It's been about 5 and a half years since I did my last Top 100 list. Due to my OCD and compulsion to constantly create lists in my head I think it's time for an all new Top 100.
My first thought was to reevaluate the old top 100, but fuck it, it's easier to pick 100 new games that I didn't have on the list last time. In the past 5 and a half years I've played more than I usually have, largely due to COVID. And in that time I've played a lot of new great games.
Plus, when I made the last list, I avoided adding multiple games from the same franchises. So I can dip back into the Dragon Quest pool and a few others.
Anyway stay tuned. Starting tomorrow we're doing this shit again.
My first thought was to reevaluate the old top 100, but fuck it, it's easier to pick 100 new games that I didn't have on the list last time. In the past 5 and a half years I've played more than I usually have, largely due to COVID. And in that time I've played a lot of new great games.
Plus, when I made the last list, I avoided adding multiple games from the same franchises. So I can dip back into the Dragon Quest pool and a few others.
Anyway stay tuned. Starting tomorrow we're doing this shit again.
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
One of the things I liked about the earlier Nintendo DS games was how developers were experimenting with all the features and trying to figure out how to utilize them for gaming. There were probably more misses than hits, and by the end of the DS' lifespan most games really didn't take advantage of anything other than the second screen for maps or item management. But the A lot of those early games gave us some very unique experiences.
One of my favorites was Lost in Blue. You play as two shipwrecked kids, one who's basically useless, and you try and survive while exploring the island and seeing if there's a way off. Spoiler alert, there is a way off, and basically you steal some drug smugglers boat and leaving them stranded on the island. Hopefully they have a DS to allow them to look for clams in the sand.
Some ridiculous premises aside, this really was a game that could dig its hooks into you. Konami did a really good job of giving players steady incremental progress that I kept you coming back to play just one more day. Really, the only negative that this game even has is that it was a DS game and therefore had DS level graphics. So there were plenty of times that that muddy shadow that you walked by a hundred times was actually an item you might need.
Sadly Konami never really found a way to improve the series. So despite three sequels, it was really a hard sell to want to keep playing the later installments and watch those unique ideas grow stale. But, that doesn't change how much fun and original. The very first one was.
I own that game, but bounced off it quite hard. I never had (nor have) much love for games with survival elements in them and this was way above my tolerance level.
Being an X-Men fan in the early '90s was weird. X-Men comics ruled the top 10 in sales month after month, and the only times it wouldn't be number one is if Todd McFarlane decided to get off his ass that month and release a Spawn book. Batman would occasionally be sprinkled around there as well. But it was also an extremely successful Saturday morning cartoon. But if you look at the video games? Jesus Christ, that was empty.
You had the X-Men multiplayer arcade game, but no home versions of that. There were also a couple AS games for wolverine and X-Men, but they're only notable because they sometimes show up on the worst games of all time's lists. Finally, Spider-Man and the X-Men in arcades revenge comes along.
I won't pretend this was the greatest game of all time. But as an X-Men fan, I'd put a lot of hours into this. And for good reason. This game is near impossible. Being able to beat it was one of my proudest accomplishments. You had five different characters to play, and level s to learn. Some of them were only hard, like Gambit trying to outrun a giant spiked ball. Others, or controller breakingly hard. For instance, since they couldn't figure out how to get Storm to fly, they threw her underwater and made her swim , solve puzzles, and try not to die of asphyxiation. Very reminiscent of the TMNT NES underwater levels, if that gives you a reference to what you were dealing with here.
Still, any port in a storm right? And while arcade was a very questionable final boss, the game was packed with a who's who of X-Men and Spider-Man villains. So it was pretty strong comic fan service all the way around. Not sure I'd be able to plate enough to get good again, but at 15, I had that kind of time and I'm glad I did.
I was not a particularly big fan of the Nintendo Switch. After exclusively gaming on a Wii U for about 4 years, a lot of the Nintendo franchises lost their luster. Fortunately, Nintendo had the good sense to bring back some older series with the switch and one in particular was a sequel that I had been waiting for since 2000, Pokemon Snap.
I'll still maintain that this should have been a game for the Wii U, but that point aside, New Pokemon Snap delivered on every end. They didn't go crazy with any new features, they just did everything a good sequel should do. More levels, more pokémon, more secret paths, more everything. And unlike the original, this game offered a lot more play time. The major gripe I had with the original pokémon Snap was that you could see and do pretty much everything in 6 hours or less. After over 30 hours, I still had plenty of things to do.
And without question, Pokemon have never looked as good as they did in this game. Pokemon games generally, don't push technology in any way whatsoever, so it's nice to see characters like these presented so well. It was really overdue.
It was also a perfect bite-size game. You could binge it for hours, but if you just wanted to play a single session, you wouldn't need more than 5 minutes. So for a while this became my "I really should be working, but is some Pokemon Snap really going hurt the quality of this report?" game. Spoiler alert, my work performance was still excellent.
Anyway, not a lot of games are worth waiting 20 years for. I'm not sure this was quite worth 20 years, but it was a damn good game. Definitely a must-have for anyone who has a switch.
"Delightful chaos perfected." I think that's the only phrase that properly describes the overloaded mess that is Marvel vs Capcom 2. And in this case, I mean mess in the best possible way. MvC2 went by the philosophy of, "if you throw enough shit against the wall something's going to stick" and I'll be damned If just about everything stuck.
If this was actually released in the arcades, I missed it, but that's not a giant surprise. By the late '90s arcades were more or less on their last leg, before they morphed into giant centers with games that just give you tickets. But I still tracked down a copy of this by sheer dumb luck. I was at the ghetto mall, that under normal circumstances I avoided like the plague. God knows why I was there, but there was a kiosk set up with just random junk in it, and amongst the crap were new, probably stolen, PS2 games all for about $20 a piece. And when I saw this, I could not resist.
I've mentioned how I've loved good fan service, and MvC2 ratches it up to its ludicrous conclusion, that wouldn't be surpassed until the most recent smash Brothers iteration. The game itself was fun, but getting credits to unlock more characters was equally satisfying. Who was next? Who the hell was even in the game? What the hell is this microbot thing? All of it was delightfully satisfying.
Really, the only negative I have in this game is that when you run out of character is to unlock, a sadness hits you and there's nothing you can do about it. In retrospect, DLC would have been a delight for something like this. That said, having 56 characters ready to go from the beginning is something that will probably never see in a video game again. And God damn it, that sadness is hitting me again now that I think about that.
Loved the massive roster in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 along with the crazy gameplay and graphics. Did not like the music in it though. Have learned to tolerate though. Also going from 6 buttons to 4 buttons freaked me out in a negative way. Have learned to be ok with that now though.