Portal the most is once you know the solutions, you kind of need to put it down for quite some time to give yourself the opportunity to forget them. Outside of that, I think it suffers without having any replay-ability. But still, I think Portal was the first game I played that adopted FPS concepts, but not an FPS itself. It felt fresh and new to switch up the mechanics and I don't think many games since have tried to do something like that. This barely sits in my top 40 games at 39th overall.

Now onto my picks, with words on the games that didn't make it from bottom up:

GOTY: Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
2.) Mass Effect
3.) Portal
4.) God of War II
5.) (HM) Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition
6.) (HM) Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
7.) (HM) Super Mario Galaxy
8.) (HM) Halo 3
9.) (Didn't make the cut) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
10.) (Didn't make the cut) Peggle
11.) (Didn't make the cut) Crackdown
12.) (Didn't make the cut) Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
13.) (Didn't make the cut) Assassin's Creed
14.) (Didn't make the cut) Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron
15.) (Didn't make the cut) Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
16.) (Didn't make the cut) Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters: This game is AWFUL. The first of two games NOT developed by Insomniac, the balancing of weapons is terrible, level design is uninspired, the story is incredibly forgettable, and the actual gameplay felt horrible. Size Matters is a HARD skip, and to this day, while still technically canon, it's never really referenced. Hands down one of the worst games I've ever played. It makes me angry.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Being a BIG fan of the original Battlefront II, when I say there was a Battlefront for PSP just after I got my own, I quickly picked it up without doing too much research. And I wish I did, because as I started playing, the controls felt OFF. The single nub for movement and the camera controls assigned to others threw me and it didn't feel good. I don't have my copy any more to test if these memories are still accurate, but I played two matches, put it down, and never went back to it. It still bums me out to this day.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2: I sort of intimated it a tiny bit during my CoD post, but the reason why I got into military shooters was my father who is BIG into these games and technically, it was his copies I played, and from what I remember, GRAW 2 was whatever with a VERY short campaign. I never touched the multiplayer so I can't speak about that.

Crackdown: At the time Crackdown was a fun time in the moment, as figuring out how to take out each game's Lieutenants was a fun challenge. And of course, so. Many. Orbs. Figuring out how to reach the different types of orbs did pad out the game, but the thing about Crackdown that fundamentally soured me was at the end, when you find out the twist (which isn't good), I discovered you couldn't make a new game without a completely different profile/account. This is also a problem with Sunset Overdrive. Because of this, I couldn't take on the gangs again, and as a result, I never want to, nor can, pick it up again.

Peggle: Super casual, but a game focusing on mixing up pinball ideas with brick-breaker like gameplay and powerups combined to make a decent time. Though, like I said about CoD, it's one of those games I wish I could forever remove it from my profile. It's too shallow for me today. I went through quite the phase between this and military shooters.

Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition: Now, I needed clarification on eligibility and because there was enough remade, this version is considered a remake. The graphical style is gorgeous as the updates to the sprites, both your party and enemies, are a joy to look at. This version is on PSP and it's practically the original with the addition of four super boss filled endgame dungeons, plus a massive mega dungeon of 100 floors, all of which are optional. It does suffer from not telling you where you need to go unless you talk to every NPC possible to get a hint and even then, knowing HOW to get there also presents a major challenge. If anyone plays it, I recommend playing with a guide. Regardless, for me, it's still a fun time, though in terms of Final Fantasies, I would say it's 7th and I would consider in my "Good" tier, and it's my 52nd favorite game.

If anyone read any of this, thank you for your attention. I can't wait for the next one which should be our contemporary 2021 list... Spoilers, I'm STRUGGLING to get enough games done from this year to qualify. 2021 didn't have much for me.