Lurker > MrSmartGuy

#65 - TimeSplitters 2 (GCN, my GotY for 2002)


I really didnt enjoy first-person shooters until the addition of a second joystick. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Turok, Doom, Quake, nothing ever clicked with me until the Gamecube, and Timesplitters 2 was an amazing start to the genre. It never took itself too seriously, and the game was much better for it. I generally prefer arcade shooters over serious, realistic ones, and Timesplitters 2 definitely fell in the former category. My friends and I would spend hours a day doing deathmatches. Monkey is banned. Way too hard to hit.

Man, 2002 had a lot of really big releases that I played and didn't like. My only other games on the list were SA2:B and THPS4. Well, Vice City, MGS2, Metroid Fusion, and Mario Sunshine were good to me, but just not quite good enough for my list.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Can also highly recommend both Hotel Dusk/Last Window.

Last Window only came out in PAL, so if you wanna get that one legitimately, be prepared to import. It's worth it, though.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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YES GHOST TRlCK

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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I recommend DDLC as well. Here's a write-up I did in the sports discord channel ranking topic I'm heading up.

For the one time in my list, I refuse to go too far into why I enjoyed this game so much. I know were more than 2 years removed from when this game took the internet by storm, but if you somehow have never heard of this game and dont mind a 3 hour read, I highly recommend checking it out. Its free. Go search for it on Steam and grab it. Dont look at the tags or the reviews; just download it and see for yourself what its about. It is not your run-of-the-mill dating sim. It. goes places.

Caveat: if you suffer from depression or have ever had a bad experience with someone near you having suicidal thoughts or tendencies, please do not play this game. It is not for everyone. That said, it had me glued to my screen until I finished it, and there are a good 10-15 moments that will absolutely stick with me forever.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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No and Maybe

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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*looks at your last 8 or so updates*

And that's why Zero Time Dilemma is bad.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#66 - WarioWare: Twisted! (GBA, 2004)


I love WarioWare. All of its games are very good (though I never played Gold). If this list covered my top 150, I would probably have included 4 games in the series. But this is a top 100 and Twisted! is definitely my favorite. Most of the other games had an obvious new gimmick to take advantage of. Microgames started the series, Touched had a touchscreen to work with, and Smooth Moves had a motion controller. Twisted was just like. what if we put a gyro sensor in a game and built around that?

And the games were pretty much all great. Twisted had the best Mona, Dr. Crygor, Orbulon, and most importantly, 9-Volt games in the series. It has a minigame where you sink a putt in NES Open Tournament Golf, so its the best by default. Its also where the song Mona Pizza came from, which is great stuff on its own.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#67 - Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds (PS3, 2007)


Hot Shots Golf is the best golf series on the market, and always has been. I never got around to looking into it until Hot Shots Golf 3, but ever since then, they have always been my go-to golf games. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds was the first (and only, somehow) foray into the PS3 era, and it was glorious. It introduced the Advanced Shot, which deviates from the 3-press bar system that the game was built on, and adds a new, welcome feel to the game.

The main draw for me was the online portion, though. For the first time, they had fleshed out lobbies and online tournaments that I would play daily for a good many months of my life. There was also a fansite for the game, where diehard fans ran their own inclusive tournaments and kept high scores. I took part in a few seasons of the big tournaments, and got 3rd in the world one year! This is probably the game I am objectively the best at out of any video game on earth. I love my golf games, and this is easily one of my favorites.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#68 - Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS, 2009)


With Dragon Quest VIII in my fairly recent memory, I was pleased to hear that one of the other best games in the series was getting a remake for the DS and coming stateside. I didnt know if it could live up to my expectations, but I was still super excited to give it a shot.

The game begins with you as a little boy, and you watch him grow up and overcome some true hardships. The passage of time over the course of the game allows for some really neat plot devices. The same many small subplots are relayed back-to-back as you continue to try to accomplish one overarching goal template exists, but the real draw to the story is definitely the main characters story and the choices he makes, and its a beautiful tale that teaches many valuable life lessons.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#69 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (GCN, 2002)


Tony Hawks Pro Skater established itself as basically an arcade game. You had 2 minutes to try and complete a number of objectives the game throws at you. If you have trouble doing one of them, youd have to start over from the beginning of the level and try again.

THPS4 bucks this trend by making even bigger sprawling levels and even more objectives that you can complete at your own leisure. This kinda ruins the whole arcade-y feel of the game, but on the other hand, it leads to a much more focused experience. For example, it allows for more ridiculous scenarios that they can change up the level for, that you wouldnt be able to get from a single level state that you only have 2 minutes to explore. It also allows for a much higher difficulty spike. There is one mission where you have to grind this super long cable for a solid 30 seconds around the perimeter of the entire level. Its a final test for how well you can hold a grind, and it would be absolutely impossible in the old format, because you could only have a maximum of 2 shots at it per run, because its so out of the way.

Also, some of the fun in earlier titles was trying to multitask and see how many objectives you could clear in a single 2 minute run. You dont have to worry about that here. While THPS3s highest score you ever had to get on a level was 500,000, THPS4 makes you get 1,500,000 in a single run. In fact, one of the objectives on not even the final level is to pull off a single combo that nets you 500,000 points. Since the game knows you arent multitasking for stuff anymore, it just asks so much more of you at once. It helps that you now have flatland tricks to accomplish these goals now, which are both fun, and extremely useful in finishing off absurdly long combos.

I have done a replay of all the Gamecube Tony Hawk games this past year. I was able to 100% Tony Hawk 3 in a matter of two days, probably about 12 hours. Tony Hawk 4 took me a few weeks; I would guess over around 40 hours. And it was a very fun 40 hours. After 4, they tried to focus more on the story in Tony Hawk's Underground, putting you in control of an up-and-coming hotshot skater with a less-than-supporting rival. And THUG2 went full-on Jackass mode, focusing more on doing weird shit with Bam Margera and his dysfunctional family. Neither THUG game stayed true to that arcade feeling of the first four games, and after that, the series truly fell off a cliff and never really recovered. Though the 1+2 Remake may instill a bit of hope? Who knows.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Uh, literally every single coach still playing in the AFC is from the Reid coaching tree. What?!

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Suprak the Stud posted...

On top of that, I cant determine why the hell some swipes do more damage than others. I ran out of swipes like eight consecutive times against Fuyuhiko

I don't even think the game tells you this, but people found it out later. If you do two swipes in the same direction and then a third in the opposite direction, that third swipe will do double damage. So if you go Left->Left->Right, the right swipe will be SUPER EFFECTIVE.


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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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WiggumFan267 posted...

I enjoyed watching the Game Grumps playing through Doki Doki, in lieu of playing it also

Still the best Game Grumps playthrough.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#70 - Doki Doki Literature Club (PC, 2018)


For the one time in my list, I refuse to go too far into why I enjoyed this game so much. I know were more than 2 years removed from when this game took the internet by storm, but if you somehow have never heard of this game and dont mind a 3 hour read, I highly recommend checking it out. Its free. Go search for it on Steam and grab it. Dont look at the tags or the reviews; just download it and see for yourself what its about. It is not your run-of-the-mill dating sim. It. goes places.

Caveat: if you suffer from depression or have ever had a bad experience with someone near you having suicidal thoughts or tendencies, please do not play this game. It is not for everyone. That said, it had me glued to my screen until I finished it, and there are a good 10-15 moments that will absolutely stick with me forever.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Anagram posted...

Go back and do the gun choice again, but this time the bullet is a blank. Is it truly just random?

It has a 50/50 shot every single time. I got mine back to back, but others have gone one way or the other like 6 times in a row, and they just assumed there was some other way to get past that lock.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

I mean, I guess I'll post two in a row, whatever.

#71 - SSX3 (PS2, 2003)



I never played the original SSX; in fact I had never even seen what it was like, so Im not sure why I was drawn to buying SSX Tricky for my shiny new Gamecube so early in its life cycle, but it was a truly amazing experience. It had awesome characters, amazing levels, and a perfect arcade-y snowboard draw to it that I hadnt felt since the Snowboard Kids days. And it came out of nowhere for me. Choosing Psymon and navigating him down the various slopes while he yelled psychotic things at everyone and everything around him was a grand old time. And those levels! Aloha Ice Jam, Snowdream, and the Tokyo Megaplex are ridiculously memorable stages that have stuck with me 20 years later. How could they top such a high bar?!

With SSX3, thats how. Instead of a handful of levels, they made one big mountain. Hows that better, you ask? Because that mountain is divided into 3 peaks, each of those peaks are considerably different from each other, and also house about 7 levels worth of content each. And you can just snowboard in between them. You can just go start at the top and skate all the way down to the bottom. Itll take a good half hour to do it, but you can. They pulled this off in 2003. Thats some 2010s level shit they did!

Theres also several new gameplay mechanics that were introduced that SSX just doesnt feel complete without anymore, like board presses and handplants. They made it possible to indefinitely continue a combo as long as youre good enough to keep it going. I still think Tricky has the more memorable levels, but my biggest SSX memories will always be running down one of 3s slopes listening to the DJ talk about my wipeouts as he transitions from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Autopilot Off.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Ninja Sex Party - Thunder and Lightning
AC/DC - Thunderstruck

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#72 - Saints Row: The Third (360, 2011)


THQ deciding to break off from the GTA mold to carve out its own path as GTA on crack was perhaps one of the best decisions any game developer has ever made. The first two games in the series are so bland that I could not tell you a single thing about them today. Wait, one of them had a fight club type of thing you could do, and the only reason I remember it is because it takes a frustratingly long time to beat someone up in there.

Saints Row: The Third, on the other hand, has a million facets to remember. The character creator has a sex appeal slider that can make your boobs or penis massive. You can also make them naked and give them a voice like Male 1, Female 2, or Nolan North. The first mission in the game involves you jumping out of a jumbo jet, diving into people and shooting a bunch of others so you can steal one of their parachutes and save the girl. It is so absurd, youd think Im making it up. In lieu of having generic combat, you perform DDTs and other wrestling moves on people. Two of the weapons are a giant purple dildo and a Dubstep Gun. You can drive a 16-bit tank or a hoverjet. One of the side-missions tasks you with throwing yourself into traffic to cause as much damage and commit insurance fraud. Some of these things might be from Saints Row 4; I dunno, they kinda blend together.

However, the one thing I distinctly remember that is specifically from The Third is the mission that tasks you jumping out of a helicopter into a highrises pool, busting up a party and assassinating some dude, all while Kanyes Power plays in the background. It may not be the most fun or impressive mission in the game, but its the single most memorable mission in any open-world third-person shooter game Ive ever played, and also the best use of copyright music in any game Ive ever played. Double whammy!

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#73 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (3DS, my GotY for 2013)


Ace Attorney is great. Dual Destinies is underrated. It was a tall task to bring the series back from the lows of Apollo Justice. They decided to play it safe with DD and it paid off in dividends. I love a lot of the new characters, and many of the cases filled me with glee. They decided to bring back Phoenix, but still flesh out Apollo so that hes more of his own character, instead of Phoenix Lite, and its a decision that makes AA5 and AA6 two of my favorite AA games in the series. On top of that, they bring in a spunky new young attorney in Athena, who has her own fascinating story unfold in this game. Not so much in AA6, but in Dual Destinies, shes great!

Case ranking: 5-DLC > 5-2 >>> 5-5 > 5-3 > 5-4 >>>>>> 5-1. Only one bad case, the others are all very good, and DLC and 2 are my 5th and 7th favorite cases of all-time, respectively.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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My mom and I can still quote the game to each other from memory. I told her I found a browser version of the game you could play and that I was trying it out to see if it was as good as I remembered, and she told me she would sneak into our computer room when I was at school and play the Music game when she was at home alone.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

#74 - The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain (PC, my GotY for 1994)


When I was a kid, most of my favorite games were edutainment games on PC. Magic School Bus in space and back in time, a bunch of Carmen Sandiego titles, and this series called Living Books, that weren't games, just picture books where you could click on stuff and something wacky would happen on the screen. However, in the middle of all this was a really great game about a mad scientist that tried to make his rat smart enough to have conversations with, but fucking up and transferring ALL of his own intelligence over, and you had to do 10 kinds of puzzles to revert the process and fix everything.

In one of them, you had to fix a scrambled famous work of music by swapping the bars, and flipping them so they fit.


In one of them, you have to micromanage a bunch of different colored objects on train tracks, make sure none of them crash, and then send them to the station in the order he wants them in.


One of them teaches kids about fucking computer logic and sub-routines, to make your character move throughout a level, picking up brains and avoiding enemies!


Not only was it super fun, there was a really solid learning experience to be had, too. I'm pretty sure I'd have to really think about how to complete some of that last minigame's hardest puzzles even now as a 32 year old man. Hell, Im looking at that last picture that is already mostly solved and wondering how youre supposed to fit all that into 8 moves! And if that all wasn't enough, the intro is crazy good. The title music is great and incorporates sound clips from all 10 games, and then the cinematography and background music of the opening cutscene make it legitimately tense and intriguing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f43lclvdY5Q

This game actually started at #94 on my list, but after researching a bit of this write-up and having a massive nostalgia bomb dropped on my face, I decided to bump it up a lot. This game deserves it; it's rad.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#75 - Mario Party 2 (N64, 1999)


There was a 3 year period between 1998 and 2001 some time where any kind of get-together with me and my friends, and there were at least 3 of us, it was Mario Party time. By far, the one we played most was 2. It had the best maps and the best games, and those two things are like 90% of what makes Mario Party fun. It came after they figured out that people dont like running their hand ragged spinning their joystick and before they started running out of ideas.

This is too short for a write-up, so have a list of my TOP 10 MINIGAMES

1. Lights Out
2. Grab Bag
3. Bombs Away
4. Bumper Balloon Cars
5. Speed Hockey
6. Hexagon Heat
7. Look Away
8. Face Lift
9. Bumper Balls
10. Shy Guy Says

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Alright, just for that, I'm posting #76 too!

#76 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, 2011)


Its Skyrim. Its on every system and everyone knows what it is. I like Skyrim a lot. Its even more fun on PC where you can Kamehameha Wave people. And Thomas the Tank Engine. And Macho Man dragons. And Zoidberg Mudcrabs. And Tommy Wiseau. And bears playing Misirlou on lutes.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#77 - Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Wii U, 2013)

I legitimately couldnt tell you the backstory for why I ever bought this game. I never played with Board 8. I never had any real life friends that enjoyed Monster Hunter. I dont think an excerpt from a gaming magazine drove me to play it. Maybe it was on sale and it looked different, so I tried it out? I have no idea, but my god, what a can of worms this game opened.

The gist of a Monster Hunter game is very simple to explain. You pick a weapon, you grab some gear, and you go out on a mission to hunt a monster. When youre done, you come back, use the spoils of your plight to craft new armor and weapons and then go out and hunt more dangerous monsters. Each weapon you pick will make it feel like youre playing an entirely different game. For example, my favorite weapons in the series are the Sword/Shield, Greatsword, Hammer, and Hunting Horn. I legitimately do not enjoy playing as many of the ranged weapons or the Longsword at all, but those 4 weapons really gel with my playstyle.

Eventually, youll reach a point where you find a set of gear that gives really good bonuses for the weapon you like to use, and one certain monster will drop the parts you need to make it. So you then have to go hunt it a few (dozen if you have really bad luck) times so you can build it. Then you equip it and feel like a total badass. For a few hunts and then theres a new set you see that will do even better. This is how Monster Hunter goes. Its not for everyone, but I love this gameplay loop. Its very easy to get addicted. This might be the single game Ive spent the most time playing in my entire life. Ive never spent an extended time playing an MMO or any game that incentivizes extended playing with continuous bonuses over time. All the time I spent with MH3U was entirely because I felt like playing it. Im pretty sure I broke the 400 hour mark. I actually dusted off my Wii U to check, but something horrible has apparently happened.


Im not too sad about it, because I will never come back to 3 in particular when I have 4, Generations, and World to play if I ever get the ol Monster Hunter itch, but it still feels like those 400 hours of my life where I had that itch the most have been erased from history.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#78 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 (DS, 2011)


My first delve into any SMT game was Persona 3. I wasnt too impressed, so I never really looked into any other games in the series. For some reason, I gave them another chance when Persona 4 came out, and boy am I glad I did. Afterwards, I thought, hmm, I wonder if the other series are just as good? Then a new DS game came out, and I had read that it was mostly unrelated to DS1, so yeah OK, Ill try it out. What I experienced was.. pretty wild. I went from a game where the main cast was trying to stop a murderer in a small town to a game where the entire fucking universe was disappearing at a rapid rate, and this little region in Tokyo was the last Devil Survivor standing.

I dont think thats where the name comes from, but I was going to use the word survivor anyway, so I couldnt resist.

Anyway, the game checks off a lot of the same boxes as the Persona series: equipping crazy demons that you buy/recruit on human characters that have different abilities to best swiftly defeat other characters demons. Its a tried-and-true formula that never gets old, even after the 60 hours or so needed to beat the game. Then, depending on some achievement-like objectives you complete during your first playthrough, you can select bonuses to bring into a NG+, to make you even more OP, so you can take on optional superbosses along the way to get some extra story for yourself. I put in well over 100 hours to this game and I dont regret a second of it.

In fact, after beating the game, it came out that they would be re-releasing the first Devil Survivor for 3DS with some bonus content. I bought that game on release day and played through the whole thing in a matter of weeks. While its story is, in my opinion, a bit more engaging, with more interesting characters, it was a bit hard for me to go from THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS GOING TO DIE to some demons are taking over this one city oh nooo. So I prefer 2 over 1.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Ngamer64 posted...

Weezer - Island in the Sun

Does ELO - Mr. Blue Sky count?

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#79 - NES Open Tournament Golf (NES, my GotY for 1987, GotD for 1980s)

Hey guys, news flash, I like golf games. I started playing golf games when I was 3 years old. I have enjoyed playing golf games for 90% of my life. This was, by far, my favorite console video game until I got my N64. I would spend full days with it. I would dare to say it was the only video game I was actually good at, growing up. I could actually hang with the hardest CPUs in my elementary school days, and this is 100% the only game I could say that about.

And that enjoyment transcends the generations, because I literally still enjoy playing this game. When Nintendo Switch Online came out with their NES titles, this is the one I immediately went back to playing, and its just as fun now as it was back then. I had completely forgotten that there was a feature to rename all the leaderboard names, so I did this.


Though Iwata was one of them, and I couldnt bring myself to take him out. RIP you wonderful man you.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

Oh no that man suffered an Alex Smith.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Suprak the Stud posted...

Im confused why Girl E keeps flashing back as a stock photo of a girl slumped over against the wall. Like, why is this the one instance in the game where they needed to use a real body. I know the game is animated but I want to include in the budget a young female actress that can dress up in a school girls uniform and pretend to be dead. Uhjust because it is hard to draw, not because its my secret fetish.

This goes back to Twilight Syndrome being a real game series. I didn't want to go into detail with it yet, because you hadn't tried it yet, but this was exactly how those games played out. They were 2D adventure games and whenever a body popped up, it would show a real photo of a person acting out how that body looks in the game. If nothing else, at least Monokuma knows to stay true to a game's past.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#80 - Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2, 2005)


This game came at a time when I was really starting to get my RPG legs under me. I had basically skipped the first three gens of my life when it came to them, and only after FFX did I really start to get a major appreciation for them. Both magazines I was subscribed to at the time gave glowing reviews of this game from this series I had never heard about (yes, I was 17 when this happened, shut up). I liked RPGs now, I should give this one a shot!

From the moment I popped this game into my PS2, I was hooked. I loved the vibrant world, the colorful characters, the lovely music, the fun enemies. While it wasnt anything new to the RPG genre, it was new to me, and I was floored. I always just expected stories to be kind of a heres your ultimate goal, now hop to it and maybe weird things will happen along the way kind of plot. Dragon Quests approach to story-telling, through several well-written, mostly contained subplots one after another was very fresh to me.

Spoilers I guess, but whos gonna be playing this for the first time in 2021..

Then you get toward the end and corner Dhoulmagus and its a fuckin super-tough fight. I looked up hints, and was told to grind for a few hours in the dungeon before him so one of the characters could learn a useful healing ability, I think? When I read that, I wondered why they gated such a good ability at such a late stage in the game, that some people may not even see. And then it turns out hes not actually the final boss. My mind was blown. There were several hours of game left!

(also, Jessica was one of my first video game crushes ever. va va voom indeed)

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

#81 - Mass Effect 3 (360, 2012)

The original Mass Effect trilogy is quite possibly the most consistent series of games the world has ever seen (Andromeda doesnt exist shut up). The only reason every single game isnt on my list is for varietys sake. Sorry, Mass Effect 1, you got the short straw this time (yeah, shocker, ME2 will show up later). Every single game is a huge recommendation from me.

Mass Effect 1 has what I consider the very best world-building in any video game in history. If the gameplay wasnt so clunky and buggy, it wouldve been the second ME game on my list instead of 3. Ill leave the ME2 talk for its write-up later, but needless to say, it got just about everything beyond the story right, too.

Here comes Mass Effect 3. It was given the almost-impossible task of taking the insane build-up from the 2nd game and come up with a satisfying conclusion. It very nearly pulled it off. I would wager that the first 95% of Mass Effect 3 totally lives up to the hype. There are so many missions and moments of the game that left me completely speechless. The scale of everything you pull off as Shepard in this game dwarfs the first two a million times over. Unfortunately, that last 5% is just about all anyone ever remembers it for, which I think is unfair. By the time the ending was patched to adhere to what the internet wanted, it was too little, too late. The damage was done, and ME3 will ultimately go down in video game history as a major letdown. Needless to say, I disagree.

With this, that means my first 20 are down! My list so far.....
100. NHL Hitz 20-02
99. Earthbound
98. Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA
97. Mario Golf: Advance Tour
96. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
95. FTL: Faster Than Light
94. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
93. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
92. Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
91. Beat Saber
90. Pocket Card Jockey
89. WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006
88. Persona 5
87. Trauma Team
86. HITMAN
85. The World Ends With You
84. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
83. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
82. Pokemon Stadium 2
81. Mass Effect 3

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#82 - Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64, 2001)

This is going to be my first instance of bundling two games in a series into one, because its really hard for me to say one of Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2 is better than the other, when 2 is essentially the exact same game with an expanded roster, and just the ever-so-slight hint of polish and expansion. They have the same game modes, the same animations, preeeeetty much the same everything. You can play your game boy carts on them both, transfer the Pokemon from them on both, etc.

Except the one area its different, and clearly the most important mode (where I spent roughly 60% of my time playing the game): the minigames. AND THEY DESERVE RANKED TIER LISTS

Top Tier Best Games
Barrier Ball
Topsy-Turvy
Ekans Hoop Hurl

Great Games, but get old a bit quicker
Eager Eevee
Rock Harden
Clear-cut Challenge
Egg Emergency

Super Fun to Purposefully Fuck Up On
Clefairy Says

Still Solid Games
Sushi-go-round
Streaming Stampede
Snore War
Furrets Frolic
Magikarps Splash

Probably popular games that I think are meh
Gutsy Golbat
Delibirds Delivery
Pichus Power Plant
Thundering Dynamo
Tumbling Togepi
Run, Rattata, Run
Rampage Rollout

Same exact game every time
Dig! Dig! Dig!

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#83 - Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA, 2003)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSQ5v5R6ZaA


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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#84 - Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS, 2008)

Professor Layton is a very stable, well-balanced series. I cant imagine there being a person that enjoys most of the games, but dislikes only one of them. Theyre functionally the exact same, besides the story of them all. Even then, every single story goes through the same progressions and has very similar plot twists. Unwound Future is basically a placeholder for the entire series in my list. I picked it in particular because the story focuses more on Layton himself. We finally get a glimpse into his past, and it gets really emotional at the end.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

....... you mean the cerebellum?

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#85 - The World Ends With You (DS, 2007)

There was never a game that utilized the dual screens of the DS quite like TWEWY. It was an action RPG that let you control two separate characters at once. On the touch screen, you move a character and tap, scratch, and slice enemies to do damage. On the top screen, you use the D-pad to perform combos based on which character was up there to attack. Its incredibly difficult to get the hang of, but once you do, it becomes really satisfying to play.

But that alone isnt what places this game in my top 100. It also has an accompanying enjoyable story. You play as Neku, who has recently been killed. You are given one final chance to return to life, by playing the Reapers game. Perform 7 tasks over 7 days, and if you can be the last human standing, you get your second chance. However, you have to team up with another player, or youll get nowhere. The problem is, Neku is incredibly anti-social and in general is a big ol d-bag for a lot of the game. But as time goes on, and he learns more about the world and himself, he eventually ends up as one of my favorite protagonists of all-time.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#86 - HITMAN (PC, 2016)

As I said before, I loved the PS2 HItman games. Absolution was definitely the low point of the series for me, to the point that when HITMAN dropped its first episode, I was really skeptical. It wasnt until a year or so ago that I decided to finally pull the trigger, after being shown Giant Bombs Hitsmas video. I didnt have quite as much fun playing as Vinny did, but thats pretty tough to do.

The 2016 title had way bigger and livelier areas than previous games, and every level felt truly alive with just tons of stuff. You could find helpful items or costumes a mile away from your targets. Speaking of which, another huge improvement is the challenge system. It was incredibly fun to replay, because there are thousands of ways to take out the targets, and the game rewards you for constantly finding new ones.

I have yet to play HITMAN 2, because I felt I needed a brief break from Hitman games, but its starting to feel like its just about time.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

That was meeeee, and yeah, I don't know why that line of all things stuck with me for over 20 years, but it did.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#87 - Trauma Team (Wii, 2010)

I like the Trauma Center series. I reeeeeally like Trauma Team, though. If you havent played any of the games in the series, you perform surgeries on people. In most of them, they kinda devolve over time to fighting man made viruses that behave peculiarly inside peoples bodies. In the words of Egoraptor, it feels like youre fighting aliens with zappy lasers. Thats not to say thats a bad thing, per se, but they leave their comparatively mundane roots very suddenly.

Trauma Team is a bit different. Instead of performing surgeries as one person, you take control of a whole team comprised of 6 people. There is a member of that team that performs the same surgeries as before, but the other 5 are all drastically different. One is a first-responder, whose job it is to go to the scene and stabilize the patient(s). At one point, you might be juggling 5 patients at once, and it gets a little crazy. One is a specialist, who removes polyps and repairs broken bones. One is a gastroenterologist who uses an endoscopy to treat polyps and retrieve swallowed items.

The other two are more unique, as their jobs are less gameplay- and more story-focused, and are the characters that truly make this game memorable to me. Dr. Cunningham is just a medical doctor, who performs diagnoses on patients. He looks and acts like Spike Spiegel, and is given a sassy AI to help him funnel symptoms into a database to narrow down what illness or syndrome the patient might have. It leads to some incredible dialogue and very memorable moments.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kimishima is a medical examiner who performs autopsies. Except she has a phone that can hear the last words of a dead person. Look, dont question it too much. In her missions, you must examine crime scenes, gather clues, and then piece together what happened with logic. Youll then pick apart testimonies from witnesses and come up with the true killer. Her missions are probably my favorite in the game, because theyre so reminiscent of Ace Attorney Investigations.

All six characters have an overarching story that takes some wild twists and turns, as you switch between them to get to an ending that actually hits a little close to home, given how 2020 went. But that doesnt detract from how much I love this game, which lands at #87 on my list.

PS: Go check out my showcasing of this game at 2019's Extra Life! It was a big hit among the attendees!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/524668015
The Trauma Team segment starts at 55:41. If nothing else, please watch from 2:31:24 to 2:32:46 to get a better idea of why I love this game. For further recommendations for scenes, try out 3:10:09 to 3:14:26. If you have a lot of time, but not like 4 hours of time, check out my two favorite chapters in the game (they're long, story chapters), that take place from 1:40:30 to 2:29:56 and from 3:29:20 to 4:16:38.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

I like Skyrim's because I modded the lockpick-breaking noise to be Adam Sandler yelling YOU BLEW IT instead and that automatically makes it 6x funner.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Murphiroth posted...

https://i.imgur.com/ZBn2SSg.jpg

I have this exact image saved on my Switch if I ever need a pick-me-up.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

Suprak the Stud posted...

It is actually called Twilight Murder Mystery Syndrome (or something close to that), a sequel to some game Chiaki knows because she has her PhD in made up video games.

Twilight Syndrome is actually not a made-up video game! It's a real horror series that began in the 90s on the original Playstation by a company that would eventually become Grasshopper (of Suda51 fame), then got dumped onto Spike before they merged with Chunsoft, who made a few more games for Playstation and DS. They were popular enough in Japan to get a few live-action movies based off of them.

The More You Know

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Elite Beat Agents

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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OH BY THE WAY, speaking of Persona.....

#88 - Persona 5 (PS4, 2016)

Persona 5 is mechanically the best Persona game. The dungeons are really cool, theres a ton of different, new skills to use, persona fusing is easier than ever, Mementos is neat (though its music is god-awful), and the way free time is handled is so much more streamlined than the previous games.

All that said, some of it feels unfinished. Goros motivations are barely expanded upon. It feels like Haru only exists because you need another playable character that can use Psi spells. I had to google Persona 5 team members because I couldnt even remember her name; she's that forgettable. I dont understand why the Hawaii storyline was even in the game. In fact, I feel like the game's story continues to get less and less engrossing as the game goes along. The first palace is the best one in the game, and has the best villain to boot! Its still a great game, but its not without some glaring flaws in its story.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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My list's genre makeup:
RPG: 18
Sports: 17
Third-person shooter: 11
Visual Novel: 11
Action: 8
Adventure: 5
Puzzle: 5
Racing: 5
FIrst-person shooter: 3
Rhythm: 3
Turn-based Tactics: 3
Casual: 2
Fighting: 2
Party: 2
Platformer: 2
Simulation: 2
Edutainment: 1

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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I played this game. It was basically Persona, but with bad characters, bad writing, and bad game design. Honestly, playing Cyber Sleuth gave me a much greater appreciation for the Persona series for getting those three things so right.

Also, Cyber Sleuth does stuff like this.
https://twitter.com/MrSmartGuyB8/status/1259622801910009856

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
http://www.scuffletown.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tRBE1.gif

God of War spoilers in the clip:
https://twitter.com/Ivan28807705/status/1338944370674954242

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#89 - WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006 (PS2, 2005)

I was a huge wrestling fan in the late 90s and early 00s. My first wrestling game I ever owned was WCW Thunder, where the game itself sucked, but each wrestler had about 20 seconds to talk about how they were gonna fuck up whoever they fought, and thats rad. But the PS2 wrestling games were much better, culminating in my favorite: Smackdown vs Raw 2006. The main draw to this game was the GM mode, where you could take control of one of the two shows, and then battle the other to see who could get the better ratings. You could instill rivalries between wrestlers, have them run promos, and book matches to try and work up the fans as best you could. It wasnt nearly as in-depth as something like TEW, but it was functional, and that was good enough for me.

The game itself was great, too. That said, the one match my friends and I would play pretty much always were the Triple Threat Tag Team Ladder matches, which would lead to some hilarious shenanigans 100% of the time. Someone would be grabbing the belt, and then someone would take the ladder out from under them, and another would jump off a turnbuckle, and the physics would get all wonky and wed just laugh our asses off. Fun times.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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#90 - Pocket Card Jockey (3DS, 2016)

You would never expect a combination of horse-racing and solitaire to ever gel into any kind of coherent package, but Game Freak really pulled off a miracle with this one. You play as a hilariously cynical, but outwardly nice person, but a total shit jockey during his first race. At the very start, he is unable to get his horse to move, gets bucked off, and is then trampled by all the other horses and killed. Yes, that is correct and its the first scene you witness when starting the game. However, an angel addicted to place betting decides to come down from heaven and give you a second chance at your dream, and life, by giving you super-solitaire powers that let you control your horse through the heart of the cards. This game will never let you down with the quality of its writing, and pretty much every dialogue your character has with anyone will give you at least a slight chuckle.

During the races themselves, you will play a certain number of games of solitaire, depending on how long the race is. The better you do, the happier your horse gets and the more energy they will have for the final stretch. You can either use this energy to move your horse during the race to accrue even more energy in their Comfort Zone, or store it for the finale. After you finish the required number of games of solitaire, the game will tally the energy youve collected and determine how much Enthusiasm your horse will have. For the first time, you will actually get full control over your horse and try to push him to the finish line as fast as you can.

Its a very weird game, but super addictive. And Game Freak has really pulled out all the stops with this game with the music. ITS OUTRAGEOUS! LISTEN TO THIS FUCKING SONG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQtzIAmlkj0

This is not in fact the final boss theme of a JRPG. It is race music for a horse solitaire game. WHAT. I love this game entirely too much. I still go back to do a few races every now and then, but Im not addicted to it like I once was. Like, super unhealthily addicted.

No one should play any game that much. But I did with this game! Its a game you should try out if you have a 3DS! Just dont try it that much.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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Golden Sun was one of my top snubs, for exactly the same reason. It was the highlight of the summer I bought it, but it has really not aged well.

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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