Lurker > Bartzyx

Actually only a few games from that top 40 will show up on my list later. Far fewer than I thought.

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4/10 of the way through!

#1 Chrono Trigger: 277
#2 Final Fantasy IV: 266
#3 The Walking Dead: Season 1: 254
#4 Final Fantasy VII: 247
#5 Metroid Fusion: 242
#5 Mario Kart 64: 242
#7 Mega Man 3: 238
#8 Super Mario 64: 233
#9 Tetris Effect: 232
#10 Professor Layton and the Unwound Future: 230
#11 Pokemon RBY: 227
#12 Jackbox Party Pack: 225
#13 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: 219
#14 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: 206
#15 Super Mario Galaxy: 204
#16 Resident Evil 4: 197
#17 Hotel Dusk: Room 215: 187
#17 Borderlands 2: 187
#19 Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: 182
#20 Simpsons Arcade: 178
#21 Pokemon HG/SS: 173
#22 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4: 171
#23 Ogre Battle 64: 169
#24 NHL '94: 165
#25 The Legend of Zelda: 164
#26 Pokemon Stadium 2: 161
#27 Timesplitters 2: 160
#27 Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: 160
#29 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2: 156
#30 Perfect Dark: 154
#31 Punch-Out!!: 153
#32 Shovel Knight: 152
#32 Elite Beat Agents: 152
#32 NHL 07: 152
#35 WarioWare: Smooth Moves: 148
#35 Snowboard Kids 2: 148
#35 Mario Party 2: 148
#35 Final Fantasy X: 148
#39 Hitman (2016): 145
#39 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: 145

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#61 Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance, 2003)

This game is the natural progression from Symphony of the Night. A lot of the concepts are improved upon here, although Aria of Sorrow faces some constraints due to the Game Boy Advance system.



The system of absorbing and equipping souls is introduced here, which provides a great reason to spend time fighting and killing enemies. But it really feels like a prototype for a much better game that would come later and in my opinion does almost everything better, and as I played both games at the same time, my experience with Aria of Sorrow is overshadowed greatly by its sequel.

So it's a great and fun game that I do not think about all too often. Maybe going back to it would have helped this game out, since it's been 15 years. That's a long time to try to remember a game that I finished in a few days as a teenager.

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#62 Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht (Playstation 2, 2003)

You saw that Episode II of this series already made my list. While I really enjoyed that game, it had a number of changes from the first game that I feel were not for the better.



In my opinion, Episode I is the best Xenosaga game for a number of reasons. The battle system is better than II and almost on par with III. The story is focused and for the most part makes sense without going too far into the weeds. The aesthetic is the right balance between grounded and cartoonish. A lot of effort was put into the graphics, cutscenes, and soundtrack, while the other games cut a lot of corners here.

I don't like it significantly better than II, but enough to distinctly say that it is my favorite of the series. Both games a guilty pleasure for me because I acknowledge how dumb they are, but a guilty pleasure is still a pleasure. I very much doubt I will ever go back and play any of these games though.

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#63 Secret of Evermore (SNES, 1995)

A lot of people were upset that North America got this game "instead of" Seiken Densetsu 3. By the time I got around to playing Secret of Evermore, I had already played SD3 through emulation so I did not exactly have that grudge to hold. I really like Evermore for the ways that it differs from the Secret of Mana games.



There are a lot of similarities between this game and Secret of Mana, and the name alludes to that fact, but it certainly is more different than it is the same. The game is about a boy and his dog from the USA who travel to another world called "Evermore" and struggle to return to Earth. Evermore is composed of a bunch of realms with very different themes, some historical and some fanciful.

The boy is the player controlled character, and the dog is an AI companion. There are a few different weapons that can be leveled up to increase their power. Instead of magic, there is a complex item crafting system to create alchemy formulas that are consumable. Like the weapons, the formulas can be leveled up as you use them.

What makes this game stand out for me is the atmosphere. It has a very dark and quiet feel to it which is in stark contrast to most other SNES games that I played. The music and sound design is distinct and does a great job in making you feel isolated within the world. I can only think of one other SNES game with a comparable atmosphere, which will be making an appearance later on for sure.

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#64 Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64, 1996)

I already had the game ranked around here so it was not hard to make Super Mario 64 at this exact spot on my list. This game was a revelation to me. I first ever saw it at a Toys R Us or Walmart, at the playable demo display, and I could not believe it. The full 3D gameplay was unlike anything I had ever seen before.



I think I finally got to play it a year or so later, and it fully met every expectation that I had for it. The levels were well-crafted and usually nailed the delicate balance between exploration, platforming, and collectables. The aesthetic is simple enough to look crisp and clear despite the graphical limitations of the platform. Compare the way it looks to any other 3D game of its time and I think Mario 64 comes away almost always as the winner.

The control with the analog stick works really well and Mario has just enough different acrobatic moves to make exploring the levels a real pleasure. Although by today's standards a lot of these environments feel small, when I first played they could not have felt any larger. Exploring the castle and the levels and discovering their secrets was a very magical experience that I probably have not felt in any game since then.

Then why isn't this game higher on my list? As time goes on, it becomes more and more obvious how far 3D platformers have come since then. I think that Super Mario 64 is timeless and has aged very well, but the game is still subject to technical limitations that designers have since overcome. The game suffers from some repetition in level design and aesthetic, which is particularly obvious on the castle's second level. And for as important as the game was when it came out, in all honesty I moved on very quickly to other games and have hardly been back to this one since then.

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Most old CRPGs, you can sell or drop key items that make the game unwinnable

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#65 Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox, 2001)

I never owned any of the Xbox consoles. But when the first Xbox came out, several of my friends got one, and we played Halo to the exclusion of most other games. Whether it was the cooperative campaign or deathmatch (splitscreen or via LAN), I must have put well over a thousand hours into this game. And despite not owning it, I managed to get in enough solo time to play through the campaign a few times by myself.

Halo was revolutionary. The second stick on the controller was so important for making shooters on console work, and Halo would be worth memorializing just for making that control scheme the standard. But it also brought an open-ended gameplay that was not really seen at the time, along with recharging shields, weapon management, vehicles, and other innovations that were closely imitated for years.



For me though, this game was mostly about multiplayer. I know that LAN parties were a thing on PC for years prior, but none of my friends played PC games, so this was my first experience with loading up TVs and consoles and taking them to someone's house for a weekend of 4 vs 4 or 8 vs 8 team deathmatch. Games would be intense and even the times where it was just 2 vs 2 over LAN, it was such an improvement over the standard splitscreen deathmatch experience that it became absolutely impossible for me to go back.



So Halo changed my relationship with and expectations for video games forever, really. Such a huge release and for a year or two it was the biggest game I played socially with my friends. It may be #65 on my list, but it's certainly one of the very top games when it comes to impact on my life.

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#66 Resident Evil 4 (Wii, 2007)

Yeah, I will admit here that the Wii version of RE4 is the only one that I ever played. I really liked the control scheme with the Wii remote for aiming. Since you already cannot aim while moving, the lack of two sticks doesn't really matter. When I ever get around for playing on a more traditional controller, it will probably feel very weird to me. But maybe I will like it better.



Resident Evil 4 is often near the top of a lot of all-time lists and I know why that is. It took the Survival Horror genre to a new level by making the combat much more accessible and exciting while still retaining a high level of tension. Every third-person shooter that came afterward owes at least a little something to Resident Evil 4 and that's a huge deal.

Leon Kennedy is great and so is every other character in this game. The English localization hits the perfect mix of professional voice acting and "B-movie" quality scriptwriting. I still take every chance I can to say "Hey, it's that dog!" or literally any of Luis Sera's lines. And who can forget "Your right hand comes off?"

The enemies in Resident Evil 4 range from the typical slow-moving "zombie" types to frightening agile monsters and everything in-between. Like other survival horror games, there are all sorts of gruesome ways for Leon or Ashley to die if you mess up. The game strikes the perfect balance of first-time difficulty and replayability that provides for a lengthy initial experience but also the ability to fly through the game in a few hours on subsequent playthroughs. Like other RE games, there are variations on "New Game +" that let you take overpowered weapons in which can be fun. I could probably play through the game again right now and have a fantastic time, and that's one of the reasons why I love Resident Evil 4 so much.



So, um, after you take me back to my place, how about we do some "overtime?"

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#67 Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)

Forgive me Nick for having this game even lower than MrSmartGuy did. But the competition is getting fierce and it just so happens that there are 66 games that I love more than I love Chrono Trigger.



But I do love Chrono Trigger. It is such a technical step above pretty much any other JRPG that had come out to that point. If I had played it when it was new, I'm sure that I would have been blown away. But for whatever reason, I actually didn't play until I think the early 2000s, so it was not quite so impressive to me.

I can still recognize how well designed the game is, and it handles the time travel story concept as well as pretty much any game has. The characters are mostly really endearing, even if I really do not like silent protagonists. Crono might be boring and mostly blank, but the cast around him more than makes up for that. The game avoids random battles which is a huge plus for me, and the actual battles are really fun with a lot of techniques that encourage you to do more than just spam "attack" all the time.

Oh yeah and fuck Magus, I kill him almost every time.

Ayla > Robo > Lucca > Frog > Crono > Marle > Magus

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Now that we are 35% of the way through, here is a "scoring" update on the top 35 games so far! Maybe this will resemble games 66-100 at the end of all this (it won't).

#1 The Walking Dead: Season 1: 254
#2 Mario Kart 64: 242
#2 Metroid Fusion: 242
#4 Tetris Effect: 232
#5 Professor Layton and the Unwound Future: 230
#6 Pokemon RBY: 227
#7 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: 219
#8 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: 206
#9 Hotel Dusk: Room 215: 187
#10 Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: 182
#11 Simpsons Arcade: 178
#12 Pokemon HG/SS: 173
#13 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4: 171
#14 Ogre Battle 64: 169
#15 NHL '94: 165
#16 The Legend of Zelda: 164
#17 Pokemon Stadium 2: 161
#18 Timesplitters 2: 160
#19 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2: 156
#20 Final Fantasy VII: 155
#21 Perfect Dark: 154
#22 Punch-Out!!: 153
#23 Elite Beat Agents: 152
#23 Shovel Knight: 152
#25 Mario Party 2: 148
#25 Snowboard Kids 2: 148
#27 WarioWare: Smooth Moves: 148
#28 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: 145
#28 Hitman (2016): 145
#30 Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: 143
#31 Mega Man 5: 142
#32 Metal Gear Solid 2: 141
#33 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: 140
#33 Sonic the Hedgehog 2: 140
#35 Guitar Hero II: 139

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#68 The Lost Vikings (MS-DOS, 1993)

I did not know for years after playing The Lost Vikings and subsequent Blizzard games that they shared the same developer, because why would I think that a charming puzzle platformer and a fantasy RTS should be made by the same folks?



I think everyone is pretty familiar with this game, but in short, you control three Vikings who travel throughout time to a bunch of wacky environments while solving puzzles in order to not die. Each Viking has unique abilities that are needed to get through the stage. The game benefits from a really colorful and crisp aesthetic that still looks great, and a very catchy soundtrack.

I did not play the second game... is it any good?

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Magic

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#69 The Aethra Chronicles - Volume One: Celystra's Bane (MS-DOS, 1994)

This is another nice old indie DOS game, made mostly by a single person. The Aethra Chronicles is a 2D overhead view party-based RPG loosely based on the Rolemaster system. The game starts with a party of three custom-made characters from a variety of fantasy races and classes. It's all mostly the usual suspects (Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, etc.) although some of the classes are unique. The story begins with the mundaneyour character's father is accused of a crime and needs to clear his namebut predictably escalates with the discovery of conspiracies and demon cults and the like. It's pretty standard fantasy fare.



The game is played in a sprawling overworld with towns, caves, dungeons, and more. Encounters in the overworld are random but in dungeons are fixed. During battles, the game enters a turn-based instance based on the geography around where you are standing when the battle starts. So you can take advantage of the positioning of walls, trees, or other obstacles to protect yourself from ranged attacks. Like many old RPGs, the game is very open-ended and if you go to higher-level areas early on you can get instantly wiped. The initial party of three can be expanded to six by recruiting either story NPCs or mercenaries from towns.



The game is not perfect, certainly. There are balance issues at higher levels that can make certain classes into unstoppable killing machines, and the normal assortment of glitches that crop up. But as long as you make an effort to play fairly, the game has a decent amount of challenge throughout and the character progression is very satisfying. The title implies there would be sequels, but for some reason they were never made. But the one game is good enough to stand alone.



As for my time with The Aethra Chronicles, it was one of my earlier experiences with RPGs and stands out mostly because of this. It was really the only game of its kind that I played until Baldur's Gate came out a few years later, but it has several substantial differences that made it more enjoyable for me. To this day, I have not found a game that does what The Aethra Chronicles does better, although I must admit this is mostly from lack of trying.

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I replayed the first Max Payne game a few years ago and it did not quite hold up compared to 20 years ago, but it was still pretty good.

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#70 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Playstation 3, 2013)

This is a really sweet game. Nee described how this game works in his entry (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949116022), and he's definitely right in that it packs quite the emotional punch. The controls work well when you have the brothers on the same side as the control sticks, but when they cross paths, that always tripped me up. The environments are beautiful and varied and have a great style so I didn't mind lingering in them while I figured out how to move.



Without getting into too much detail, there are some emotional moments in the second half of the game that are set up well and don't feel cheap, which is a really astonishing feat in general, let alone in video games. Brothers is just the right length and does not overstay its welcome. In all, a very nice experience that I really should go back to someday.

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Off course!

No, way!

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#71 The Walking Dead: Season One (Playstation 3, 2012)

I think most people regard this as the best of Telltale's adventure games. I know that I do. The Walking Dead took Telltale's formula to a new level with a very engaging story and a strong cast of diverse characters who may or may not die based on what you do. Spoilers: they pretty much all die one way or another though. The flow of play is very simple and the focal point is choosing how the player character, Lee, responds to different situationsusually by selecting what he says in conversations.



What makes this game great is how well-crafted these situations are, and the grim world of The Walking Dead is really the ideal place for this. The tension in the game comes from Lee being forced to make difficult choices where often someone's life will hang in the balance. The classic example from early on is when another character (whose actions come off as somewhat racist) suffers a heart attack, and Lee has to choose between trying to revive him or destroying his brain before he possibly comes back as a zombie. There are many decisions you make that feel very impactful, and credit to the designers for very carefully obscuring which choices actually affect the direction of the story, and those that do not. This does not hold up the more you play through the game, and since Season One I have avoided playing Telltale games more than once to maintain this wonderful illusion.

So the combination of a compelling story, great characters, and a simple but satisfying game flow produced a game that managed to revive my interest in the adventure genre and served as a template for a proliferation of licensed adventure games that came out in the next several years, some of which were also good. But in my eyes none of them were as good as The Walking Dead: Season One.

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Warcraft 2 is my favorite Warcraft. But I'm not really into Blizzard RTS games the way I got into others. I liked the scale of other games more and then hero units I never really cared for either.

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#72 Bully (Playstation 2, 2006)

When I was first putting this list together, I forgot all about this game. But Bully is an incredible experience. It took the style of open-world game that Rockstar is known for and managed to fit it into the concept of a boarding school. A lot of the Grand Theft Auto elements remain, but made appropriate for a game about teenagers.



Despite its name, the main character is not really a bully. Jimmy is a tough kid with a bad family life who gets a chance to start over at a new school, Bullworth Academy, which is dominated by a group of bullies. Throughout the game Jimmy is working with various factions within and without the school to improve the culture. It's a surprising good story that manages to elicit empathy for Jimmy and the people that he encounters.

The gameplay involves doing things like attending class and performing tasks to win the trust of other students within the various cliques at the school. Later on, the focus shifts away from class and more to the local town and the people there, and Jimmy also can do jobs for money or participate in activities like bicycle races. A lot of it is familiar if you have played any GTA game; if you misbehave, school staff will chase you, and you can collect various "weapons" like firecrackers, marbles, slingshot... you get the picture. It's a surprisingly robust game with a ton of things to do and I think a lot of care was taken to make the world very lively and dense with content. I really wish that they would do another one of these.

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Here's the "scoring" recap from the first topic.

#1 Pokemon RBY: 227
#2 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: 219
#3 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: 206
#4 Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: 182
#5 Simpsons Arcade: 178
#6 Pokemon HG/SS: 173
#7 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4: 171
#8 The Walking Dead Season 1: 170
#9 Ogre Battle 64: 169
#10 NHL '94: 165
#11 The Legend of Zelda: 164
#12 Timesplitters 2: 160
#13 Perfect Dark: 154
#14 Punch-Out!!: 153
#15 Elite Beat Agents: 152
#16 Shovel Knight: 152
#17 Mario Party 2: 148
#18 Professor Layton and the Unwound Future: 146
#19 Hitman (2016): 145
#20 Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: 143
#21 Mega Man 5: 142
#22 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: 140
#23 Sonic the Hedgehog 2: 140
#24 Guitar Hero II: 139
#25 Darksiders: 138

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Here's the old topic:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627

Wigs #75 & 74

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949545309

Nick #55
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949545458

Nick #54
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949546180

Nee #68
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949546855

MSG #61
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79208627/949558058

And that should catch us up to this topic.

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#73 Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Game Boy Advance, 2003)


The isometric gameplay of Final Fantasy Tactics was a natural fit for an iteration on the GBA. The gameplay all translates well to the handheld screen and although it was not capable of the same graphical effects, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance managed to look great and play smoothly.

When I first played it though, I wished it had just been a port of the Playstation game. The silly story and judge system took a lot of getting used to. I don't think I ever had a good time when I had to play a battle where "Fight" was banned. But for all the other laws, I think it added an extra element of strategy and consideration, mostly for the better. As for the story, at the very least it has produced a lot of memes, and I think it's probably more entertaining if you see Marche as an antihero. I grew to like it after playing for a while.



And I think the game is much better if you divorce it from the Playstation game, and just view it as something else altogether. Sure they both share the world name "Ivalice," but FFTA is a much more fanciful world with silly creatures and stupid Mewt and so on. The gameplay is similar, but simplified without the charge times and all that, and it ends up moving a lot faster. I also really like Sakimoto's soundtrack. I know a lot of people prefer Uematsu, but I think Sakimoto is really just as good, despite his different style.

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#74 Total Annihilation (Microsoft Windows, 1997)

Wow, it only took a quarter of the way through the list to get to my first real-time strategy game! But I am sure a lot of you who have played Total Annihilation are wondering what other titles in the genre I will rank higher. For a lot of people, this is the epitome of the classic RTS. It has a sprawling tech tree, a wide variety of units, and a couple of challenging and lengthy campaigns.



I don't think the game stands out that much today, but at the time it took everything that people liked about the genre and turned it up to 11, which was really appealing. The resource management was more than one-dimensional unlike Command and Conquer, but still simple enough to manage easily. The Commander was a great take on the hero unit concept which eventually was popularized by Warcraft. The soundtrack was suitably epic and all the units made satisfying mechanical noises.

I still go back and play some campaign missions from time to time. I didn't play this one online much, but the single player experience I had with Total Annihilation was immensely entertaining.


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I enjoyed Thomas Was Alone so much that I played through it on two platforms. Really neat game, although all I could think of during the narration was Shaun from Assassin's Creed (same actor).

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I somehow never played PoR! One of these days I'll get around to it and have a good time.

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#75 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Playstation 3, 2011)

I really love the Uncharted series, every single game I have played of it. But Uncharted 3 is the only one I have played in the series that I do not really want to play again. Not to say that it isn't good; it's an outstanding game both for its time and also now. But I would rather play any of the other games again than this one.



Although the overall story is strong, there are large stretches of the game that kind of just spin its wheels(I'm looking at you, ship graveyard). And while Whiskey Nick thinks the "hallucination water" is fine, I thought that was actually really dumb and in general not fun, with a very unrewarding climax to the game.

I do have to give it credit where it's due, though. The Chateau is a highlight and so is the stowaway sequence. Learning more about Nate's past and his relationship with Elena was also satisfying, even if in Uncharted 4 they decide to go straight back to those wells.



The multiplayer was also great and enjoyed long-lasting support from the developers, with plenty of content updates. It was not quite as much to my liking as Uncharted 2's more classic-style multiplayer, but that's probably just me getting old.

So the whole package was a bit of a step down after what came before, but maybe my expectations for this game were just too high. It may seem weird to dunk so much on a game that I have as one of my top 75, but Uncharted 3's flaws are really what separate it from the other games in the series. Rest assured, I will talk more about why I love these games later on.

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This is the same company that brought you "New Super Mario Bros." and "Super Mario 3D World."

"New Pokemon Snap" shouldn't surprise anyone as far as lame titles are concerned.

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#76 SkyRoads (MS-DOS, 1993)

This is a really simple game. Pilot a vehicle along a Road in the Sky while jumping over or otherwise avoiding obstacles. SkyRoads could be frustrating until you figure out the right speed and rhythm for each level, then became really satisfying. There are a few dozen courses to figure out while chilling out to the FM synth soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOcHlthSLp0

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Arti posted...

#75 - Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC, 2001)

I never did own a N64 so Melee was the first Super Smash Bros. game I owned, and what a game it was. I normally dislike most fighting games, but Smash is the one series I can still enjoy due to its party style. Back in Melee I mostly played Falco, Kirby, and Ness (I've used Ness in every Smash game). Cleared all 51 events, beat classic/adventure/all-star with all characters, etc. I did never get all the trophies in this one, I felt some requirements were either too hard or too tedious, not sure which at the time. This was always one of the games my friends and I would play at each other's houses throughout middle and high school.

I want to say I got all the trophies in this game but I honestly cannot remember.


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#77 Dead by Daylight (Playstation 4, 2017)

This one was a little hard to get my thoughts straight about. Dead By Daylight is an amazing concept with huge flaws, and sometimes I feel like the flaws are just too big for the game. Other times, I just don't care because the game is so damn fun.



It's a competitive multiplayer horror game that pits one player against four: a serial killer trying to sacrifice four survivors to a supernatural entity before they can escape a killing ground. The survivors are forced to work together to repair generators that power the exit gates while hiding from, distracting, or running away from the killer. The killer uses unique powers to track down and cut up the survivors with a melee weapon. Each of the over 20 different killers has different abilities that cause them to play differently, some drastically so. Both sides also select from a wide range of perks and consumable items to assist them. The maps are procedurally generated from a wide range of templates, so no two matches are ever really the same.

I'm not really a horror fan, but the large cast of characters pulls from licensed properties like Halloween, Stranger Things, Saw, Silent Hill, and others, which is neat for those who are fans. There are also a bunch of unlicensed characters based on various tropes (e.g. wraith, oni, mad doctor, clown, wimp, track star, gambler, etc.). While each killer is unique, the survivors all play basically the same, although the perks they start with are different.



Matches can be very tense. If the survivors take too long to repair the generators, the killer will have time to kill enough of them that escape becomes impossible. If the killer takes too long to find and kill the survivors, they will be able to escape. The killer cannot just kill the other players immediately; instead, survivors have to be hit until they collapse, and then placed on a sacrificial hook for two minutes. During this time, they can be rescued and continue playing.

There is a lot more to it, but that's the basic flow of the game. Having a successful game as a killer feels very empowering, as do the moments when you manage to outsmart the killer while playing the other side. And that probably sums up why I like Dead by Daylight so much; success in the game more often comes down more to mindgames and strategy than mechanical skill. At my age, it's difficult to be competitive in most games that rely too much on the latter.



I said at the beginning though that the game is flawed, and that is why you're seeing this now and not in my top 25. It's obviously difficult to balance asymmetrical games, but even considering this, the developers of Dead by Daylight seem to get things wrong so often. What balance the game has is based around the idea that the four survivors cannot communicate with each other, but the game does allows friends to team up, which can give a huge competitive advantage. And even though they have been balancing the game for years, there are still so many completely useless perks and items, while there are some rare items that are so game-breaking that you want to dodge matches where they show up. And probably the worst of all is that the strongest and most effective tactics in the game are also the least fun to play against, so it's basically down to an "honor system" for players to avoid using them because for whatever reason the developers will not do anything about it.



As you can see, the game is kind of a mess. I take breaks for weeks at a time, but keep finding myself coming back to it again. So I guess that I enjoy it a lot.


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This was an english test and you all are failing I'm afraid

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Mega Mana posted...

Gladiator <3

No I cannot believe that anybody else actually played this game.

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#78 Gladiator (MS-DOS, 1995)

Gladiator is another old indie DOS game from when I was a kid. This game is an action RPG with a 2D top-down perspective. The gameplay is a little similar to Gauntlet, but differs in that the enemies you fight are similar in strength to you, and therefore you will recruit a large mercenary team of various classes to fight along with you. So think Gauntlet meets Final Fantasy Tactics. When you deploy to battle, you can control only one character at a time, while your allies fight using less-than-perfect AI. However, the game also allows up to 4 player local cooperative play, allowing three friends to control your allies, which was really neat! As the game progresses, your characters will level up and gain new abilities. If they die in battle though, you lose them permanently and have to recruit a replacement.



It certainly had its rough edges, though. I recall a number of glitches and occasional soft locking. But the game was compelling enough that it didn't really bother me at the time.

Gladiator also featured a level and campaign editor which I took full advantage of, creating many levels for me and my brothers/friends to play through. This game gave me hundreds of hours to time and it was very enjoyable.

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At least your mother tipped well

Moonchild

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At least your mother tipped well

Now that we are 25% of the way through our lists, here is a recap of the top 20 games so far (minimum 2 appearances):

#1 Mario Party 2: 237
#2 Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: 182
#3 Simpsons Arcade: 178
#4 Ogre Battle 64: 172
#4 The Walking Dead Season 1: 172
#6 NHL '94: 167
#7 Punch-Out!!: 153
#8 Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: 143
#9 Sonic the Hedgehog 2: 140
#10 Guitar Hero II: 139
#11 Darksiders: 138
#11 The World Ends With You: 138
#13 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: 136
#14 Mega Man 9: 130
#15 Final Fantasy IV: 126
#16 Pokemon RBY: 124
#17 Super Mario Maker 2: 122
#18 Fat Princess: 110
#19 The Wolf Among Us: 107
#20 Castle Crashers: 106

I assigned a score to each ranking, which increases exponentially as it approaches #1. So very highly ranked games have more value than being low on multiple lists.

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At least your mother tipped well

#79 Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (Nintendo DS, 2008)

I really love the so-called "Igavania" games. Although I could play endless games based on the Symphony of the Night formula, I appreciate that Order of Ecclesia deviates somewhat. Like Dawn of Sorrow, you acquire abilities from the enemies you defeat, but this game completely eschews the weapon system of other Castlevania games and you rely only on "Glyph" spells obtained from enemies.



Ecclesia also leaves the open-ended Castle for much of the game, allowing you to play through mostly linear stages that you select from the world map. Like the other games, there are multiple endings that can stop you early, but unfortunately in this game it's pretty hard to get anything but the good ending unless you play very sloppy and miss one of your objectives.

All things considered, a very good game, but there are better Castlevania games out there.

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At least your mother tipped well

They desperately want you to use the app. Same reason why Instagram's PC interface is horrendous.

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At least your mother tipped well

Nick please send me to the Zohar so I can connect with U-DO

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At least your mother tipped well

I disagree with that ranking, but that's all I will say for now.

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At least your mother tipped well

For all you know, maybe I have every other Xenosaga game above this one!

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At least your mother tipped well

He did say MachineGames right in the topic title!

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At least your mother tipped well

#80 Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bse (Playstation 2, 2005)

What a weird game to have on my list! I don't even know for sure why I like this series. But I do, even though I would consider it a guilty pleasure. At the time, there were not many other JRPGs that relied so much on cutscenes, and I kind of dug it, especially because this is yet another game with a really cool and dumb story. Xenosaga is a bunch of a science fiction bullshit and I'm not going to go into the story because it's really all too complicated.



The game plays like your typical active turn-based battle system JRPG. Characters take their turns to attack, can use items and techniques, and do dual-tech attacks. If I remember correctly, there is a lot of time spent charging things. Episode II has the weakest battle system of the three, but I still enjoyed it. Between battles and the hours of cutscenes, you travel around areas and do quests and stuff like that. You can see enemies on the field so there are no random battles, which is nice. Also a pretty good soundtrack.

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At least your mother tipped well

Since everyone else did a recap after 20, here:

81. Loom
82. Capture the Flag
83. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
84. Binary Domain
85. Wolfenstein: The New Order
86. Awesomenauts
87. Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol
88. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
89. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence
90. Darksiders
91. God of War: Ghost of Sparta
92. The Wolf Among Us
93. Pokmon Red Version
94. Shadow of the Colossus
95. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
96. Heavy Rain
97. Duke Nukem II
98. Plants vs. Zombies
99. Flower
100. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

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At least your mother tipped well

#81 Loom (MS-DOS, 1990)

During the late 80s and early 90s, One of the genres that really flourished on the PC versus other platforms was the point and click adventure game. The computer mouse made control very easy and intuitive, and the keyboard was used to type commands, similar to older text-based adventures.

Thankfully, as typing in commands was really tedious, adventure games started to drift away from that traditional method of play and rely more on using the mouse for control. Loom, a fantasy-themed adventure game from LucasArts, used the mouse to its full potential by allowing you to control the game using the mouse for pretty much everything. The character in the game uses a staff that produces magical musical spells, and you click on different parts of the staff to cast them.



I played Loom when I was very young, and it left a huge impression on me. It was the first graphical adventure game I experienced, and the open-ended nature of it was enthralling. The game had a fantastic other-worldly atmosphere and, as Loom did not have any failure state, so you could literally just explore the world and click on things and try to figure it out. It wasn't a long game (probably beaten in 3-4 hours), except for 5-year old me, then it took tens of hours. In fact, I'm fairly certain that I never finished it before losing interest and moving on to other games. While it lasted though, it was a wonderful experience.

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At least your mother tipped well

Man I don't think I can remember my first HoF pokemon team. I lost my original carts so who knows.

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At least your mother tipped well

#82 Capture the Flag (MS-DOS, 1992)

One of the trends of the early 90s PC games market was the Shareware business model. Because PC games did not come on expensive cartridges, and the floppy disks that were commonly used for distribution lacked copy protection, it became very efficient to produce a free version of the game that could be shared with anyone. This "shareware" version often included only the first few levels of the game, or a version of the game with limited features. Shareware games would also include lengthy ads for the full game, usually available only by mail order.

That was how I first experienced Capture the Flag, what was basically an indie title at the time. It's a turn-based strategy game modeled after the traditional outdoor sport of the same name. You control a team of up to 24 players, each with differing attribute levels (speed, endurance, vision, stealth) and have to try to find and capture the opponent's flag while protecting your own. The map has a somewhat realistic fog of war system and you only see actions taken within your line of sight. While enemies are in your territory, your people can take a chance to tackle them, and if successful, send them to "jail" or back to their own territory. Different terrains offer advantages in stealth, vision, or movement speed, so weighing the advantages of how you traverse the map and position your defenders is essential. You can play either versus an AI or a friend and there are plenty of options and maps to customize each match.



The shareware version came with only one map and limited options, but my brothers and I enjoyed it so much playing against each other that we ended up sending for the full game pretty quickly. It was one of the very few shareware games that we actually ended up paying for. The full game came with a map editor that we used to make really cool (and sometimes really dumb) maps.



The concept still holds up pretty well, I recently tried it out again and had a good time. Of course, the game does not play as smoothly as a more modern game would. In 1992, they just had not really figured out controls and UI for strategy games that well yet. At the same time, considering when it came out, I'm surprised that it is as good as it is. This is mostly on my list because it was one of the first strategy games I ever played and was responsible for stoking my interest in the genre before the renowned and classic games in the genre were released.

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At least your mother tipped well

Donkey Kong Country ???

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At least your mother tipped well

#83 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES, 1995)

Another game that I think you all know about. It is easily the best of the Donkey Kong Country games, and my favorite. The pirate setting is a lot of fun and Dixie is more fun to play than Donkey anyway.

I am sure this game is on multiple other lists, so hopefully they will have something more interesting to say about it than I do. To me, it's just a good solid 2D platformer and probably the best thing Rare has ever done. No, not Diddy Kong Racing, which sucks total ass.

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At least your mother tipped well