Recently, I’ve been watching and reading a lot of top 10 lists. I started to notice a trend in some of them: THEY ARE ALL ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME. To see if these games were really worth being on top of all these lists, I got a few of them. It wasn’t worth the effort to find them all. So without further ado, I give you the 5 most overrated games of all time.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

If you haven’t heard of MW2, there’s something wrong. Infinity Ward’s latest (and probably final, because of the lawsuit with Activision) entry to the Call of Duty series is probably the most popular game to come out the entire decade. Within the first 24 hours of it’s release, it sold about 4.7 million copies. That’s a lot. The issue with this is that it’s just another war shooter. The game follows the same war shooter plot, where you fight in russia and kill terrorists. The game follows the same mechanics of aiming and shooting. The graphics are just the same old war fps graphics, destroyed buildings, nighttime in a few levels, you know the drill. So why would anyone buy this game over something like Battlefield Bad Company, which was released a year earlier? Because it’s Call of Duty, and because it’s rated M. And everyone knows that playing rated M games makes you cool.

4. Super Mario World

Super Mario World came out on the SNES in 1990, and introduced lots of cool new stuff that you just couldn’t get on the NES. The game had a lot of new power ups,  a map screen, Yoshi and his record scratch voice, and a lot of levels with much better graphics, thanks to the SNES being a 16-bit console. If you look at other lists, or ask around, a lot of people will call Super Mario World the best mario game, or even the best platformer. Sure, Super Mario World is pretty fun, but definitely not the best. The game’s strange spinning jump move and the turtles just disappearing when you jump on them made the game mechanics feel weird and different. I’ve never really been able to sit and play SMW for very long, and that’s why it is at #4 on the list.

3. Call of Duty: Black Ops

Hey look, another CoD game on the list! Yes, it’s true, the call of duty games are a goldmine of overrated shooters. This game is on the list for one reason and one reason alone: People were calling it an amazing game and it was being talked about more than any other game, and it hadn’t even come out yet. Much like MW2, this is a case of “Slap call of duty on the front and they’ll buy it.” Think about it. Would you buy Black Ops if it wasn’t Black Ops? It could be the exact same game, but named something else, maybe “Behind Enemy Lines” or something. If you saw Behind Enemy Lines on the shelves, would you have bought it? Now see Call of Duty on the shelves, and people think that since it’s CoD, it’s going to be amazing, and I should go blog about how great this will be, OMG OMG OMG.

Whatever this is, I must buy it.

2. Team Fortress 2

Look around the steam community, or most online communities, and you will hear someone mention Valve. Valve has been around for a while, making games like Half Life 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. While it’s never managed to break though into people who don’t usually play video games (like CoD has), valve’s games have a big place on the internet. It was a hard choice, but in the end, Team Fortress 2 beat out HL2 and Garry’s Mod as the 2nd most overrated game, simply because of how much machinima you’ll find of it. So many people are talking about this game, and so many movies are being made about it, and the thing is, none of the youtube videos are really all that funny, and the game isn’t very entertaining either. I played it for about a half hour before getting bored. There’s a wide range of classes to pick from, but why bother, you know that there will be a guy there who spent like $100 in the store, and will singlehandedly kill your entire team without breaking a sweat.

1. Final Fantasy 7

It’s kind of ironic. Final Fantasy 7 tops every list of best RPGs, and here it is, topping this list as well. Don’t believe me? Go on youtube right now, and search “top 10 RPGs of all time.” Watch a few of the videos, and I can guarantee that at least two of the following will be on the list: Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy 7. Why did FF7 end up on the list? Because the other two games are fun. Chrono Trigger has a great storyline, Secret of Mana has a fun fighting system and great music, and Final Fantasy 7 just has 3D and that scene everyone has watched at least twice where sephiroth comes down and stabs Aeris, and then the blue ball thing bounces down the stairs while the sad piano music plays, and cloud just kinda watches he body lay there in the water, and you get the idea. It’s still a fun game and all, but there’s better games out there, and FF7 is always in front of them. And that’s why Final Fantasy 7 is the most overrated game ever made.