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InfiniteSpark

I'm an idiot.

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Spark’s Unhearled Favorites

List compiled and finalized as of 23 April 2015.

A list highlighting a select group of my favorite games that I thought didn’t get a lot of fanfare or seemed to lose some visibility the past couple of years and wanted to shed my light on them. An inspired spin-off take on the “all-time favorites” lists.

[Developing this list helped subside some of the immense works stress I’ve been dealing with so far this year. It’s kept me busy in a good way the past three weeks.]

Here’s an accompanying YouTube playlist of select songs from each game on this list cause why not: YouTube Playlist

NOTE: The numbers do not indicate ranking. The order of the games are in approximate North American release date chronological order, oldest to latest.

List items

  • [Super Nintendo, June 1992]

    I enjoyed the Konami games I owned and played often as a child during the Super Nintendo era: TMNT IV: Turtles in Time, TMNT Tournament Fighters, Sunset Riders, and probably a few others I cannot recall. But the Konami game that I harbor special memories of is The Legend of Mystical Ninja. Mystical Ninja is a surprisingly challenging and lengthy adventure game where you get to play either as Goeman/Kid Ying or Ebisumaru/Dr. Yang in traveling all over Japan battling tons of enemies and bosses to rescue Princess Yuki. The lasting memories I have with Mystical Ninja are it’s exploration of numerous areas, the numerous variety of enemies and bosses, the challenging platforming sections, the fun mini-games found in the amusement park area of the game, and that glorious feudal Japanese era inspired soundtrack.

    In spite of never completing the game, I always enjoyed the failed excursions I had in Mystical Ninja. Each chapter is split into two phases, exploration and platformer. Both phases are fun in their own aspect. In the exploration phase, I always loved to fool around and tried to explore as much of the area that was available before it shifted over to the platforming phase. Once it shifted to the platforming phase, I enjoyed the challenge these phases presented. Lastly, I really loved how crazy each boss was, whether it’s a spooky ghost genie-esque lady throwing dishes which you have to hit to reflect and damage her, to whatever the second boss is with the number of lanterns, and the dual sumo wrestlers who break down into a huge blob that covers the entire screen before being ultimately defeated. I personally haven’t progressed past the fourth stage, but the rest of the bosses are equally creative and crazy.

    But the thing that was such a major distracting time sink was reaching the amusement park in I believe the second chapter of the game. All of those mini-games were so fun to play that included trivia, gambling (dice and race horses), and a little easter egg in Gradius available. Sometimes I just wanted to get to the park and spend the rest of my gaming time in this game just purely playing the mini-games. And to top it off, Mystical Ninja has a great soundtrack which sounds like it was taken directly from feudal Japan. All in all, Mystical Ninja was a fun journey to take every time.

  • [Super Nintendo, August 1996]

    Great puzzle games pushes the mental and physical boundaries of the player from a simple premise. In Tetris Attack, the player has to outlast their opponent by filling their board with garbage blocks by clearing more than three of the same regular blocks or by comboing three or more blocks following succession. Sounds simple enough, but what happens when either the AI or human opponent hits back hard with their own barrage of garbage blocks parading on your own board. Many matches end up being a battle of attrition, which one can continue to mount an offense while clearing out their garbage blocks.

    That battle of attrition, mostly me against the AI on the harder difficulties, is what makes Tetris Attack so thrilling to me. I would always fall behind as the AI would pull off some early crazy combos to throw down a bunch of garbage blocks on your block. The fun comes when the shit hits the fan, how much can you survive, thrown down your own shit and staying active until you hope you won the match. It was thrilling to knock out each AI on the hardest difficulty, since most times the player ends up on the losing ending no matter how long they stay active on the board, clearing the seemingly infinite amount of garbage blocks and continue to clear regular blocks during the duration of the round.

    As the case with many Nintendo developed titles, they add in a nice coat of paint over the simple but deep puzzle gameplay with clean presentation and a beautiful/chaotic soundtrack. Pretty much every single song in Tetris Attack is great. My favorite song is Raphael the Raven’s theme, that harp!

  • [Nintendo 64, February 1997]

    It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s the Blast Corps laying complete destruction to your town… for mankind! Blast Corps is one of the long line of great games that Rareware developed while working under Nintendo’s umbrella for the Nintendo 64. In Blast Corps, you control a number of different vehicles with their own abilities to destroy building to clear a path for a runaway nuclear truck. Sure, destroying at will is fun, but it’s only fun as far on how well it goes about it. Rare does an amazing job having a number of vehicles to drive and designing each stage that caters to their destructive ability.

    The Blast Corps has a turbo-propelled car to jump off ramps to destroy, a motorcycle that can shoot missiles a will, a vehicle that has two deployable hammers to its side, a bulldozer, and a shitty dump truck with a shitty slide mechanic that’s both hard to perform and utilize. There’s also to large robots that are designated to destroy skyscrapers/taller buildings. Rare squeezes in some stages where you have to jump from one vehicle to another to complete the stage. The stage is initially done when you clear the path, but there’s so much more you can do as you revisit each stage. There are numerous secrets that can be unlocked if you really look around.

    Rare doesn’t skimp on the content in Blast Corps, packing some stages with unlocks that opens up to numerous bonus levels. It ups the ante by having the corps destroy a city to clear a landing spot for a battered space shuttle, destroy space junk on the moon and other planets, time attack courses, and a bonus stage exactly like Pac-Man. And if you’re really a go-getter, you can go full 100% in the game and the game will say that “you can stop now.” Did I mention the game’s soundtrack composed by Graeme Norgate and how great it is? Causing so much chaos never sounded so good too!

  • [Nintendo 64, March 1998]

    The Nintendo 64 has a number of enjoyable racers, from the fast and furious F-Zero X, to the Mario Kart entry in Mario Kart 64, a nice kart-adventure game in Diddy Kong Racing developed by Rareware, and the thrills of snowboarding and jet ski racing with 1080 Snowboarding and Wave Race 64 respectively. There was one kart-inspired snowboarding racer that I took a random purchase on and came out to be my favorite Nintendo 64 racing game. That’s right. Snowboard Kids is my all-time favorite Nintendo 64 racing game, over all of the other racing games I mentioned in this paragraph.

    What Snowboard Kids lacks in total content (six racers, nine race courses, bare modes outside of normal racing), it more than compensates with a ton of offensive and defensive weapons that can both assist the player to catch up or expand their position over the competition, a fun directional input-based trick system, fun course design with an creative way to start the next lap, and tons of unexpected and hilarious events and results packed in a race. The racer in first who is on the cusp of winning the race can all of a sudden fall into last place. It happens frequently in kart racers, but somehow becomes more of a normal experience in Snowboard Kids. As there’s only four racers in a course, even the one running last and far behind the pack can still have a huge impact with the use of items available.

    The biggest testament I can support Snowboard Kids with is how much time I put into this game both individually and with family and friends. Each race is like opening a new Pandora’s Box, where all hell breaks loose and you just have to play your cards right while navigating the course and having some luck along the way. Folks out of the running would gladly do what they can to ruin the person in the lead on their way to winning, and vice versa. Sometimes it’d get too real. In the end, it was all in fun.

  • [Nintendo 64, July 1999]

    Nintendo threw Mario into a bunch of weird new ventures during the Nintendo 64 era. Not only he was thrown into the 3D world, he and the rest of the recognizable Nintendo crew were also thrown into three party games inspired by board games, playing tennis, and even beating the living daylights out of each other. The Mario game I personally dug into the most was its golf game, Mario Golf. It became one of those weird plug-and-play games where you can turn on and have fun playing one course and tackling a bunch of things in a longer session. The courses may remain the same, but battling the winds and weather and the strategy to attack each hole with the selected golfer forever brings a new challenge.

    Even though Mario Golf was presented as another one of the number of fun local multiplayer games for the Nintendo 64, I found the Mario Golf experience to be more fulfilling in single player. Outside of playing a normal stroke round game of golf, there’s also match play battles against the AI to unlock a number of new playable golfers, along with a few other modes. Even after you unlock everything, the thrill of tackling that same course over and over again never seems to get old. One day, the conditions are in your favor and you birdie the hole. Other times, the conditions push you to settle for par on the same hole on the following effort. Sometimes I’ll play Plum (the golfer with the shortest drive) and see how successful I can be with her on Mario Star, the hardest course. (Answer: not very successful, but fun to attempt!)

    I also like how Mario Golf has a nice casual growth of difficulty for those who wish to pursue defeating the AI to unlock those characters and the challenges each forthcoming courses present. It really forces players to adjust and get a feel for playing the expert level golfers in order to compete against the high level AI and potentially earn better scores on the game’s main six courses. Even if you don’t pursue or unable to conquer the game’s tougher challenges, Mario Golf is still a ton of fun to play on the easier set of courses with the easier level golfers if you ever get to feel comfortable with its three-click golf swing gameplay mechanic.

  • [Neo Geo Pocket Color, November 1999]

    Through 1999 to 2001, Capcom and SNK joined forces and produced four games in those two years from that partnership. Capcom developed the two main Capcom vs. SNK fighting games for the arcades and consoles. Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium is probably the most recognizable out of the bunch, hailed to many as one of the favorite fighting games of all time. You can’t dispute CvS2 going all out with 44 characters with six different grooves each with their own unique mechanics. CvS1 was okay, but is really rough and doesn’t hold up very well compared to CvS2. SNK however, developed two games for its short lived Neo Geo Pocket Color handheld. One of them was a card battle game that I recall it getting very good reviews (though the updated DS version wasn’t as well received). The other was a wonderful fighting game in SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millenium.

    SvC (as I’ll dub it) has the usual fare of fighting game modes with arcade/story, 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 KOF style matches. The fighting was surprisingly pretty smooth and the NGPC’s analog stick made execution any motion a breeze. The game looked great bursting with bright colors displayed for each fighter and even some stage backgrounds. The sound was a bit lackluster but it’s still nice to hear each fighter’s respective themes in the game. There’s also a neat touch in 2v2 and 3v3 that if you select certain fighter combinations, the game will reveal a unique nickname for the chosen team.

    The fighting and graphics were only part of what made SvC great. There was also a bonus mode with a couple of mini-games that I equally spent a ton of time on. On Capcom’s side was a side scrolling platforming take on Ghouls and Ghosts featuring Arthur and Firebrand and a DDR-esque mini-game featuring Felicia from Darkstalkers. SNK has a Target 9 mini game themed from its Metal Slug franchise and a 4-way sword dummy target practice mini-game featuring Jubei from Samurai Shodown.

    Capcom vs. SNK 2 is what many folks will remember when the two companies teamed up, but SNK vs. Capcom was equally as fun as CvS2. It’s too bad the remaining Capcom vs. SNK games released after weren’t great and any possibility of the two rejoining forces to produce any more CvS content is very unlikely to occur.

  • [Sega Dreamcast, August 2001]

    The Last Blade 2 was one of those sneaky games that didn’t appear to have much on the surface, but reveals so much more once you peel back that surface. What at first seems like an inspired spin-off take of Samurai Shodown actually outshines it and other games in the fighting game genre in numerous aspects. TLB2 features a wonderful array of characters, with each character having a surprising amount of lore and story. The gameplay is deceptively deep, with three different fighting styles with their own pros and cons along with numerous universal mechanics packed in. The fighting speed/pace of matches in TLB2 is deceptively fast as well. All of that is packed in what I think really sets TLB2 far away from the competition is the game’s presentation. Rarely any game really combines a beautiful introduction movie, vibrant stages, characters with strong personalities and convictions, a sublime but gorgeous musical score, all wrapped up in a restrained, inflective, and unsettling atmosphere.

    One of the reasons why I love SNK is that they put in a ton of effort to make all fighting stages lively in its own way, spanning all the way back from the first Art of Fighting and up to King of Fighters XIII. But I think SNK really outdid themselves in TLB2. Some stages showcases it’s vibrancy like the town stage with the elephant. Other stages shine with its muted beauty, like the beginning pathway stage, the late afternoon field stage, and the waterfall forest stage. Other stages highlights the unpleasant mood such as the dusky sea port battlefield stage and the dark forest stage with the open void in the background. The most striking stage in TLB2 is where the two combatants fight inside a burning house. I love the fact that half of these stages do not have accompanying music, which brings out more out of those stages.

    The Last Blade 2’s gameplay may not be up to many folks cup of tea, but I found it deceptively speedy and frantic in its own unique way. Each match always feels tense as the two fighters first feel their way until one has the upper hand. After that pivotal moment, matches can either skew totally one-sided or turn into a chaotic grinding battle to the end. The combination of numerous universal mechanics along with added mechanics from the three different fighting styles contribute to it’s speedy and frantic nature. Who would’ve known that TLB2 included repels, guard cancels, pounce attack, recovery, and an overhead/guard break mechanics? Each different fight style has their own way of inflicting major damage. Power mode offering unlimited supers at low health and a stronger second super at low health and full meter. Speed mode users have access to the ranba super where a string of commands must be timed correctly in order for the full combo super to inflict its full damage potential. Lastly, the EX (extreme) is the glass cannon choice where it has access to both power and speed modes’s characteristics at the cost of stamina.

    There are a number of fighting games I have really enjoyed up to this point, but many of them lack both a deep but enjoyable fighting gameplay combined with lush production. Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Capcom vs. SNK 2, the King of Fighters XI and XII, Persona 4 Arena, and Guilty Gear XXAC+R and Xrd are my other top fighting games that have strong deep gameplay and production, but to me, don’t even come close to what The Last Blade 2 delivers. [It’s why you see the fire stage as my profile header and Hibiki Takane as my avatar.]

    Fun Fact 1: Hidatake Suehiro, better known as Swery65, worked on both The Last Blade games!

    Fun Fact 2: I read somewhere that Hakumen’s drive (his parry) is a nod/homage to The Last Blade’s repel mechanic.

    Fun Fact 3: Yu’s full 150 meter super in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is a nice recent example of the ranba super.

  • [PlayStation 2, November 2007]

    If you took a survey from King of Fighters fans which are the best games of the franchise, most folks would probably say 1998, 2002, and XIII are the best ones. KOF 1998 and 2002 lucked out as being KOF’s Dream Matches, where almost every fighter that appeared in a KOF game up to those years were all rounded up in that year’s iteration. KOF XIII’s well-deserved recognition comes from an incredible rebound from the abysmal KOF XII, along with strong fighting gameplay and incredible presentation and production. XIII was also buoyed by an incredible showing of Top 8 matches during its three-year run at EVO. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear anyone mention any other KOF games that they’ll recommend outside of those three. For me, there is one other KOF that I believe belongs on the same pantheon as those three, and that’s KOF XI.

    KOF XI is the second game of the Ash Crimson saga and one of two KOFs that actually utilized the Marvel vs. Capcom 3-on-3 style where you can tag in your teammates at any time during the match instead of the typical KOF 3-on-3 style where the it’s teams take turns battling each member of the team. (The other KOF that had the Marvel 3-on-3 style was the game before XI, KOF 2003). I can’t say or recall if this was SNK’s response on seeing how fun and frantic Marvel’s team style worked, but I can certainly say that it was a refreshing change of pace for the long-running franchise at the time. It made you have to completely rethink on how to approach a match with the new mechanics of tag-ins, assist calls, and max cancel supers. It was also the first KOF that really sped up the pace in games ten-fold, which was another nice change of pace as the previous KOFs match pace went very slow.

    KOF XI also featured an unusual cast of playable and unlockable characters. The biggest uproar from the initial arcade release of the game was that Mai Shiranui, who was featured in all of the previous KOFs up to XI, was not included in the original KOF XI lineup. She was later tacked on as a bonus unlockable character in the console version. There were some interesting team shakeups in XI, King joining with Ryo and Yuri to represent the Art of Fighting team, Kyo and Iori teaming up together with Benimaru kicked over to another team, the old Fatal Fury team featuring the Garou Terry Bogard, Kim Kaphwan, and Duck King(!), along with a Garou team consisting of Bonne Jenet, Gato, and Tizoc, and other crazy roster changes and omissions.

    In short, KOF XI really shook up the old KOF formula to amazing results. The shift to the Marvel style 3-on-3 really quickens the fight and matches are completed faster than ever, along with shifts to personal strategies with the new 3-on-3 style and other new mechanics. The shake-ups with the roster and team composition also contribute to the fresh new change to the franchise. Add in a huge number of bonus/unlockable characters and a surprising amount of playable modes makes this one of the premier KOF games.

  • [X-Box 360, January 2008]

    Rez HD is one of those games where attempting to explain the game to others can only do so much. It’s one of those games where the player just has to go in and see if what it presents jives with them or not. I did not have a chance to play Rez back when it was originally released on the Dreamcast, but still thrilled to have experienced it from its re-release on the X-Box 360 years later. Rez HD has a great soundtrack, that’s no question. It’s how that soundtrack melds with the gameplay and how the stage’s environments shift along with the music with the trippy vector visuals that make Rez HD an impactful game to me.

    Each stage starts off slowly. A few enemies, a few blips and you hover the crosshair cursor over the enemies, more blips sound off as you shoot and destroy the targeted enemies. Then more enemies come on, more of the visuals and background environment fills in, the music gets busier. At the end of each phase there’s a box you’re targeted to destroy. You destroy it and the next phase breaks open the stage even further. Enemies are coming in numbers, the music is intensified to a beat thumping over 150+ ish bpm pace, and the background starts to resemble something. The stage ends with a unique boss, each one requiring the player to break the boss down in different phases before going in for the kill.

    Rez HD culminates its visual and musical journey with a strange final stage in which it presents a final major challenge against the player in reaching their final goal of the game. It may take a player no more than a few hours to complete, but it’s quite the playable trip during that short time span.

  • [X-Box 360, April 2008]

    Ikaruga is one of the pioneering games in the venerable bullet hell genre by adding in a simple mind-blowing new wrinkle with the dual color mechanic, where the player’s ship absorbs bullets of the same color while getting hit by a bullet of the opposing color will destroy the player’s ship. Past bullet hell shooters would simply overwhelm the players through swarms of enemies, enemies and bosses that shoot hundreds of bullets that cover over half the screen, and environmental traps. Ikaruga does resort to using some environmental traps in its five stages, but the dual color mechanic removes the need to throw tons of bullets everywhere and instead presents its own brand of challenge with its dual-color mechanic.

    Through Ikaruga’s five gauntlet stages, the player is challenged to maintain one color to absorb bullets of the same color while battling enemies and avoiding bullets of the opposing color. The first stage serves up an appetiser with a few twists thrown here and there. The second stage is where the true fun begins, as the player is tasked to constantly flip back and forth between the two colors in navigating the stage’s built in colored bullets combined with the bullets thrown by enemies and the spewed additional bullets from defeated enemies (in normal and hard difficulties). Some players may be turned off by all the nonsense and seemingly no ways to get through a particular puzzle, but there is a solution, even if it isn’t easily apparent.

    I have not completed the game through its normal conditions, and probably never will, but I still really enjoy what Ikaruga presented. Back then, when I first played Ikaruga as it was released on the X-Box 360, I loved Ikaruga for its chaotic nature of the dual-colored bullet hell madness. I like Ikaruga now for how well Treasure designed its dastardly stages with enemy paths and bullet patterns and environmental bullet and trap placements. Whatever the reason, Ikaruga is still an awesome game in its dual-colored glory.

  • [Nintendo DS, May 2010]

    I already represented Picross 3D as one of my favorite games from the previous video game generation, but I brought it back to include it here on my under the radar list because I still believe this is one of the standout puzzle games in generation 7 that was released silently with barely any marketing support. I give a ton of credit to developer HAL in making the clues on every puzzle easy to decipher yet making it a challenge for the player in carefully determine which blocks to paint over if they know that block is a piece to keep and which pieces to hammer away as a piece that is not part of the final puzzle.

    The items that made Picross 3D memorable was that it was loaded with puzzles (300+ puzzles I believe), the excellent gradual increase of difficulty with each coming puzzle, the end result of some puzzles, and even excellent additional puzzles to add for free through user created content. I’d liken my experience with Picross 3D as my daily fill of solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle during the time I was deeply entrenched with the game. It’s easy to learn, but really shows its colors once you jump in and use the clues is available to figure out the puzzle.

    Hopefully Nintendo will consider developing a new Picross 3D for the 3DS. The Picross e series developed by Jupiter is an okay alternative, but it doesn’t quite capture the creativity, challenge, and enjoyment I found in Picross 3D.

  • [Nintendo DS, February 2011]

    Another game I mentioned on my Favorite Games of Generation 7 list that I chose to highlight again since it was released very quietly in North America (the limited print run didn’t help matters either) toward the end of the Nintendo DS lifespan. Radiant Historia was one of those games where I read briefly about that peaked my interest, then suddenly became a huge personal favorite game when I completed its long but highly engaging game through its dual timeline jump mechanic, engaging battle system, and a well-developed and written hero.

    I found Stocke to be one of the more striking heroic characters I ever played in a JRPG. It helps that how the story was presented and developed solely on Stocke even though he meets and befriends many other characters throughout the journey. He’s the only one that soon picks up sometime amiss with his personal power to jump in-between the two dueling timelines, but maintains his calm as the story prompts to make the timeline jump. He’s stern, carries a calm yet confident demeanor, and strangely empathetic for a quiet strong character as himself. When he figures out everything right before the boss fight and finally defeats the final boss, he doesn’t admonish him for being evil. Instead, he understood his motives and even admits he may have followed in his steps if he had the power the final boss had.

    The game has a great lead hero with a decent supporting cast and a good story aided by the constant hopping between the dueling timelines. But none of that would hold up if the game wasn’t fun to play. The game does a great job giving you prompts on when you should make the jump over to the other timeline. It also includes a well-developed battle system where you have the power to manipulate the turn over to give your party as many consecutive turns to unleash a powerful combo offense to your enemies and accompanied by some fabulous and powerful musical scores from Yoko Shimomura. Lest I forgot the sudden and numerous bad endings you’ll encounter throughout the course of the game. The first bad end starts at the very start of the chapter where Stocke has to make his first big decision.

  • [X-Box 360, April 2011]

    If you are wanting a game that makes you want to go into your “chess thinking pose,” look no further than Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. You do not have to know anything on Might & Magic to get into this game (I certainly don’t know anything about M&M), you just gotta have a love for a game that mixes in puzzle and strategy. M&M:CoH, just like a majority of other titles on my list, has a lot more than what it shows, and developer Capybara has done a nice job with in updating the look of the game from the Nintendo DS iteration.

    The gameplay and goal of the battle is simple. Each player can choose an assortment of pieces to deploy into battle and take turns battling each other until one player is defeated by having their HP depleted to zero. It’s not until you figure out which character’s magic ability, combined with the right mixture of pieces to deploy and knowing the advanced techniques during battle is where M&M:CoH really shines. All of this stemming from reorganizing your entire army through plucking and removing particular units to initiate offense and defense.

    On top of the engrossing warfare gameplay is how well M&M:CoH is balanced between all the characters, troop pieces, and modifying artifacts along with running with a character and team to cater to a particular playstyle. Matches can either go really quickly, or can stretch out to over an hour (which I have engaged a few times online). The engagement and joy of participating in chess-like battle lingers far after the conclusion of battle. It’s similar to the feeling of playing an engaging board game with friends, the calamity over the course of the game and the review and analytics of hindsight after the game; that buzz that leaves you wondering what went right, what went wrong, and what you had no control over. It’s just like that for me on an intrinsic level in this video game.

  • [PlayStation 3, May 2011]

    There’s a bevy of solid racing games out there that cater to a particular audience. Forza Motorsport has been a great running simulation arcade mix racer for the X-Box 360, while the PS3 folks got two (mediocre) Gran Turismo games. Those that have a thirst for speed had the great Burnout Paradise along with a number of Need for Speed games and Forza Horizon. There hasn’t been a ton of games dedicated to rally off-road racing, but Codemaster more than fills that void in Generation 7 with the awesome Dirt franchise, highlighted by Dirt 3.

    There wasn’t much difference in feel of gameplay between Dirt 2 and Dirt 3, but the sleek clean presentation, electronica gear soundtrack, changing weather conditions, and the inclusion of a number of events around Gymkhana is where I ultimately give the nod to Dirt 3 over Dirt 2’s X-Game inspired presentation. The big shift in presentation I felt better suited the racing atmosphere of the game, especially when it’s just you and the road on classic rally racing. You don’t have to deal with annoying announcers sounding hard to make it sound cool and extreme and a soundtrack that felt more suited toward the speedy arcade racers.

    The bread and butter of Dirt 3 is simply giving a straight up non-filtered blissful racing experience, more so in standard rally than the racing and Gymkhana events. Dirt 3 does a great job of not distracting you too much with environmental issues or in needing to look all over the screen with ugly looking UI. The driving is constantly smooth and responsive, an incredible sense of speed, the car models sleek and sexy, and the environments pretty in motion. All in all, Dirt 3 really does a fantastic job on focusing on the player to tackle the road one-on-one.

  • [Nintendo Wii, February 2012]

    Melding a great video game around music has always been tricky, but when it’s done right, the results are incredible. Rhythm Heaven Fever is one of the few in my book that really did it right once you get the sense of timing of what each mini-game presented. Add doses of cute and silliness along with well-composed timing music and you have a charming and highly entertaining rhythm-based video game.

    The important key that makes Rhythm Heaven Fever an incredible game is how well the musical cues come up to mesh with the designed mini-game. RHF still requires your visual attention to kind of picture the timing of the action when the musical cue is imminent, but the excitement comes in once you figure out the musical rhythm and cues in each mini-game and finally pass and perfect that mini-game. It also helps that each mini-game is charming in their own right.

    The transition from the finicky gameplay controls from the original Rhythm Heaven on the DS to simple button prompts in Fever was a smart decision by Nintendo. I can’t imagine having to use motion controls to conduct the action reacting to a musical cue using the Wii Remote and Nunchuck in a mini-game to be any good. Nice of Nintendo to see a simpler scheme of button presses to yield more reactive and engaging gameplay.

    It’s crazy that Rhythm Heaven Fever was released in North America three years ago, yet it feels like a much older game to me in 2015.

  • [Nintendo 3DS, February 2013]

    There are a ton of dungeon crawler games out there, and many games in this crowded genre share many of the basic elements in dungeon level design, party/class composition, and other typical RPG elements. What does a game have to do to stand out from the crowded pack of dungeon crawlers out there? In my experience, Etrian Odyssey IV stands out not only because it goes the gameplay elements right, but it makes the player feel like they’re venturing out on their own journey as they explore every nook and cranny of each overworld, caverns, and labyrinths.

    I was surprised throughout my 120+ hours poured into EOIV is never at one point where I felt a hint of boredom. I spent entire days of my free time solely playing EOIV! There was always something to do in EOIV that kept me interested at all times, in exploration for fun, handling a side request, figuring out the best path to go through a section of a floor filled with FOEs, and battling enemies with the chosen five classes. Part of the additional fun is finding the right mixture of five classes to run with on your entire journey. EOIV does a great job in allowing any combination of classes a player so choose to run with and still be successful in the game.

    EOIV was an endearing game for me because it made me feel like I was taking a grand adventure through it’s numerous lands to explore, unlike other games in the crowded genre where it actually felt like crawling through a dungeon. You actually are acting out as an explorer, going to many distant lands and discovering the mysteries behind each new world. Many games claim to be sending you into a grand sense of adventure, EOIV is one of the few that actually delivers.

  • [PlayStation 3, July 2014 (JP)]

    I already wrote on UNIEL extensively twice, first as a long blog post, followed by a lengthy summary on why it was my favorite game of last year. The game is largely unknown to folks who do not follow much from either the fighting game community or niche Japanese games, which is why I still feel inclined to place this game on my list even if it’s still a relatively fresh title. Instead of rehashing what I already wrote on UNIEL, I’ll do a unique take and provide my latest thoughts on UNIEL ever since I crowned it my number one game of 2014.

    I’ll bring this point upfront, my enthusiasm for UNIEL has taken a bit of a hit since my glowing reactions for the game in 2014. I still think it’s one of the premiere fighting games released for the PS3/X360 era and I always tried my best to understand the game in spite of my lack of skill and success with it. The biggest reason why I’m starting to pull back my enthusiasm for UNIEL a bit is that I still have yet to find a personal groove/comfort level with it. I really haven’t logged in a ton of time in UNIEL compared to the other fighting games I played in the past couple of years, but even in those other games, there was a certain comfort level I eventually got to make me feel I’m doing okay.

    Tagging along with not reaching that particular comfort level is the fact that I haven’t quite found the character to assist me in feeling more comfortable fighting in UNIEL. Though folks know that I mostly played Orie in UNIEL, it was more of a settled choice than a confident one. She was the only one that didn’t feel the biggest resistance to me. If I could set away some time to place more effort in UNIEL, maybe I could find another character that I could probably make me feel more at ease with myself in UNIEL. That remains to be seen.

    In spite of a few of my personal misforgivings on UNIEL, I will still stand by on my views in that UNIEL is a great fighting game. It’s still a joy to watch high-level UNIEL play as well as viewing and experiencing the game with friends locally and online, whereas I can capture how well crafted UNIEL is in the crowded fighting game genre. I’m glad to hear it’s still pulling in strong numbers in major tournaments in spite of not being selected as a mainline game at EVO this year. I recall UNIEL getting more entrants than Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (an EVO game this year) and others at Winter Brawl and it may have been the same case in recent other major US fighting game tournaments. I hope it’ll pull in strong numbers as a side game tournament at EVO and continue to have support for it afterward, though I have my doubts if it’ll still be supported that far after EVO this year.
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