Board 8 > Ranking my top 25 Multiplayer experiences of all time

(+) Yeah! (+)

5. Kirby's Epic Yarn (2010)
System: Wii
Played with: girlfriend

For my money, the best Kirby game is actually one of the spinoffs that doesn't even have the series' iconic copy abilities. What it lacks in powers, it more than makes up for in everything else that makes the franchise my favorite. Incredible music, iconic style, and pure concentrated joy bleeding through every ounce of its gameplay. This is the best game I ever played through with my partner, largely due to all the little touches that make this so endearing for multiplayer. Things like the ability to grab your co-op partner and throw them like a ball (with the bonus that there aren't really deaths in this game so the consequences for trying to have fun are never dire). The ability to just jump on your partner's head and ride them like a moving platform. The little BOP that your partner will do if you dash into them (also, dashing turns you into a car, and it's adorable). It's near impossible to be unhappy while playing this game; nothing else I've experienced has ever so easily put a smile on the face of the player. There's nothing else out there like it (and yes, that's including Yoshi's Wooly World). We played through the full game together early in our relationship, and it's one of my best memories with her.

On a semi-related note, I liked the game so much I made a custom moveset based on its non-Kirby main character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iw7pGLsmWk


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I need to know if Halo will make this list

tag

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If I made a list like this, Kirby Air Ride would definitely be near the top. City Trial is godlike.

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MajinZidane posted...

I need to know if Halo will make this list

tag

Johnbobb posted...

20. Unreal Tournament (1999), Counter-Strike (2000) & Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Johnbobb posted...

17. Halo 3 (2007)

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oops I scrolled a little too quickly

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shit I need to finish this already

4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008)
System: Wii
Played with: girlfriend, several other friends

Yes, as much as I love Playstation All-Stars, I've gotta give the edge here quite easily to Smash Bros. And not Ultimate and certainly not Melee (seriously, why the hell does everyone go crazy for Melee, it was decent but not nearly as good as every game in the series to follow). While Ultimate has Brawl beat in terms of characters and stages by a lot, and I appreciate that, Brawl has gotteen by far the most hours out of me. The new additions had me hyped more than probably any other game in the series (Meta Knight, King Dedede, Sonic, Snake, hell even Ike ended up being my favorite blue-haired swordsman). The timing was also great, because in 2008 I was in 10th grade, with plenty of time to spend on Smash Bros., the coolest game in high school. I also got a girlfriend around this time, and we played through all of Subspace Emissary together.

Subspace Emissary. Goddamn, what a mode. THIS is what I'd been waiting for from a Smash Bros. game from the start, and it boggles my mind that they've never bothered to return to something similar. I really had my hopes up for Ultimate to return to form after the initial World of Light trailer, but while that mode was fun enough, it wasn't nearly what Subspace Emissary had been. The inspiration it borrows from the many Nintendo platformers (especially DKC and Kirby) is easy to see, and it's so much fun jumping on goomba heads and navigating platforms as a variety of crossover characters. Then the boss fights came along, and the cutscenes, and it was just everything I ever wanted from Smash. I mean I watch stuff like this and still can't believe this actually happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKHQXuXE8qc

part of me's convinced Nintendo just paid people to shit on this game years later so they wouldn't ever have to live up to all that.

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3. Journey (2012)
System: PS3, PS4
Played with: anonymous strangers

Before its release, Journey had been on my radar for a while. Something about it was immediately striking. It's served as indie inspiration for the last decade, defining a visual and musical style all its own. It finally came out when I was in college, and I played the whole game in one sitting in my college dorm.

There something so powerfully unique about Journey's multiplayer. There's no local co-op, only online. When you play online, there's no matchmaking, no profiles, no voice chat in in-game communication beyond a single button. You can press the button for a BWOOP or hold the button longer for a slightly longer BWOOP. Weirdly, that's all you need. The game is designed in such a way that you can certainly get through it alone; much of the gameplay consists of platforming, light puzzles, some stealth, and perseverance. But man, is it just such a better experience with someone, anyone, at your side. Sometimes your partner will just disappear, and you can never quite tell if that's the other player disconnecting or you just not being able to find them. It's completely on the players to work together or not, but more often than not I found myself having a bizarre, almost loving friendship with the other anonymous player. I'd find them waiting for me when they didn't need to, and I'd do the same for them, and we couldn't share anything more than the smallest blips. The whole experience is done short of 3 hours, but in the end, I found myself with tears welling in my eyes as the joyous music played across the approaching mountaintop, and I knew my time with this ghost companion had come and gone. It's difficult to make yourself finish the game and leave them behind.

Shortly after, I brought the game home to have my girlfriend play it, and watched her go through it, experiecing it much as I had. Even watching the experience is wonderful, no small part due to its wonderful art and music. Years later, I got it again on PS4, and again I played through it, though as the years go by, there are less and less players available online, leaving me sense a bit of nostalgic loss at the original friendship.

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2. WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (2003)
System: PS2
Played with: my dad and sister

Pretty much every WWE game of the 2000s can be squeezed into this spot, as I played almost all of them, but it was clearly Here Comes the Pain that set the standard for a wrestling game. I haven't watched the WWE in about a decade or so now, but when I was a kid at my dad's apartment, it was an easy thing to bond over. Many of my all-time best gaming memories came from these games. For a while there when I was a kid, my dad wasn't able to afford cable, so we spent most of our weekends with him watching movies and playing endless royal rumbles. There was something just so much fun about being able to play as someone like Mark Henry (or later, Great Khali) and just pick up opponents and overhead throw them out of the stage. Likewise, it was a blast managing to scrape through as Rey Mysterio against the odds. The backstage areas were a fucking blast, and I'll never forget the hours I spent riding around on a motorcycle or forklift or throwing people off buildings or wacking them with mannequins. In a wrestling game, of course. (While the later games continued to have backstage sections, they tried to play it more realistically, drastically limiting the environment and interactive options and in doing so made for a less fun experience.)

More than anything else, these were games that allowed me to bond with my dad and sister, and in a time when we really needed it. We created dozens of characters and factions and played through the stories several times over and played every type of match over and over and never got tired of it.

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Johnbobb posted...

part of me's convinced Nintendo just paid people to shit on this game years later so they wouldn't ever have to live up to all that.

100%

4 and U are improvements on the fighting, but Brawl was the definition of DRAMA. The trailers, the music, this mode. Super memorable to casuals (me) in a way that 4 and U don't come close. I understand disliking the cutscenes and platforming parts, but the Kirby style exploration section at the end was brilliant enough on its own. I'm sure it took the dev team like 50% of the dev time to make though.

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damn we played Here Comes the Pain sooooo much, so many weird characters and crazy storylines

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1. Worms Armageddon (1999)
System: Sega Dreamcast
Played with: my childhood friend group

So this is it. My original "favorite game" for years before the spot was eventually overtaken by more complex, narrativ-driven, single-player games. That doesn't stop it from easily being one of the most fun games I've ever played. This game alone defined a decent chunk of my favorite moments as a kid. This was the all-nighter, where I would go to the house of my oldest friend (who I've mentioned several times in this topic previously), and together with a few other friends from our neighborhood, we would hang out in his basement, getting ourselves a pizza and a 2-liter each, and stay up through to the next morning shooting, punching, bombing, drowning, and holy handgrenading each other as goofy-looking worms with silly voices. It's a time that lives forever in my head as "the good 'ol days," even if they weren't always that, and while we played through dozens of games as a group, it's a time most prominently defined by this game. It's the bright, colorful graphics. The fact that you could name your own teams of worms, which gave the identical pink squiggles a touch more personality. It was the customization, the music, the variety of weapons and tools and terrains. The simplicity of the controls and the complexity of the most truly impressive plays. To this day, I still break out my Dreamcast now and again for the sole purpose of booting up Worms Armageddon, and to this day I still am not as good with a ninja rope as I want to be. When I think of the pure, childhood joy that really turned me into an adult who still loves gaming, I think of Worms.

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The full list:

1. Worms Armageddon
2. WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain
3. Journey
4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
5. Kirbys Epic Yarn
6. Castle Crashers
7. Kirby Air Ride
8. Jackbox Party Packs
9. Overwatch
10. Uncharted 4
11. Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale
12. Bloodborne
13. Kirbys Return to Dreamland
14. Portal 2
15. Guitar Hero: World Tour
16. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed
17. Halo 3
18. Tekken 4
19. Tony Hawks Underground 2 & AW
20. Counter-Strike
21. LittleBigPlanet 2
22. World of Warcraft
23. The Jungle Book
24. Crash Team Racing
25. Soul Calibur

and some honorable mentions:

Rayman Legends (2011) - Played with my girlfriend, and we loved it, but for some reason never finished it
de Blob (2008) - An underrated single-player game with a surprisingly addictive multiplayer mode involving trying to have the most painted areas in the time limit.
Mario Party and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (various) - These mostly fit together, as they're basically collections of addictive minigames that are stupid fun
A Way Out (2018) - Another underrated game that requires steady cooperation from someone close to you who'll appreciate the story as well.
Minecraft (2009) - Yes, I, like everyone else, have played Minecraft. It's fun.
Red Dead Redemption (2010) - I played the online of the first one a lot, but not the 2nd, despite the 2nd having much more content online. I think I was just burnt out after finishing a 100 hour story. Maybe I should go back at some point.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (2020) - It's so dumb and so frustrating and so fun.


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This was a great read. Thanks for doing it!!

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Johnbobb posted...

Rayman Legends (2011)

this would probably go in my Top 25 just for the music stages

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Worms is a ton of fun, and so are WWE games.

Though IMO, WWF No Mercy set the standard for a wrestling video game!

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wallmasterz posted...

This was a great read. Thanks for doing it!!

Thanks for reading! It's something I'd wanted to do for a while

jcgamer107 posted...

this would probably go in my Top 25 just for the music stages

music stages were easily the high point of the game


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Here comes the pain, what a legend

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