I know, it’s hard to believe, right? Seeing as we only ever talk about the same four or five here (eheheh.)
But no, it’s true, there are a couple of games we don’t quite see eye to eye on. The Legend of Zelda series comes to mind. Ocarina of Time is one of my all-time favorites. But Mister Adequate– brace yourselves for this one– is not a fan. He’s played a good number of the Zelda games and does not “get” them. Now I can already hear the cacophony of “WHY” coming from our readerbase, but I will refrain from detail here as to let my comrade speak for himself in a future blog post, if he feels so inclined.
Another place where we frequently diverge is in older games, because I grew up a Nintendo kid and he a Sega kid. We do both see the other’s platform as a worthy rival, but trust me when I say that you do not want to start the two of us on an SNES vs. Sega Genesis “discussion”.
Or maybe you do, because the battle would be hilarious to watch.
Recently, there is Minecraft. Okay, actually, we both have a sort of weird complex where we like to pretend that we don’t play it as much as we do. At the end of the day, though, we have to admit our weak spot for the infamous game of blocks, and Mister Adequate has clocked so much more time into this game than I have that it’s silly. And also not open for debate. Sorry, sweetie! (Yes, I poke fun of him for this.)
So yes. We do, actually, diverge on opinions for a handful of games. Scary, no?
Listen to this while reading and prepare yourself for a fairly shallow bout of sheer enthusiasm about a game I like.
If you’ve heard much about Alpha Protocol, an espionage-based RPG from Obsidian, you’ve probably heard things like “It’s okay”, “Buggy”, “Mediocre”, etc. Metacritic shows that the average hovers around 65% (Slightly higher on the PC version), and it generally has failed to inspire, as well as being confirmed not to have a sequel in the works.
You know what I have to say to that?
BULLHOCKEY
Mike Thorton knows how to blend in.
Alpha Protocol is AWESOME. It’s one of the better games I’ve played in the past few years, certainly outside my preferred Strategy genres. Yes, it is a bit rough around the edges due to time and budget constraints and yes, people have reported bugs aplenty (I haven’t encountered anything worse than a graphical glitch myself, but that’s an entirely subjective experience of course). The leveling isn’t perfectly balanced, with pistols and stealth being rather overpowered and some others falling by the wayside.
But these are minor nitpicks in a glorious game. Alpha Protocol has a great cast, a ton of missions, and everything – EVERYTHING – you do has some consequence or another. It might grant you a stat boost, or it might change the entire ending, but whatever you do it’s going to change something. You can choose to kill or spare pretty much anyone in the game, you can take different attitudes towards everyone, and you fight an 80s-obsessed Russian mobster who is coked out of his skull. Unless you do things in a different order and make friends with the right character, in which case you can just poison his cocaine and the fight goes way easier.
The depth and intricacies are amazing and well worth it by themselves, but the gameplay is still perfectly solid even if not exceptional and let me tell you, pulling off a perfect stealth run makes you feel like a total badass. So if you get the chance, don’t listen to the critics, listen to me and play it!
I’ve messed around with it before, but I was never able to give it the full amount of attention it really deserved. Partially because it liked to crash at inopportune moments (guess that’s what happens when you’re playing a 12 year old game, though), and partially because there always seemed to be other games that were competing for my attention. So all my attempts at the game mostly involved me derping around and never getting to finish an entire game because it would crash or I’d get distracted or something. Recently, though, inspired partially by a pretty neat Civ IV mod called Planetfall, I actually sat down and played an entire game and allowed myself to be swept up in the story and the atmosphere.
Oh
My
WORD
It’s like, if you threw Civilization, some of the best quotes I’ve ever heard in my life, and this insanely great science fiction story into a blender and then spiked it with the most addictive drug you can think of, you’d get SMAC.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Guys. Just. Okay. First, I’m going to talk about the characters. They get mad. Easily. A lot easier than they do in, say, Civ IV. They’ll come after you if you so much as look at them funny, unless you manage to appease them with a tech or something, and who wants to do that?
So you’re fighting a lot.
While you’re doing this, you’re also trying to deal with the native life on Planet. Which is incredibly deadly and has this backstory that will send chills up your spine.
Then, Planet starts talking to you.
(Planet is basically GLaDoS before GLaDoS existed, by the way. In that Planet has this bizarre and thoroughly great way of talking and says things that will make you giggle for minutes.)
So you’re trying to figure out this mystery, and you’re still fighting this war and trying to manage your bases and trying to tech and trying to deal with the native life (although you can start using the native life to your advantage if you get on good terms with Planet), and then spoilers happen and more spoilers happen and pretty soon you’re on your way to transcending mere mortal humanity.
Sounds pretty great, right?
Except by this point, if you aren’t careful, you’ve got even MORE on your plate to deal with. Like your own people rioting because you didn’t manage them correctly. Like your enemies flinging around missiles that actually permanently destroy portions of the map. Like rising oceans that will wipe out your carefully tended bases without a single warning. Like everyone racing you to become one with Planet.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Has a video game ever been so tense? Has a pile of pixels on a screen ever made me grip my chair so hard? I don’t think so.
This game is far, far more obscure than it should be.
And I think it’s my new favorite. And I haven’t had a new favorite video game in at least a decade. Not because I’m stubborn. But because this is the first game I’ve played in ten years that hasn’t made me add “It’s almost as great as…” under my breath after my accolades. Games like Starcraft or Ocarina of Time were my favorites for years because, back then, they blew my mind on multiple levels and set a whole new bar for what video games could do. SMAC has done that again. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t figure this out, I dunno, in 1999 like I should have. Better late than never though, right?
My exact reaction while playing SMAC.
Also, if Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds haven’t been promoted to godhood yet then I don’t know WHAT is going on.
I mentioned it before once or twice, but I’m going to take a whole post now to talk about Mirror’s Edge.
“Once this city used to pulse with energy. Dirty and dangerous, but alive and wonderful.”
Mirror’s Edge was, in my eyes, something with a lot of potential from the start. It was the first first-person platformer I can remember since Jumping Flash, and the first trailers spoke of something even more impressive, which was the unique and interesting aesthetic.
I don’t recall ever seeing a game world with such vibrancy. I don’t normally mind the “brown ‘n’ bloom” that seems to have taken hold terribly, but to get a breath of fresh air like this was rather delightful. This game is so bright and colorful it should be garish, but because it was apparently designed by Rarity, it works perfectly and harmoniously to create a sharply gorgeous world.
The Android's Closet is apparently filled with MLP toys.
And what do you know, the game is great. Not flawless by any means, the combat especially is a rather questionable addition (Though it can usually be avoided in whole or in part), but it has a flow to it, a sense of speed and movement, that you don’t really get outside of racing games like WipeOut or Rollcage, but unlike those each step and jump and juke is something you have directly done. Fundamentally Mirror’s Edge has a lot going for it, but the real reason I think it’s great is because it gives you such a sense of satisfaction when you do something right; when you get a new personal best on a level (And the game is best viewed as having strong puzzle elements), when you master a particularly tricky section, or when you find some shortcut that cuts your time down hugely.
The DLC cuts everything down to the barest components, and it still has to look this weird and colorful.
Ultimately, and I’m sorry to use somewhat nebulous terms, the thing about Mirror’s Edge is that it feels refreshing and kinetic, it feels fast, it feels rewarding when you do it right. It isn’t perfect at all, but it is glorious, it tried to do something that was genuinely new, not just aesthetically but in gameplay as well, and it largely succeeded in this. Despite Faith’s quote up at the top there, the City feels alive and wonderful, pulsing with energy, even if that energy is Faith’s alone. It’s also supremely cheap now to pick up used, so I would wholly encourage anyone with a few bucks and hours to spare to pick it up.
Following on from Pike’s post I shall also provide some musings on the games I consider to be the very best. But unlike her, I shall actually deliver a list of five games! Just to briefly note that I’m not trying to say this is a definitive list of “best games ever” or something; just give that I’m most fond of and have a lot of personal regard for.
5) Final Fantasy X
Well, it’s always a toss-up between this and VII, but every time I play through FFX I find something else to love about it. This is, for my money, the best game Squaresoft/Square-Enix have ever put out. It is massive, richly detailed, I love all the characters in their own way (I didn’t used to like Yuna at all, but I’ve totally come to love and respect her as I really thought about her life and how she deals with everything), the battle system is immensely fun, and it’s got the best bonus content of any FF except, perhaps, XII, but then I don’t like XII so I’ve not seen much of that!
Also, blitzball is the best minigame ever.
I think most of all I love it because it’s so beautiful. Not in the purest sense of eye-melting graphics, but in the aesthetic sense. Not too many games have a South-east Asian style setting anyway, but FFX feels so hot and tropical, is so colorful, so thoroughly alive in every scene, that I can’t help but get completely sucked in. And this is not mentioning the soundtrack; I listen to this and I am transported to Spira, feeling the heat and the water, it’s so wonderful.
X-2 is great as well, I don’t care what anyone says.
4) X-Com
Ah, X-Com. You’ve heard Pike talk about this lately, and just think about what that means for a moment. A game that’s nearing 20 is more compelling to a new player than almost anything contemporary. Just so! X-Com is vast, ridiculous in scope, encompassing a global geostrategic component, base building, research, economic management, manufacturing, and of course the insanely deep, detailed, addictive tactical combat against the alien menace. Why so good? Like any classic, because it’s immersive. It sucks you in. You are the Commander, you have to simultaneously care about your troops and deal with it when they die in droves. You have to juggle a number of competing concerns, and the aliens will usually throw a wrench into your plans. It might be an isometric pixelfest today, but it’s still more engrossing, and often more terrifying, than anything that has come since.
Pictured: An actual nightmare. Not pictured: You, never sleeping comfortably again.
X-Com came out in 1994 and the game has probably never been improved upon. I own four separate copies (Along with two copies of TFTD and a copy of Apocalypse). I really can’t recommend it strongly enough to anyone who hasn’t played it. This is why we got into gaming: Experiences like this are what it’s all about.
3) Deus Ex
Games like to talk about having multiple and diverse solutions. They rarely do – This one does, and oh man does it ever show how short the rest of the industry falls in that regard. You can be Snake, you can be Dook, you can be a l33t haXX0r and turn the enemy’s guns and robots against them, all kinds of stuff. And all backed up by two separate, synergistic methods of advancement, namely experience points on one hand and nano-augmentation on the other. All wrapped up in the most delightful dystopia I’ve had the pleasure of setting foot in, reveling in every conspiracy theory you can imagine (Except birthers, because that didn’t exist in 1999, obviously).
If you think this is an exaggeration, you'd be wrong.
Yes, the graphics have aged badly and yes, the gunplay is a bit clunky, and yes, it has voice acting that can veer right into the comical. Not a single one of those things matter, because this game is how you make games, and the few flaws it has are completely overshadowed by the vastness of scale and ambition contained here.
2) Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
There’s no shortage of 4x games around, but if you’re listing the best, you’re probably going to talk about either Civilization or SMAC. There is a reason for this. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is the 4X game par excellence, the apex of the genre, not matched before or since. What makes it so great, I hear you ask? Where to begin. Name an aspect of videogames and SMAC does it brilliantly or better. The implementation of the gameplay, the mechanics, all of that stuff, is essentially unimpeachable. There is little realistic way to say it could be better except, perhaps, to say there could be more of it. What elevates SMAC from merely a brilliant game to an all-time classic and a brilliant experience is the atmosphere.
This game has quotes from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marx, all kinds of stuff. And these quotes are usually the less impressive ones. The really impressive quotes are the ones written for the game’s various faction leaders. Every time you research a tech you get a quote from someone, every time you build a wonder, and the first time you build any given building. The end result? A 4x game with stronger, more detailed characters, who undergo more evolution, than the best RPG. As things progress their opinions change; compare these two quotes from Sister Miriam Godwinson, leader of the Lord’s Believers faction.
“The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.”
“And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”
Also there are cyborgs, which is extremely hot
The final enjoyable factor is that the game goes for the ‘high balance’ route. All factions can achieve a position of particular strength, often wildly divergent from each other, but they can all become immensely powerful. When you can wipe out continents you really feel like you’re in charge of a future society, not to mention gives a palpable sense of reward for building up your empire. It was an excellent design decision which goes somewhat unnoticed, but contributes a lot to the game.
1) Suikoden II
So there’s some predictable classics on this list. Nobody is surprised to see X-Com or SMAC on a “Top games list”. But what’s this? Soo-wee-ko-den? What’s that? It’s a Playstation JRPG. It’s the best game I’ve ever played.
Suikoden, now up to entry V (All are exceptional except for IV), is a game where you lead an army. You generally start out on the side of an empire, and the corruption of it is soon revealed. Willingly or not you are caught up in a revolution or war to oppose it, and end up being the leader of the army. Yes, as a JRPG it means teenagers end up leading tens of thousands of troops. Yes, it has essentially silent protagonists, which is usually an immense pet peeve of mine. No, there is essentially no way to diverge from the prescribed plot (Though there are more chances to do so in SII than in any other JRPG I can call to mind). And yet here it is, number one on my list, a game I replayed around Christmas and loved as much as ever.
It’s a little hard to really explain what I love about this game, but that’s sort of the point of this post, so I’ll do my best. It has charm. It has grandeur, but it keeps things believable. You’re not saving the world from an ancient evil that has recently awoken, you’re fighting for your country, usually by fighting on the side of your country’s historic enemies. And you fight people on the other side who believe in their country, or believe they have a duty to serve it at any rate, who are for the most part thoroughly human. Except Luca Blight, who is the only ‘Murderous lunatic’ villain I have ever seen who makes me feel anything other than derision.
Viktor and Flik - most severe badasses to ever kick ass.
There are 108 characters to recruit in each Suikoden, sometimes recurring from other games in the series. They all form part of an overarching story of the Suikoden world, a plot not yet all revealed, but one which is engrossing in the extreme. Every game has fascinating characters and locations, gorgeous visuals, and absolutely stunning music. Forget Nobuo Uematsu, forget Yasunori Mitsuda, Miki Higashino is an unsung genius. I don’t think anyone has ever made better videogame musicthan she has.
So I was thinking the other day, and thought it might be fun to do a post about some of my all-time favorite games. I mean, I talk about “OMG THIS GAME IS AWESOME, I LOVE THIS GAME” so often that I may as well have several dozen favorites, but I decided to challenge myself to narrow it down. This’ll be tough for me, but let’s see how it goes.
1. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
This is, hands down, my all-time favorite game of all time. Are there better games from a technical standpoint? Yes. But this game shall always hold a special place in my heart for being the first game that grabbed me both in terms of gameplay and story, and for showing me what video games can really do as a medium for both.
Genre-rise this is, as the name would suggest, an RPG. It was made by Square back when they were Squaresoft and still making games for Nintendo. They made it in between making Final Fantasies VI and VII, and it shows– the game and many of its little nuances (billions of unnecessary items or ridiculously superfluous magic spell animations, anyone?) have a very vintage Final Fantasy/Chrono Trigger feel.
The game combines this classic RPG gameplay with a need for almost rhythmic timing for button combos, and when you toss what was, at the time, the deepest storyline twelve-year-old Pike had ever seen before in a video game into the mix, you get a game that has really stood the test of time and hammered itself into my mind as a firm favorite.
Also, Geno. Best. Character. Ever.
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Remember how Super Mario RPG did it for me by combining good gameplay with a good story? Yeah. This game did the exact same thing.
This entry on the list probably doesn’t come as a big surprise to anyone. There are plenty of people out there who didn’t like this game as much as most people did, but very few people will deny that this game had something going for it, something that captivated the better part of a generation.
About a year or so back I replayed the first half or so of this game and was pleased to see that it’s still just as captivating now as it was back then. And even those huge blocky polygons couldn’t change that.
3. StarCraft: Brood War
Longtime RTS players will frequently point to a Command & Conquer game or, more often than not, Age of Empires II as being the pinnacle of the genre. And you know what, those games were great. But for me, there is one king of RTS and that king is StarCraft.
I don’t know if there has ever been a strategy game where the races/factions were all so very different and yet so very balanced. If there is, I certainly haven’t played it.
StarCraft is sublime. Easy to learn, insanely difficult to master, with strategy layers that I swear are endless. I’d just play games over and over again, trying different strategies or trying to refine a previous one. Back in the day, I’d load this game up in the morning and play it until night. Twelve or thirteen hour StarCraft marathons were not a rare thing for me.
Funny bit of trivia for you though: I’ve never played through the story mode. I just played multiplayer or (more frequently) custom games against the AI.
(P.S. Yes, I also like StarCraft 2, but frankly I consider that game to mostly be just a graphical upgrade of the original StarCraft, with a couple new units tossed in for flavor. So the original gets my vote here.)
4. Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword
I know, I know. I’m super behind the times and didn’t start playing this until recently. And yet it’s already on my all-time favorite list. Biased? Nope. The game is just that good.
Yes, I was mad.
Let’s see, what’ve we got here. Nuanced strategy, a whole bunch of different ways to win each game, a crazy learning curve that will have you learning new things about the game months after you’ve started playing, a mix of history and humor, Gandhi nuking the stuffing out of you, and above all, fiendishly addictive gameplay. Yup. This is the best 4X game of all time. Every time I play it, I remember why I fell in love with it in the first place.
5. …uh, yeah, this one is up in the air.
Okay, you’ve got me. I have no idea how to narrow #5 down to just one game. I’ve got a bunch of candidates. Depending on mood, time of day, and the thickness of my current pair of Nostalgia Goggles, I’d go for Dig-Dug, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Bros. 3, Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Halo, Pokemon Gold, Final Fantasy VI, Metal Gear Solid, or The Oregon Trail. Or probably several others that I’m forgetting. One of these days I’ll sit down and figure out a definitive Number Five, but today is not that day.
Alrighty then! Your guys’ turn! Top five favorites?
So I’ve decided that every now and then we should tell you about games worth playing that you may have missed the first time around (Much like Pike’s classic Videogame posts over at Clockwork Hare). This is the first one of these.
The Warriors
Come out to plaaaayy-eeayyy
This right here. It came out of nowhere, it was based on a cult movie from 25 years previously, and it was on top of that a brawler game, in the tradition of Streets of Rage and Final Fight. Not exactly the hottest genre in the middle of the Noughties.
And it. Is. AWESOME! It’s brutally violent, hilarious, chaotic, and absolutely ridiculously fun to play. It’s great by yourself but even better with a friend, so if you can get a friend and a copy of this game, I urge you to sit down and bro-op through it, because it truly is an awesome time. It’s a little hard to pin down what it is that makes it so great. I sympathize with Troy Goodfellow’s position that simply saying something is ‘fun’ is a copout, and yet – it is. It’s ‘fun’ in a manner which I have a lot of trouble defining. It’s not a complicated game, nor a deep one, but it is deeply amusing and engrossing.
