Board 8 > Board 8 #sports Discord Ranks Their Top 100 Video Games Finale: THE TOP 10

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#3 Deus Ex (Microsoft Windows, 2000)

I am fascinated by conspiracy theories. I love reading about them, and learning how and why they came to be. Not a believer or supporter, but it's a wacky side of the world that I enjoy following. Deus Ex is a game that imagines what the future would be like if all the conspiracy theories were true.



This first-person RPG set in the year 2052, in a world that is being ravaged by a deadly pandemic. A vaccine is in short supply and provided only to the rich and powerful, which has given rise to terrorist groups attempting to steal it. JC Denton, the player character, is an operative of UNATCO, a UN anti-terrorist organization. He is one of the first people in the world to be augmented with nanomachines, which give him superhuman abilities. This system of augmentations is one of the bases for the game's character progression, the other being skill points that can be allocated to areas such as weapon accuracy or hacking. JC starts out very limited in the beginning, and has trouble dealing with the most basic of enemies, but is able to grow very formidable by the end of the game.



The game is rich in story, with a variety of characters to interact with, sidequests to undertake, and secrets to find. It's presented semi-linearly through a series of areas; some areas are connected together and visited many times, while others are seen only for a single mission. I call the game an RPG, and that is what it is first and foremost, but much of the combat is handled through first-person shooting. You can also opt for melee weapons, if that is more your style, or much of the time combat can be avoided altogether. Deus Ex was innovative in that it was purposefully designed to accommodate many different styles of play, and the open-ended levels encourage exploration and strategy in planning your approach. You could stealthily infiltrate a building, hacking the security to attack your enemies. Or, enter through the front entrance, guns blazing. Countless games have done this since then, I know, but Deus Ex was a pioneer here and it really impressed me when I first experienced it.



Each part of JC's body can be upgraded with nanomachines, and with each initial upgrade, there is an irreversible decision to be made between two abilities. For example, you can upgrade the legs to give either extra running speed, or silent running. The speed will help in combat, but the silence might help you skip combat situation altogether. An upgrade could make JC invisible to the naked eye, or the other choice would make him invisible to cameras and electronics. In some cases, the choices aren't perfectly balanced, but by and large you can choose the pieces that specialize in your preferred style of play. Alternatively, you can mix and match to be more well-rounded.

Deus Ex goes a lot of places. The first act is confined to locales in and around UNATCO headquarters in New York City, but as JC finds himself involved in global conspiracies, he begins visiting cities all over the world, each rendered in blocky low-res late-90s glory. The game touches on all sorts of crazy conspiracies, including aliens, the Illuminati, one world government, man-made disease, vaccines, and Area 51. Given certain recent events, a lot of Deus Ex feels relevant today, which is kind of incredible for a 20-year old game.



JC Denton is a strange character. His voice actor was instructed to give an emotionless, deadpan delivery, and yet the character is written to wisecrack constantly. The result is a kind of dissonance that is unique to this game. It's kind of goofy, and bad, but also quite endearing.

The game does not hold up perfectly now. As noted, other games have taken the concepts that Deus Ex introduced and improved on them. The voice acting was not even that good for its time, and now is pretty laughable. The graphics have also aged quite poorly, even with numerous and impressive mods that do a decent job of helping in that respect. But I have incredible nostalgia for this game, and I am in love with its premise and characters, as cheesy as they can often be. I do acknowledge that it was kind of a hard game to get into in 2000, and much more so now. But this is my list, and it was very hard to find even two games that I love more than I love Deus Ex.

Deus Ex also is responsible for some of the best memes and stupid stuff out there on the internet. An all-time favorite of mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmOCsiZgAbg

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#5. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PS1, 1999)





Lunar: SSSC is a game that came along at the right place and right time in my life, and everything about seemed perfect. There is definitely a certain set of memories and emotions attached to the game, along with a legacy of influence it left on me. I'm not saying it wouldn't hold up today or anything, but at the time I played the game, everything worked out in way that I absolutely loved the entire experience.

I touched on this a little in my Lunar: Eternal Blue writeup, but I remember seeing ads in game magazines for Lunar: The Silver Star for Sega CD. I thought it incredibly cool. I had no clue what anime was, but the style of characters and the detail to them just grabbed my attention. I also was not very familiar with RPGs, but I had to play this game. I didn't own a Sega CD though, or really even know anyone who did. Lunar was just that cool game I would play one day, I guess, but I didn't know how.

Fast forward to the Playstation days. I'm still not very experienced with RPGs (I've played Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy Legend 2/3, and Super Mario RPG by this point in time). I'm also minimally more familiar with anime, as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon were playing on Cartoon Network's Toonami everyday. I saw an ad or a preview or something in a game magazine for Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, and that desire to play this game kicked right back in. I still wasn't certain I would even like this game, but I knew I had to give it a try.



The story in Lunar seems pretty standard from the start. The main character, Alex, wants to set out on an adventure to meet the dragons of the world and become the next Dragonmaster. Alex idolizes the previous Dragonmaster, Dyne, who grew up in the same small town and brought peace to the world as part of the Four Heroes. I don't want to get into any spoilers but there are some big twists as you advance through the game, and the story definitely ramps up as Alex seeks the dragons, meets new companions, encounters the Four Heroes, and learns about their past. But the story is really secondary to the characters. Lunar is really a tale about friendship, about love, about helping each other achieve goals, and working towards goals. The main cast is interesting and is given a lot of time to interact among each other and really work into their relationships. Where other RPGs might have tried to create a grandiose, over-arching story across all the universe, Lunar kept things more focused on the character level and full of more personal levels of charm.

One of the characters in the game is Ghaleon. If you were to ask me my favorite video game character, Mega Man might seem a good choice, since I do use a Mega Man-based name online these days, and there's a chance I could answer with that. But most days, I'd still probably say Ghaleon is my favorite character. That's right, I was the guy trying to get him into the Gamefaqs contests back in the day. Ghaleon can be intriguing and enigmatic, but also very real in his motivations. And given the themes in the story and characters and Alex's journey, he fits in great to really enhance all of it.

Because the game is a remade Sega CD game, it looks very much like a 16-bit era 2D RPG. Battles kind of play out like Grandia's, where characters can move around the battlefield, and there are attacks over certain areas or with certain reach. It's not like a full strategy RPG though, it's still a classic turn-based system, and just has some light elements of movement/positioning/strategy to keep them fresh, but also keep them moving along quick. All the 2D sprites are nice visuals, being on the Playstation. Noriyuki Iwadare made the music (another similarity to Grandia), which works great to convey feelings of adventure, with just the smallest bit of cheesiness to also make the songs fun. There's also a good selection of music that works with the emotions of the story. And you can't forget that there are a couple vocal tracks, which was a big deal at the time!

And going from the vocal tracks, there were the anime cutscenes, another big deal at the time. They seemed crazy detailed for the time. I think, as much as or even more than anything on Toonami, Lunar was what really made me aware of what anime was and gave my desire to seek out any anime I could find in the early 2000's. Working Designs also did a very good job with the dubbing on these, as they typically put a lot of emphasis their presentation of things. That reminds me, do you remember the band O-Town? No? I didn't think so, but they were the boy band created from the TV show Making the Band back in the day. One of the guys that made the band was Ashley Angel. Ashley Angel was a local kid to Working Designs offices, and they opted to cast him in the lead role of Alex for Lunar. It was his first role in anything showbiz, and he went from there to be in a major band, and then have a Broadway career after. This doesn't relate to my enjoyment of the game at all, but I find it interesting that a voice acting role in this game set him down the path to much greater successes in life.





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Working Designs of course gave Lunar: SSSC all its signature touches. The game came in a giant box, with a hardcover manual, a map, a soundtrack, a documentary video CD, and of course the two-disc game. The translation was full of all kinds of goofy humor. NPCs change their dialogue all the time as events happen, sometimes filling in with jokes, sometimes filling in with pop culture references. The pop culture references can be dated, as there are jokes about Austin Powers, the Tootsie Pop owl, the Wheaties cereal box, and Bill Clinton. They're all still references I get, so it's personally not an issue there. But the dialogue can also be serious and interesting. And due conversations constantly updating and changing throughout the game, it offers a lot of room for character development. It was a very well-written translation that had a lot of time put into it, at a time when many games had sloppy translations rushed through the door as quickly as possible.



When I first bought Lunar:SSSC, I didn't own a memory card. I just tried to go as far as I could before dying, or before I had to turn the game off for the night, and that was it. Then a day or two later, I'd try again. This continued for most of that summer vacation. I eventually made it as far as the Blue Dragon Cave in one go, if that means anything to anyone (it's more than halfway through the game). Ir probably played that first leg of the game about 20-30 times before I bought a memory card. Just from that early part, Lunar was living up to everything I hoped it could be. I got obsessed with this game pretty heavily. Lunar 2 ended up being a day one purchase when that came out. A few years later, I bought a Japanese copy of Lunar: SSSC for the PS1. I'm not really sure why, but I have it!

My family moved not too long after I played this game. There were a couple kids at my new school who I talked to that had also played Lunar and I was able to use that common interest to help start friendships. One of those guys is still a friend to my day, and was even in my wedding party when that happened a few years ago, so it was a good friendship to form.

I've often wished over the years that Lunar was a bigger deal. Online 20 years ago, I wanted to find more fansites, more communities to join and discuss it, more fanart. It would also be nice if the franchise continued to make more games like the two wonderful treasures we got. Well, we did get Lunar: Dragon Song, which was uh something else, so maybe we don't need more games if they would turn out like that. I at least always have two fantastic adventures and all the memories with them.



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I really love Lunar cant believe i left it off

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So many good games in here. Loved seeing 428 Shibuya. I need to play that and Trails of Cold Steel II again.

I tried making a top hundred a few weeks ago thanks to the old reminders of 90s PC glory days (hi Gladiator and Lost Mind of Doctor Brain). I'm looking at it now and the sixty fairly ranked, and I can't even agree with "two weeks ago" me on the top five.

Gaaaah, this topic so gooood!

I really should get back to trying the list-make, painfully trying to decide which nostalgia ranks in my heart over which, gameplay and innovations surpassing flaws and better successors, and pushing the limits of how many games I xan count as one entry (e.g. I have Sonic Mega Collection at 35 because only Sonic 2 would even come close to that high, and the Genesis cart doesn't have the Archie covers and Sonic CD intro I'd watch on loop).

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Yay Lunar! Just wondering what your thoughts on Lunar 2 are. I kinda liked it even more than 1 especially with a nice epilogue.

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Metal_DK posted...

Yay Lunar! Just wondering what your thoughts on Lunar 2 are. I kinda liked it even more than 1 especially with a nice epilogue.

I had Eternal Blue ranked at #17, so you can find more thoughts in the third topic, whichever page that writeup ended on. I did try to do that writeup in a way that wouldn't make it clear I liked Silver Star Story more, so I was a little vague about some things. EB does have some nice gameplay improvements, like that epilogue (oh god, I always wished SSSC had one too), and sped up battles, but overall, the biggest reason for having the first game higher is that I like the cast of characters more. They're both great games though.

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#1 - Bloodborne (PS4, my GotY for 2015)

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

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7. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 2007)
Our story begins a very, very long time ago with a young girl.

SMG is probably the perfect demonstration of the ways in which the mainline Mario series continually manages to reinvent itself. After the relative disappointment of Mario Sunshine, Galaxy shifts its focus onto more "traditional" linear levels rather than vast worlds to explore and search for secrets. Of course, there's still some hidden power ups and stars at points, but the game is much less about the movement capabilities of Mario and moreso about new abilities and wildly creative levels. And here I'm still burying the lede just a little bit - the game's levels are composed of loosely connected planetoids with their own gravitational pull. This gimmick has so much creative potential, at times it feels like Galaxy just scratches the surface of what sorts of challenges and ideas are possible. And gameplay-wise, it's smooth as hell; the camera shifts between following behind the player or in a fixed spot as the situation demands. The controls are relatively simplified, too - you can get an extra jump to adjust any misfires with a wiimote flick, but there's very little additional complexity versus say, Sunshine or Odyssey.
But the #1 thing that sells me about SMG1 is its theme; y'know, the whole space thing that's sold by its very title. There's a lot of stuff done really well by centering Mario around a space theme: it introduces Mario to characters and environments not really touched upon by the series before, it allowed for the creation of the traveling-between-planetoids and gravitational madness that comprises the bulk of the gameplay, and it gives the game a distinct aesthetic, as evidenced by its visual presentation and music. And wow, the soundtrack is still absolutely stunning. There's the breathtaking triumphal tracks like Gusty Garden and Buoy Base, Good Egg and Melty Molten; and there's serene and beautiful tunes like Space Junk, Gateway, and the Comet Observatory; and everything is fully orchestrated, capturing the grandeur and impressiveness of the games themselves. It's a testament to how fully baked the concepts of SMG are that all of the individual pieces really do feel fully realized - the music heightens the tension of the individual stages while bringing out the themes of the game's setting and story.
I also feel a little compelled to address Galaxy vs. Galaxy 2, since nearly everyone who has placed 'em thus far has essentially paired the two or found it impossible to interchange the two. I do think the games very much are complementary to one another - as I said earlier, Galaxy had so many ideas to explore that 2 felt almost essential. I think gameplay-wise, they're pretty close; I like the ways SMG2 expands on some of the more novel concepts briefly demonstrated in Galaxy 1: ball rolling, bubble blowing, motion-controlled races. I also think some of the 2D-fixed levels really cleverly expand on things like Bee Mario movement and gravity swapping. And although I take issue with some of the execution, the extra 120 Green stars are a much better post-120 Star bonus than SMG1's "uh...play everything again, but with Luigi I guess?" That said, I still rather prefer the base structure of SMG1's levels - I like their fleshing the worlds out with more individual stars, and giving each one two comet stars, as it helps delineate the "main" areas and flesh them out as full-on worlds. There's also just the tendency of the sequel to just sort of copycat some of the original at times (and of course, some of this is intentional): there's replicated versions of a lot of SMG1's big levels, like Gusty Garden, Freezeflame, and Good Egg Galaxy. And I find SMG2's hub area oddly frustrating - there's what amounts to basically a giant level select screen, which I think is generally good, but you're constantly broken out of it to interact with fairly unnecessary elements on the "Faceship". It's a frustration that they didn't just fully commit to a full-on level select instead of trying to preserve some of the Observatory's hub-area structure with a star bit bank and a handful of random unnecessary creatures to speak with.

All of this is well and good, and enough to place Galaxy firmly near Odyssey or 64 on my list with the best 3D Mario games. So I'll apologize in advance for delving into some deeply personal stuff to cap off why this game means a lot to me specifically, and ended up pushing its way into my Top 10.
I've struggled with depression for most of my adult life - it's something I've worked on a lot and found a lot of ways with dealing with, but something that never really goes away and something I accept will be with me in some capacity for the rest of my life. For that and all sorts of other reasons, I gravitate toward games where atmosphere and ambiance are heavily emphasized. And on that note, I particularly love space as a theme (see: all the Metroid games on the list); there's something unique about its sense of isolation and tranquility that feels like it replicates some understanding of what it's like to deal with a thing as weighty as depression; a sense of loneliness and emptiness that is also beautiful and captivating. And Galaxy, for a lighthearted Mario game, bakes in these themes constantly and effortlessly. I know there's some amount of personal bias here, but there are too many cues here for me to be completely projecting. The game's soundtrack, as mentioned beforehand, shifts tone often between sweeping grandeur and quiet simplicity - and some of the most notable points, such as the introduction tutorial before the first "actual" level, are punctuated with these more subdued tunes. There's also an entirely optional section of the game - Rosalina's Library - which is a beautifully illustrated children's storybook ostensibly about Rosalina's origin story, set to a quiet somber score, that is simultaneously both lovely and tragic. The fact that the designers included such a feature in the game, where Galaxy 2 is constantly pushing you into plowing through more new stages, shows the tonal shift between the two games. Galaxy 1 is much more interested in an all-encompassing experience - letting the player bask in the game's setting and world as much as necessary while moving through its various challenges. I think there's something to the fact that my favorite music piece in the game plays during a one-off level with only two stars in it, and it always feels like one of the best parts in the game, despite being little more than a footnote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z29bt-wjS88
As I didn't own a Wii, I missed out on this game for a decade before getting the chance to give it a go in early 2017, and I would argue (among other things) it's why I've been brought back into gaming after being mostly out of it for quite a few years. It blew me away by its ability to overwhelm me with emotion - whether through its soundtrack, gameplay, atmosphere, or (usually) some magical combination of the three. It was a game where even despite being so much more linear and limited in "explorability" relative to its 3D predecessors, made me want to scour every corner of its worlds for secrets, just to bask in the glow of its perpetually imaginative worlds and music. I don't think I can ever totally replicate the feeling of playing this for the first time, but it still always stirs up a little bit of that sense of wonder and joy inside me on any replay. And that's something special, and very close to my heart, that only a few things can or will ever manage to muster.

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Dishonorable Mention #5 AKA the worst game ever made - Earthbound (1995, SNES)

Putrid shit. I played this game at first because some guy named Ness was in Smash Bros. He was a letdown right away. I heard you could unlock Nes, and thought it was a living NES you could play as, so when I unlocked him and saw it was this dorky kid, major letdown. Thing was, he was a blast to play as and became my second main behind Kirby. So I played Earthbound, was not impressed and moved on like 2 hours in. Years later a guy in high school was a huge Earthbound guy. Like lived on Starmen.Net or whatever it was. Would not shut up about this game. So I made a deal with him. You play my favorite game, and I will give Earthbound another chance and finish it. My god did I get the shit end of the stick on that deal. Earthbound is fetid horseshit. The game plays like a bad 1988 NES game, except it came out on SNES in 1995. The graphics are hideous. The characters are awful. Poo? Seriously? Poo. The music is bland and generic. The story is god damn awful. Everything is just bad. There is not a single redeeming quality to this game. So I hated the entire experience and he really enjoyed the game I suggested to him. When I told him how much I didn't enjoy it, his response "but dude they eat a magic cake" It was at this point I realized why he and others liked the game. It was for morons. A person of insanely low intellect would of course be enthralled by some colors and a kid that wears a hat. The magic cake has none of the subtle brilliance of Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy. It is more like making popcorn then eating the bag and throwing out the popcorn.

If you like this game, that is fine. It is okay that you have the brain of a tape measure.



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TheKnightOfNee posted...

I had Eternal Blue ranked at #17, so you can find more thoughts in the third topic, whichever page that writeup ended on. I did try to do that writeup in a way that wouldn't make it clear I liked Silver Star Story more, so I was a little vague about some things. EB does have some nice gameplay improvements, like that epilogue (oh god, I always wished SSSC had one too), and sped up battles, but overall, the biggest reason for having the first game higher is that I like the cast of characters more. They're both great games though.

ah i have only read this topic my b. Ya I love both, i lean a tad more towards 2. I think 1 was a bit more challenging though (star lights seemed harder to obtain more of the game, also individual inventories required some level of management i guess) which i liked. The characters of 1 were slightly better I agree especially the Kyle/Jessica bickering. But I thought Hiro was a better main character than Alex, I'm not a huge fan of the silent protagonists. But I'll check out the other topic.

The epilogue of 2 i think was what put it over the top for me. The rounding up the squad, the final tower, and a couple of the more optional dungeons were such a nice addition. God I love Lunar

Still to this day I wish they made a proper Lunar 3.

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MrSmartGuy posted...

#2 - The Outer Wilds (PC, my GotY for 2019)

I love this write-up.

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06. Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360, 2008)


I suspect that the presence of The Beatles: Rock Band was a surprise to many of you reading this, even knowing that I am a big fan of Rock Band, and of Harmonix more broadly, but when you get down to it, that game is built off the bones of the best game in the series: Rock Band 2.

The first Rock Band was a pretty spectacular thing in the most direct sense: it was remarkable, and a bit of a spectacle, but it was far from perfect. There were a lot of bugs and quality of life improvements that could be made. The soundtrack was good, but some of the best songs - Paranoid, Run to the Hills, Train Kept a-Rollin, Tom Sawyer - werent masters, but good-sounding imitations, as had been the case with much of GH1 and GH2s soundtracks. As Rock Band 2 came into being, we learned that most - but not all - of the songs from the first game would be exportable into RB2s library. But not Paranoid, Run to the Hills, or Enter Sandman, a master track that was lost to Activisions deal with the band for Guitar Hero: Metallica. The original Rock Band instruments? Not the most durable, as it turns out - especially the drums.

Harmonix took all these lessons to heart and corrected (almost) all of them in Rock Band 2 (a few songs, including Metallicas Battery, were not exportable to Rock Band 3, but Battery is also the only one they lost worth keeping). The setlist was bigger, and better, the instruments sturdier, the gameplay sharper and tighter, the visuals more appealing.

The secret to Rock Band 2s success - which Rock Band 3 and Lego Rock Band tried to emulate, but failed to, for reasons Ill get to in a minute - is the collection of songs they assembled for it. With the exception of a couple of the hardest songs (Bodhisattva, Shoulder to the Plow, Get Clean) and the few songs by Harmonixs in-house bands, the setlist here is basically the most karaoke friendly song that every band featured has in their catalogue.

Think about it: whether you like the bands or the songs or not, you know damn near every word to Livin on a Prayer, Down with the Sickness, One Step Closer, Spirit in the Sky, White Wedding, and so on and so on. Basically, if you have a familiarity with a given artist, you know the song they have in Rock Band 2 before you even start playing. From top to bottom of the setlist, theres basically no misses among the non-bonus tracks. Even most of the bonus tracks are great - no one saw Conventional Lover or Supreme Girl or "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter" being as good as they are. In the 84(!) songs, theres maybe 3 or 4 duds: Welcome to the Neighborhood, Souls of Black, and Visions, though the latter is at least responsible for one of the greatest RB2 videos ever (about which more later)

Oh, and somehow, this game brought into existence the presumed vaporware/development hell of Guns n Roses Chinese Democracy, whose first single, Shacklers Revenge, was released to the entire world in Rock Band 2. It is not a very good song, and frankly one of the aforementioned duds, but it says a lot about the cultural power of Rock Band in the late 2000s that perhaps the most anticipated rock song in recent memory debuted in this game.

Lego Rock Band and Rock Band 3 leaned into the idea of broadening the appeal and having every song be karaokeable, but neither has anywhere near the 90-95% hit rate that Rock Band 2 has. Im not sure any western rhythm game does. It was an impressive feat, to be sure.

On top of that, the fact that it came out at a time when the idea of video game as party game, even for non-gamers was hitting its first peak was a perfect confluence of events that led to me and my friends - even my family once in a great while - playing an absolute ton of Rock Band 2. We tried so desperately to get the Endless Setlist achievement, for playing all the songs in one session, back to back to back. We had a natural singer, a talented drummer, and me on guitar, all on expert. The song that did us in was Visions, which to this day I have never beaten on X Guitar. We tried it so many times, and if I got going okay (rare), our drummer would fatigue out and the non-sung vocals simply didnt have enough overdrive to carry us through. We paused at one point, at maybe 2 or 3 in the morning, after playing the game for god knows how many consecutive hours, to see if we could find any Youtube videos of the song to give us an idea of how other people played it, you know, maybe pick up a tip to navigate the absolutely painful guitar riff or all the blastbeats better.

We found this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqdZ4t1cft4

Needless to say, it broke us. We fell on the floor laughing. Im not sure Ive ever laughed harder.

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#1. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)

Happy Birthday Chrono Trigger. You are 26 today. Perfect game. Does everything perfect. There is not a part of this game that I don't delight in. Have played it well over 100 times. Still a yearly replay. Top 5 OST all time. Kingdom of Zeal is my all time favorite video game location. Used Epilogue/To Good Friends in my wedding ceremony. All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu, that is my belief, at least for now.

Own this on SNES, PS1, PS3, Wii, DS, iOS, Android, Steam







Also have a 30000 member facebook group that I lead for this game which are lazy and don't rally well for contests here....

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And here I thought Rupert Murdoch was the worst thing I shared a birthday with

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05. Killer7 (Gamecube, 2005)

There are games you play, and there are games you experience. Killer7 straddles that line in a way unlike anything else Ive ever played, and it is a game Ive spent more time thinking about than perhaps any other. Its one of those games that worms its way into your head, not unlike the way a David Lynch movie (or certain episodes of Twin Peaks) can.

Created by Suda51, and his first game released outside of Japan, it came to America as part of Capcoms pledge to bring more mature games to Nintendos platform. Its an on-rails third-person action/first-person shooter hybrid, where you play as members of the Smith syndicate, a group of seven highly skilled, diverse assassins under the employ of Harman Smith. Each assassin has a wildly different set of skills that you use to navigate the highly stylized and utterly bizarre noir world they operate in, which has recently come under threat of mutant suicide bomb creatures called Heaven Smiles, who were created by Harman Smiths archenemy and rival, Kun Lan.



Going any further into the plot - which is somewhere between Hideo Kojima and Hunter S. Thompson - than that here will not only ruin the experience, but confuse me and you, dear readers, so Im not going to do that. Suffice to say, each of the seven chapters of the game represents a target for the Smiths to hunt down.

Instead, Ill talk about the style of the game, which is inimitable. To capture the hardboiled/noir aesthetic, the game is cel shaded, and largely operates in a palette of black, white and red. Blood is a significant factor in the game and its gameplay; when you kill an enemy by destroying its weak spot, you capture its blood, which you later use to power yourself up using a television (its a weird game, in case that wasnt already clear). Thats not to say that the game isnt visually flashy; quite the opposite. Its use of such a consistent visual identity and thematic approach makes the deviations from it more impactful in ways that are almost always as satisfying as they are mystifying. It absolutely captures the essence of the film and literary genres its borrowing from.

The games use of music is absolutely masterful. Youll scarcely find a game with such a diverse soundtrack; the styles of music are varied to the extremes but are all expertly deployed within the game itself. Not a single tune ever feels out of place - unless its meant to, of course.

Listen to a few tracks, which range from ambient to industrial to country-tinged to full on techno:

Resound of Silence:
https://youtu.be/jLDLS4DgxBY

Emigrant Song:
https://youtu.be/ZF7uH3ETmXs

Tecks Mecks:
https://youtu.be/o5EFfOA30Cc

Rave On:
https://youtu.be/AJO8uo3UMko

You might note that some of those songs titles reference songs in the canon of western pop music: Simon & Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, and Buddy Holly in these instances. Thats a lead-in to another thing that Suda51 does with Killer7: he weaves in pop cultural references at a Tarontinonian level. The assassins are literally The Smiths. The first set of instructions passed to them is in a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Theres references to New Order. One of the supporting characters, Kess BloodySunday, is likely a politics reference and a U2 reference, and Kess himself (who is a ghost, it should be noted) bears a striking resemblance to Kurt Cobain in the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video. One of the Smiths is named Kevin, which I cant assume is a coincidence, especially since Kevin Smith never speaks. Santana, Sailor Moon, The Beatles, James Bond, luchadors, Ravi Shankar, Twin Peaks, and Power Rangers. These things, subtle and not so much, are in the DNA of the game, which is centered around the struggle for global supremacy between Japan and the United States in an alternate future, rife with doublecrosses and subterfuge and political intrigue. All of this is stuff I would love if it popped up in any other game (which is patently obvious if you have kept tabs on recurring themes on my list); that it was all in one game made for nearly a perfect game for my tastes.



If you like games that are weird and engaging and cinematic, and (can) enjoy unorthodox gameplay that ultimately works because of how well it serves the style and direction of the game, I cannot recommend it to you enough. Theres even been a remaster released relatively recently (2018) on Steam, which I hear is very good. You might not always understand whats going on, but you wont be able to look away.

Plus one of the Smiths is a luchador who can headbutt bullets.




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1.) Vectorman (Genesis, 1995)


Nick nailed it...in this essay I will tell you about why Vectorman is the greatest game ever

Just kidding.

1.) Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)


Of course its Chrono Trigger - and very happy birthday to the greatest game of all time and the greatest story about time travel of all time. I own this game on damn near every platform that I've ever owned, including the mobile platforms which are not a normal platform for me to game on.

What makes Chrono Trigger stand up above and beyond the rest? For one thing the pace with which it unveils itself is pretty special. Despite being a story about time travel, it unveils just enough about itself at the beginning to catch your interest and litters all sorts of hints about the world around you. A dinosaur racer? A robot? Medieval style clothing and knights mixed in. A little twinkle of magic in Guardia but its obviously not the thing that makes the world go round.

And...your inventor friend who has apparently invented a teleporter machine. Pretty fancy.


Then you get swept into the medieval past and the distant dystopian future. Despite the mechanism for the storytelling here being time travel and thus sending you all through the timeline out of order, the story is being told in a logical and straightforward way where youre getting every piece of information exactly when you need it to make sense of the story. Everything about this is masterfully crafted. The trial completely BLEW MY MIND the first time I played through the game



Perhaps the biggest plot twist is that the first major character you meet - Frog - isn't actually that important. And his archetypal evil foe - actually has completely justified and understandable goals that are completely misrepresented by the way we remember history. And ACTUALLY they hook into the settings true deepest darkest secrets. You witness the consequences of Lavos going unchecked. You see what happens on the day that Lavos wakes up. You even see the ill-fated gambit that brings lavos to the planet and worse, see the acts people took that end up making the lavos situation so goddamn dire in the first place.



The music is perfect, the characters are great. Even the smallest details early on in the game end up paying off. Dozens of tiny little mysteries and subplots are littered around the map and then executed. The fact that you can get lifelike dolls from the fair in the very beginning pays off during the game's climax. The subplot where Robo is used to save a forest and prevents the creation of a desert later in the game is touching in ways I didn't initially expect.

Everything is carefully placed into an elaborate and intricate arrangement. Like a clock. It all fits together to form a perfect whole that shines through as an unexpectedly wholesome and amazing story. And in the end, I think Lavos is one of the better villains you could ask for. He's a force of nature. A problem that needs solved. He's not some mustache twirling mega-villain. In fact the game gives us four of those and three of them are comedy goofs and the third 4th is Magus who isn't actually that at all! It's just there. It's always there. Mankinds doom engineered by mankind. In some ways an allegory for the climate issues we face.

And then because everything is so carefully laid out and put together, the New Game + mode makes it so you can challenge Lavos at every different point in the game - all of which have cute little names which is an underrated thing games should do - and each provides a different ending. A different what if, based on where things were left in the various timelines. I love it. The game is magic and life.

And that's why it's my favorite game of all time.

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I knew it was Vectorman!

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#6. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (DS, 2005)
(Im using the US release date of the first game as the year here, sorry Naye).

Thank you Board 8 for recommending these games to me. To this day I find myself replaying them even though they offer basically zero replay value. Theres not too much I can say I think. But well try!

You know the scoop. Play as a rookie lawyer. Investigate some crime scenes. Gather clues. Talk to witnesses. Go into court and cross-examine witnesses and point out contradictions and find out what really happened and protect your client. All on rails, pretty much. And it all just works so well.



It has a fantastic cast of main characters, all of whom you see grow, who are endearing and want to root for, and are colorful and interesting. The cases are all fantastic, save a couple, and very well-told, and are well-written. The twists in each case are interesting, with an engaging story, noit just case to case, but as an overall arc, over each game, and over the first 3 games. Replaying this is like rereading a favorite book, its a great comfort zone thing that I try to do again every so often.



Our main driving cast across the 3 games of Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth, and Gumshoe all bring unique things to the table and are all fantastic characters. Even if a number of the witnesses or criminals or defendants or whatever arent that great, it doesnt matter because the driving force of those 4, plus the Judge and rival prosecutor is more than enough to keep the game going. 1-4 remains my favorite case what with Larry at his best, Manfred von Karma, and pretty much each day and each court case is filled with great twists and plot. The moment you jokingly are suggested to cross-examine a parrot, only to actually do so and find von Karma had tampered with the parrot thats when I knew this game was legitimate. Maybe some of its memes havent aged well, but its forgivable (hello Sal Manella). Name puns still unrivaled though.



At some points, we have to suspend the air of believability, what with how big a part spirit mediums play over the course of the game. However, everything still follows logic and reason. You accept the fact that yes, spirit mediums exist, as part of this worlds reality and the story still holds itself in place. The stories remain compelling too. The game is presented extremely well too, including the music, and it remains one of my favorite to talk about all you fine people with, be it Case or Character rankings, motives, parts we like, parts we dont like, inconsistencies, and twists. And it remains a top suggestion for any people I know looking for a great story-based game to play. The second trilogy is also really good, though didnt really create the same magic of the original 3- Spirit of Justice is excellent and Dual Destinies is pretty good, and its definitely a series worth playing if you havent, especially if you have Dual Destinies already installed on your 3DS and havent got around to playing it yet.



And thats all I really have to say! zvarri lol

Case Rankings:
Elite:
1-4 > 2-4 > 3-5 > 3-4 > 1-5
Great:
2-2 > 3-1 > 3-3
OK:
3-2 > 1-3 > 1-2 > 1-1

Whatever:
2-3 > 2-1



Next up: How does every person in this game have the upper body strength of a god?

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also yeah I'm "cheating" combining the 3 games into one BUT its all available as a single game so I feel like I'm ok here! bartz if you need to use just one of the games for your list, I guess use Trials & Tribulations

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and its definitely a series worth playing if you havent, especially if you have Dual Destinies already installed on your 3DS and havent got around to playing it yet.

hmm i wonder who this could be referring to

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I refuse to play a B8 recommended series

fool me once, shame on you
fool me twice, shame on me
fool me thrice, oopsie poopsie
fool me fourice, I am Nick

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Get on me and nicks level

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04. EarthBound (SNES, 1995)

Like Killer7, EarthBound is a distinctly weird game, layered with loving homages and references to pop culture, especially music. Unlike Killer7, it comes from a genre I do not generally have a fondness for: the RPG. Because I had become such a fan of Ness in Smash, like Nick, I gave EarthBound a whirl, not knowing much about it beyond that it was a jRPG set in a strange American setting, starring a group of weird kids trying to save the world. Unlike Nick, I adored it immediately.

That it turned out to be a weirdly satisfying combination of wholesome, bizarre, and dark was and is to its benefit. The modern setting, the unending charm, the lack of random encounters, the bright and fantastical visuals, and the spectacular score, which beautifully borrows from American musical influences (note the similarities to Johnny B Goode when you fight the New Age Retro Hippies, for example) is one of my favorites.



The game also uses elements from western pop culture to great effect throughout the game. Playing it for the first time in my teens, these references to Bowies Diamond Dogs and Starman, to Coltranes Giant Steps, to The Blues Brothers, to various Beatles songs, to War of the Worlds, Dali, etc, helped hook me on the game, but also got me to consider and reconsider the pieces of culture which were being referenced, which then deepened my appreciation of both those things and the game.

Even the general concept of the story is an homage to Americana: its Stephen Kings The Body. Its Charles Schulzs Peanuts. Its The Goonies. Its Lovecraftian. Threed is a George Romero setting if ever there was one. Its a classic kids vs the world story. Adults are present, but have a minimal influence on the proceedings. Ness dad exists only as a voice on the phone (Ive always wondered if this was an influence on Pokemon, which also has a conspicuously absent father). Nesss fatherlessness is mirrored in his ultimate enemy, Giygas, whose father abandoned him in the events of the first Mother game. The final battle of Earthbound remains one of the most memorable and surprisingly poignant finales to a video game. It is a pitch perfect ending to a game that traffics in the kind of blend of surreality, style, and heart that few games can claim.

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#4. Dragon Quest XI (PS4, 2018)



I have a hard time ranking newer games as high as I do older games. It's not that I feel newer games are inferior or anything, but I've found years of enjoyment, sometimes even decades, in a lot of older games. So when I compare a game that was incredibly fun that I played one time a year ago, against a game that was incredibly fun both 20 years ago and a year ago, it's easier to hold the older game in higher regard. Up until this week, Dragon Quest XI was planned to be at #5 on my list. It's nothing against Lunar that I made the swap I talked at great length about how much I love Lunar. But as I thought more about what Dragon Quest XI meant as I played it and reflected on my feelings both now and how they may hold in the future, I think I had to make this swap. Dragon Quest XI was just that good.

Dragon Quest XI is one of the best looking games I've played. Being a more recent game, sure, it is technically impressive with things like draw distance on scenery and level of detail, but none of that will be a big deal in the long term. Even ignoring that though, The use of color, style, variety in scenery, the trademark Toriyama character designs, clarity of objects, and the camera work to let you me enjoy all these sights and events in the game. There were just so many times where I thought about how pretty the game looked. Some of the more mundane moments of the game did feel as such, in part because of how nice it was to look at things.

The standard Dragon Quest turn-based battle system framework is here. Characters can be customized with ability points to learn different skills or use different weapons better. But at the same time, each character is unique enough that you won't end up with four attackers, four magic users, or whatever. Each still has to play a specific role in battle. And it works out that you can make an assortment of characters, and an assortment of skills set, and it will all be useful. You'll have to change around the strategy used, but it can work. And it made things a lot of fun, swapping out characters, or changing a character from swords to whips because I found a new strong whip, and devising new battle strategies.



The storyline is where DQXI shines the brightest. There is strength in the main plot, there is strength in the characters, and there is strength in the locations and people you meet along the way. The plot follows the main character, who at the start finds out he was adopted and is actually the Luminary who is to save the world. It's a simple premise to begin with, but enough to get you moving as you meet characters and explore the towns. Every character that joins your party is important to the story, some evident quicker than others. They're also as unique in personality as they are in battle. And as you travel across the world, there are charming places to visit, suspiciously weird places, places with interesting people, or some that tie in to the main plot or the backstory of a main character.

Then at some point the game hits with a sharp turn of plot. And it's like, oh cool, we hit the big twist, except it's not that at all. Because it's not a game with just a story into a big reveal, and then down the home stretch. And these characters in your party, you see how the weight of events affect them, help them through things as they learn and discover and do. And through these character stories, you're uncovering big swings in the plot ad important moments. And all these places across the map, and townspeople, you learn more about how they feel and help through events. And there's more to all this, because all of these people and places are vitally important. And you realize all these individual threads of stories and characters, they are so intricately woven together, with everything affecting something else, and it's all so magical.

There are some intensely emotional points in these character stories, in these plot reveals, and in the events you see. DQXI is very very good at hitting home the full gravity of any situation, whether it be despair, love, hope, loss, or regret. All the emotions are there to smack you right in the face each time. If I came up to you and said, Hey, remember in DQXI, that really depressingly sad moment? That scene that felt so relieving? The big plot twist that you did not see coming? The really important moment that laid out the full the weight of the story? and we could think of different answers to all of those. The story just keeps rolling with the hits, consistently making big moments that shine, without feeling overshadowed by previous events or reducing the feeling of future events.

I don't normally care to get all trophies/achievements/whatever in a game unless I am very close, and even then I need to really like the game and find the last trophies not very taxing. But DQXI wasn't even a question, I just kept playing and playing and got all the trophies.





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DQXI was a very pretty game. Enjoyed it as my first experience in DQ outside of playing DW1 as a like 4 year old and not understanding it at all

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Games?

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i have 3 left

they are good

but i haven't written them up lol

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Never posted my full final list

HM1Vectorman
HM2 Crash Commando
HM3 Dungeons and Dragons: Shadows over Mystara
HM4 WWF Smackdown Just Bring It
HM5 Fat Princess
HM6 Simpsons Arcade
HM7 Gauntlet Legends
HM8 Mario Party
HM9 Octopath Traveler
HM10 Radiant Historia
HM11 Castle Crashers
100 Riviera: The Promised Land
99 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time
98 Metroid Fusion
97 I Am Setsuna
96 DBZ: Kakarot
95 Metal Gear Solid 4
94 Metal Gear Solid 2
93 Portal 2
92 SSX
91 Golden Sun
90 God of War (2018)
89 Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
88 Sonic the Hedgehog 2
87 Sonic Generations
86 Mega Man 9
85 Super Monkey Ball 2
84 Tomb Raider (2013)
83 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
82 The Last of Us
81 Guitar Hero/RB Series
80 NFL Blitz
79 Super Mario World
78 Tales of Symphonia
77 Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
76 Super Blood Hockey
75 Darksiders
74 Mario Kart Wii
73 Punch-Out!!
72 Perfect Dark
71 Yoshi's Island
70 Dark Cloud
69 Kirby Canvas Curse
68 Jackbox Party Packs
67 World of Final Fantasy
66 Fall Guys
65 Tales from the Borderlands
64 The Walking Dead Season 1
63 Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call
62 Ogre Battle 64
61 NHL '94
60 Grandia 2
59 Pokemon HG/SS
58 Super Mario Galaxy/2
57 WWF: No Mercy
56 The Legend of Zelda II: Link's Adventure
55 Kingdom Hearts
54 Kingdom Hearts 2
53 Blitz the League 2
52 Dynasty Warriors 7
51 Tetris Effect
50 Disgaea 4
49 Final Fantasy 4
48 Mega Man 3
47 Final Fantasy X
46 NHL 07
45 Grandia
44 Mega Man X
43 Disgaea 5
42 Cosmic Star Heroine
41 Final Fantasy 13-2
40 Final Fantasy 13
39 Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
38 Tecmo Super Bowl
37 Kirby Air Ride
36 Horizon Zero Dawn
35 Uncharted 2
34 Uncharted 4
33 Super Smash Bros Melee
32 Super Mario 3D Land
31 Final Fantasy 6
30 Borderlands
29 Xenoblade
28 Kirby's Pinball Land
27 Final Fantasy Tactics
26 Super Mario Odyssey
25 Disgaea D2
24 Pokemon RBY (Blue)
23 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
22 Ken Griffey Jr presents MLB
21 Final Fantasy Record Keeper
20 Super Mario 3D World
19 Chrono Cross
18 Final Fantasy 7 Remake
17 Kirby SuperStar Ultra
16 Final Fantasy 9
15 Super Mario Bros. 3
14 Super Mario Kart
13 Dissidia: Final Fantasy/Duodecim
12 Super Mario RPG
11 Borderlands 2
10 Bubble Bobble
9 Mega Man 2
8 Disgaea 1 (Complete)
7 Smash Bros Ultimate
6 Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
5 Final Fantasy XI
4 Final Fantasy V
3 Xenogears
2 Final Fantasy VII
1 Chrono Trigger

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Just three more to go for me! That daylight savings time change really messed with the free time I could've had for writing yesterday.

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#5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, 2009)
After I got a PS3- which the primary spark for were the Ratchet & Clank PS3 games if I recall, I was told by the world to play this game. But sure enough, I played the first one first. I thought yeah- this is a pretty decent game. Its fun. Shooting seems pretty basic, stealth is basically nonexistent, story is like a fun movie, it looks great, its presented well. It was a good game, but definitely didnt seem like something omg Wigs you must play this game. But I saw no reason to not play the second one, I liked the first pretty ok.



And so, here was Uncharted 2. And its everything the first game did but done way way way better, to a nearly perfect degree, to be exactly the kind of game its supposed to be. The set pieces in this game are absolutely incredible, the opening in the snow wasteland of the Train graveyard (from flashback to reality), climbing a gigantic Phurba dagger, going through the Nepalese temple, the truck caravan (all these games have those Caravan scenes, and theyre always a spectacle), and of course, the unparalleled train ride sequence. To this day, that part gets me every time with just how cool it is to be barreling along while doing all your usual action game stuff. Speaking of climbing, it may just at the end of the day pointing your stick in hopefully the right direction and mashing X, but man does it look cool and somehow feel good anyway. The gunplay is solid as always as in these series, the characters are fun and easy to root for and Sully is always the best... you always follow the hose (also RIP Cameraman Jeff, true MVP), the story is exciting and nice and simple but effective and to me, the other thing these games, and UC2 in particular, do best are the presentation.



This is great- how much it really feels like youre playing a movie, the way it transitions between cutscenes and action segments is flawless, the fitting dialogue while youre doing these things, the way the game is framed and filmed (Im looking at you scenes where one character is hanging over a cliff with a chasm beneath them and needs the other character to pull them up, while the camera is over the shoulder pointed straight down)-its all incredibly cinematic and works extremely well. This is no longer really a novel thing and so many games do this now, but Uncharted 2 really to me felt like the first to really stick the landing with it and set the stage for this. And man, do all these not-necessarily-built looking characters have the upper body strength to not only endlessly climb and pull themselves up on crazy structures all day, but also pull each other up cliffs, all effortlessly come on, lets see all yall workout routines. Still, that opening, when Drake is climbing the train, and the camera swoops around to show you the scope of it all. It hits man. The music is also VASTLY underappreciated. There's a lot of really nice tracks and accompanying music, and that main theme is just iconic as fuck. It always gets me in the nostalgia.



But how can I not proceed here without talking about my lifeblood of this game, the multiplayer. I lived, breathed, ate, and sweat this multiplayer- and this is what a Shooter multiplayer should be. Third person, teams of 5 v 5, mix of game modes (Deathmatch, Plunder, King of the Hill, what have you), a wide variety of great maps (Train Wreck for life), and very little in the way of extraneous shit (just 2 booster slots- usually one dedicated to faster reload speed and the other dedicated to preventing other people from cheating Fuck Situational Awareness). I hope one day ND will bring this style of mp back, but as UC4 and TLOU have evidenced, were too far drowned in all kinds of complicated stuff in our multiplayer. Not to say those arent fun, cuz they are. But this is where the true classic was. Trying to get all of the multiplayer trophies was really fun too and a great motivator to keep you playing. Goddamn 10 Protectorates though took forever.



Loved playing with all you b8ers though. Dp, Bartz, MSG, Menji, Pacific, rammtay, icon, Poka, numbers, Not Dave, Lockes, Mershi, KCF... and YOU, yes you! (Sorry if I didn't mention you)
We had a thing going for a long time, and it was great. Long live Uncharted 2.

*pumps* *pumps* *pumps* *pumps* *pumps*



Next up: A game where YOU are a character, although not one of the main characters.
(Extra note: I don't think anyone anywhere has guessed this game as appearing on my list yet).

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one more image since i couldnt fit them all



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<3 UC2

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more like unsharted

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When is UnKarted?

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#3. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360, 2009)







Fighting games were pretty cool when I was younger. I got into Street Fighter 2 during that huge boom in the early '90s. I would rent fighting games from Blockbuster, because even if they were actually bad, they would be fun for a couple days (yes Clayfighter, this includes you). Rival Schools was a big time sink for me in the PS1 days. I got into Street Fighter 3 and Marvel vs Capcom 2 when I was going to arcades in my DDR days. Guilty Gear XX was a big hit in college among friends. The King of Fighters games were fun to push buttons in and had a nice sense of style. I played a lot of fighting games over the years. And I was bad at all of them.

I didn't play many fighting games with friends. It was mostly single-player as a kid. When I did play against friends, they were much better than me and I don't know if I ever really improved that much. I just kind of did moves and hoped they would hit.

Street Fighter IV came out at just the right time. Fighting games needed a bit of a revival, and this was a big brand that put a lot of energy back into the genre. But more importantly, the internet was just at the right place for Street Fighter IV to thrive. Youtube had become big enough for people to upload and share game footage, so people could post techniques, match videos, tournament footage, and funny & cool moments. It was also easily the biggest name fighting game to have online play at that point, allowing people chances to find opponents beyond their local arcade or group of friends. I was not great at SFIV when it first came out, but I really leaned in to these new tools.

I originally used Dhalsim as my main character. I wasn't good at the combo system SFIV had, and Dhalsim primarily relied on poke attacks to keep people away. He had some combos, and they were trickier to perform than most characters, but it was okay that I couldn't do them. Playing a lot with Dhalsim against strangers online, I started to get a sense of spacing & patience on defense. I was still losing quite a bit more than winning when Super Street Fighter IV came out. This upgrade had two of my favorites from Street Fighter 2, T Hawk and Dee Jay. I ended up settling on T Hawk as my new main character, partly because his combos were shorter & simpler. I was still playing this a lot in 2011, and decided to buy an arcade stick. The XBox 360 d-pad was not the best, and I saw a lot of top players using arcade sticks, so I got one too. Making a big purchase like this meant I was pretty all-in on SFIV at this point.

In 2012, I heard about an anime con that had some fighting game tournaments, including SFIV. It was maybe an hour drive away. It had been 6 years since I had last entered a DDR tournament, my last game tourney of any kind. I decided I had been playing and improving enough that it was worth seeing how I stacked up. Surprisingly, I won a match at this tournament, so I didn't have the 0-2 performance that many people find at their first game. I also talked to someone at this tournament that headed up weekly events in the Detroit area, and got info so I could start going to those every so often.

Not long after this first tournament, I met up with some friends from college. These were the friends I played DDR with, and went to tournaments with, back in those days. I found out they had been playing Street Fighter IV too, and a couple of them were trying to plan a trip to Evo in 2013. I had only seen them a couple times since college days, and this gave me an unexpected reason to all reunite for a weekend in Vegas. Evo 2013 was also the year I was in the same pool as Marn and Daigo. I prepped as hard as I could, and although I didn't do well enough to even get a match against Daigo, I managed to score an upset win over Marn. I already had a strong desire to get better at SFIV, but this moment gave me the drive to really work at it.

I played a lot of Street Fighter IV. I mean a lot. From when I first got the game, I played it at least once every single week until 2015, when I got married and went on a week-long vacation. I drove 90 minutes to play casual games with a community way too many times. I played some online matches that appeared on Excellent Adventures. I entered tournaments in 4 different states. I got matches against a lot of well-known players, even winning some. It's because of this game that I went to strong on other fighting games, finding new games to love and get good at, finding new friends locally and across the country, and reuniting with old friends.

The competitive scene moved on to Street Fighter V, along with a bunch of other newer fighting games. I play a lot of those other games too, so I don't turn on SFIV nearly as much as I used to, often months between games. But every time I turn it on now, I still have a fantastic time, whether I'm trying to play seriously, or just mess around with whoever. SFIV had a lot of tough mechanics to get the hang of, maybe even some weird choices with combos, but the thing it was best at was being a fun time when playing against other people.

Here, have some videos of matches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_xb5wmI2aI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59a6MoFHxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6Ev7FvwtI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm8pta29C4A

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Oh shoot, I forgot to post this video too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG5H-c5S4jI

STREET FIYTAH FO

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#3 - Persona 5 (PS4, 2017)

I hold the very uncommon opinion of ranking the modern Persona titles as such: 5 > 3 > 4, and have posted as such many times over the last few years, so those that remember that probably expected to see this high on my list!

Where Persona 5 excels is mostly in its writing. The story itself isn't that much of an improvement over previous titles, but the social links... er, confidants are some of the best the series has to offer. Unlike the past titles, which have a few boring ones mixed in with the more interesting ones, I feel Persona 5 actually did a great job of making every confidant storyline interesting enough to make it worth raising every one to the end. Considering this is already pretty much half of the game by itself, it's a welcome addition.

In battle, Persona 5 also ditches the shadows of prior games in the series, and replaces them with the Shin Megami Tensei demons that are much more well known. No need to guess five or so times to find the weakness of Shadow A and ending up dead before you can figure it out. This also brought back demon negotiation to the Persona series which was not present since the Persona 2 duology. It's pretty much the same as any SMT title so I won't be going into specifics here. There's a lot more strategy that can be used within battles with baton passing and various gun skills that get unlocked throughout the game. It's probably the best battle system of any of the Shin Megami Tensei or Persona titles that are out there now.

Exploration is also changed with the Palaces that are now the main dungeons of the game - instead of a randomized dungeon the palaces are instead actual, static dungeons based on a place visited in the story. This allows for more story within the palaces themselves, and makes the dungeon crawling a much more exciting part of the game. There are some annoyances with the exploration in some of the later dungeons, but it's not that big of a deal in the end.

In short, Persona 5 is an amazing video game, and the long wait definitely paid off as it managed to fit and exceed what I expected it to be. I haven't played Royal yet, but I am playing Strikers now and it's definitely a treat to see all these characters again - kind of missed them a bit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD-OFP-0H5g


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P4 is special for me because of the giant bomb endurance run

I'll take Charlie Tunoku over Larry Bird Jr. any day

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What is an update? A miserable little pile of games.

#1 Chrono Trigger: 1969 (+30)
#2 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 1883 (+1)
#3 Final Fantasy X: 1646 (+3)
#4 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: 1621 (-3)
#5 Super Mario Odyssey: 1582 (-3)
#6 Pokemon RBY: 1303 (-2)
#7 The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: 1275 (+19)
#8 Final Fantasy V: 1266 (-3)
#9 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: 1180 (-2)
#10 Super Smash Bros. Melee: 1168 (-2)
#11 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations: 1129 (+39)
#12 Rock Band 2: 1127 (+39)
#13 Super Mario Galaxy: 1078 (+39)
#14 Borderlands 2: 1043 (-5)
#15 Mother 3: 1032 (-5)
#16 Earthbound: 1022 (+69)
#17 Metal Gear Solid 3: 995 (-6)
#18 Jackbox Party Pack: 980 (-6)
#19 Super Mario World: 944 (-6)
#20 Mario Kart 8: 913 (-6)
#21 Metroid: Zero Mission: 900 (-6)
#22 Final Fantasy IV: 881 (-6)
#23 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: 877 (-6)
#24 Super Mario RPG: 867 (-6)
#25 Pokemon GSC: 858 (-6)
#26 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: 845 (-6)
#27 Super Mario 3D World: 839 (-6)
#28 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 834 (-6)
#29 Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: 832 (-6)
#30 F-Zero GX: 830 (-6)
#31 Mega Man 3: 828 (-6)
#32 Final Fantasy VII: 822 (+185)
#33 Super Mario Bros. 3: 805 (-6)
#34 Bloodborne: 800 (+226)
#35 Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: 793 (-7)
#36 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: 791 (-7)
#37 Final Fantasy Tactics: 772 (-7)
#38 The Last of Us: 760 (-6)
#39 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2: 741 (-6)
#40 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: 731 (-6)
#40 Fallout 3: 731 (-6)
#42 Dragon Quest VIII: 727 (-6)
#43 Kirby Super Star Ultra: 724 (-6)
#44 Steins;Gate: 718 (-6)
#44 Killer7: 718 (+199)
#46 Final Fantasy VI: 713 (-7)
#47 Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: 710 (-7)
#48 Virtue's Last Reward: 698 (-7)
#49 Pokemon Puzzle League: 697 (-7)
#50 Yoshi's Island: 690 (-7)
#51 Super Mario 64: 688 (-7)
#52 Mega Man 2: 679 (-7)
#53 Resident Evil 4: 677 (-7)
#53 Paper Mario: 677 (-7)
#55 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice: 674 (-7)
#56 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: 673 (+46)
#57 Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: 666 (-8)
#58 Persona 5: 613 (+489)
#59 Seiken Densetsu 3: 610 (-6)
#60 Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: 600 (-6)
#61 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: 594 (-6)
#62 Elite Beat Agents: 577 (-6)
#63 Bioshock: 575 (-6)
#63 The Outer Wilds: 575 (NEW)
#63 Crusader Kings III: 575 (NEW)
#66 Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: 574 (-8)
#67 Valkyria Chronicles: 567 (-8)
#68 Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective: 560 (-8)
#69 Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising: 550 (-8)
#69 Xenogears: 550 (-8)
#69 Trails of Cold Steel II: 550 (-8)
#69 Deus Ex: 550 (NEW)
#69 Street Fighter IV: 550 (NEW)
#74 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: 547 (-10)
#75 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: 546 (-10)
#76 Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call: 543 (-10)
#77 Chrono Cross: 541 (-10)
#78 Dance Dance Revolution: 540 (-10)
#79 Undertale: 538 (-10)
#80 Sonic the Hedgehog 2: 530 (-10)
#80 The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: 530 (-10)
#82 Pikmin 3: 528 (-10)
#83 Mario Party 2: 527 (-10)
#84 Phantasy Star IV: 525 (-10)
#84 428: Shibuya Scramble: 525 (-10)
#84 Spec Ops: The Line: 525 (-10)
#84 Dragon Quest XI: 525 (NEW)
#88 Mega Man X: 519 (-11)
#89 Persona 4: 518 (-11)
#90 Return of the Obra Dinn: 513 (-11)
#91 Metroid Prime: 512 (-11)
#92 Portal 2: 510 (-11)
#93 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels: 505 (-11)
#94 Final Fantasy XI: 500 (-11)
#94 Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis: 500 (-11)

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I should probably post my top 3 at some juncture

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Games

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#2 - Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (SNES, 1992 JP; played on DS, 2009)

Dragon Quest V is an unique game in its own series and much different from most of its other SNES RPG counterparts. The main thing about Dragon Quest V is that DQV Hero, the main character, is no legendary hero and never is throughout the entirety of the game. Dragon Quest V simply tells the story of this character's life.

At a short glance, there's nothing very special about Dragon Quest V. Like all of the games in the series, it's mostly a basic turn-based RPG. The Hero can tame monsters and have them join the party. I especially used the Golem, Slime Knight, and of course the Sabrecat. Where Dragon Quest V excels is in the story it tells, and even on the DS some of the cutscenes it goes through are some of the most powerful that I've seen, and of course all of them are spoilers, so I won't talk about most of them here. But this writeup would be pretty short otherwise, so I'll talk about this a bit.

About five hours into the game, Pankraz's sacrifice is a powerful cutscene that sets the stage for how the game continues. The cutscene is done like a regular boss fight, with the two monsters repeatedly attacking him while he simply takes it as his son is being held captive. It's simplistic but works extremely well in getting you to play more after that point. I had a playthrough topic on the board here when I was playing through this, but at that point I didn't want to write anymore and just wanted to keep playing after that, and the playthrough topic was eventually abandoned shortly after I played through these events.

Dragon Quest V is simply a special game throughout its entire runtime, and I can still remember most of the game even ten years after I played through it. It's no surprise to me that Yuji Horii has said it's his favorite of the series either, of the games that I've played it's definitely his best work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRpiz734Sw

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I have DQV for the DS and I have tried to play it a few times. Just can't get into itmaybe the timing is bad. I always ditch it for something else.

The gameplay of the DQ games is kind of boring for me.

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if only every game could have DQ gameplay

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DQV good choice

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#2 Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS, 2005)

I don't care very much about Soma Cruz, Alucard, the Belmonts, or anybody else from these games. I mean, they are fine, but I'm in Castlevania 100% for the "game" part. Dawn of Sorrow is pretty much the best action game that I have ever played.



Dawn of Sorrow is the culmination of several years of iterations on the formula that Symphony of the Night introduced. As a result, it feels like the most polished, sophisticated, and playable game in the series. The crafting and soul system is robust and full of different choices that enable multiple styles of play. The graphics and sound effects benefit greatly from the upgrade from GBA to DS. The soundtrack is my favorite of the series, and an all-time great for me.

Let me get something out of the way first. Yes, the magic seals are a crappy shoehorned gimmick that add nothing to the game. It was a lesson learned quickly in the Nintendo DS lifespan, and a shame that Castlevania had to go through it. Thankfully, emulation of this game just lets you skip these if you choose. Really the best way to address it if they remake this game is to ditch it entirely.

But that is really the only flaw that I can see in an otherwise perfect game. Exploring Dracula's castle is a ton of fun, and the second screen with the constant map makes it so much more smooth. I know that "map" is like the most generic use for the Wii U or DS screen, but it's also super useful. It just makes sense to do it in games like this. Not having to pause the game to see where you are or where you need to go is a wonderful quality of life featurethere's a reason why many single-screen games overlay the map when possible.

Not that Dawn of Sorrow doesn't have other reasons for you to climb around in the menus. As mentioned, there is a crafting system where you can upgrade weapons and so on. I won't get into the details here, but it gives you a reason to grind a bit besides just trying to increase your level. The best weapons are not necessary at all, but can be fun to earn if you like feeling overpowered. The souls are mostly unique and having multiple loadouts that can be switched on the fly is another feature that just adds to the smoothness of the game.



There are other great things about the game that I will briefly touch on. The multiple endings, Julius mode, Hard Mode, the silly multiplayer mode, boss rush, and I could go on. It's a very deep game with a ton of replayability. "Metroidvania" is one of my very favorite game genres and Dawn of Sorrow has yet to be topped in my experience.

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#4. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (GBA, 2003)
Fire Emblem is the perfect toilet game. Sitting on the toilet pooping is the best time to get your thinking on- and this game is that. Planning everything as carefully as you can- seeing where you can move, where the enemy will move based on where you move, where to set up, what units you should be bringing and what to equip them with, what you need to do to get every item on the level, whether or not you are opening doors with your own thief or baiting an enemy thief to do it, when to save the boss for last so you can kill all the other enemies finally figuring out the perfect strategy to do everything you want to do on the level- getting all the items and chests, killing all the enemies, doing the requirements for the upcoming side chapter, recruiting the difficult to reach recruit. And of course having it all be ruined by that damn 5% brigand critical. Your unit dies, and as any good Fire Emblem player, you go welp. Cant lose any units. Start over. And that is the essence of Fire Emblem. To achieve that perfection of doing everything and losing nothing. And it feels great.



And this game was my first experience with Fire Emblem. I got this game BECAUSE of Smash Bros, I was intrigued by Marth and Roy and was like hey, I want to play a game these guys are in, so I got Fire Emblem when it came out, of course not knowing that they werent in the game at all (until the scene at the end!), but Im still glad I did. The way this game makes you plan and come up with a best-odds strategy and actually pulling it off (and all while on the toilet) just was always excessively appealing. I love the level of micro and micromanagement it affords in all the stuff I mentioned above.



What also works really well in this game is the story. In a sense. The story is great, maybe not amazing, but its still great and works for what it is and has its emotional moments, but you find yourself getting very attached to these characters, who, despite there being a ton of them, all have their unique personalities and adds to the desire to want to restart any time you lose one to that good ol permadeath. But what really helps drive that point home is that YOU, the player, are directly involved with these events, as the games strategist. Youre not a main character or anything, but youre directly involved with all the main characters. You put in your name and Hector, Eliwood, Lyndis (who has become one of my favorite characters), and the rest all talk directly TO YOU, and its such a simple thing, but being a part of this story, and having the characters really talk right to and about you, show appreciation and emotion, its such a simple and seemingly minor thing, but its so extremely effective and the way Fire Emblem uses it is unlike any other game I am aware of and I think more RPGs (or whatever) should acknowledge the idea of this outside all-controlling source, making all the moves actually being a part of the story, not as an omnipotent god, but a simple strategist as part of your story to really make you feel with , care about, and identify with these characters and the story.



this image may have been slightly doctored, but rest assured its YOUR name that goes in there!

Next up: The ultimate love letter, for fans, by fans.

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That's not Path of Radiance

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You cant play path of radiance on a toilet. Well you can but it takes some work.

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