Agent47 wrote:Think of it this way, H: imagine a FPS akin to Crackdown, a simple and basic story to set the scene and then just let you loose on anything with (or without) a pulse. That would be my dream for this kind of FPS.
I'd would strawberry floating love that. Especially if it turned you into a badass, bullet-absorbing killing machine and give you tons of enemies to blast seven shades of gooseberry fool out of.
Agent47 wrote:Think of it this way, H: imagine a FPS akin to Crackdown, a simple and basic story to set the scene and then just let you loose on anything with (or without) a pulse. That would be my dream for this kind of FPS.
That might be interesting...but that isn't a game like Doom, it is doing something else with it. It'd be nonlinear and presumably open world, have some much better AI and probably be doing a lot of other things.
You know the Far Cry demo? The one that starts with you assaulting an island headway, before moving onto a long beach and then up one of several different paths up a mountain?
A game that consisted of just levels made like that, I'd have no problem with...but that isn't the same as a game along the lines of Doom, it does more. Thats all I'm saying, you need to do more now than just the straight shooting, perhaps that means a level of planning involved, not on a deep strategic basis, but on a moment to moment level, while still satisfying the basic need for 'just shooting everything in sight'.
I wasn't meaning the Crackdown-esque idea to be like Doom, but it would still be the category of pure shooter. As an idea, I meant something along those lines of having the most basic story that would do nothing more than set the scene, then a basic objective that can be done in any way the player chooses - as long as it involves shooting the gooseberry fool out of stuff and whatnot.
I'm not opposed to AI and the like within this type of game and even set-pieces would be welcome (like the Serious Sam: Second Encounter one I mentioned, that was genius ), as long as nothing strays too far from the main premise of shooting anything and everything.
Perhaps this thread has been diverted long enough, though I'd still love to see these ideas for FPS reach consoles and PCs at some point - however unlikely.
No World of Warcraft, PGR, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Donkey Kong Country 2 or Unreal Tournament (any version) in the top 100 and and both Gears, loads of Final Fantasy games, more Zelda's than needed, Halo 2 which is no where near as good as Halo 3, and others in the list... I guess I didn't vote so I can't really complain.
Dalagonash wrote:No World of Warcraft, PGR, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Donkey Kong Country 2 or Unreal Tournament (any version) in the top 100 and and both Gears, loads of Final Fantasy games, more Zelda's than needed, Halo 2 which is no where near as good as Halo 3, and others in the list... I guess I didn't vote so I can't really complain.
25) Super Mario Bros. (NES) The problem with including a load of games with a shelf-life that can be measured in decades is that trying to justify their inclusion often forces you to write sentences beginning with some variation of "I remember when..." I'm going to try and avoid doing that as much as possible for the sake of this list, but if any game on here deserves exception from this process, it's Super Mario Bros. I remember heading into Coventry city centre when it was first released, me and my two brothers huddling around my mum as we pushed our way through to a rather grotty-looking market stall specialising in video games. £45 lighter, we headed home, and the reaction I get when 1-1 loads up is as vivid now as it was all the way back when. If there's any crude method of judging just how well a game has withstood the test of time, then the priority it takes when you run an emulator on another bit of hardware might just be one of them. The fact that I could turn on any one of... four or five bits of machinery in my room right now and start playing this immediately might speak volumes.
24) Fallout 3 (PC) ...and in contrast to all that, you have a title so contemporary and fresh in the mind that I wouldn't dare say I've finished playing through it *properly* even once yet. Of course, a large part of that could quite easily be attributed to the sheer enormity of the game itself; a vast, awe-inspiring technical achievement, one that captures the entire feel of wandering around the post-apocalyptic ruins of Washington DC so well that you wonder how on earth it could possibly be followed. Who would dare even toy with the idea of an irradiated landscape after having wandered through Fallout 3's incredible interpretation for ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred hours or more? I can but hope the answer is 'Bethesda'.
23) Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) I remember...
Ahem. Having two 8-bit Mario games squatting right at the opening of this list might seem a little... obvious, I guess, but there just isn't a way for me to compile a selection of personal classics without including the titles which, for me, defined (and still define) an entire genre. Having an overworld to explore between levels was, for the sake of a better term, strawberry floating mind-blowing back then, and little touches that only the Mario Bros. series gets right just pulled this way, way ahead of anything else I was playing back then. Item/inventory management in a platformer? On the NES? Absolutely. Sitting down and replaying both this and the original SMB is almost like an exercise of muscle memory - I take the same route every time, exploiting the same warp pipes/magic whistles to skip to the right levels. I don't know why, but it's been incredibly comforting to have something so predefined and... reliable to go back to over the years. And World 8 still scares the hell out of me.
22) Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC) As a general rule, video games aren't very funny. Paper Mario, along with being a breath of fresh air for people sick of generic RPGs, a standout title from Intelligent Systems who well and truly deserve their moniker, a brilliant reinvention of a set of well-established characters, and probably the best game on the Gamecube, is also the funniest video game I have ever played. And that deserves recognition.
Developing an encyclopedic knowledge of 151 varieties of fictional creatures is, by and large, what happened in 1997 for me. To some degree, that knowledge remains, and as with the comforting familiarity of the Mario gameplay described earlier, there is something buried deep within my brain that likes how I know what level an Ivysaur evolves at, and what TMs it should be given to best counter a trainder focusing on ground-based Pokemon. To be honest, despite having said that this list should be populated entirely by games that could just as easily be played today as when they were first released, this is the entry which I would be hesitant about ever replaying. The series has evolved (at level 18) too far beyond my recognition, additions seem convoluted, the list of pocket monsters overpopulated, and I'm not sure how much what I consider the series to be today would affect my ability to sit down with a GameBoy Color + link cable + Pokemon Red and retain some level of enjoyment. I'd sure like to find out though. I choose Charmander.
20) Metal Gear Solid (PS1) With a storyline that is expanded and explored to the nth degree in three subsequent installments, I don't think I could get away with saying that I've included this because of its narrative content. What I will say is that this was one of the first games I played that I felt treated me, as a player, like an adult, which to a 14-year old kid is a pretty big deal. Going back to it now offers somewhat different rewards, but that feeling of the game taking you as serious as you're trying to take it stands strong.
I remember feeling pretty awesome about the fact that, at the end of the game, Snake reveals that his name is David. That's a little embarrassing.
19) Mega Man 2 (NES) Hands down, the best soundtrack to any video game I've ever played. Still. I like this game for lots of other reasons, and replay it through to completion once a year on average, but the blips and bleeps that chime energetically as Mega Man strides an 8-bit skyscraper below the title screen say all that needs to be said.
18) Picross DS (DS) I really like Picross puzzles. This let me complete lots and lots of Picross puzzles on my DS. There's really not that much more to divulge.
17) Pic Pic (DS) Yes, I'm still playing this. No, I'm not going to shut up about it. I will have put in about 100 hours or so by the time Drawing mode is finished, which is an astonishing number for the little white handheld. What's even more noteworthy is the fact that games which I rack up this many hours on are usually either long, drawn-out affairs offering much in the way of exploration, or at the very least, something which I feel a sense of advancement is the main thing propelling me forward. Pic Pic is a grid-based puzzle game which I play for fifteen minutes at a time, no more, no less, but taken over a period of six months... well, here we are. If there is any sort of radical philosophy which the DS brings to the realm of game design, every ounce of it can be found residing within Pic Pic.
16) Devil May Cry (PS2) Devil May Cry is the reason I bought, re-bought and still own a PS2. It just has this beautiful difficulty and learning curve that evolves as it progresses; one of those rare occasions where you can feel a real sense of co-operative development, with you getting better in terms of skill, and it opening up in terms of item/equipment/enemy management. I'd be hard pushed to pick a game released since then that does it better.
15) Halo 2 (Xbox) Okay, so we probably couldn't sit down in a multiplayer lobby today and expect the same sort of experiences as we had during Halo 2's heyday, but there's no way this could have been left out. It's the starting point for... nearly everything, in terms of my experiences with console-specific online gaming, and houses far, far too many wonderful moments and memories. Shockingly, I actually don't mind the single player mode either, ludicrous end boss battle aside.
14) Call of Duty 4 (360) ...and its unnatural successor, wrestling the mantle for Live game of choice away from Halo's third installment and sitting proudly upon a heap of inadequate contenders. There are issues with the core gameplay mechanics of the multiplayer modes, and at least 50% of the perks might as well have not been included at all, but those of us who made the switch over to COD can still happily go an entire night as a party without playing anything else. All eyes on its sequel.
13) Super Mario World (SNES) Probably my most-replayed game out of... everything, I guess. The amount of times I've watched Mario lead the Yoshi eggs all the way out of Bowser's Castle, through a set of truly wonderous worlds and arriving safely back at the starting tree fails to explain my desire to see it all again right at this very moment. It's not enough to say that it oozes charm from every pore - I'm of the firm belief that it represents the pinnacle of ingenuity within the genre of 2D platformer, with unlockables and secrets and alternate approaches and such a complete disregard for conventional linearity that it baffles me how such a game could have been produced so long ago. It has yet to be bettered, not by Nintendo themselves, not by anyone else. It is strawberry floating superb.
12) Secret of Mana (SNES) A couple of three-dimensional Squaresoft RPGs might sit a little further up this list, but that should do nothing to belittle the amount of both time and adoration I have for this game. Again, the core purpose of this list is to see what holds up today underneath the cold, harsh light of replays, but Secret of Mana is maybe the one game out of this set that I still don't feel like I've played through optimally yet. That's a rather crap way of saying that, as a three-person co-operative game, it could very well be the deepest, most satisfying multiplayer experience available for a trio of plucky adventurers. Taken as a solo game, it has to rely more on its magnificent combat and wonderfully engaging story. Luckily, that's more than enough.
11) Doom (PC/SNES/PS1/XBLA) Time to wheel out that old story regarding how the first game I played for the first week of being an Xbox 360 owner was the XBLA version of none other than John Romero's finest. I still go back to it every once in a while, still running along the walls hammering the A button to find the elusive hidden doors. Still going up against the Cyberdemons. The 8-man online co-op games I used to run here on GR were amazing; the 4-man co-op RF runs we did also great. But I could just as easily sit on my own, storming through Hurt Me Plenty without a care in the world.
10) Rock Band 2 (360) Between instruments, license transfers and an obscene amount of downloadable content, Rock Band 2 is easily the most expensive video game I have ever played. It's a damn good job then that it also happens to be the very pinnacle of music game design, and the centrepiece of any gathering of like-minded individuals who don't make exhanging a little piece of their dignity for a few Boston tracks. The support Harmonix has been nothing short of magnificent, a new benchmark in how developers cater for their (sometimes obsessive) fans.
9) Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GC) The best local multiplayer sports game I've ever had the fortune of playing, as Big Frank will also probably testify. Accessible without ever risking being shallow, replayable without ever seeming repetitive, it captures the very best of what the Gamecube did well in its heyday. Camelot's efforts have waned since then, with Wii Love Golf not even holding a candle to their previous titles, but when you manage to make something this good it's hardly surprising that it becomes a tough act to follow.
8 ) Resident Evil 4 (GC/Wii) Having adored the PS1-era entries in the series, my interest in anything Resident Evil-y almost completely disappeared during the relatively barren days of early PS2/GC releases. Code Veronica X seemed too far removed from what I had grown to love about the franchise for me to care, and Zero somehow set itself up as a prequel to an event which really, really did not need exploring. REmake was the only refuge for the faithful during this time, and while it managed to fulfill its role of masterfully re-interpreting a modern-day classic, there was no getting around the fact that it was, as its title suggests, merely retreading ground that had already been covered.
Then along comes Resident Evil 4.
There's a slight danger of just echoing the immense level of praise which it has received since it was released, but at the same time, you just cannot underestimate how important that opening village section was in terms of most action-adventure games that followed. The whole thing just felt like a desperately-needed breath of fresh air for a franchise that was starting to build a reputation for churning out mediocrity, settling for less than it deserved having effectively rejuvenated the entire survival horror genre with its first PsOne release. To say that RE4 changed all that seems like something of an understatement. But it changed everything.
7) Final Fantasy VIII (PS1) Might as well get it out of the way now - the story is absolute bobbins. Trying to play through the game today would require a seriously forgiving nature, and possibly the use of a blindfold as you hastily tap the cirlce button through the entire "we grew up together in this orphanage but forgot all about it because Guardian Forces give us CHRONIC AMNESIA" section. So that's a minus, I guess.
But... I just can't stay mad. I love the setting. I love the SeeDs. I love the Gardens. The opening section ending with a mad dash through the streets of Dollet absolutely floored me. I adored the main characters, many of whom didn't really want to take on this absurd quest they'd been given, seemingly more intent on dealing with their own selfish, pubescent worries instead. Somehow, that came across as completely understandable to my teenage self, and it made for a welcome change from the "Save the planet, YEAH!" mentality of the game that sits directly below. It was also the first FF game I played which actually gave the Summoned forces a character of their own - hunting the later ones down in gloomy castles and scorched deserts actually lead to a feeling of immense reward when these tasks were accomplished. GF compatability was a complete gooseberry fool though...
6) Final Fantasy VII (PS1) No more than two hours ago, the Sister Ray fired an intense bolt of Mako energy right into the barrier surrounding the Northern Crater, exposing Sephiroth's hiding place to the world. This is 2009, 12 years since the above sentence first made sense, and still the FMV sequences have me captivated, still the overworld theme music has me enthralled. No matter what the series does from this point onwards, no matter how many changes it makes, or however many different platforms it is released on, for a great many people (with myself included), everything that there is to adore about Final Fantasy can be found spread over three black discs.
I do so hope that it doesn't get remade any time soon.
5) Vandal Hearts (PS1) At about 12:30am the other night, I stumbled across the news that the third instalment in the Vandal Hearts series was being released as an XBLA/PSN title later this year.
I squealed.
Vandal Hearts is just a joy from start to finish. It's a tile-based SRPG for people who don't want to spend countless hours grinding a set of arbitrary numbers upwards (although that has its place - see below), preferring instead to spend their time getting to know the characters they're going to send off into battle. The amount of physical control you have over how specialised your characters can become is actually very limited - the game paints very broad strokes in terms of levelling up your party and choosing individual job classes, allowing for an almost binary set of oppositions for each member (would you want to specialise in healing or combat, archery or movement, tanking or general melee, etc.), and this frees up the necessary space for you to concentrate on the meat of what's going on within the world of Sostegaria (no, really).
That's not to say that the story is especially well-told or complex. When the characters have names like Grog Drinkwater (again, really) you can't really expect too much in the way of narrative strength, but the game somehow still manages to make you care about the events that unfold, still manages to engage you sufficiently so each battle feels like it's worth something. Each party member is more than just a faceless soldier sent off into battle; they're individuals, with unravelling backstories that play out beautifully over the course of the entire game. I do like it so.
Oh, and the sound effect that plays when an enemy dies is incredible, as is the ridiculusly over-the-top fountain of blood that sprays from their fresh wounds. Yes.
4) Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1) Yes it's another SRPG, yes it's on the PS1 as well, and yes you can probably assume that I went through something of a phase with these sorts of games during this period. But any fan of the genre worth his salt, whether they prefer the stylised battle fo Ogre Tactics or the mecha-customization of Front Mission 3, will grudgingly admit that Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the most accomplished, most refined and astonishingly deep examples of a strategy game ever released on a home console. The story, while suffering from some impenetrable translation issues, is heavyweight stuff, with themes of outright political corruption, the decline of nobility, the suffering underclass, long lost civilizations, disgraced knights, demonic cults and the fragility of friendship all having their part to play over the course of the main storyline. The recent PSP release tidied up the script significantly, but something about the obtuse nature of the original verse still retains a certain charm.
To say that the job class system is as complex and as intricate as you're ever likely to come across is only a slight overstatement. It is a literal timesink, allowing you to pour hundreds upon hundreds of hours into refining your relatively small party to the nth degree. If all this mastering and combining specialist skills sounds like a bit of a slog, that's because it is, but it's also the most appealing, and mortifyingly, the most beautiful thing about Final Fantasy Tactics. It is a statistician's wet dream, the bastard child of an adventure and a database, and one of my most treasured games.
3) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) The eagle-eyed among you will notice that this list includes not one Zelda title that operates within a three-dimensional envirionment, and as such, omits That Game which usually emerges on top of the pile whenever these things roll around. In my eyes, that is nothing less than a disservice to one of the finest adventure games ever made, which despite its diminuitive top-down stylings, manages to build a world far larger than the sum of its parts. The chunky envirionments always bowl me over, always have me admiring the almost impassable scale of Death Mountain, or the inviting waters of Zora's Fountain, or the vast expansive sands surrounding Desert Palace, or... you get the idea.
I honestly just don't get why it seems to have been surpassed in the eyes of so many by its 64-bit sibling. It was, and still is the game which offers up an actual *adventure*, beautifully child-like in its essence as you roll out of bed into a world full of princesses to save, beasts to vanquish, caves to explore, ledges to leap, forests to wander, magical swords to unsheathe... all of which is accompanied by this gorgeous, rolling soundtrack, which somehow captures every dramatic ebb and flow of the surroundings you find yourself stumbling through. The ending sequence, with a similar tone to that of Super Mario World, has you retracing your steps through the lives of everyone you've encountered on a truly epic journey - a perfect closing sentiment for a supreme game.
2) Super Metroid (SNES) The immediate comparisons to LTTP are more obvious than you'd think - it too seems to have been overshadowed by a more contemporary instalment in the series, it too relies on gorgeous two-dimensional environments to tell its own tale of adventure and exploration. But if there's a key distinction to be made between Samus' and Link's SNES outings, it's this - the world of Hyrule, wherever you wandered, always felt connected, always felt like a living, breathing, bustling place, where previous adventurers had roamed, villages had been founded, castles constructed.
The alien planet of SR388 contrasts this by offering up as desperately lonely an environment as you'll ever find yourself in. Aside from the howling storm which lashes onto Samus' ship on the surface of the planet, it's just the player and the planet, with little to no text cues or hints as to what's going on, or where you should head next. It's nothing less than a testament to the incredible design of Super Metroid that this is never a negative issue, and allows for just this almost unsurpassed feeling of genuine exploration. The building-block nature of the map system, expanding and recording your travels as your progress, suits the game perfectly, and when you add in the now-staple Metroid equation of item acquisition = further exploration, the result is not only one of the finest games taken from a golden age of 2D game design, but one of the finest games period.
1) Deus Ex (PC) Deus Ex is the greatest video game ever made.
Venom wrote:Say what you want but if this Halo TV series is a BIG BUDGET Game of Thrones style series with Spielberg directly producing this could be a Band of Brothers in space.
Grand Theft Auto III - It is very difficult for me to write about this game without descending into hyperbole. What can I say that hasn't been said 10,000 times over? This game absolutely took my breath away when I first played it. It was the first time I thought "this is the next generation". Up until that point, all I'd played were PS1 games with sharper graphics. This plunged me headfirst into a city, and let me run amok. Yes, I could talk all day about the music and the characters ripped straight from so many mafia movies, but that is merely a sidenote for the real crux of the game - the freedom of the city.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - If, like me, you love the 1980's, then this is the game for you. It builds on the GTA3 gameplay, but bathes it in a neon glow, and gives is a cheesy pop soundtrack. With a story suspiciously similar to Scarface, it wears its influences on its sleeve, but gives them a little added humour. Gameplay additions included the ability to buy businesses (with side missions included) and make profit from them. It gave you a wider selection of vehicles, including GTA's first aircraft, making the game world much more vertical than ever before. It polished the GTA formula to a point where I didn't think they could possibly improve it further.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - I was wrong. Dead wrong. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that the PS2 could pull this off. The biggest game world in any GTA game, with a huge variety of terrains and conditions. Countless things to do, including (but not limited to) BASE jumping, diving and quad biking, for no other reason than just because you can. It is possible to spend hours playing around in this game world without killing anyone or anything. Sure, some people didn't like the whole "gangsta" theme, but it was treated with a sense of humour (OG Loc, anyone?), and there were plenty of "out there" moments, mainly involving an old hippie known only as "The Truth". GTA: SA gives you more than any other game, even in the current generation, that I can think of. This, for me, is the very pinnacle of not only the series, but the entire free-roaming genre.
Bump for justice. This aint over yet, I left it before due to university but I'm coming back to finish the job. My original idea was a website or blog to show off people's writing for each of the 100 but I think I'll just make it a Creative Corner thing for now considering my hectic months coming up.
I'm also going to be working on revising the list, eliminating a game from a series that has more than three games already in it. Don't worry about it I'll do my best
PsychoPriest wrote:I'm also going to be working on revising the list, eliminating a game from a series that has more than three games already in it. Don't worry about it I'll do my best
MGS is that good, unfortunately. But if you insist - MGS1 > MGS2 > MGS4 > MGS3
), as long as nothing strays too far from the main premise of shooting anything and everything.
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