LogFAQs > #969975361

1-Playin' Mario. Real simple. Not particularly exciting though.

2-Hotel Mario. Bowser shows up in record time unlike the other Mario games where they make you wait, Mario either questions Luigi's sexual orientation or reveals one of video games' earliest LGBT protagonists to be present. Luigi tells either Mario or the player to go to hell, nobody knows why for certain. Mario looks incredibly self-satisfied while telling you to check out the enclosed instruction book. Rivalled only by two of three Zelda CDI games.

3- I'm going to cheat. Rather than talking up any game's local multiplayer modes, my favorite thing that technically counted was people coming over with a memory card and going "I'm stuck, can you beat this for me?" It was mostly new games I'd beaten quickly or punishing 3D platformers.
It was a cool feeling and after 6th gen it seemed to disappear for good. Sometimes it went both ways, like with Pokemon where you'd help each other by trading.
How is this local multiplayer? Well, it was local and there were multiple players.

4- Dark Hero Jet Black. Jet told me over a decade ago that in the big evil looking castle that sprang up out of nowhere - despite the setting changing from Movieland to the real world - was where I would find an enemy beyond my imagination, the secret of the black film and the black v-watch. I've seen this location and can confirm that it exists so unlike with Captain Blue who confidently told me to expect a third threat, I still have no reason to doubt that Jet was lying. I am still waiting.
Jet's really cool. He's owns a movie theatre, wants to show people cool stories about heroes and is extremely selective about what he likes. I get it. He does something I like a lot, instead of trying to make it deep or serious, when he makes his move and reveals himself as the final boss he's all action and hams it up. I really like his voice, Keith Szarabajka's really endearing as both the "come ahn ya not quittin' on me now are ya?!" regular Jet and the "MUHAHAHAHA MORE POWER TO ME!" final boss version. That white outfit with the sword, the crescent moon helmet and the scarlet eyes is fucking viewtiful too.
His fight on Ultra V is happiness in video game boss fight form, only waiting on VJ3 to try and steal the title. You've got this guy taking your VFX meter to make shields, lowering gravity, firing air fireballs that put Akuma's to shame, flying around with his orbiting razor moon thing, constantly yelling "IT'S SHOW TIME" and all the time that song is playing. The award ceremony where the fight takes place is even worth a mention considering it's where I was left to wait, the place I am to return when the time is right and the three is where the two still it.
One day. Glory to Gedow.

5- Super Mario Sunshine. This is a hard one because I've really lost a lot of enthusiasm for these. Give me the one where you can cover the ground on water then slide on it for high speed, sure why not? I do still find the music pretty endearing and I appreciate that it's pretty challenging on the whole.

6- Tony Hawk's Underground 2. It doesn't seem like your normal contender for relaxing navigation or anything similar but here's the thing, I really don't like long stretches of going place to place. I know what's where in Lordran, I am very familiar with the Mojave Wasteland, what was once exploring is now mere walking place to place. THUG 2 though? I know most of those levels inside out and the game was designed for that to be the fun of it. The more you manual, grind and ollie, the more the points go up. It's not that hard to re-accumulate lost speed and it's a total non-issue once you unlock the Hotrod manual. Classic mode doesn't punish you, you can do one goal per run and it'll still let you check enough off eventually and move on. Story mode is this crazy dopamine vending machine where you just speedblitz a bunch of challenges and get hit with the rapid fire goal complete sound effects.
There's something about day/night cycles from games of this period too, this, Harvest Moon AWL, Dead Rising, stuff like that. I always found it was weirdly engrossing to see the day night cycle spinning while me, my stupid custom character of the day and sometimes other parts of the game remained completely unperturbed by it and totally fixated on skating around sticker slapping off of things. I am a sucker for nice evenings and dawns. The whole time the music never cuts out, you can customise your tracklist too and it's a solid selection. Another thing is as the years go on it becomes more and more like a time capsule, it's part skating, part punk music, part Jackass and all 6th gen video game.
It's a game with a lot of inputs and if you were new to it it might be asking a lot of you to learn your way around but once you've over the initial hurdles it's incredibly relaxing, almost meditative to play. It's not the conventional kind of relaxing, but if you fall back down, it's gonna pick you back up again.

7- Resident Evil 5. The Resident Evil 5 Infinite Launcher is the strongest rocket launcher I have ever encountered in a video game.
The RE5 Rocket Launcher is an absolute fucking murder cannon and probably the real reason Chris needed arms like that. Sheva wielding it without being sent into orbit by the recoil suggests she isn't even real, they DID give her a fairy tale outfit too. Perhaps she was a collective hallucination.
There are a grand total of two enemies safe from this thing and even then we all know they aren't really safe. Ndesu is a forced turret section but you know if you got to fire that thing at him it probably wouldn't even play the cutscene where the plaga spawns out his back he'd probably immediately walk off set and demand there be no El Gigante in RE6 because he really cannot keep doing this. Jill is the other exception. You can shoot Jill with the rocket and she will die. You aren't supposed to, because the game wants you to pull off her chest the device that apparently impairs her vision and intelligence to the point she engages you in combat despite you holding this thing, but you CAN.
Why not RE4's as well? In 4 you must hold R to pull the thing on to your shoulder and then fire a shot. Slow. Yeesh, what, where they trying to balance it? No thanks. In 5 you aim the gun you're cruelly pretending you'll be using, press on the directional pad for a quick switch to the Infinite Launcher and hold the fire button as it comes out for a quick fire. Hold the fire button. More rockets.
What can survive? Some bosses with armor if you didn't even aim and they're at the absolute brink of the blast radius. That's it.
What about Irving? He's a small target, isn't he hard to hit? You shoot the water beneath him, the blast damage is enough to one-shot him.
Isn't that second Uroboros boss glitched and apparently unkillable in later releases? You know what his glitch didn't save him from? This. One shot.
Wesker can dodge, can't he? Yes, he knows what he's dealing with. The superhuman final boss bobbing and weaving for his life only adds to this weapon's cred. If he gets hit while unaware or in his final form weak point, he's done.
Now I know what you're thinking. In UMVC3, critically acclaimed regular human beings Ryu and Chun Li can survive shots from it in his super can't they? Well you almost have me there but I will meet that by reminding you in that game, Chris can use that rocket launcher to kill Dormammu and Shuma Gorath.
I would say knowing is half the battle, but if you have this then there never was a battle in the first place.