Lurker > Paratroopa1

That said I do think "NitW made me unhappy" is a perfectly valid feeling to have felt

Mac Arrowny posted...

Playing NitW made me very unhappy and made me like life less, which is quite an accomplishment for a video game. Probably a bad thing for suicidal people to play, especially considering that the guy who made it committed suicide.

Whoa whoa whoa. I didn't really want to bring this up as a topic of discussion for a lot of reasons, but I think it should be clarified that there were three people who worked on this, and the other two, who did a lot of the writing and character design and such, are alive and seem to be doing fine.

And one last honorable mention before I get to the top 10, one "game" that I had meant to mention somewhere, probably in the same post that I talked about randomizers, but I forgot, so I'll pay it tribute now:

Honorable Mention





Not really a game so much as an event; not really an event so much as a bizarre hallucination we all had for a couple of weeks back in 2014, but maybe one of the most important things to happen on the gaming part of the internet, ever. If you missed it, it's really one of those you-had-to-be-there things. Never seen anything like it, probably will never see anything like it again, but for the two weeks that this happened it was pretty much all I thought about. The idea of everyone controlling a game of Pokemon all at once is brilliant. Put into practice, it is beautiful, maddening chaos, so much that the rules had to be changed halfway through to allow for people to vote on which input to use to get through the more harrowing parts of the game. I got more suspense, more excitement out of watching this play out than I've ever gotten watching any TV show. And this did feel something like a TV show, waiting to find out what would happen in each new episode; would we beat the next gym, or would we get stuck on a narrow ledge for 12 hours? Would we catch a new Pokemon, or release all of the ones currently in our party? The constant thrill of not knowing what was going to happen next despite it in theory all being in our control was fascinating, and the fact that all you had to do was type inputs into a window to help participate made it all the more fascinating. I was there! I was there at sometime around Pewter City, all the way through the end. What a fascinating journey that gave us so many great stories and a wealth of memes so pervasive that even Jeopardy's twitter account invoked them when talking about its Pokemon category. You just had to be there. Some of the future TPP playthroughs were also great, but they've lost their edge since, since sadly the newer games are far too easy to control via the twitch plays method. But the original playthrough of TPP is legendary. It's not the best game released this decade, but it might be the most interesting game-related thing to happen.

#11





Years of release: 2010 (DS/iOS, Japan), 2011 (DS, WW), 2012 (iOS, WW)
Beaten?: Yes

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was, once, described to me as being a lot like Ace Attorney, sort of. I understood that it was written and directed by Shu Takumi, the mastermind behind the Phoenix Wright trilogy, but I otherwise didn't really understand how it could be like Ace Attorney. There's no lawyers or courts of any of that stuff - the game isn't really even about solving murder mysteries, not in the standard sort of way, anyway. It's a narrative-driven game, and there's an overarcing mystery to be solved, but that's where the similarities end. But I played it with great skepticism about what sort of game this would be, and it turns out, it's exactly like Ace Attorney. Well, no, it's not actually like Ace Attorney at all, so forget that. But it's written with the same sort of sensibilities - and the same sort of flair - as Ace Attorney, so it ends up evoking a lot of its style. And it is a very good style. Ghost Trick is every bit Ace Attorney's equal in clever writing and storytelling, and for me it was a can't-stop-playing game from start to finish.

In Ghost Trick, you play as Sissel, who has just died. Although he cannot save himself, he discovers that he has just one night to at least solve the mystery of who killed him and why, before he disappears forever. As a ghost, he has the power to possess objects and perform "ghost tricks" to make the objects move and react in various ways, and you move Sissel from object to object, manipulating them to prevent other people from meeting the same fate you did. It's a puzzle game, where each new puzzle is lovingly crafted and exceedingly clever from start to finish, surrounded by lengthy narration that explains further developments in the mystery surrounding Sissel's death.

It's really damn good. Aside from the puzzles being great and the story being surprisingly gripping, the game just nails every element of its presentation so damn well. The animation is one of the rare DS games that still holds up perfectly today, smooth and stylish and incredibly fun to look at; every character moves with a brilliant sense of personality. The music is pretty much nonstop bangers and drives the action much like you'd expect from an Ace-Attorney-except-it's-ghosts-and-not-lawyers kind of game.

But goddamn, if you've read this list you can probably figure out that I'm a fucking sucker for a good plot twist - some story element that the game builds up to that knocks me flat on my ass when it's revealed. I'm not gonna talk about it here, of course, but this is where the game really reveals Shu Takumi's fingerprints all over it. Some of the shit that happens in this game still gets me fucking pumped up as hell thinking about it almost ten years later it's so awesome. There's a fair handful of moments in this game that were worth experiencing not just myself, but also vicariously through other people, and I think this game surprised me in a few ways that Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, etc could only dream of doing. I still think about this game a lot, and I might be due for a replay I think. This may well be my favorite game on the DS; if you haven't played it yet, don't miss it.

#12





Years of release: 2017 (PC/PS4/XB1), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: Just the Bea path. Sorry Gregg, one day

It's a crisp autumn day, and somehow, I'm back at my old community college. I'm wearing my Seahawks hoodie and a pair of shorts unseasonable for the weather; my hair is slightly disheveled and my backpack strung along behind me by a single strap as I race up the stairs of the main building and into the library. At the counter, I impatiently ask the librarian if there's a book club meeting here today; she hesitantly replies yes, confused by the urgency of my question, but she doesn't know about the news I'm about to break to those unsuspecting literature snobs. I run past towering shelves of books too tall to reach their highest levels, bothering some people quietly studying for a science test, and I burst forth into the room where the book club is being held, the door dramatically swinging open and hitting the wall. A confused and frightened hush falls over the dozen people in the room, looking up from their copies of whatever dumb novel they were reading before I arrived and changed their lives forever.

"GUYS, THIS IS IMPORTANT," I shout excitedly in between labored breaths. "VIDEO GAMES ARE NOW ALSO ART."

And then I show them Night in the Woods, the whole thing. I show them its stunning art, its gorgeous music, its loveable characters, the way it uses an interactive medium to seamlessly blend all these features together, but most of all I show them its story. They see this story, a postmodern reflection on millennial depression and a requiem for the inevitable decay of lower and middle class America; they see its themes, and oh, how much they love their themes. They see all of these things and they fall to their knees, immediately and intuitively understanding that I am right. Their books are all bullshit, now. I have decisively won the war, and video games are, now and forever, officially Art.

Then I wake up, and I wonder why the hell I chose to frame the opening paragraphs of this writeup as a dream that I never had, and I wonder if I should start over. It's okay, I decide. I also frequently do not understand the ways in which Night in the Woods chooses to frame its story, I question the choices it makes, but I admire that it made those choices, and the best way I can honor it is to make some questionable choices myself.

There are narrative-driven video games that I like more than Night in the Woods, but I don't know if there are any that I would consider more important, more urgent, more relevant to the current time than this one. NitW is a game that probably hits something close to home for most people here; for me, it hit rather close indeed. Most games focus on gameplay challenges, but Night in the Woods is an emotional challenge. The game is at once easy to play and get wrapped up in, but also at times very difficult to continue, not for the events of the story itself but for the way they reflect back on my own life and the lives of people around me. At the time, I didn't know if it was hurting or healing to have a game dig this deeply into a wound, and looking back on it now I still don't know. Night in the Woods is a difficult game to grapple with.

But it's all okay, because NitW washes it all down with a heavy dose of warmth. At the same time as it's a cold bucket of water all over my head, it is also a warm, cozy blanket next to the fireplace with which I can nurse myself back to health from my hypothermia. This game ranks as high as it does because I realized that this game is going to stick with me for a long, long time, because its world feels so alive with the real, lived experiences of its writers, beautiful and moving in all the strangest ways, melancholy and thoughtful all while having a goofy smile on its face. I will want to return to this world someday to play through the story path that I did not see the first time, but I still need to give it some time to really recover. I hope that the game's final act will make more sense to me the second time I play the game.

Let's not forget the most important lesson here, however: aside from the cheapest frozen pizzas in the store that barely register as food, and some kind of freaky ass pizza that's topped with caviar and gold leaf or some shit, all pizza is Good As Hell.

#13





Years of release: 2011 (Wii, Japan), 2012 (Wii, NA/EU/AU)
Beaten?: One time I did it blindfolded just for fun

I can't believe that this is actually a game of the decade. This game feels way too formative for that - like one of my core experiences as a human being. This feels like a game of my childhood - how is it only seven years old? I really don't know if I can convey to you how staggering this is to me. No game on this list feels more out of time than this one. I sincerely don't clearly recall the time before I had played this game, yet it's younger than the Russell Wilson era of Seahawks football. I guess that's how much of an impression it made on me.

I am, obviously, a big fan of rhythm games, just as a general rule. I haven't really immersed myself in any of the big, challenging ones lately, but I still love a game that lets me tap along to a nice beat, enjoying the almost tactile feel of pressing a button and seeing or hearing stuff happen. It feels kind of like a deconstruction of video games, in a way, completely removing all the abstraction between the idea of pressing a button and succeeding at a task, and in that way, Rhythm Heaven also feels like a deconstruction. The game is a series of minigames, each of which have a song and a pre-programmed, non-random routine that goes with it; in each game, you have some set of visual and audio cues that the game teaches you careful before you play, that you must follow along with. Delightful things ensue.

Rhythm Heaven Fever is my favorite of the series, partly because it's got the best music, the best games, and the best overall polish, but also I think because, even though it's the third game in the series, it's also the simplest, broken down to the barest essentials, and that somehow works. The GBA game has you pressing multiple buttons as well as the d-pad and occasionally engages in different rulesets or weird gimmicks; the DS game has you using the touchscreen to occasionally do some fancy things. Fever has you press A and sometimes B - and that's all. But it's amazing how much mileage it can get out of just telling you when to press A and when to press A+B at the same time; that's what's so interesting about the deconstruction aspect of this game. Every game, by virtue of the way it looks, sounds, and reacts when you hit buttons, as well as the precise way in which it expects you to hit the buttons and how you should know which buttons to hit, manages to feel like a very different experience.

This game is a sheer joy to play. It wouldn't work if any element of it was off, but the music is infectiously catchy, the characters cute as all hell, the gameplay as tight as it can be. Pretty much every game and every song is permanently imprinted in my brain at this point, and even the voices and sound cues themselves are good for a meme or a few; there's a lot of "wub-a-dub-a-dub is that true?"s and "Ba-BOM BOM BOM"s among me and my friends. Almost more than any other game on this list it feels like a very important shared experience, something that's always been there and that again I cannot stress this enough cannot be a fucking 2012 game, there is no way.

The remixes are the best part of this game, when the game gives you different music and mixes up a bunch of different games together into one longform game. I wish there was more of this, and this is probably my only complaint, because this is when the game is really at its best. I love seeing all of the custom remixes that people come up with online; a lot of them are really creative and involve custom art assets and there's a surprisingly big community for it for such a niche game - that's rhythm game fans for you I guess, the desire to create knows no bounds.

I once played this game blindfolded and it was awesome. Every game except one, bafflingly (Built to Scale) has sound cues that allow you to perfectly play the game without looking at it, so I casually played through it blind and it was a lot of fun and an interesting experience playing a game with my eyes literally closed for over two hours. Really speaks to how much I like what this game has to offer that I'm looking for new ways to play it like that, and it was totally worth it too. Needless to say I'm kinda in love with this game and I really wish they had added the Chorus Kids into Smash like was once rumored, but there's tragically no Rhythm Heaven representation at all, even as an assist trophy or something, and it really bothers me. This game is one of Nintendo's best first-party offerings and it should not go ignored.

Honorable Mention: Rhythm Heaven Megamix. Really like this game too, but while it does add some new games of its own and some new features as well, most of what makes this game good are old games ported over from previous Rhythm Heaven games, so I decided not to rank it. It probably would have ranked in the 70's or 80's or thereabouts - I don't like the remixes in this one as much as in Fever, nor do I even like the game selection as much as Fever, for various reasons which I don't feel like getting into here. And just the fact that it's lacking as much novelty as Fever has means it doesn't rank as high for me. It's still really good, though, and I feel really lucky that we had it localized here, because it felt for a while like we weren't going to get it. I'm wondering if Rhythm Heaven will have a future - I really hope they make a Rhythm Heaven for Switch.

I DID start in original early release (like, December 2017), but, yep. That's mostly active playtime too, not a lot of idling (although there's definitely some. Probably somewhere between 10-50 hours of idling, hard to say.) But, yeah, there were some days during 2018 where I didn't do much except play Spire, so even though I've had a few months where I didn't play it at all, yeah, I'm not surprised that I got the average way up there.

LordoftheMorons posted...

VLR is fantastic. So glad I decided to buy it after thinking 999 was just pretty good.

Same. I actually like 999 more now that I've played VLR, but at the time I was only kind of mildly interested in the sequel, I thought 999 was okay, had an interesting style and some really interesting plot twists, just enough to get me to want to see what the sequel was about since everyone said VLR was really good.

#14





Years of release: 2017-2019 (PC early access), 2019 (PC/PS4/XB1/Switch)
Beaten?: A20 act 4 on Silent/Defect but still working on Ironclad/Watcher

Clocking in at an unconscionable 1,144 hours, Slay the Spire easily ranks as my most-played game of the decade, and surely ranking near the top of my most-played games ever, although I believe Rock Band 2 is still the likely titleholder (although I'll never really know how much time I spent playing it and I don't really want to know). You might have thought a certain other game might have been the highest, but that other game is only in the 700 hour range! This is my most-played Steam game right now and it will take quite the effort for any game to top it.

Slay the Spire is a roguelike deckbuilder. If you've ever played Dominion or something of the sort, the concept will be familiar here. It's like a CCG, except you always start with the same, basic deck, and through the course of play, drawing cards, playing them, discarding and reshuffling, you use the cards in your deck to defeat monsters and advance through the Spire's many floors, adding cards to your deck as you go (and sometimes removing cards) and powering yourself up to take on the challenging boss fights at the end. Like any roguelike, the game's different every time you play, and if you die, you start a new run from the beginning.

Does this game really have 1,144 hours of content? Well, probably not quite that much. But I've had a lot of times in my life between late 2017 and now when the exact thing I needed was a Slay the Spire run. It's comfort food - something I can pick up for an hour or two to relax and put down whenever suits me. I never really get bored of this game. The possible strategy space is pretty vast, almost every card in the game is useful and be utilized as part of some effective and fun strategy, so every game feels a little different. Adding cards to my deck and collecting relics and watching myself get stronger over the course of the run just has an addictive quality to it, and there's enough variety here that no two runs ever feel quite the same.

The game's pretty challenging too. My first ever run, on Ironclad, was a victory, and my first Silent run was a death to the act 3 boss; but after that stroke of luck I found myself needing improve my skills and knowledge to keep that streak up. I did, but the game offers one of the most clever difficulty mode options I've seen; Ascension mode, which goes from levels 1 to 20 and adds incrementally harder challenges to each run, beefing up enemy hp and damage, giving you less gold and healing, adding junk to your deck and making events worse, just turning up the heat a little more each run until you hit ascension 20 and suddenly the game has gone from relatively simple to completely oppressive. Ascension 20 and act 4 didn't exist for about the first half of my career playing this game, but even still, I have only scored an act 4 victory on A20 three times ever. This level of challenge gives me a lot of motivation and a lot of room to really focus on playing my best, and that combined with the variety of different cards at my disposal keeps me coming back, trying to increase my mastery of the game little by little.

My only complaint about the game really is that it's pretty random what cards and relics you get, and some relics and cards are much better than others. I really like roguelikes that present you with different but equal options, focusing on having runs have variety, rather than a variable chance of success - sometimes hoping for great relics in Spire can be a bit of a frustration when you get dumped with the really bad ones. But it's a pretty minor complaint, as most of the possibilities in this game are viable.

Not much more to say than that. Dominion has long been one of my favorite board games, and the mechanics of adding and removing cards from your deck during play in order to create the most efficient deck has long been a game mechanic that has fascinated me. I haven't been able to play as much Dominion lately, but the single-player Slay the Spire has given me the opportunity to really think about those mechanics in a different setting. After all this time, I still haven't really mastered the new DLC character, so I've still got more of this game to play. A roguelike deckbuilder is right up my alley as far as games that can absorb all of my time go; I don't know what type of game it will take to break my current playtime in Spire but it'll have to be pretty damn good.

Oh, one other completely random thing that I forgot to mention but I wanted to mention in my Super Mario Maker writeup: a shoutout to Mega Maker, a brilliant little fan project in the vein of Super Mario Maker that does for Mega Man games what Super Mario Maker did for Mario. I haven't really actually gotten as deep into it as I should have, and I don't really know why - I think, again, it's just hard for the creativity bug to bite, and random Mega Man levels are harder to just pick up and play than Mario levels for whatever reason. But I LOVE the concept and I really should check out and see how it's come along in the past year or two since I first found it. It was something I considered putting on my list but I just didn't have enough experience with it, but it's a great little thing.

#15





Years of release: 2017 (Game Jam demo), 2019 (PC, Switch)
Beaten?: Yes, almost 100% but not quite

I don't remember exactly how I came upon Baba Is You, but at one point or another it became the flavor of the month sometime around the beginning of the year, and I decided I would play the less polished demo version of the game to get a feel for it. Despite the fact that the visuals and music were all hastily put-together things for a game jam, the game concept was completely riveting and immediately catapulted itself into being one of the most interesting puzzle games I've ever played. I knew I had to play the full thing right away, and I did.

Baba Is You is a block-pushing puzzle game, but with a twist, the best twist the Sokoban genre of games has ever seen - every rule that governs how objects in the world work are ALSO blocks that can be pushed, and by pushing them, you change how everything operates - walls no longer stop you, objects become pushable or not pushable, and you can potentially control any object on the screen, including the walls themselves. Soon, you realize that objects themselves have no intrinsic meaning, only the logic that the game grants to them, and the ability to change this logic allows you to manipulate them as you please.

Well, to an extent. Because, of course, this is a puzzle game, and if you could do anything you want, it wouldn't be much of a puzzle. This game's puzzles are so intelligently designed that the game always feels challenging, but never feels too fully frustrating, except for a few of the game's more arduous puzzles. The solutions always feel like they're just in your grasp - there are only ever so many ways that you can manipulate the level's logic, and trying new things results in different interactions, and experimenting with what things you are allowed to change reveals the path forward if you spend enough time with it and spend enough time thinking about how you can use the tools given to you to move forward and achieve your goal. It's a difficult game, but far from one of the most difficult puzzle games I've ever played - it's no Snakebird, or Stephen's Sausage Roll, or something truly miserably difficult along those lines. Baba Is You starts off nice and simple and gradually works its way to being difficult, before still gradually working its way up to being truly nasty, and then when you think you've understood all there is to understand, there is so much more yet to learn. It's really surprising and impressive just how far this game takes its own concept to the max. And yet, all the way, aside from a couple of puzzle solutions that I admit I did have to look up, I always felt like the puzzles were manageable, within my reach. Just as long as I kept trying new things, and never repeating old ideas that didn't work, and eliminating seemingly dead possibilities until only one remained, I could always figure out the answer - and the answers themselves always felt like rewards, these grand moments of realization in which I realize a way that I could have used the tools given to me. Playing around with the logic of the game makes the answer to each puzzle seem not like a solution, but a REVELATION. These, to me, are always the best sorts of puzzle games.

I really love the art style and music in this game, too. The soundtrack is really chill but surprisingly catchy, and I find myself humming its abstract and discordant little tunes surprisingly often - they're a really nice backdrop to this game when you're thinking for a long time. And Baba is just so damn cute. I don't know what he is. Is he a sheep, because he's called Baba? Some kind of rabbit? Some kind of... weird gremlin? I don't know. I love Baba. I am glad that he is me. (Not to be confused with Me, who is not Baba.)

But I really keep coming back for the puzzles. I'm even replaying the game right now, because it's been long enough that many of the solutions to the puzzles I've forgotten by now, and even having more expertise in understanding the game's puzzle 'language', so to speak, I still continually find the puzzles challenging. And there's quite a few that I still haven't cleared yet. I did look up a couple of answers just because I wanted to progress through the game and unlock stuff, but I'm satisfied with leaving some puzzles uncleared to gradually work my way through, because nothing's more satisfying than having spent several hours over weeks or months solving a puzzle to finally stumble upon the answer and have it seemed so simple all along.

Random comment: Also I just want to briefly comment on how Virtue's Last Reward is probably the most clever game title I've ever seen; the original Japanese title translated literally to "Good People Die", but also contained within it a double meaning of something like "I have to be a good person" that's lost in the literal translation to English; instead they used the idiom "last reward" meaning death, to convey the double meaning that virtue is something that carries with it a reward, but also, that virtue will get you killed. It's a fucking masterstroke of translation and I just felt like giving commendation to this. (Also, I didn't mention this, but the localization and voice acting for the game in general seemed really top notch)

#16





Years of release: 2012 (3DS/Vita), 2017 (PC/PS4)
Beaten?: Yes

I don't think I could have telegraphed any harder that this game would be on the list, considering I was kicking myself for not including 999 on the list (still kicking myself honestly), and calling ZTD somewhat of a disappointment, although an incredibly fun disappointment. While I played 999 on Board 8's recommendation and enjoyed it since I knew the sequel was coming up soon, HOLY HELL was VLR a ride that I wasn't expecting. In my opinion, it's not just the best of the three games, but really the high mark that makes the entire trilogy worth it, at least for me.

I think it would be kind of an injustice for me to describe too much of the game or talk about any of the story for anyone who hasn't played it, but the general premise is - nine people wake up, trapped in a mysterious location by a mysterious figure named Zero, and they are forced to play a Prisoner's Dilemma style game with each other with potentially lethal consequences. It's a dark, philosophical, sometimes humorous, and fully batshit insane visual novel with branching paths and escape room-style puzzles, as well as some other tricks up its sleeve that I won't talk about here that really blew my mind when I realized them.

Some of the twists in the story - if you've played the game, you can probably imagine which ones - still get me thinking about this game sometimes, and there are things that happen that blew my mind and are so interesting that it makes it fun for me to see other people experience them vicariously. This story is confusing as shit and makes no sense half the time, but man oh man, it knows how to play intrigue, it knows how to make the player question everything they think they know, and even the game's stupider plot points are delivered with such flair and confidence that I can get over the fact that, again, this game's plot makes no sense and is mostly just a bunch of pseudo-philosophical babble.

I actually really love the cast, too. The funny thing is, despite the fact that they look like a bunch of absolute clowns, every character is actually way less weird than they look and wind up being relatable and likeable from top to bottom. Unlike Danganronpa, where the characters are just completely absurd, I actually feel like I can take the cast of VLR really seriously, and that gives the story a much greater sense of urgency than it would have otherwise. It's a long game, too, so getting to spend a good 40 hours with this cast helps you really get to know them and get invested in figuring out the mystery behind each one of them.

The game's puzzles aren't too great, really, and could have been better, but that's alright - the story's the meat on the bones here, and I think that having the escape room puzzles to do as a fun little break in between story sequences helps not just break up the action but also kind of tricks you brain into making you FEEL like you're doing work in solving the story, even though the game never really requires you to do anything except make a few difficult choices. I haven't really played many true visual novels, like the ones where all you do is advance the text and read, but I really like these games like Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and Zero Escape, where it's mostly reading but then you have to do some stuff yourself as the player, and you feel like you're really the one advancing through all these scenarios instead of merely watching the characters do it.

It's one hell of a game, and I was super excited for ZTD afterwards, and it... didn't quite deliver, but honestly, this game alone feels self-contained enough, even with something of a slight cliffhanger of an ending, to have been a completely satisfying experience on its own. I'm looking forward to playing AI: The Somnium Files now, which I've heard is really good, and I trust that whatever Uchikoshi does, it's gonna be interesting at the very least.

Zero III >>>>>> Monokuma and I'm really sad that he just doesn't appear in the second half of the game for no apparent reason (aside from one small cutscene).

#17





Years of release: 2013 (3DS)
Beaten?: Three times!

Phew. I was worried for a second there that this wouldn't have enough Zelda games on it. Crisis averted, guys. I found all the Zelda games. I have proudly retained my status as a Nintendo shill. If this were my real top 100 games of all time list, you wouldn't be able to wade through it without tripping over a Zelda game every five games or so. It's probably my favorite series of video games, even if that's not a particularly exciting or unique opinion to hold - they have the status they do for a good reason.

One of the best days of my life was the day that I received my SNES, way back in 1994. I got Donkey Kong Country with it, and just having that game on its own, I was absolutely thrilled - but when I looked in the box a few days later, I realized that there was something else that I had completely missed - the SNES was packaged with a copy of A Link to the Past. Wow, cool! I had already played Link's Awakening for the GB, so I was really excited to play this new Zelda game I hadn't heard of. The great thing is that, at the time, I thought that Zelda cartridge was a demo. It made sense to me, right? There were demo CDs for PC games all the time to try to entice you to buy the full game, so I assume that the SNES just came with this neat demo for a game you could go out and buy later. I didn't realize that at this time, the consoles were usually bundled with a free game, so imagine my shock when it slowly dawned on me that this game was not a demo, but the full, real thing. It was like Christmas came early, twice. I couldn't believe my good fortune.

LTTP is a game that doesn't really quite hold up for me nowadays - I think the game is kind of ugly and plays a little slow and it doesn't hold the same magic for me that it once did. But that said, it was an incredibly formative experience of my childhood, and it's very near and dear to my heart. When I was a kid, the world just seemed so BIG, and I couldn't take any of the game's challenges for granted. Discovering any secret, any bombable wall or hidden item, seemed like a huge bit of progress, figuring out any of the game's puzzles like solving a grand mystery, and can you even imagine how awestruck I was that beating Agahnim wasn't the end of the game, but just the beginning? I seriously didn't know I was less than halfway through the game at that point, I thought it was about to be over! LTTP was such a great adventure for its time.

A Link Between Worlds is a perfectly crafted sequel and revisiting of LTTP. I love how well it effectively blends old elements with completely new ones. I love how it tries to get you with nostalgia, by having the world map be exactly the same, and all the dungeons and enemies are familiar, all the music arranged from the original game - but then it turns everything on its head, planting new secrets in the world, completely changing dungeons, adding new music. It has the appearance of something old, but the guts are totally new.

The biggest new mechanic is the ability to merge into the walls as a painting and walk along them, which is about as mindblown as I've been since... well probably since Portal gave me the portal gun. It doesn't seem like much, but suddenly the fact that the walls are an available movement space in rooms opens up the possibility for puzzles a lot and forces you to think about how to get around in ways that I've never considered in a video game before. This game, above all other Zelda games, has the best puzzles I've seen in any of them; the dungeons are really well designed to take full advantage of the painting mechanics, as well as creating puzzles of their own, eschewing the more standard Zelda layouts for dungeons that offer multiple paths and surprisingly open-ended, emergent puzzle designs that really ask for creativity, as well as using themes that the original LTTP didn't touch (such as the brilliant darkness mechanics in the palace of darkness, which is actually dark now).

I love the music in this game - the old tracks from LTTP are lovingly rearranged and remastered here and sound a lot better than the originals, and the new dungeon tracks added are really interesting and moody, bordering on experimental, creating interesting soundscapes. The artstyle's great here too - I love how they ported over like, all of the "weird looking faces on the walls" aesthetics of the original and recreated them completely faithfully here, giving the trees weird faces and all that stuff. And it's cool how they took the elements of LTTP but reimagined them into this brand new story, where the "dark world" is a completely different concept and the villain all new.

The only bad thing I could say about it is that, while I love Ravio, the item renting mechanic doesn't quite do the job for me here. I do love that it means this is one of the few Zelda games were acquiring a lot of money really does matter, since you have something to spend in on, and I like how powerful all the items are, but it did leave me longing for a more linear adventure where I get items and can use them in new places and stuff. It's not so bad being able to get almost everywhere and choosing which dungeon to go to, but there was something strangely unsatisfying about being able to buy nearly every item in the standard Zelda lineup at the start of the game (with a couple of exceptions that you don't open until later). It's a minor complaint though, it has its upsides, and I appreciate that they tried something new. It's otherwise a nearly perfect reimagining over a game close to my heart, and I daresay probably an improvement.

#18





Years of release: 2015 (Wii U), 2016 (3DS)
Beaten?: N/A

This could also be Super Mario Maker 2 in this slot, but I've only played a little bit of it, and I played a lot of SMM1. Super Mario Maker 2 by all accounts seems to be improved on most levels, although it has some slightly awkward UI and a couple of removed features I'm sad about, but the original has the novelty factor, so I'm ranking that one here. You can assume this is both games in one slot though.

Super Mario Maker is the highest Mario game on my list, and for good reason. Well, no, not for good reason, SMO should've been, SMG2 and SM3DW are both amazing also, etc etc whatever. But Super Mario Maker in so many ways feels like the truly ultimate Mario game. It is all Marios at once, both the good and the bad, and it is a truly wonderful thing to behold.

I have always loved games that allow you to customize your own levels. This goes back to when I was 2 years old - one of our most beloved home videos is of me as a wee tot, playing Wrecking Crew with my mom, telling her where to place objects on the screen, shouting "LADDER LADDER LADDER LADDER LADDER" and giggling with excitement as, there they go, the ladders going up the screen. This obsession continued with Excitebike, onto things like Rollercoaster Tycoon and RPG Maker in the 90's, Jumper and Stepmania in the 00's and of course, stuff like WarioWare D.I.Y. later. I've always wanted to get into romhacking games like Super Mario World and messing around with stuff and making levels in those, and although Lunar Magic is a pretty comprehensive and fairly intuitive SMW hacking tool, I just couldn't really get into it for some reason - wasn't quite intuitive enough. I wanted more instant gratification out of it, I guess.

I was a little skeptical of Super Mario Maker at first, for the same sorts of reasons I skeptical of WarioWare DIY. How well would the creation engine really work? Really well, as it turned out. Well, does it create levels that are perfectly faithful to the original games? Sort of. While it's lacking in some options and I was at first bothered by how a lot of the visuals effects don't look true to the original games, I soon got over that - Super Mario Maker really creates its own "language" so to speak of the different old and new parts that it has cobbled together. The result is its own new thing that lets you make old things.

I really like creating Mario levels in Mario Maker - I personally find a real joy in trying to create traditional levels, designing them to be how they would have developed them in older Mario games, trying to balance the difficulty and finding new ways to use the tools I'm given. The interface is really intuitive, the touchscreen makes putting stuff down a breeze, and I really like the almost Mario Paint-like qualities to the game's UI and sound design. But playing the levels is endlessly fascinating, too. I love doing 100 Mario challenges and just seeing everything - the good levels, the bad levels. There is something fascinating about seeing all of these infinite Mario worlds, even the garbage ones, and exploring them all.

I think what I get a kick out of the most though is just seeing other people play these levels. It is amazing to see the kind of crazy puzzles and awesome challenges that people create with these things and give to other people to try. The blind Super Mario Maker races they did at GDQ were some of the most entertaining things, seeing people speedrun on the fly and try to figure out these levels that other people created, and it's a joy to see the creativity at work. And I love to look up Youtube videos to see the various different tricks that people have figured out with different objects in the level editor to create new kinds of situations through clever application of the tools they have. There's just such an awesome and interesting community surrounding this game.

I only have a couple of minor complaints. First, Super Mario Maker 2 removed the ? mushrooms, which really sucks, because that was one of my favorite elements of the first Super Mario Maker. Also, it kind of makes me wish that we could create our own world maps and create entire games out of it, as long as that would take a person to do, it seems like something that would be really fun. And I just never feel like I have enough energy to really sit down and create a level - it's always too damn hard to put in the brainpower towards creating one. And Super Mario Maker 1 is, I guess, probably dead at this point? I don't remember if services are still online for it, but it's probably going to poof out of existence soon enough, and who knows if Super Mario Maker 2 will last the whole decade. I hope so, and hopefully I can enjoy it to the fullest while it's around, playing through an endless parade of absolute garbage some 10 year old kid in Florida made.

As for Stardew Valley, I did start playing it very recently (like, this december), and I wasn't instantly hooked on it so it didn't get a mention anywhere. I might go back to it at some point since I know people love it and it should be the sort of game I like, but it wasn't an instant must-play for me.

Oh yeah, I sort of did Grim Dawn dirty in my writeups because I just couldn't think of any really interesting thoughts to articulate at the time, but I ranked it at #36 on my list (and much higher than Torchlight II) for a reason! I directly prefer it over Diablo II, I think it has more interesting class and equipment options and I think it plays more interesting. I super highly recommend it and I'm really surprised that it feels like it has gone largely unnoticed by a large portion of the gaming population, it feels like it should be one of those cult indie hits that everyone talks about, because it's really well produced and captures the feeling of playing Diablo II for the first time again effectively, for me at least.

Nagito's my favorite DR character, so that wasn't a problem for me

#19





Years of release: 2014 (Pack 1), 2015 (Pack 2), 2016 (Pack 3), 2017 (Pack 4), 2018 (Pack 5), 2019 (Pack 6) (PC/PS3/PS4/360/XB1/Switch/Mobile/Apple TV?! You can get these on APPLE TV?)
Beaten?: I am the best Quiplash player on Board 8 and I'll fight you

This ranking is for all six Jackbox Party Pack games mashed together into one spot. (Drawful 2 can also be here, in spirit.)

I cheated. I'm sorry. This list is tainted.

I didn't know what to do here. The way I saw it, I had five options:

1) Rank each individual game in the Jackbox Party Packs on their own merits. This seemed really hard to do, since they're minigame collections, and those are already a thing in video gaming, anyway (it's even already a thing on MY LIST - see Game & Wario). Like, I can tell you what I think of Jackbox Party Pack 1 compared to the rest of my list well enough - but specifically judging Fibbage, or Drawful? I don't know, that just seemed really hard, and I feel like it would have made my list a huge mess. I DO have stuff to say about all these games, but it would have been repetitive.

2) Rank each individual party pack. This would be the normal thing to do, but again, it kind of messes up my list - I think each pack of games is probably good enough to get into my top 100 here, but most would be further down the list. I just didn't want to write about each pack individually. Again, I have stuff I could say, but it would get very repetitive, so I didn't do this.

3) Rank all the packs in one slot. That's cheating, kinda, but it's my list and I'll do what I want. So this is what I did.

4) Rank only my FAVORITE pack and give the rest honorable mentions. I almost did this, but I decided I was going to end up talking about the entire series anyway. If I WAS going to rank my favorite Party Pack, it would have been 3. So if you want to consider my #19 game to be Jackbox Party Pack 3, that's fine, if it helps you sleep better at night. I know the fact that I cheated on my list is very upsetting.

5) Throw all of the Jackbox Party Packs out of my list entirely and consider them to not be video games. This seemed stupid. While they do kind of occupy a space that almost feels more like board game culture than video game, they're clearly video games and I don't think anyone would argue against this. Plus, they're great, they're some of my favorite video games released this decade, and I want to talk about them. So I didn't do this.

So that's my dilemma.

We've all played these, right? I don't need to do a huge writeup about them. Every Jackbox Party Pack has become a significant staple of our board game night diet (usually at Shad's house. Yes, me and Shad play board games irl, I live 5 minutes from hise house) as well as a fixture of Board-8-playing-stuff-together-online for years. For good reason - these are just about as perfect a party game as I could ask for. I love games like this that are just about being funny and creative and having a big ol' laugh with the group. I still play them to win! I like to play them competitive and see how well I can really flex my funny-creative muscles. But it's never too competitive or stressful - I always feel like I've had a great time after playing. The Jackbox games are incredibly clever and well-designed, and the way they work with having the game on the TV and everyone playing on their phones is a work of pure genius.

Jackbox Party Pack 3 has the best overall assortment of games - Quiplash is a brilliant game with the right group of people who are funny enough to come up with good answers, Trivia Murder Party is one of the most entertaining and replayable trivia games I've ever played, Tee K.O. has had some of my biggest laughs in any of these games, Guesspionage is an underrated and fun little stats game, and Fakin' It is great if you have a real-life group to play it with, since you can't play it online. Other games I love include Fibbage, which I'm glad they released sequels of since I completely exhausted the entire list of prompts from the first game; Drawful, which I would have replace Telestrations in every family board game night if I had a device with access to Jackbox games; Mad Verse City, which is extremely fun to write funny rhymes on and hear them spoken back; and Push the Button, which is like Fakin' It but playable online and structured more like a Mafia game, which is perfectly up Board 8's alley. I like pretty much every game in the series though, aside from Lie Swatter in the first pack. Pretty much everything else is a winner, or at least playable. Bomb Corp is also great if you can get four people in real life to play it with.

It's tough to rank these among other games, but some of the times I've had playing these games have been the most memorable and fun times I've ever had, so I don't think it's dumb to rank these this high at all. All of the work that the Jackbox people went into coming up with questions, doing voice acting for them, and all of the hilarious characters and music and presentation in general that they put around it make for a really excellently produced package, so I have no doubts that they're some of my favorite games of the decade. I hope Jackbox Party Pack 7-16 rank highly on my next game of the decade list.

#20





Years of release: 2019 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

I would like to share with you a conversation I had on a private server of Necrodancer friends. The context of this is that we were putting together a numbered list of various game ideas that we wanted someone to make someday. Please note the time stamps.



Ultimately, this game ended up being procedurally generated, and I didn't even suggest the idea of turning Necrodancer into an ACTUAL Zelda game. But... well, let's just say this game coming out fulfilled one of my wildest fantasies, regardless.

The mere existence of this game is one of the strangest and most wonderful miracles I can even imagine. I had no reason to even bother watching the Nintendo indie showcase where this game was announced; imagine my absolute confusion and shock when I woke up that day to a bunch of Discord notifications revealing that... this was a thing that existed. It still doesn't feel real - Crypt of the Necrodancer getting a crossover with The Legend of Zelda. It feels like a weird dream that I'm still having. Naturally, those of us in this channel freaked the actual fuck out in March of 2019 when this game was eventually announced. The proceeding months waiting for this game were agonizing. I knew it probably wouldn't live up to how good Necrodancer was, but I couldn't wait to play it.

It didn't disappoint; although it indeed was not as good as Necrodancer, it was an excellent title in its own right, and lives up to its concept about as well as I could have hoped. In fact, it was probably in the upper ranges of how optimistic I was about the game; I loved how this game incorporated Zelda's overworld and dungeon mechanics, its various tools and items, how it created challenging boss fights, and how much fanservice it gave for fans of both series.

We did a lot of speculating about what the mechanics of the game would be like, and whether or not it would adhere more to Necrodancer or Zelda traditions. It ended up being roughly what I expected - the gameplay is mostly Necrodancer but with Zelda items, and the characters and world are largely Zelda-derived, but Cadence shows up (although she plays a much smaller role than I expected - interestingly enough, this is a game where Zelda shines instead). I think it all works pretty well. Thanks to the less roguelike nature of the game, I think this game is a bit more accessible to new players, and it's easier to beat than Necrodancer but still gives a lot of ways to challenge yourself, through speedrunning and playing on more difficult modes. I like how this game found ways to give the idea of a Zelda-like adventure without having required items and paths for you to take, the nonlinearity reminds me just a little bit more of Zelda 1, where items are useful but not needed. The dungeons and boss fights feel great. Holy crap, the music. The music is wonderful.

This game only doesn't reach the highs of Necrodancer because I think it's comparitively lacking in replay value. There aren't a lot of different items you can get in this one, so every run more or less plays out the same way, whereas every Necrodancer run can be quite different depending on which items you find. It doesn't have quite the same longetivity, although it's still an excellent game to race. I sadly haven't been able to play this one as much as I did Necrodancer, because I don't have the means to stream the game, so I haven't been able to compete online except in the first week in which we competed to set the best possible times on the leaderboard (I got #3 in the double-time category with a time of 22 minutes). This has also contributed to my relative lack of playtime with this game.

I hope we get more stuff like this. Ryan Clark, the Necrodancer developer, was given the keys to the Zelda car and he handled it about as well as he possibly could have, and the game was well-received and successful. I've been saying for a long time that Nintendo would do well to release its grip on its own franchises a bit and outsource them to indie devs who love the games and would do a great job with them, and this game proves that I'm right, I think. Funny story - someone I know who knows Ryan Clark a little better knew that he was working on some kind of Necrodancer crossover with another game, AND he had heard rumors that Nintendo was working on a Zelda crossover, but he never put two and two together to realize that these rumors referred to the same game. I don't think I would have put it together either. It's just too crazy to imagine Necrodancer x Zelda being real.

By the way, yes, Necrodancer ranks somewhere in the top 10 of my list. I think everyone who knows me even slightly already knows this.

Bug Fables is another one of those games that, notably, I sprung for when it was only -10% off during the Winter Sale. I knew I had to play it right away. Worth the 20 dollar price tag, but I think it would be an excellent game for the Switch.

#21





Years of release: 2011 (PC/360/PS3)
Beaten?: Only the single-player campaign (!)

I will ALWAYS remember the first time I picked up the portal gun in the first Portal game for as long as I live. I remember thinking that Portal was just going to be a puzzle game in which you, like, put down standard video game teleporters that would hop you from one place to another, and while that might be an ok puzzle mechanic it didn't sound revolutionary. But then I saw how the portals actually worked; the way you could look through them and see where they lead on the other side, that you could walk through them and it would seamlessly transition you from one place to another, or that you could even throw objects through them and have them come out the other side with their physics carrying through. I was absolutely mesmerized - this still might be the single biggest technological marvel that I've seen in a game in a long time, and I'm somehow not overstating that. I spent at least 20 minutes just fucking around in the first room where you get the portal gun - and remember, you only have the ability to shoot ONE portal at that time, the other one is affixed to the wall and unmovable. I was still completely transfixed on how just a single connection of portals in an unremarkable room worked, like a caveman discovering fire for the first time. Getting the second portal was just giving that caveman a flamethrower.

The rest of the game, of course, was great, and I think most people here are probably familiar with it by now. Much like ME2, while I wouldn't consider it a top 10 personal favorite, I would most definitely rank it as one of the finest video games ever made; an unquestioned hall of fame, put-in-a-time-capsule candidate for sure. It's short and sweet, the puzzles are fun throughout the entire game's length, the twist and the ending are the stuff of legends, and it all left me wanting more in a good way.

I think, strangely enough, that the reception to Portal 2 was just a bit mixed at first. Like, it was definitely a good game, but I think it could never truly recapture the novelty and magic that the first Portal offered, and I don't think it really tried to. For me, though, I think it's really damn hard for me to tell which game is better. Sure, the first one had novelty, but the second one is just packed full of content and new puzzle gimmicks that only improve upon the concept, and the renewed focus on the game's story, writing, and comedy made it feel like a very different game.

I feel like 80% of the humor I associate with Portal actually comes from Portal 2. Evil GlaDOS, Wheatley, Cave Johnson, all that good stuff. It's been a really long time since I've played Portal 2, but there are just so many funny moments that I still remember; I remember the game's final chapters in particular being a real rollercoaster ride. The balance of entertaining and challenging puzzles and seeing what funny and clever thing the game was going to do next made it all feel perfectly paced. I REALLY need to replay both of these games, as I think my ranking of Portal 2 might be doing it some level of injustice.

Even worse, I haven't actually played the co-op campaign yet! I have a couple of different people in mind for who I might play it with someday, we'll see. I kinda almost decided to rank this game higher just because I know there's still an entire half of the game that I haven't seen, but just the single player campaign alone is worth my love. Knowing that there's more to see definitely means Portal 2 is deserving of being one of the greatest games of the decade. There are still, somehow, 20 games that I ranked above this one. It was a good decade.

Bug Fables is planned to be released on Switch/PS4, but that's a TBA for now. Keep an eye out for it!

#22





Years of release: 2019 (PC)
Beaten?: Currently playing in chapter 6

Bug Fables! Haha, you incorrigible little prankster! You tricked me into thinking you were Paper Mario there for a second! You almost had me going for a second there.

Meet Bug Fables, a cute little underdog of a title that just barely got in there under the wire to be a 10's game. Bug Fables is Paper Mario. "Oh, that sounds like a really reductive thing to say," you said, until you got to the part where you met the chef in town who will cook one or two of your ingredients, such as a mushroom that heals 3 HP or a honey drop that restores 5 TP, which gives you better items, such as an item that is a mushroom covered in honey that restores both HP and TP, but if you try to combine ingredients that don't work, you get a "Mistake", a gross-looking dish that only heals a measly 1 TP. "You're talking about Paper Mario," you said. No, this is Bug Fables. The only difference is that they call it Teamwork Points instead of Flower Points. "Does it have badges?" You ask. No, it has medals. What are medals? They're badges. When you level up you have the option of selecting HP, TP, or MP. MP is Medal Points. You get 3 of them every time you choose to level up, so you can equip more medals. Are you still not convinced? Let me show you the back alley of the desert town where you can talk to a mysterious hooded figure who, for a small, medium, or large price, will enchant you so that you randomly get attack and defense bonuses in battle for a while. "That is exactly a thing that happens in Paper Mario," you said. No, again, I'm talking about Bug Fables.

Bug Fables knows exactly what it is doing; it is Paper Mario pastiche. It is not trying to hide this fact. It very specifically evokes very specifically the N64 game Paper Mario as often as possible to remind you that that is what their intention was. And I love the game for this. A new Paper Mario is something that a lot of people wanted. It is something I wanted. In Bug Fables, I got it.

Okay, so there definitely are some differences here, aside from the fact that everyone is a bug, and, you know, the story and world and scenario are all brand new and all that. The battle system is very familiar to anyone who has played a Paper Mario game before, but it has received some overhauls. Most notably, instead of being Mario and a bunch of helper buddies, you have a set team of three main characters in this one, all of whom fight at once and have different abilities. That opens up the Paper Mario design space quite a bit, actually, and Bug Fables uses it to its advantage. I'd say that there's quite a bit more of interesting tactical space here, although it doesn't really start to open up until chapter 3 or so. The game's a lot harder too; it even helpfully gives you a hard mode badge - sorry, medal - option which will beef up all the enemies you fight.

Most of all what I love about this game is that it's just so damn CUTE, though? I cannot help but root for this game; I want to love it so bad my heart aches at even trying to consider this game's flaws. And, to be honest, it doesn't do everything well. Some of the visuals and UI design feel just a bit lacking in polish, the music is a mixed bag of good and forgettable tunes, the environments aren't quite as interesting or fun as Paper Mario, some of the areas get a little tiring to traverse and some of the puzzles and platforming are annoying to solve, and the overall plot can be a little trite at times... and yet, somehow, I don't care about ANY of this. I am in LOVE with this game. Even if it doesn't really quite live up to Paper Mario's legacy, it is trying its hardest, and its effort is so earnest that it is impossible not to root for.

My ranking of this game is extremely volatile, since I'm about 70% of the way through the game and I haven't had any time to let this game settle - I'm kind of cheating since I'm still accounting my current, 2020 playtime in this ranking, but whatever, this game came out so late in 2019. But lacking the time to let this game digest, I don't know where it'll eventually end up in my all-time rankings. This game actually started out pretty weak at first - the game was far too easy until I found the hard mode medal and the hard hits medal (putting these both on ramped the game up into brutally-hard territory, which I absolutely adore), and the game's writing was severely deficient in the first chapter, where the characters had no chemistry and the writing lacked punch. The first chapter ended up being the awkward pilot episode, because as the game went on the narrative got a LOT stronger, and the characters went from 'weak' to 'I would absolutely fucking die for these cute bugs.' The chemistry between the characters really improved as the game went on, the dialog a lot more playful, the writing much sharper, even the plot a little less cliche than I was expecting at times. The gameplay got better as the game got more complicated and my number of medals went from 'disappointingly few options' to 'way more options than I know what to do with, some of which are potentially extremely good.' Sidequests all over the place, some of which are surprisingly involved. Plenty of little side areas and secrets I missed. Bug Fables grew from a tiny little caterpillar into a butterfly! That's a bug metaphor.

I hope the rest of the game is good. I'll probably complete it in the next week or so. So far, this game is more of a personal favorite for me than it is one that I would blanketly recommend to everyone, but if you've been aching for a Paper Mario sequel like I have you should probably give this one a look - I think over time Bug Fables will make a little more of a name for itself. Just give it a couple of chapters to find its groove, because it starts out slow.

#22





Years of release: 2001 (N64), 2007 (Wii VC), 2015 (Wii U VC)
Beaten?: Many times

Paper Mario is one of my favorite games of all time! The aesthetic of this game is absolutely adorable, the gameplay is really fun even if it's kind of easy, and I love exploring the world and looking for all its secrets. I was skeptical of it as a followup to Super Mario RPG, but it turned out better than I could have imagined! It's an incredibly cute game, thinking about it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, and it's probably my game of the decade for the 00's, since it did come out in 2001. It's too bad that aside from the spectacular sequel, Thousand-Year Door, we haven't really gotten another Paper Mario true to the series' roots in a long time.

But, wait... that's odd. I thought I was ranking 10's games.

Heeeeey, wait a minute, this got pasted on here. If I just peel this off...

xp1337 posted...

I'd actually agree that the V3 cast is the most solid overall but I still have DR2 as my favorite. The dynamic Nagito added to it was just too good for me. (I also have Nagito as my favorite character in the series but I think you can evaluate how he influences things separate from his character itself. I happen to like both a lot but I could definitely see/respect how one might like one but not the other. Of course if you like neither I can see how DR2 wouldn't measure up to V3 at all.)

And 2-5 is still the best case in the series IMO. Though V3 brings some great ones to the table as well.

DR1 as the best is definitely a take that would always leave me befuddled. 2 and V3 I can both absolutely see. But 1? I just can't visualize it personally!

2-5 is also my favorite "case", I should add. My next three faves are all in DRV3 though (1, 4, and 5)

KamikazePotato posted...

This is pretty much it, yeah. DR2 technically had more 'interesting' characters but I felt like most of them just ended up being terribly grating. There were like four people I liked seeing talk and the rest actively decreased by enjoyment of the game when they were onscreen.

That, and DR1 easily had the best atmosphere. I really like 'trapped in a place' settings and the other games just don't have that.

DRV3 has it!

Lopen posted...

That's an interesting read on Civ V.

I actually kinda dislike playing the game on higher difficulties cause of the arbitrary bonuses other Civs get and would rather stick to normal difficulties and just try to win with something gimmicky if I'm feeling it's too easy

I wonder if I'm a minority among people who have played as much as me though

(I also have an unplayed Civ VI on my Steam shelf. I feel your pain)

I mean, I kind of hate the arbitrary bonuses, but winning on the "balanced" difficulty (which is 4) is so trivial for me under any circumstances, even on my very first playthrough of the game, that I desperately need to be handicapped. The game just isn't playable on any difficulty lower than 6 for me - MAYBE 5 if I'm playing with a very odd ruleset. The AI just... isn't strong enough to stand up to any human player with 4X or general strategy game experience. I have no idea if this is a flaw with the game, or if it's simply not reasonable to develop AI with a better strategy sense (I am pretty sure some of the stuff that AI does is extremely stupid and could have been fixed though).

MrSmartGuy posted...

There's one potential reason people have given me for liking 1 the best that actually makes sense to me. Once you realize the backstory for why DR1 exists (aka who's behind it and what's happening in the grand scheme of things), the overall plot of the future games in the series no longer hold intrigue. Instead of wondering what's happening to this group of kids, your mind immediately begins trying to piece together how this fits in the overall timeline and the mystique of it all is then ruined.

I DO agree with this point - DR1 holds the most interest because you have absolutely no clue what's going on or why. DR2 and DRV3 sort of struggle with this point as they attempt to look for ways to surprise a player who already knows what the point of DR1 was. That does make DR1 a more interesting mystery experience in some ways.

I did not play UDG. I think I made the correct choice. DRV3 is not UDG, trust me - it was actually kind of a surprising breath of fresh air from the rest of the series for me, though it's hard to explain why.

#23





Years of release: 2017 (PC/Vita/PS4)
Beaten?: Yes

Ranking this game on the list started to become almost something of an inside joke for me. Like, I very conspicuously did not mention it at all in my writeup for the first two games, and I was kind of wondering like, I wonder how far on this list I can go before everyone forgets about this game, or starts to wonder if maybe I didn't rank it?

It's really hard for me to explain just how much better I think V3 is than the other games, and why that's even the case. I spend very little time thinking about the first two games anymore but I think about V3 all the time. I think it's mostly the cast - whereas I kind of hated the cast in the first two games I actually adore V3's cast. I think it has the most entertaining overarching plot and the overall best murder mysteries too, and I like that it returns to the failing of being trapped in a high school as opposed to on an island. The music and visuals here are a step up from the previous games. And even the ending of the game, which is really divisive for some people... well, I really liked it! Some of Danganronpa's issues of weird anime humor and some plot points that I was REALLY disappointed with their execution still crop up here, from time to time, but overall, whereas the pervious two Danganronpa games were a huge mixed bag for me (I may have overranked them but they were hard to rank because their high points are so high), this game didn't leave me with that feeling at all. Danganronpa V3 is a great game, in my eyes.

There isn't really a whole lot more else I can say about it. If you've played the game, you know why. A more comprehensive look at Danganronpa V3 would talk a lot about some of the particular things that this game did remarkably well, but I wanna keep this relatively spoiler-free so I'm not gonna get into it. (It was exceptionally hard for me to even find a screenshot of the game that wasn't too revealing - I didn't even TRY with the first two games, haha.) Just take my word for it that I think this is the best one. I'm a little surprised, one of my friends irl ranks 'em 1 > 2 > V3 and I don't really know why! I'm not really sure where the fanbase stands overall on this, but DR1 was just easily the worst one for me.

I didn't play all the side stuff which I heard was actually really good. Maybe I'll get to it someday, but I'm mostly just here for the main story stuff.

#24





Years of release: 2011 (DS, Japan), 2014 (Prosecutor's Path)
Beaten?: Yes

Gyakuten Kenji 2, also known as Ace Attorney Investigations 2, also known as Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigation 2 - Prosecutor's Path (WHEW) came at a particularly dark period in the series. Of course, I loved the original trilogy to death, and they remain very close to my top 10 games of all time, but the following two games, Apollo Justice and Investigations 1, were well below the bar. It kind of felt like the mainline games were going off the rails and the spinoffs weren't going to save them; the Ace Attorney series was now a fluke, a really good trilogy of games that had nowhere to go after that. As a result, I wasn't even excited for AAI2 at all. Like, if they localized it and released it here, I would have played it, but I wasn't excited to do so at all, and the fact that it never received a localization didn't really gut me all that hard; I brushed it off and moved on with my life.

Of course, I did play AA5 when that came out, and that completely restored my faith in the series. Furthermore, from the few people who actually had played AAI2 in japanese, I heard that it was pretty good, so my interest in this game got renewed. Shoutouts to dowolf who did a really nice translation/playthrough of this on Youtube, I really respect his work on this a lot - however, I do have to admit that I wanted to play the game for myself rather than watch it, and fortunately, a really good patch for the game came out.

This is actually a ranking of the fanmade localization, I should note, and I'm taking into account the quality of that translation as well as the quality of the original game, just like I would any other game, because that's the version of the game I know! The fan localization feels like a really professional work, and for the most part, playing it made me feel like I was playing an official game in all but name only - not only is the script faithfully localized, but the team went to the work to change names, upgrade graphics, and add voice acting as though this was an official work that Capcom would have made. The result is almost seamless, and it's really amazing how good a job they did - just knowing that this was a fan work actually increased my appreciation and enjoyment of the game a little bit. I do have some quibbles with the script, as I think there's a few jokes that don't land or fizzle out that they could have punched up better, and there's a few slight awkwardnesses (a few too many "eh!"s of surprise or confusion that should have been translated as "oh!" or "huh?" or a number of other better options in english), but for the most part, you can really tell the love and care that went into making this seem like the real deal. As a result, I think the fandom basically treats Prosecutor's Path (what a cool game title, too) as canon, and I think rightly so. We'll probably never get a better rendition of this game.

As for the game itself, it really was worth it, and I regret not anticipating it more highly, although maybe my lowered expectations made me enjoy it more. There isn't too much I can get into about the plot without spoiling, but I will say that this game just really feels like it has a lot more red meat than the first game does. The first game's cases are kind of boring and some parts of the overarching plot are cool, but it doesn't feel like their best work. Here, the overaching plot connects to Edgeworth in a much more meaningful way, and I really connected with all the characters a lot better. This game also weaves each case together into a full storyline in a really clever and cool way, and I think it's overall much better than the sum of its parts. There are some pacing issues in a couple of the longer cases, but overall, it takes the format of the first game, which was cool, and just told a way better story with it. It's a little bittersweet knowing that this is the last major apperance for a lot of these characters, but this game really delivered and sent them off in the best way possible.

By the way, I forgot that AAI1 was actually a 2010 game by my rules, but it would have been really borderline to even show up on my list at all - probably somewhere in the 90's. I did actually LIKE the game, but it wound up disappointing enough that I think I'm glad I didn't put it on the list, wouldn't have been a whole lot to talk about. AAI1 does have its moments though and maybe deserves a small shoutout, but the fact that it contributed to me almost giving up on the series does kind of sting a little bit. The fact that I now know the series would eventually experience a renaissance DOES make me feel a lot softer towards both AAI1 and AA4 now though, and they aren't remotely as disappointing as they once were.

Sir Alex posted...

Tagging for later, good reads so far! (Ranmilia from elsewhere here, hi Para!)

Oh hey ran

I just want to add my biggest criticism of the Animal Crossing games:

I have to play a stupid human when all the other characters are cute animals

What the fuck I want to be a cute animal too this sucks >:(

(Mass Effect reminded me of this by the fact that once again I'm stuck playing a human in a world full of really cool aliens)

#25





Years of release: 2010 (PC/360), 2011 (PS3)
Beaten?: Yes

Whoa, what the hell is this game doing here? A big AAA title where you shoot things? It's not even cute! What happened here? Looking at this list, I'm really struck by how out of place Mass Effect 2 looks here. Very different look and feel from the usual fare that I enjoy. But Mass Effect 2 is just a masterpiece, and I played and beat it, so it gets to be here.

I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet, by the way - just haven't gotten the opportunity. But I played the first two games in consecutive years when I was staying over at a friends' house for a couple of weeks, and I played through them on his 360 with my friends watching. (This was the same group I played Catherine with.) I never got back and played Mass Effect 3, unfortunately, so I don't really know what the whole deal with that game is yet - I'll have to replay the first two games on PC before I get to ME3, but I will someday.

It's crazy to me how far ahead of their time the Mass Effect series feels. The first one came out in the late 00's, and I don't feel like games have gotten particularly more modern or impressive since - I think this series still stands as one of the greatest gaming achievements ever, probably, and it's a shame that its reputation has fallen in recent years thanks to the poor reception to Andromeda. I remember when Mass Effect was a huge deal. It was such a huge deal that even I played it, and I don't usually play games like this!

Actually, I enjoy shooters a lot more than you would think given this list, I just haven't played any big ones in a while. This one's a third-person shooter with a lot of RPG mechanics, but it still kind of falls in the same boat. But what I really like about this game is the plot, the cast, and the world-building. This is probably one of the most impressive sci-fi epics ever written in any medium, let alone video games; I'm probably more invested in everything going on in this game than I am in any particular sci-fi movie, especially because you're able to walk around and actually interact with the world, which lets it fill in the details on a lot of little niches that movies, TV, and even books can't do as effectively.

I remember feeling totally in awe of the Citadel in the first game, all of this shit going on in it, and while ME2 doesn't have any locations as impressive as that, it makes up for it big time with a much better cast, a more gripping main plotline, and a ton of QoL upgrades to the gameplay in general. While the first game had some annoying equipment micromanaging and a lot of vehicle exploration that wasn't all that great, the second game really streamlines everything and gets to all the good parts. Not having played ME3 but understanding some of the controversy, it's easy for me to see why ME2 is the most beloved of the trilogy - it just sort of nails everything perfectly, especially the way it wraps up in one of the most gripping climaxes to a video game I can remember in a long time.

The only reason it doesn't rank higher is that it's not a very personal game for me. As a game reviewer, I would probably give Mass Effect 2 a 10/10 and recommend it as a top 10 game of the decade. As a player, though, it's just hard to explain - I have a lot of objective love for the game but not a lot of PERSONAL love for it, which is something none of the games ranking higher on this list lack - all of the games after this are defined by some sort of deeply personal connection I felt to the game. And it's not really my favorite genre of game, either. But goddamn, don't let that be a knock on this game at all, Mass Effect 2 in my opinion deserves status as one of the greatest games of all time. The worldbuilding is stellar, the characters are memorable and loveable, the writing and voice acting better than what I thought a video game was capable of achieving at the time, and the game's fun on top of all that.

Someday I'll replay the first two games in preparation to play the third one. I'm not sure when I'll get around to it, but someday I'll definitely do it. It's been a really long time since I've played them, hence the vagueness of my writeup compared to more specific comments I would have, and I think I'm definitely well overdue for a replay. I'd like to make a judgment on Mass Effect 3 for myself, and I kind of suspect I'll really enjoy the game.

btw Femshep all the way

#26





Years of release: 2010 (PC), 2012 (Gods & Kings), 2013 (Brave New World)
Beaten?: On highest difficulty, and also against humans

This is actually my first Civilization game! I'm not sure what convinced me to play this one - I think it was in a Humble bundle or something, and I was in the mood for a strategy game, so I tried it out? I have IV but I still haven't played it. And, embarrassingly, I bought VI as well but I haven't played THAT one either. Civilization V really satisfyingly served my needs.

One type of game I like are games that I'm able to play while I'm watching videos on Youtube. There's stuff I like to watch on Youtube but I get bored of just sitting and watching it, so I need something non-lingual (otherwise I miss what's going on in the video) to do just to busy myself with something in the meantime, and I like games that I can play kind of semi-mindlessly for a bit. Civ V fills that niche, oddly, although I would call it anything but mindless; but strategic planning sort of goes into a different part of my brain than watching a video so I'm kind of able to multitask, I guess.

This game also kind of weirdly falls into both the Roguelike/"watching numbers go up" niches. Starting a new game of this is appealing because every time, the game is going to be a little bit different, and you're going to get lucky and have exciting new things happen in each game. Pulling that slot machine lever and seeing what start you get each game produces a little bit of a dopamine hit, which is nice, and it always feels good every game to build up your civilization, build an army, research techs, expand your cities, watching all those sweet, sweet numbers go up. And if you successfully build a wonder, which is nearly impossible on the higher AI difficulties, mmmm it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing how much it's going to kick ass for me.

I really like playing this game with people when I get the chance. Games take way too long, unfortunately, so they almost never finish unless it's like 3 or 4 people max and you make the game as quick as possible, but it's really fun to build up your civs and strategize against each other, although the game does have a tendency to have some people run away with things. Mostly I play against the AI though. It's unfortunate that the AI sort of sucks so to make it hard the AI has to get completely obscene bonuses that allow them to do things the human players can't do (some wonders at higher difficulties become literally impossible to build because the AI will ALWAYS prioritize them over others), but, hey, that's the challenge of playing a 4X game against the AI I suppose, I'm used to it by now.

I do think the game starts to bog down in the later eras a bit - technology gets so crazy that you can have way too many cities and way too large an army to manage, while everyone's defenses are too good for you to do much significant damage to other civs, if they're playing decently well. I don't really like managing air units a whole lot, and the endgame tends to be a space race, but that's okay - I just wish that military victories didn't have to be quite so comprehensive, because conquering the world takes a ridiculously long time given everything you have to do. Minor complaint, but I definitely do find the game more fun in the earlier phases than the later phases.

This ranking should really be only considering Brave New World as the definitive version of this game, not the previous versions. I got Civ V with Gods & Kings originally and it was still a little weak back then - culture victories weren't very interesting and there were some other things that needed tweaking, which Brave New World came along and fixed. There's other mods out there that I've played though, there's one multiplayer balancing mod that changes up quite a few things that I really liked.

I should probably pick up Civ VI at some point but it's hard for me not to just want to keep coming back to Civ V - after 300 hours, I still feel like I could play a few more rounds if I wanted to. Each civ has pretty unique strengths and weaknesses and nearly all of them are fun to play, so the game has a lot of replay value, since every game is different. I want to get more into 4X games like this, since I've really come to like the genre. It's like seeing what board games can do when a video game is automating them.

#27





Years of release: 2012 (3DS, Japan), 2013 (3DS, worldwide), 2016 (Amiibo update)
Beaten?: LOL, what does that mean

I was a fool for thinking I would ever be able to resist being caught up in Animal Crossing's magnetic pull. I remember when the first one came out for the Gamecube and I thought, like an idiot, that this game was going to be boring, that it wasn't for me. I mean, it's a game without any gameplay! You don't do anything except own a house and walk around town helping the villagers! And yet, here we are, now, with New Leaf, with 300 hours played, and the title of #1 most-played game on my 3DS. It is not particularly close. (A few Steam games do eclipse this mark, though.)

Animal Crossing is pure escapism. Once I'm in this cute little town with cute little animals leading cute little lives, I pretty much never want to leave. I want to live in this world. I will do anything to lengthen my stay in this world for as long as I can. Fishing? I'll catch all the fish. Collecting shells on the beach? The beach is going to be pristine. Rearranging all the furniture in my house over and over again? Listen, I'll do anything, just as long as I don't have to shut off the game right now. Just let me stay a little bit longer.

My teenager's notion of the idea of no gameplay was, of course, completely misguided. There's a lot to do here, as long as you like collecting things and doing a lot of chores. Turns out, I do. There's an addictive quality to turning on this game every day, sweeping through the village, finding new fossils, seeing how your fruit trees are doing, helping villagers with tasks, seeing what's new in the shops, etc etc. Filling out the list of every fish, every bug, every fossil. Waiting for real time to pass so you can find new things that appear each season.

There isn't really a lot to do, yet I'm always kept busy, and I never really entirely feel bored. I don't know how to explain it. It's just a sort of magic this game has. Or it's a curse. I'm not sure which. Whatever it is, the spell did eventually lift on me after about a year, and I haven't been back to this game in a very long time. Typing about it though made me realize how much I miss it. I want to go back to Animal Crossing. I guess there's a new one coming out, right on cue, as I think wistfully back on my time with New Leaf. I could go back to New Leaf, but I feel sad thinking about how completely unloved my town will be after a good 6 years of neglect. Weeds everywhere! Everyone's moved away! There is a sort of frustration to the way this game makes you feel like you HAVE to play every day, like you've done something wrong. Ugh, maybe that's why I eventually had to put this game down. Will I pick up the new one? I guess it depends on if it has Isabelle. If it has Isabelle then they've got me by the balls. She is the best girl and I will do anything for her. If Isabelle is not in the new Animal Crossing I will start a riot.

You would not believe how hard it is to find images or screenshots of this game.

#28





Years of release: 2018 (Switch), 2019-present (DLC)
Beaten?: Not the single-player campaign, no

Of course it's on the list. How could it not be on the list?

Smash is sort of like Mario Kart where it used to be one of my go-to's, but I don't play it that much anymore, as I lack the people to play it with and I don't feel like grinding against AIs so much anymore. It's funny to think at one time I wasn't interested in Smash though; the first previews of this new fighting game coming to the N64 starring Nintendo characters just didn't excite me all that much, since I wasn't really into fighting games as a kid. I played it for the first time at a minor-league baseball game of all places, where they had this booth that had demos of Super Smash Bros and Pokemon Snap to play. I played it and I was hooked.

And now here we are. It's funny to imagine that once upon a time, the idea of Mario, Link, Kirby, Pikachu, etc all together in one game was pretty mindblowing, but now we're arguing over, like, Nintendo C-listers and 10th FE and Pokemon characters and random third-party chars like Travis Touchdown. How the hell did we get here? I could never have imagined that Smash would become as expansive as it has. It's a pretty awe-inspiring work of pure fanservice. Just about every Nintendo game past and almost-present is represented and celebrated here, and for someone who grew up pretty much entirely on a diet of Nintendo games, it's a really beautiful thing to see. I'm almost here less for the gameplay now and more here just for the sheer spectacle of it. Seeing all the new and returning characters and stages and assist trophies and music and what have you.

I do still really like the game, to be clear, and I feel bad about ranking it as low as I did, but it's been a really good decade, what can I say. I just haven't had that many friends to play it with, and I don't feel like going online to play it. I did play it with my buds a few months ago when I saw them, but that was about it. So I just haven't really sat down and spent as much time with this one as I'd like, but I'm sure it'll be a staple of friend get-togethers in the future. Wouldn't be accurate to say I've moved on, but it's definitely not the biggest thing in my life anymore.

I wonder if this is where the Smash series ends? I kind of thought that last time with Smash 4, and I was proven wrong, but now it's really starting to feel like there's nowhere left to go. Maybe I'm wrong! The series is still profitable, so maybe we'll continue to see Smash games in perpetuity, but "Ultimate" really does imply that this series is starting to near something of a breaking point. I imagine it'll never really go away entirely, though.

Honorable Mention: Super Smash Bros. For Wii U/3DS. This probably would have ranked in the 60's somewhere, but I excised it from the list and appended it here, because I really felt like there was nothing extra to say about this game, and it got outclassed by Ultimate. Well, okay, there are a couple of things to say. First of all, this was the game that introduced Mega Man, and I might never have experienced as much pure joy as the time that release trailer hit. I don't know how many times I watched it, but Mega Man is my favorite video game character, and I thought there was no chance he'd ever get into Smash, and just... the reveal absolutely blew my mind. Also, I do really like having this game on 3DS. Since I mostly just play against the AI anyway, it's a really nice game to have on a portable system to just kind of pick up and play a little bit of it for fun anywhere. It obviously wasn't as polished as the Wii U version and had some problems but it was the game I played the most of. The Smash Run thing could have been cool, it's a shame that it wasn't a little more polished and interesting. Anyway, these games are sort of dead now, but they deserved some kind of nod.

#29





Years of release: 2014 (PC), 2015 (Wii U), 2017 (PS4), 2018 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Look, I may be a furry, but I'm a furry with standards, alright? One thing that falls below my level of standards is the Sonic fandom. Never really been into the series very much (aside from Sonic 06, which is a masterpiece) and I share little in common with the fandom, aside from those who just like classic Genesis games. It's a bit embarrassing to be as deep into the Sonic fandom as some people are; the worst of it are Sonic OCs. Sonic OCs are the very bottom of the barrel in the eyes of this snobbish furry. So if you think I played Freedom Planet because it's a furry game, well, you are still correct. But I'm not PROUD of it.

Okay, all joking aside, Freedom Planet is definitely a game that falls into the "guilty pleasure" category. I really have to cast aside my inhibitions to get fully into this game, because the plot and writing would otherwise be barely worthy of a failed saturday morning cartoon pilot and with a cringeworthiness that makes Sonic look pretty good by comparison. But, you know what? Fuck it! Life is too short for me to not throw my notions of what's worth taking seriously and fully immerse myself in this ridiculously cutesy and mildly embarrassing world. The characters are cute, the world is fun, and the game kicks some ass, so why the hell not!

In my opinion, though I haven't played Sonic Mania yet, Freedom Planet might be the best Sonic game ever. The game is a combination of the fast-running and ridiculously large levels of 2D Sonic games with a slightly greater focus on combat and over-the-top boss battles that you might see in a Treasure game, plus the ability to airdash like a motherfucker. These elements are all super polished and work really well together. This game seems to know how to use its ridiculous speed better than the Sonic series ever did; the levels seem to actually contour well to you speedrunning them, and there are stops, but the level design flows from slow to fast rather naturally. Lilac, the main character, is an absolute joy to control. She's fast, her jumps are floaty, she has a midair attack that feels really satisfying, and her ability to stop in midair and do a huge midair-dash in any direction turns this game into a dream speedgame. Speedruns of Freedom Planet are some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen; precise execution can ensure that Lilac nearly never stops moving, and everything blurs by. Sonic would be jealous.

The art in this game is a joy, as well. All of the game's different worlds here feel like they're born out of an entirely new idea to some degree; I've seen fire worlds and ice worlds, but I've never seen "festive Chinese-inspired shopping mall" or "police chase in a giant bamboo forest." The ideas here are creative and lovingly rendered; the backgrounds, foregrounds, and characters are colorful and awesome to look at. So many stage elements here are also bursting with creativity, whether it be giant dandelion fluffs you can hang onto, ziplines you can fly off of, bows-and-arrows that you can shoot yourself from for some reason, or classic Sonic loop-de-loops that wind themselves cleverly around the stage, every little thing you can interact with feels like a gift from the devs to the players. The stages are just fun to run and fly around in.

The boss fights are really good too; there's a fair bit of challenge here, unlike the 2D Sonic games of old that are mostly jumping on Robotnik's head a few times as he floats lazily across the screen and does something ineffectual. The bosses in this game are big and not fucking around. I just love how much flair this entire game has - everything just pops off the screen. This game has presentation down to a fine art. There's only one flaw, which is that the sound mixing is quite bad; sound effects are way too loud and drown out the music, and there's no way to change the sound options. Which is a shame, because the music in this game gets my official seal of approval, even if it is occasionally about as overdramatic as one would expect about a game about Sonic OCs.

Otherwise, I consider it to be one of the best retro pastiches of the decade. Just like the Sonic series before it, it takes all of its best ideas and its most questionable ideas and goes full ham on them without a single shred of shame, and I can respect that.

#30





Years of release: 2017 (PC/XB1), 2019 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

Typically, I am about a year or two behind on games at all times, except for the real must plays. I don't have a lot of money, so when I buy games I prefer to wait for them to go on sale when I can. I always feel like I'm a bit behind on game of the year discussions and I never fully end up catching up until a year or two afterwards, but I'm never lacking for new games to play, so it isn't really too much of a big deal. But when I saw videos of Cuphead, I knew that I had to stop watching immediately and play the game myself. It couldn't wait. I HAD to play this game and experience it for myself.

I'm sure everyone's probably familiar with Cuphead at this point, but if you aren't, you should make yourself familiar, because it's one of the most interesting works of art created within the gaming medium to date. The idea to create video game bosses out of hand-drawn, 1930's-style animation was a genius one, and it is flawlessly executed here. Every character is fluidly animated and wonderful to look at in every frame, and the artists filled every character with an infectious sense of personality. The soundtrack is a real gift, too; actual big-band music written and recorded live, and it's easily one of the most impressively written soundtracks of the decade. I could really go on about the visuals and music in this game all day. There's just nothing like it in gaming and it really got all the press it did for good reason.

It isn't just a loving tribute to old-time animation, either, but also old-time games; this is a run-and-gun boss rush with plenty of little nods to classic games; Mega Man 2, Battletoads, Super Mario World to name a few off the top of my head. This game gets a reputation for being difficult like those games too, and while I don't find this game to be more challenging than the Contras of the day that this game is styled after, that reputation is still well-earned. I never found it too unfair, though. For as well designed as the game's aesthetics are, the boss designs are also well-tuned; I love how the bizarre personalities of each character lend themselves well to unique attack patterns, and they never seem too ridiculous to dodge, at least with a little bit of practice. The game does reward practice and strong play, though, which I appreciate, although I found the shmup stages maybe a little too hard overall.

The only reason I couldn't rank it higher is that every game higher on my list has a more interesting gameplay conceit or a more interesting story to tell. As beautiful as this game is, and as fun to play as it is, it's still kind of just a Contra boss rush, albeit a very well polished and creative one. Its novelty does wear thin soon enough after it's beaten once, at least for me, and I spent less time with this one than every other game on the list I ranked above it except for one. But it was a game that was well worth my efforts to play it in the actual year it was released, and I do still think about this game quite a bit. I really can't state enough how hard it is to only rank this game #30.

SeabassDebeste posted...

not having played this game, you're doing yourself a big disservice by assuming shakespeare's plays are dry - especially the most famous ones. their dialogue can be impenetrable but the plot and characters are iconic for a reason.

Yeah, actually, I did want to clarify that I didn't mean that I believe Shakespeare is dry, but it was a talking point that slipped through my fingers as I talked about other stuff. I definitely have some degree of intellectual curiosity about his works even though I've never experienced any of them personally, because I know well that there's a reason these stories are probably the most important works of the English language's canon. But I DO know that they are challenging works to read or watch at the very least, which makes the effort of experiencing them thoughtfully seem like an undertaking, and in video game format I was worried that it was going to be a lot to take in; but the game made it painless to understand the story of Hamlet. The writing here is almost entirely contemporary aside from a few direct Hamlet quotes, I should add, which helps its legibility a lot especially considering you really need to carefully consider every word of the game's script.

I do want to say that this is the exact place on my list where I REALLY start feeling my pain points hit. Every game before this is a game that I really really liked - every game AFTER this point is a game that I loved to bits. Ranking every game before this was relatively painless, but every game here on out was super hard. This is the real creme of the crop stuff for me.

#31





Years of release: 2019 (PC)
Beaten?: Sort of, but only after 2020

Seeing this game on this list makes me regret that I don't have more obscure, oddball picks on my list. My tastes in indie games are pretty 'normie', all things considered, and I think even if you tried to guess the top 30 games on my list, you could probably guess about two-thirds of them right just through inference alone even if you didn't know me that well. I think that until 2015 or so I didn't really start picking up on more unusual, overlooked game picks, but I have friends and I'm deeper into communities that help me find these sorts of things now. Still, I can't help but feel a little bit self-conscious about the fact that I only have a few weird picks on this list that are unique to me. Anyway, here's Elsinore. I JUST played this one, so this will probably be a longer review than games that I played 8-9 years ago.

Elsinore is Shakespeare's Hamlet meets Majora's Mask. I really feel like I could just stop the writeup here, because I think that concept alone sells itself, but I suppose I'll continue. Elsinore is a retelling of Hamlet from the perspective of Ophelia, Hamlet's one-time lover who, spoilers, dies in act 4. The events of the story play out much in the same way as before, albeit with some liberties (characters are added, expanded upon greatly, have their genders changed, etc), but after Ophelia dies, she wakes up a couple days before, remembering all of the events that transpire, and realizes she's stuck in a Groundhog Day style time loop. Shenanigans ensue as Ophelia attempts to stop the coming tragedy.

I like stories about time travel, but I REALLY like stories about time loops. Groundhog Day is one of my favorite films for its deep exploration of the idea, imagining how someone stuck in a time loop could use their foreknowledge to change the course of events and their repeated attempts at the same sequence of events could open up new opportunities - and how all this would affect their state of mind in the end. And I enjoyed Majora's Mask's take on it, too, although it's more about world-building and game mechanics than it is character-driven. The idea of this world where all the characters are going about their lives even when you're not looking, where you can watch their comings and goings, learn from them, and try to engineer a perfect loop is very appealing.

Majora's Mask doesn't quite scratch the itch fully, though, I think because the Anju/Kafei quest is really the only one which requires extensive knowledge of different events happening. So now Elsinore tries its own take on it, and I like how it expands on the idea. As Ophelia, your only real weapon is that you can walk around, see what people do, learn information, and then you can, in later loops, reveal that information to people to change their actions in the future. This gives a sort of open-endedness to the idea that a game like MM lacks; the ability to dictate the course of actions through foreknowledge, and to see the many different ways the events can play out.

Elsinore's world is small and very character-driven, but the characters are quite deep, nuanced, and well-written, as they absolutely must be in a game that is ONLY about talking to people and nothing else. I was not familiar with the story of Hamlet prior to this, although I did read up on it after - my unfamiliarity did not matter too much, as the basic story beats of Hamlet are very well-explained in the game's dialog, and I never felt overwhelmed at all learning who all the different characters were. I was worried that being based on a Shakespeare work would make this game very dry, but that didn't end up being the case, as the dialog is all very sharply written, and the twists and turns of the story were quite surprising - needless to say, even without my familiarity with the work, I could tell that this story takes quite some large liberties, and finding out what those liberties were was a lot of fun, since this game goes in some really surprising directions. Despite the fact that it does some pretty crazy stuff with the characters, it all seems pretty well justified, and the dev's love of the original work shines through in all of the different ways they chose to play around with the cast of Hamlet.

I love how many ways you can get certain events to happen in this game - my only complaint is that, while this game does have quite a few possible ending paths, most of them seem to be gotten rather easily, and don't require you to set up any machinations that are too overly complex, and a lot of possible information you can use or events you can see end up being largely red herrings, which isn't too big a deal, but there were some interesting events I managed to set in motion that didn't end up leading anywhere which is a bit disappointing. The game is occasionally just a bit limiting in how it allows you to direct the characters; you can inform them of things but never tell them what to do, which I suppose would make the game a bit too easy, but it does make things confusing when you need to find very roundabout ways to keep characters from murdering each other.

Still, this game was one hell of an interesting experience, and delivered almost perfectly on its premise, helping me scratch my itch of playing a game about a really interesting time loop. I think the ideas presented in this game aren't done being refined, and someone could look at this and create something even more masterful. That said, I've spent a LOT of time over the last month thinking about Elsinore, and it's easily one of the most interesting story experiences I've had this decade. I'd strongly recommend it to anyone for whom the concept of the game appeals, even if you're not familiar with Hamlet - I have a feeling that I'll see the play and just be disappointed by the portrayal of all the characters now, especially Ophelia, who's now become one of my favorite leads.

(This is the first time I've had to take a screenshot of my own, by the way - I wasn't satisfied with how anything I googled displayed the game.)

By the way, update on Super Mario Odyssey: we found it today, of course, very shortly into 2020, after I missed my window to include it on this list. Well, I invoked murphy's law, and the game was returned to me. Ultimately what matters is that I can play it now and realize how wrong my list is without it, so hey, that's good.

#32





Years of release: 2018 (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch), 2019 (DLC)
Beaten?: Only the A's

Do you guys remember Jumper? I know you guys remember Jumper! At least a few of you, anyway. That was definitely a thing back in the late 00's, back when indie games were mostly something someone made in Game Maker or Flash or something else that was suitably low brow. And yet, I'd say that Jumper sparked the birth of a genre - something I like to call the Infinideath platformer. A linear series of rooms filled with spikes and other death traps, where you have to navigate the room with very careful precision at every turn, but death doesn't matter too much - you just go back to the start of the room and try again, over and over, until you beat it and move onto the next room.

These sorts of games were very in vogue and still are today, and while I did enjoy Jumper and its sequel for a while, I sort of came to dislike the genre; I just didn't find myself all that satisfied by trying the same obstacles over and over and over ad nauseum until my muscle memory had perfectly solved the problem. I prefer platformers in which you have room to make mistakes and you need not be so precise at every obstacle, but which demand that you overcome a longer series of challenges with minimal mistakes before you can proceed. It's just kinda what I'm used to, I guess, and while it would be wrong to say I found Jumper at the like to be not challenging, the challenge felt strangely hollow when all I had to do was eventually fluke into clearing a room once and then never have to see it again. Of course, I could play more to see how few deaths I can beat the game with, but... I don't know, the whole precision-platforming thing doesn't really appeal to me. Never got into IWBTG or its many clones; even Super Meat Boy wasn't really much to my taste (though I did think it was a fine game).

Now, the creator of Jumper has made his magnum opus, Celeste. And it is incredible. It's a testament to how flawless this game is that it's a type of game that I don't even really like, and I'd still easily rank it among my top 100 games of all time.

It's really awesome to remember the humble origins of Jumper and to see how far it's come. Celeste is stunningly well-crafted. It's visuals and music are gorgeous, its ambiance and tone cozy and charming. It even has a story that I think is well executed for what it is, managing to touch on topics of anxiety and self-fulfillment directly without feeling too hamfisted. But most of all, for me, the gameplay of this genre has finally found itself a sweet spot in which it's tricky, but not too mindlessly or annoyingly difficult to turn me off entirely. Madeline's jumps and wall climbing feel absolutely perfect, and the level design always feels like it has exactly the right number of obstacles to make the level exactly as challenging as it ought to be, no more, no less. Everything feels perfectly fair. I never found myself frustrated even once. I was always delighted by how new stage elements would be taught to me, then cleverly re-used and combined to create new challenges. Each new world brings with it new gimmicks that add to the game.

It's really only not higher because it still remains a genre of a game I feel at arm's length with. I really couldn't get into playing the B-sides, and let's not even speak of the C-sides, thank you - I'm aware of them, and I could probably beat them with enough time, but I just don't really have it in me. I don't mind, though, that there's optional content in this game that I don't feel like playing - I absolutely love watching Celeste speedruns, and I felt like I got a complete experience out of playing this to its basic conclusion. I haven't played the DLC yet - I'll probably return to this game at some point and finish it off, maybe even give the B-sides another go, who knows? Celeste may not be my first love, but it's undoubtedly deserving of my time.

I did take a lot of time off! Okay, back to work. No more delays from me.

#33





Years of release: 2015 (most consoles)
Beaten?: Yes*

This does raise the question of what "beating" a game means, because I never actually took control of the game once - I 'played' this game via watching Dels play it over screensharing, and giving suggestions for stuff to do and talking about the game's plot and all that. I experienced the whole game and I very much "felt" like I had played it in the end, so I'm counting games like that where I meaningfully experienced it. I love playing story games like this with someone else, anyway; having someone to bounce crazy theories off really enhances of a game designed to make you have crazy theories like Life Is Strange.

Remember how I said I really liked Gone Home, but I felt like other games would come along and do similar things to Gone Home but better? Life Is Strange REALLY gave me Gone Home vibes - or I guess I should say Gone Home gave me LIS vibes because that's the order I played them in. Just with, uh, more narration and characters and gameplay. And instead of a single house, it's a small town in Oregon. Much like Gone Home, I like this story of interpersonal drama that takes place in a world that feels very lived in - I love the design of the homes, the school, all the little posters and fliers on the wall, all the objects sitting in the corner that you can look at.

Of course, I'm also just a sucker for time travel stories. I don't care too much if the time travel logic has issues - I enjoy exploring the different worlds that going back and making different choices has to offer, seeing how things would play out differently, changing the future by altering events in the past and all that. It's an interesting space to explore, and Life Is Strange uses it really well, offering the chance to rewind time and see how different actions play out before deciding which choice you want to commit to. Even if most of the game's decisions don't matter in the grand scheme of things, there's still a very "journey, not the destination" feeling to all of it, and the choices you make do come up later in little ways that I found pleasing. And best of all, I like that these choices create talking points - it's really fun to see the statistics of which choices people chose, and I wish more games featured something like this.

I like the cast in this game a lot. As much as I like the Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, etc series, there is something nice about this game's down to earth characters, and Max and Chloe are really easy to like and follow along the story with. All of the side characters are great too - this game was clever, and even the most unsympathetic-seeming characters have surprising nuance to them. This story plays in a lot of gray areas - characters who aren't simple, problems that aren't easy to fix - and it does it without feeling too melancholy, despite some of the more tragic outcomes of the game's story.

I played this game as an episodic thing, and it was pretty fun to do it that way, since that built up anticipation for each episode. Episode 2 was definitely a highlight for me, as the climax of that one featured some really cool use of the game's mechanics as well as being an emotional peak as well, though some of the twists and turns near the ends of episodes 3 and 4 were very welcome as well. A lot of people didn't like the ending because it kind of ends exactly where it looks like it's going to without your choices influencing it, but - I mean that's partly the point? And I don't mind that the story winds up arriving at the place it says it's going to. Not everything needs to be a twist ending! I don't want to get into it here, just to say that I didn't feel too much discontent with the plot overall. I had a few issues here and there, and some intrigue didn't build up to anything as interesting as I had hoped, but it was overall good.

I think that's most of what I have to say about it - it's been a few years so maybe if I had played it more recently I'd have more stuff on the brain. While not my singular favorite story game, it set a very high bar for what a game like this could be. I'll play Before the Storm and LIS2 at some point eventually, but I did not get around to those this decade.

Random aside - this was the game I had the most trouble getting screenshots for. Most things came up with BTS or LIS2 and I just didn't find any pics that I found particularly satisfying for this one. It's strange that this of all games would be the one.

I'd heard of 6 games on this list, I put Heaven's Vault on my wishlist right after I saw it, I don't know if Mutazione, 10 Beautiful Postcards, or Anodyne 2 would be to my tastes as much but maybe

Outer Wilds is one I badly want to play, A Short Hike I own but haven't gotten to, Eastshade and Hypnospace Outlaw are also on my list of games I want to get to eventually

Elsinore I've just beaten and I highly recommend

I'm really enjoying your writeups.

I thought that AGDQ would be a good time to do writeups - it actually turned out to be highly distracting so now that that's over I'm going to go back to trying to churn these out

#34





Years of release: 2013 (3DS), 2014 (iOS), 2017 (Android)
Beaten?: I've beaten it three times

Right, like I was saying. After the original trilogy, which was obviously universally beloved by fans, Ace Attorney went through a bit of a dark period, to say the least. Thanks to questionable directorial choices and ill-conceived plot issues, what followed were a run of three games that, for me, really did a lot of damage to my interest in the franchise (although the third one was surprisingly good, actually) and left me wondering if they would ever make a really good Ace Attorney ever again. Fortunately, the seventh installment of the series (and its newly-introduced female protagonist) took a back-to-basics approach in reviving the series, reintroducing a lot of the old cast while also starting fresh, acknowledging the mistakes made in previous installments, and while it may not have been the most original story ever told, hitting many of the same cliche beats, it reinvigorated my faith in the franchise and filled me with hope for what was to come - an interesting, exciting, and wholly original sequel followed, but sadly, only disappointment after that.

Okay, maybe casting AAI2 as Revenge of the Sith didn't quite work, and casting Athena as Rey was a bit silly. But otherwise, it's not too much of a stretch, is it? Dual Destinies is absolutely the Force Awakens of the Ace Attorney franchise. It's not perfect and it doesn't hit the highest peaks, but it's a completely serviceable return to form for a franchise that desperately needed it, after my faith had been shattered by the Phantom Menace that was Apollo Justice.

I was ready to have a new protagonist and move on from Phoenix, but I have to admit, his triumphant return to being an attorney in this game made me kind of fist pump a little bit, and it's great to have him back. The plot of this game feels like it's trying to right the ship after the poorly-executed AA4, and I think it succeeds. It doesn't quite stick the landing at the very end for me, for reasons that I won't talk about here, but maybe I'll get to if I do an AA ranking at some point down the road. However, the DLC case more than makes up for it, being possibly one of the most fun and surprising cases in the series, and I love that in canon, Phoenix's first case after coming back to being a lawyer was to defend an orca. It's classic Ace Attorney.