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*
It’s a secret to everyone.
SMT: Devil Survivor is a tactical RPG that features all the demon summoning and apocalyptic themes that we've come to know and love from the SMT series over the years. But with Devil Survivor, we have it all in a new package. Bring out the grid because now we have it in tactical RPG form.
Being a trpg was what initially pulled me in, because at that point Final fantasy tactics made me a fan of the genre and I couldn't get enough of it. But prior to this I had never played a smt game before and I really was not prepared for how dark it would be. Amusingly, the devil Survivor games are slightly lighter in tone than the main SMT games. Slightly. There's still lots of innocent people getting killed and grim vibes throughout. But yeah, I wasn't expecting that out of a DS game. Fortunately I loved it and because of this it actually opened the door to Persona and the rest of the smt games afterwards.
One last note about the game, of all the games on my list(s) there are only a few I have not been able to complete. Devil Survivor shares a special place, along with bloodborne because not only did I not beat them, but I didn't even get through the majority of the game. This one unfortunately featured a boss battle in the mid game that spiked with such difficulty that I had to quit to save my own sanity. But that said, I've returned to it many many times over the years trying to get past that point. I haven't done it yet, but I love the 15 to 20 hours leading up to it so it's still worthy of making my list.
The original Harvest Moon is definitely not the best game in the series. Hell, the best game in the genre isn't even a part of the Harvest Moon series anymore. Stardew Valley took that title ages ago. But for me it was one of those games that was like a light switch being turned on. It was this completely original idea and it opened my mind to the idea as that, anything can be turned into a fun game, even farming.
Getting my own copy of it was the most work I've ever had to go through for any game I've ever purchased. At the risk of sounding like the old man that I am, young people will never truly appreciate how much easier internet storefronts have made when it comes to getting things that you want. I lived in one of the biggest cities in America, and less than 2 years after it's release, it couldn't be found anywhere for sale. I even had one manager of a game store argue with me that the game had never been released in America. I'm sure that guy went on to manage his own GameStop just a few years later. There was one video store where I found it available for rental and for a while I was working at the nerve to tell them I lost it just so I could pay the fine and keep it as my own copy.
Eventually I did find someone selling it at some obscure online auction site. This is right before eBay was a thing. It was listed for just $20, but I knew if it went high I wouldn't be able to afford it. So I reached out to the seller and offered him $40 for it, which was all the money I had as I was still up very very broke college student. He said he was going to let the auction run out and wish me luck. The thing is, this site was again so obscure that no one ever found it. So I actually got my copy of it for just $20. Sucker!!!
Ironically, I was actually burned out on the game by the time I got my own copy. Just repeatedly renting it, I think I had put around 120 hours on it and had pretty much nailed down the formula for optimal gameplay. But I would never regret owning that game. For those 120 hours, that game is a complete obsession and for the next decade Harvest Moon would go on to be my favorite series.
In case the top 50 goes in a less interesting direction, I just wanna say this is (so far) one of the best top 100 games of all time lists...it's certainly in the top...100!
Great mix of personal favourites, obscure shit and classic choices, with as many personal anecdotes as mini-reviews.
But glad you're enjoying it. I think you'll stay equally entertained with the second half of the list. It's actually pretty well balanced with all the categories that you mentioned.
Kirby's Avalanche was my introduction to both the Kirby series and Puyo Pop. I am at times a very simple creature and sometimes all it takes to pull me in is a lot of brightly colored objects. This game has a whole lot of that going on. But seeing it presented as a Tetris style game was all it took for me to make the plunge.
Puyo Pop is however quite different than Tetris. In this game, you're actually trying to let your screen get filled up so that you can create a chain reaction that ends up clearing the entire screen, instead of just four rows at a time like in Tetris. The result is actually a slightly more stressful game, but one that I prefer.
However, as much as I like the Puyo Pop gameplay, I still find myself preferring this version or Dr. Robotnik's mean bean machine (ultimately, they're the exact same game), then the later installments in the series. For whatever reason, in the mainline series, all the characters are at some weird magical Japanese school, and in comparison, the Kirby characters are infinitely more adult and mature. Normally I wouldn't make a big deal out of that, but the Puyo pop crew is just so infintile that you can't help but cringe every time those characters open their mouths.
So thank you Kirby. The thank you for taking over the title, even if for a brief period of time. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to stomach it.
If you are a Beatles fan, but you don't own this game, you've done a tremendous disservice to yourself. It should be considered a requirement, right up there with owning a copy of the White Album and watching A Hard Days Night.
As someone who was a pretty big fan of the Guitar hero and Rock Band games, I never would have thought you could do one game with just one band. Lord knows they've tried it enough times and it never really worked again. I'm pretty sure the Van Halen edition of Guitar hero is a collector's item now, because no one wanted to touch it with a stick when it was released. But in retrospect, it made sense that it worked with the Beatles. Not many bands changed that much over a 10-year period and consistently made excellent music the entire time.
In a more fair and just universe, we'd be having this game remade every console generation instead of Grand theft Auto V or The last of Us, so that everyone would still have a chance to play it on modern hardware. Until then though, this is why I'll never get rid of my Wii version.