LogFAQs > #949041854

100. Battle of Polytopia (Android, 2016)

I haven't kept full tabs on everyone else's system breakdowns, so I don't know if any other mobile games will be making an appearance, but I felt that I couldn't in good conscience make this list without including the game that has gotten me through so many dull classes, dead shifts, and waiting rooms over the past few years.

The Battle of Polytopia is a deceptively deep 4X turn-based strategy game where you control a tribe - each with a preordained specialty - and attempt to take over villages and cities, be they neutral or opponent controlled. You know the formula. Start at your small home, expand outward and upward, trying to maximize your research and army to control as much land and score as many points as you can. Polytopia does this beautifully and simply in a way that works remarkably well on your phone or tablet. It's free to play, and you can drop a few bucks for additional tribes, which is honestly (usually) worth it if you are the type who gets easily sucked in by 4X style games, especially if you end up playing with friends, which you can do both in person in a pass-the-device mode, or online.

099. Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64, 1999)

This game might have been higher if it had come to me a little earlier in life. I had wanted it when I was young, but we didn't have much money growing up and in the time it took 11- and 12-year old me to scrounge up the money for a new game, JFG (and the N64, for that matter) pretty much disappeared from store shelves. It wasn't until 2006, when I found it on a table at a flea market, that I finally got myself a copy. By then, of course, it was hard to judge fairly, because in the intervening 7 years, the entire gaming landscape had changed.

But this game, a third-person shooter/action adventure hybrid that draws its influences as much from sci-fi films as it does from any particular video game, and developed by the same group at RARE that put together Blast Corps, still excited me, even then. Its controls are not intuitive, but the gameplay is fun and relatively deep. Juno, Vela, and Lupus each present unique ways to tackle puzzles and combat, and the nonlinear design of the levels felt fresh and new in 2006, so I can imagine that it must have felt even more so in 1999. It's also one of the most visually appealing games of its generation, and it remains one of the best sounding games I can think of, from its grand score to its expertly crafted sound effects. It's really a marvel.

098. Mount Your Friends 3D (PC, 2018)

This game has brought a strange collection of B8ers to riotous laughter many a time. The idea is simple: imagine QWOP if QWOP was about flinging yourself up a tower of hypermuscular Sandbag-lookalikes before the clock runs out, all with real dong physics.

The game is perhaps best summed up by one quote:

"Do you remember me slowly lifting my dick into the goat's face?" - Digi

097. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Arcade, 1995)

I know a lot of people love the more recent, full-gore MKs, but my heart is always with the first three or four. Of the first three, I think MK2 is largely the most popular, but for my literal money, I always enjoyed playing Ultimate MK3 at my local arcade, and later, at my favorite laser tag place (which recently closed permanently, RIP Laser Quest). Gimme all the classic characters, a few new faces, and let me bloody everything to a pulp. That's what Mortal Kombat is about, and to my mind, UMK3 is the purest distillation of that.

096. Final Fantasy IV (SNES, 1991)

I am not the world's biggest fan of traditional JRPGs. I think people mostly know that about me. But for whatever reason, I always found Final Fantasy IV both charming and engaging in a way that I rarely did with other games of its ilk. The cast of characters is pretty strong for a 2D FF with no cutscenes or voice acting, and I think it has one of the stronger initial hooks of a Final Fantasy - the Red Wing attack on Mysidia and Cecil's subsequent moral questioning and exile have a way of drawing you in.

Is it the best Final Fantasy? Maybe. Is it my favorite? Yes. Does that make me weird? Almost certainly, at least compared to the rest of Board 8.

But that's the kind of weirdness I bring to this endeavor.

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The Thighmaster