Thank you Foolz, that's very comforting.
#81. Retro Game Challenge
Even if Retro Game Challenge utterly sucked and was no fun whatsoever, you'd still have to give it credit for how creative the idea behind it is. You're sent back in time to the 1980's by a video game demon king who has become bitter that he sucks at modern day multiplayer gamest. There, alongside his human younger self in the, he gives you goals to complete on a variety of 8-bit games that kind of look familiar. Shooters, RPGs, racing games, and platformers... games that almost seem familiar. If you can complete all the challenges he throws at you, you get to return home.
If that doesn't make a lot of sense, don't worry about it. All you need to know is you're going to play a bunch of old NES games that never existed but probably should have. You don't have to actually beat them, just reach the goal that was set (getting a high score, reaching a level, collecting extra lives, etc.). Funny thing is, the games are actually pretty damn good, and you might just want to go ahead and keep playing until you win all the same. To round out the retro experience, you even have access to game manuals (ahhh now that does bring me back), and video game magazines that will have "tips and tricks" like old issues of Nintendo Power. When I got this, I really didn't understand what I was getting into, and wrongly assumed it was some kind retro game collection. It was possibly the best misconception I've ever had.
The "classic" games of Retro Gaming Challenge are shockingly good. Most basically feel like clones of games that existed back then like Galaga, Final Fantasy, RC Pro AM all come to mind, but you could easily see other games that influenced them. The games are really good, and they keep you grounded while an absolutely bizarre scenario plays out around you. It's a hell of an experience, and was definitely one of those games that could only have been made on the DS. Tough game to find, but totally a classic.
#80. Final Fantasy VII
The Squaresoft RPG revolution may not have begun with Final Fantasy 7, but lord knows that's when everyone decided to jump on the bandwagon. It's tough to blame them too. This game was a god damn epic. Part of me hates that this game sort of ended the classic "fantasy" elements of Final Fantasy, but it brought a lot of new elements to replace the old and it was hard to not forgive Squaresoft after experiencing them. The animations for summoning espers, materia, serious subject matter, a giant playground at the Golden Saucer, and a serious baddass of a villain. It was all cool shit.
This was the game that I bought my Playstation for, and was in fact the first game I even owned for it, despite owning a PSX for about 3 months. Up until then I'd just occasionally rent games. I promised myself that Final Fantasy 7 would be the first real purchase for my console. And overall, I wasn't let down at all. Classic Final Fantasy drama, memorable characters, and secrets hidden everywhere. It was as good as I could have hoped. If I remember correctly, I ended up dropping a college class because it was interfering with me spending as much time with the game as I wanted (for the record it was an elective that I didn't really need). This game, was a big one for me. It may have started my falling out of love with the series, but I still unquestionably loved Final Fantasy 7.
Final Fantasy 7 was amazing. I know it's cool to hate on it because it's so popular, but fuck those people. The game was a juggernaut. It wasn't my first PS game...I had already been amazed by the worlds of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. And it wasn't even my first PS RPG...that title went to Wild Arms, just a few months earlier I believe. But I remember loving Wild Arms, as it was the first RPG I had played in years. Really since the Genesis. But FF7 was on such another scale from WA it was literally laughable. I remember thinking to myself not long into FF7 "Man, it's a good thing I played WA before this", because my opinion on it would have been very different.
This was really the game that got me heavily into RPG's, and for me, cemented the fact that the Playstation was a behemoth.
Happy birthday guys, thanks for making me fell young!
FFVII is an all time masterpiece.
I remember playing Final Fantasy VII knowing nothing about it; what an amazing opening.
I have since failed to complete it twice on PC.
#79. Bulletstorm
I don't like first-person-shooters. I don't really like games with realistic violence, and plus I utterly suck at them. I've just never been able to play them with any proficiency and ultimately get frustrated and quit. There's one big exception to this though.... Bulletstorm. Granted I suck at it, but that's okay. Everything else in the game is more than enough to keep me invested and encourages me to keep plugging along... and getting plugged for that matter.
The utterly R-rated yet completely juvenile sense of humor is one pat of it. Anytime a character uses a word like "dick-tits" as a legitimate insult, I giggle like I'm an elementary school kid that just learned a new bad word. And god knows Bulletstorm is filled with stuff like that. Still, as happy as I am with simple playground humor that wouldn't quite be enough to keep me invested over the course of the game, but fortunately there's something a lot more interesting here and that's the gameplay. Bulletstorm is more than just headshots. You're encouraged to kill your enemies with style using a variety of upgradable weapons as well as your environement. You're outfitted with sort of a laser lasso called a thumper and that little device is your key to getting creative in how you kill people. For example you can use it to throw an enemy into the air, then plug them with a couple shots from your gun in mid-air, and then catch them with the thumper again to toss them into a cactus. The combos can get crazy and they're the key to earning points that will allow you to upgrade your weapons further. It's a great cycle that doesn't get old and makes Bulletstorm really stand out in a world of FPS games that otherwise bore me to hell.
#78. Rayman Legends
Rayman Legends is probably my favorite pure 2-D platformer of the past 10 years. While there are plenty of items to collect in each level like the lums and the teeneys, at the end of the day it's focused on the running and jumping more than anything else and that's exactly why I play platformers. That said, Ubisoft did a great job of adding extra features so there's a little here for everyone. There's levels and challenges based on collecting items, time attacks, endless running, and even a halfway decent multi-player game called Kung-foot. Ubisoft's framework went a long way in making this game look like a cartoon come to life, and it's one of those rare occasions where the game is actually as much fun to watch as it is to play.... well almost.
The most notable thing about Rayman's Legend that would probably get it in this list even if the rest of the game sucked is that it is home to the greatest platformer level in the history of gaming, Castle Rock. It's basically a level where you start running and don't stop by doding arrows, monsters, and dragonfire, while listening to a very Raymen-esque version of Ram Jam's Black Betty. Baaaad asssss....
robio said:The most notable thing about Rayman's Legend that would probably get it in this list even if the rest of the game sucked is that it is home to the greatest platformer level in the history of gaming, Castle Rock. It's basically a level where you start running and don't stop by doding arrows, monsters, and dragonfire, while listening to a very Raymen-esque version of Ram Jam's Black Betty. Baaaad asssss....
I mention how XC2's combat is in essence little more than a rythm game, and you balk at the prospect of you enjoying a rythm game, but then you put the visually wonderfull but otherwise only so-so Rayman Legends on the list, solely on the ground of some of its levels being little more than a thinly veiled rythm game? You are a person of questionably stable standards!
Surprised to see Bulletstorm on here. It was a fun game, I'd like to see another one. But not something I was expecting to see on Manpretty's top 100, for sure.
SupremeAC said:I mention how XC2's combat is in essence little more than a rythm game, and you balk at the prospect of you enjoying a rythm game, but then you put the visually wonderfull but otherwise only so-so Rayman Legends on the list, solely on the ground of some of its levels being little more than a thinly veiled rythm game? You are a person of questionably stable standards!
Apples and oranges. You're comparing the battle system of a 100 hour game to a single three minute level of a platformer that's played to one of the greatest rock songs of the past 40 years.
edgecrusher said:Surprised to see Bulletstorm on here. It was a fun game, I'd like to see another one. But not something I was expecting to see on Manpretty's top 100, for sure.
Yep it surprised me too. Honestly I don't even remember why I decided to try it but I'm glad I did. It was batshit stupid fun.
robio said:
Apples and oranges. You're comparing the battle system of a 100 hour game to a single three minute level of a platformer that's played to one of the greatest rock songs of the past 40 years.
fair point. Now go play Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
SupremeAC said:robio said:
Apples and oranges. You're comparing the battle system of a 100 hour game to a single three minute level of a platformer that's played to one of the greatest rock songs of the past 40 years.fair point. Now go play Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
DO IT!!!
Anyway yeah Bulletstorm was a hell of a lot of fun. Had a great time with the game myself as well.
#77. Super Dodge Ball
Super Dodge Ball is a constant reminder that I probably could be a sports fan if televised sports actually appealed to me. If there was a real Super Dodge Ball league (that was available to watch on something other than ESPN 3 at 1 in the morning) I'd probably be glued to it. Alas there is not, but the video game is a pretty good substitute. From the arcade to the NES to the GBA and all the Japanese only versions that have showed up on other systems, every version of the game has been a blast to play. Discovering each teammates' super throws, and building your team around them is all well and good, but even at its barebones level with the games that went light with the super throws or other frills, Super Dodge Ball has a great simple strategy that requires you to figure out what the best plan of attack is while not getting beaned by the opposing team. Direct attack? Tossing it around to members outside the square? Tricking the opponents into crossing the line? It's cliche as hell, but this is one of those classics that easy to pick up, but hard to master. If only we could get a few of the newer version into the West, all would be good for this franchise.
#76. World of Goo
When WiiWare first launched it was home to some of the most innovative games on consoles. The first generation of it saw S-E turn Final Fantasy into an adventure management sim called My Life as a King. Tell Tale brought out early internet icon Strong Bad over to his first adventure game,Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. Frontier Developments took a break from making sims, and created Lost Winds, a platformer where you controlled the atmosphere as much as the character. But my favorite was without question, was a dark little physics puzzler from a new indie studio called 2D Boy. World of Goo.
You spend the game using the IR controls on the Wiimote to stretch and arrange cute little goo blobs into ladders and bridges in order to get them from point A to point B. The game starts out cute and happy, but things darken up quickly and after a while the levels look like something Tim Burton would create when the lithium REALLY isn't working. A PC version would later allow you much tighter controls by using the mouse to arrange the goo blobs, but I've always thought the imprecise controls of the WiiMote made the game more fun and challenging. Like a good game of Jenga, if your hand isn't steady you're going to pay the price. There's also a really cool free-play mode where your only goal is to create the highest tower you can make without it falling to pieces. I showed this to an engineer friend of mine years ago. He wasn't much of a gamer, but when he saw this his head exploded and he pretty much spent the next day in front of the TV trying to set a record and get on whatever kind of leader board they created.
2D Boy (later known as the Tomorrow Corporation) has since gone on to frustrate me with their later games. Their subsequent games never seemed as ambitious, with games like Little Inferno and Human Resource Machine. Hopefully they'll come up with a more grand idea soon and we can see what other great games they can make.
#75. The Magic of Scheherazade
Behold, The Magic of Scheherazade, aka the greatest game you probably never played on the NES. If The Legend of Zelda and Chrono Trigger had a baby that was raised on the Arabian pennisula 1000 years ago, this would be it. I originally rented this game at Blockbuster on a whim which is pretty remarkable considering how unappealing the box art is, but it proved to be one of the great uninformed decisions of my life. This game took all the overworld exploration fun of Zelda and flipped it just a bit. Unlike Zelda you didn't use items to overcome puzzles, but The Magic of Scheherazade gave you other ways to solve your puzzles. You'd travel back and forth through time looking for a way to overcome a challenge, make allies who would join your quest in order to further your adventure, or perhaps change your character class. The game would also on occasion interrupt your traditional 2-D adventure and throw you into a turn based RPG type battle where your new allies would join you and occasionally create combos that would give them huge advantages in battle. It could be a little jarring at times, but it was a neat idea and was actually my first taste of turn based RPG games.
The game also had one of the most infamously bad translations I've ever seen. A magic spell that could open hidden doors was called "oprin." A multi-armed boss that looks very much like the Hindu goddess Kali was named "Curly." The list goes on, and while it was mind boggling bad at times, it never managed to be so bad that it broke the game. At the end of the day it added a little unintended personality to the game. Anyway if anyone was dying for an NES game to play this one gets just about the highest accolades I can give one.
Very interesting. Where do you find this stuff.
Happy Birthday, Robio!
None of you are old; you're just middle aged. Time to think about how you've failed to achieve your dreams and your life has amounted to nothing. Don't worry, though. When you actually are old, you won't give a shit.