This statement right here is your OPINION...my OPINION is that Melee is indeed the greatest game of this generation, and no, I'm not wrong...but neither are you...it's an OPINION...NOT A FACT...last I checked, an opinion can't be wrong...
Oh, opinions can indeed be wrong. Whoever told you otherwise was an idiot. You aren't special and you aren't a snowflake either, in case you were confused.
Opinions can be and often are wrong. Black people are evil, white people are good, aliens destroyed the WTC on 9/11, ect.
Its time that "opinions cannot be wrong" thing was nipped in the bud. They can be wrong, and yours is wrong.
Now, is it really possible to say whether one game is better than another? The answer is: maybe. We can look at a large number of factors - sales, reviews, ect. If multiple lines all point towards the same game, then we'd probably say "Well, that game is more likely to be the best", and conversely, if they don't all point towards any given game, then we'd be like "Its more difficult to tell". But in this case, we can look at, say, MGS 2, which got better reviews than SSBM and sold as many if not more copies, with probably about the same if not a smaller target audience.
I would tend to say there is some evidence to suggest that SSBM is not, in fact, the greatest game of the last generation. It is arguably the greatest fighting game, but its not the highest rated by critics, its not the best selling, and it wasn't enough to be a killer app.
And no, Melee players are NOT useless...
No, and I never said they were. People who end their posts with "Play Melee", believe that opinions cannot be wrong, and cannot read always are.
Well in online respects, we use the 360 as the ideal model!
Isn't battle.net the "ideal model"? Free, useful, and you can easily find a game.
I thought Brawl deserved GOTY because, unlike other GOTY nominees like Fallout 3, GTA IV and MGS4, I'm still playing it and enjoying it greatly. The three games I just mentioned were enjoyed for two months max before I got sick of them and felt like playing Smash Bros again.
A game isn't better because you play it for longer. This is the trap that many people who play RPGs fall into headlong.
Playing a game for a long period of time CAN indicate it is good... or it can indicate that it is just that sort of game, or is addictive, which isn't the same as being good.
Fighting Games and online multiplayer FPS games naturally have significantly longer lifespans than do other games, and MMORPGs have artificially inflated lifespans as well. The reason is partially addiction, and partially simply core gameplay functionality.
However, Fighting Games, online multiplayer FPS games, and MMORPGs are not the best games ever, and indeed games such as WoW are actually pretty poor games but suck up many hours of life.
Platformers such as Mario Galaxy will never have as much replay value as fighting games, but that doesn't mean that it is worse than an MMO or Counterstrike, say.
Fighting Games, FPSs, and MMOs have high hour value per dollar, particularly the former two. However, they don't necessarily have a high experience value per dollar as compared to, say, Super Mario Galaxy, and likewise they may not have as high of a fun per unit time value as Super Mario Galaxy or another similar game with lower replay value.
It is worth noting that which game is the "best" of any given generation has very variable values in these regards. The best SNES game was probably a platformer which actually was bundled with the system, and the N64's greatest game was likely either Mario 64 (an amazing platformer), Perfect Dark, or Goldeneye, and any of those three are strong contenders for the best game of their generation as well (though FFVII is up there, as far as video games go, as it is a definitive RPG, though FFIX actually got superior reviews).
I think hours spent on a video game are about as follows for me:
Neverwinter Nights
Super Smash Brothers Melee
Perfect Dark
Goldeneye
But Neverwinter Nights is not the best game I've ever played, despite having spent the most time on it, not even the best video game. It had incredible replay value, and was easy to play all the time, so I did so. I've beaten Mario 64 a couple times, and consider it superior to NWN, which isn't a very good game at all.
As for Yahtzee, his review is as worthless as any other game reviewers, but far, far more amusing and is worthless for different reasons. Paying him off doesn't really seem to be an option, but he does nothing to check his personal opinions at the door; Super Smash Brothers Brawl is just not the sort of game he'd enjoy, as he basically pointed out in the review and is obvious from every other review he's done. The fighting game genre is not
for him. This, as opposed to other game reviewers, which typically are paid to say nice things about whatever game, or simply do what Yahtzee does, thus equally well rendering their opinions worthless.
Fallout 3 wouldn't win because it isn't all that great of a game. Its fine, but Bioshock is basically in the same genre and much better.
Half the time, you cannot tell which game is the best until 10 years from now, when looking back people talk about X, and not Y. Planescape: Torment is still highly regarded however many years later, indicating it was better than people thought at the time, as are the Fallout games. Conversely, people barely even remember half the games which were around back then, and they are seldom referenced.