A little exercise in game association. I bet I can think of, like, at least 95 games, which is a completely arbitrary number that has nothing to do with any quest requirements there might coincidentally be. This is just a list of games I have played (and maybe a few I haven't), in the order I think of them.
I am totally not making this list just to get the quest for making a huge list. I don't know why Deus Ex was the first game I thought of, it certainly is one of the best though.
For the record, I actually liked this one just as much as the first. Played it on the Xbox, and all the ways it was streamlined for the console made perfect sense, and in no way detracted from my basic enjoyment of the game. Wraps up the plot in a number of very interesting ways, too.
They are making another Deus Ex game. It will hopefully be good. This was an entirely necessary addition, and definitely not here to flesh out the list so I can get that quest. YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELVES TO BLAME, GB!
This is one of my favourite games of ALL TIME. It's just *so* damn good. The writing has yet to be matched by anything else that's come out before or since.
Believe it or not, I STILL haven't finished this game, ever. In fact, I really ought to be doing that instead of these dumbass GB quests. WAITAMINUTE! I mean, I *was* doing those quests. Now, I've forgotten all about 'em. Ha! You know, I just have this urge to make this list *really* long, all of a sudden.
I can't remember, but I think I might have actually played Fallout 2 *before* the first one. Going back now, Fallout 2's opening dungeon is unbelievably hard, for some reason. I'll get around to playing it one day.
I played maybe 15, 20 hours of this game after it came out and put it down for a while. Partly because I started out on the PC version, but had to switch to the 360 because it has some minor bugs on the PC. Y'know, little things like CRASHING THE ENTIRE GAME WHEN YOU GO THROUGH A DOOR. *Sigh*. By the time I'd played maybe 25 hours of the game, I still had just barely gotten started with the actual main quest. There's a LOT of game in that box. I'll get back to it eventually.
I played this once. I remember it being kind of good, but I bet if I played it now it'd be awful. Of course, it might have been awful at the time, and I just wasn't aware because I just thought it was cool for being sorta a bit like FF7. Ah, youth.
Talking about really obscure FF7-era PC RPGs, I played a demo of this once and thought it was a blast, but then never picked up a copy. I remember that it had a weird mouse gesture-based realtime combat system, and the character models had that kludgey distorted, jagged FF7 look, overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds. I'd actually be interested to give this one another go.
Might as well stick this one on there, since I've mentioned it so much already. To be honest, I think people shitting on this game are doing so just to be dicks more than anything else. Yes it's aged, but I played it again just last year and it was still untold leagues ahead of 90% of all the JRPGs that have been shamelessly ripping it off ever since. Maybe I'll do a blog post about that some time...
On the other hand, I fucking hated this one. Hated EVERYTHING about it.
This one was fantastic though. Never actually finished it, of course, but I periodically go back and attempt to play through it again. Never get much further than the end of the first disc.
I completely missed the boat on this one originally, owing to the fact that it never got released in the UK (not until the GBA port, unless I'm very much mistaken). I finally managed to get a hold of an import cartridge and played it with a region converter of some description, one of those ones where you had to plug the cart in the top and a native PAL cartridge behind it. Good game, I can totally see why you'd be mind-blown over it if you'd played the original release. Don't really see it as being significantly better than the later high-points of the series, though.
This might actually be my favourite game in the series. Of course, I'll have to actually *finish* it one day to really make that decision. My save file has something stupid like 75 hours clocked up, and that's barely *halfway* through the main story. Got fully hung up on the monster hunting quests, which actually left me quite significantly overleveled for the main game. Overall, just fantastic in every way. Really disappointed that XIII didn't keep more of XII's innovations, and the general *maturity* of the story's feel, which is more about political intrigue in an almost Shakespearian sense than spiky hair and magic crystals. How come all the Final Fantasy games set in Ivalice are so much better written than all the others?
Like this one, for example. Again, never did get to play this originally cuz it never came out here in the UK. Picked it up on the PSP though, and it still blew me away.
See? Another fantastic game set in the crazy dark age / fantasy world of Ivalice. I must admit I have also never finished this one, but I'll get around to it one day. I think it's actually on PSN now? Might have to stick it on the PSP, it would be nice to have some semi-turn-based dungeon crawling on the go. This is one of the only games that has weapon degradation that ISN'T just completely irritating.
Speaking of Final Fantasy Tactics... to be honest, for me the entire Tactical RPG genre begins with that game and ends with this one, with nothing inbetween. I don't see how there could be enough time in my life to really get into more than these two games, anyway. I actually imported an English copy of this game from Hong Kong, because it was IMPOSSIBLE to find it in the UK. Imagine my consternation to find it was recently put on the PSN for somewhat less than I paid... whatever though, it's nice to have it as a kind of collectible. I still haven't gotten around to playing it much further than the tutorial though - there's just *too much* going on here for me to be able to focus on learning this game the way I anticipate I will need to.
Since I'm on the topic of bizarre, quirky JRPGs that are *unbelievably crammed* full of innovative gameplay mechanics and mountains of sheer content, this just sprung to mind. Another one that I've played a good many hours of, but still don't seem to have really even gotten started with the actual story yet. I just can't believe that even after many hours of gameplay, I still only seem to have uncovered about *half* of the crazy mechanics and general bizarre shit this game is eager to throw at me. They don't make a lot of games like this, and you should be glad it exists even if you don't find it all that much fun, which I could totally understand because there's just SO much going on it can be overwhelming.
Another CRAZY DS game that I had to try really hard to track down, then never actually got around to playing all that much. Again, it's just crammed full of really insane shenanigans and I feel like I would have to spend some serious time getting really good at it to get the most out of it. Will come back to it when I'm not so downright *scared* of its insanity.
Speaking of being scared, I've been playing this recently. Seems really awesome, and I have a strong suspicion the relatively subdued use of "player-watching" in the first couple of hours is only going to get more and more unnervingly profound as the game goes on. I REALLY hope any future Silent Hill games continue on down the psychological horror path, rather than the yawningly bland action-horror they were fumbling around with in Homecoming.
I remember when this first came out and I went over to a buddy's place after school to check it out. I played through the first ten minutes and very quickly decided I NEVER, EVER wanted to have ANYTHING to do with this game EVER again. That was how freaked out I was by the whole opening sequence. A few years and a couple of console generations later, I developed an interest in scary games so I went back and played through it. By that point it was pretty much just a clunky, blocky-looking adventure game with bad combat that ceased being scary once you realised all the square monsters weren't actually very hard when you figured out how to exploit the crap controls. All the same, I was still struck by just how atmospheric it managed to be, even looking so outdated, and there were still moments where the *top-notch* sound design did genuinely give me quite a chill. I was disappointed, though, by the silly creepy-psychic-demon-summoning-religious-cult supernatural storyline. It may not have been as bad a left turn as, say, Fahrenheit, but it was a huge improvement when they stuck to the strictly internal psychological horror element for the sequel...
The meisterwerk. A truly emotionally disturbing game that I would not hesitate for one heartbeat to hold up as a prime example of the "games as art" argument (which is already a boring debate to begin with). One of the best game soundtracks ever, too, but that's really a hallmark of the entire series.
I have this one lying around somewhere but I've never gotten around to actually putting it in the machine. I'll do it one day.
Another freaky game I picked up during my little horror phase a few years back. Again, never have actually played the damn thing, but I will one of these days... when I'm feeling strong.
This one is supposed to be even better, but it's really rare to find a copy in these parts for less than £20 or £30. Perhaps if I really enjoy the previous game, I'll splash out on this later on.
This, on the other hand, I'll just have to play via the fan-made translation patch, since it's probably never coming over here through legit channels.
...speaking of which... I have actually had to play this on a patched ROM of the game, since there's simply no other way to play it here. Just one of those situations where some form of piracy is pretty much obligatory if you want to enjoy the love with which somebody spent so much time creating something of such beauty and detail. I would LOVE to be able to legitimately buy a copy of the game and play it normally, but guess what? Nintendo refuses to let me. It's a real shame, this is a genuinely beautiful game.
Speaking of beautiful games... this one pretty much takes the cake. You can keep your rusty brown space marines. Okami is more visually splendiferous than all the Gears of War games put together. And besides that, it's just such a freaking fantastic game. A few days ago I picked up from where I left off at about the 25-hour mark, walked into a new town in the game's huge world, and spent 2 hours just wandering around the area, finding unbelievable quantities of *stuff* everywhere, enjoying the sheer variety of things you can occupy yourself with - digging for treasures, feeding all the animals, fighting demons, even just barging into stuff and pissing people off is fun. How could a game so packed to bursting point with features, activity, and just genuine gorgeousness, have been so ignored? Especially after all the hubbub people stirred up about getting it ported to the Wii, where the public *also* didn't buy it. A real travesty, considering this is, for my money, one of the greatest games EVER made. So good, I bought a copy on *each* system.
I really, REALLY hope this is good. Seriously. Little bit put off by the cutesy-ass graphics, but at least it's getting made and the Okami name is being continued in SOME form.
Speaking of *fantastic* games that are clearly not going to get the public response they deserve... this is the SOLE reason why I have recently realised that I actually NEED a PS3. You can keep your God of War, your Uncharted, even your MGS4 - even though I really loved the previous games in the GoW and MGS series, I don't consider the newest instalments genuinely *essential* to me. But I recently went back and blasted my way through the first two Yakuza games, and HOLY SHIT I NEED A PS3. Anybody want to buy my liver? It might be a little beaten up but it still works! Honest!
I think I'm actually going to write user reviews of Yakuza 1 and 2 on the site... and not just for the XP. This one has some pretty clunky combat, but it has a great, very involving story that you could totally imagine seeing in a fairly decent HK action flick, which is way more than you can say for most dumbass video game plots. I really got involved in the characters, who someone seem like convincing analogues of real people despite being in a crazy gangland story set in a rather OTT, hyper-real version of Tokyo (which is, nonetheless, so accurate in many ways that my girlfriend, who grew up in Tokyo, got genuinely homesick watching me play this). What's so good about the game is the way the developers managed to balance their boldly ambitious goals with a sense of pragmatism about how much they could really expect to achieve on the limited hardware, resulting in a small but fiercely varied world that manages to feel open and free enough that there's a ton of things to do, but not so bloated that you ever feel overwhelmed or just bored by wandering around some huge city that has all its fun stretched out too thin. I'll go into it all in more detail when I get around to doing reviews of the series.
Without going into too much detail here, this is pretty much a prime example of a perfect sequel - everything you loved about the first game has been expanded, fleshed out, streamlined and extended. Everything you *hated* about the first game - janky combat, cheesy English dub - has been totally fixed up. The game is bigger, longer and just plain better than the first (although the story itself is perhaps a little bit less engaging). If Yakuza 3 is continuing along the same path of simultaneously expanding upon *and* streamlining the previous game... dude, I NEED A PS3.
One of those game franchises where I always forget how much fun the game actually is when I haven't played it for a while. At any given moment, I generally do not particularly want to be playing MGS, but when I actually trick myself into playing one I quickly realise how awesome the actual gameplay is - something that I think often gets forgotten when people get all bogged down in complaining about long cutscenes and suchlike. Playing the Peace Walker demo recently woke me up to the franchise again, and I really ought to get around to actually *finishing* one at some point. That's right, never even finished this one. Got about two-thirds through and got stuck on that comm tower section where you're running up all those stairs with infinite dudes chasing you. I'll go back and finish it soon.
Played maybe 4 hours of this one and put it down again. Want to finish the first one before I go back to this, I think I'll push my way through the whole series hopefully by the time I get my hands on Peace Walker.
Played this for like 20 minutes, *ever*. I know, shameful. I'll get to it soon.
Psyched about this. Nice to have an actual game to play on my PSP that isn't a re-released older title, or essentially a port of a PS2 game.
I swear, I'm totally not a Final Fantasy junkie. Much as I still love VII, it's really pissed me off how that universe (read: cash cow) has been mercilessly flogged over and over again by Squenix. I have been playing this recently though, and actually really enjoying it. It strikes a good balance between big RPG feel, and little bite-sized chunks of side missions to churn through. Some weird mechanics, though - I level up using a *random slot machine*? ...Really?!
Haven't played a whole lot of this one but it seems pretty unique so far. There should be more games dwell morbidly on death right off the bat. That would be heaps of fun.
So, talking of death... yeah this one is a serious mindfuck. If you can think First-person Silent Hill but *way* weirder, with a kind of ethereal colour/painting mechanic, all wrapped up in high-concept Eastern Bloc jank. A truly, deeply weird and unsettling game.
The previous game by the same developer, Ice Pick Lodge. They're my personal favourite purveyors of Eastern European jankiness, owing to the deeply symbolic and allegorical nature of their storytelling. In this one, the plague-ridden city your character has been called to is likened to a huge, rotting cattle corpse, where the very soil beneath the town has been sickened and polluted by generations of senseless slaughter and brutalism that has gone on there. So, yeah... fun times.
More Eastern wobbliness in this ambitious and striking RPG from CD Projekt. Great storytelling despite the dodgy translation (even in the Enhanced Edition, which I'm told improved the voice acting in particular, people say the *strangest* things...). Generally an excellent transplant of Szapkowski's grey-shaded protagonist into a grownup and well-realised world that predates and goes several steps farther than BioWare's comparable setting, even if it is a bit knobbly around the edges. Looking forward to the sequel, if the questing and dialogue are a bit tighter and combat a bit sharper, these guys could have a big hit on their hands. Please leave out the retarded and completely incongruous naked lady trading cards this time though, eh?
You know, I never did play more than maybe 5-10 hours of this. Just wasn't all that crazy about it, even at the time. Don't know why. When it came to Infinity Engine games, Planescape was the only one for me.
Never even played this one. Ever.
or this.
or that.
Now THIS, on the other hand... classic. Not a whole lot to say about it at this point except I am PSYCHED about DIII. I look forward to picking it up from the HOLO-STORE IN MY GODDAMN HOVERCAR. How long, O Lord, how long?
Thankfully I have this to tide me over until then, although to be honest the strange kind of reverse-novelty-value of someone essentially re-releasing Diablo II for the current generation has worn off by now. Whatever though, that just leaves me with a damn fine dungeon crawler that improves upon its forebear in a number of key ways. I found myself wishing EVERY game gave me a pet who could summon skeletons, go back to town and sell all my shit for me. Even Tetris would be improved by that.
So a buddy of mine finally got me into this for a few months last year. Previously I'd only played a brief free trial - I'd downloaded it, played it for about 48 hours, then deleted it entirely off my system, vowing never to have anything to do with the game ever again. Why? Dude, when I say I played it for 48 FUCKING HOURS, I am not kidding. But a buddy of mine managed to persuade me to subscribe, and I joined his guild started levelling, HARD. The game took away a couple of months of my life, I hit about 73 and realised that if I was going to hit 80 any time soon, I would have to sacrifice a hell of a lot more time to the game than I was willing to give up. Oh well. The game mechanics and general feel are an absolute work of genius, but I wish Blizzard would transplant that stuff into a smaller-scale, co-op RPG with a definite, self-contained storyline. Since the overarching plot is so vague and ill-defined, the whole game just starts to feel completely meaningless, and when there's no story to move through I lose interest very quickly.
I might restart my account when this comes out, but only briefly, to take a look at the redone zones and see how things have changed in my time away from Azeroth. I'll never get back into the game as deep as I was before - my life has *moved on* in a lot of ways and I just don't have the time.
Now, speaking of games that have an overarching storyline that keeps me playing... this series is a real classic in my personal gaming history. I picked it up knowing *nothing* about it except it was some kind Zelda/Diabloesque RPG where you play as a vampire dude. This is back when CastleVania: Symphony of the Night was newly out and vampires were still cool, y'know. So I picked it up on a whim and immediately got sunk into it, WAY deep. REALLY involved storytelling overlaid on a huge map with a lot of parallels to a sort of adult-oriented 'Link to the Past'. Actually had to use cheat codes to beat the game cuz it gets so HARD towards the end. I was kind of shocked when I finally discovered there was some kind of sequel in the works...
Hell yeah. This is really the only game in the series that I would unreservedly recommend someone to play - the original Blood Omen is a little creaky and old now, and everything after the first Soul Reaver ended up continuing the same rich, deep storyline but with kind of half-baked gameplay. This one is the diamond in the rough - fully 3D, explorational Zelda-meets-Metroid-via-Tomb Raider gameplay with great combat and a stunning alternate-dimensions gameplay mechanic that works perfectly through the huge, *seamlessly* streamed world - an impressive feat given the game's PS1 origin. Cements the series' tradition for absolutely stellar voice acting.
Next game in the series represents the first minor misstep. Apparently the whole game would have originally been part of the final section of the first Soul Reaver, but that game was so huge they didn't have the time to complete any of the stuff that happens after Wraith-like Zombie Vampire protagonist Raziel jumps through the time gate after Kain. Yeah, this was a game where I actually had to stop playing and sit down for a couple of hours with a notepad to really figure out what was happening in the increasingly involved and complex story. Dude, you travel back in time AND into the spectral realm. It gets pretty crazy. Unfortunately, in this game it seems like they spent all their time working on the beautiful, smooth new assets and the five-star cutscenes and story sequences (the fantastic voice acting is combined with some of the best facial animation I've seen, even since), leaving the structure of the actual game a little wanting. There's a LOT of backtracking through a pretty much entirely linear world, none of the wide-open exploration of the previous game. Still an essential play for someone who was hooked into the plot so deeply by this point, though.
Unfortunately, no improvements here. In fact, this is arguably the only genuinely bad game in the series - not that it's unplayably awful or anything, it's just sort of more on the sucky side. It ties up some of the important plot threads left hanging by Soul Reaver 2, but its stiff gameplay and clunky storytelling (set in a weird steampunk interim between the first Blood Omen and Soul Reaver games) just rang hollow, even for series fans. Only recommended if you were REALLY into the rest of the series, and simply MUST know about the minor plot details this one deals with (albeit in an often self-contradictory fashion - why, for example, is Vorador even in this game when he was supposed to be long-dead by this point?)
The series is wrapped up in something resembling a return to form. Still none of the expanse and exploratory wonderment of the first Soul Reaver, but the switch to a kind of stylish Devil May Cry-influenced action combat system at least keeps the story moving along at a gallop. Ties together most of the loose plot threads with the usual peerless acting and writing (the scene where Raziel finally meets Turel is one of my all-time favourites), but leaves the ending somewhat open and subsequently leaves me mourning for a sequel, which is pretty much never going to happen at this point. Still, a competent end to a series that I absolutely loved, though would not necessarily actually recommend to someone, especially given how quickly a lot of games of this period get heavily dated.
Hmm, "Games I loved but would not recommend"... maybe a title for my next list. This is another of my personal favourites of the PS2 era. Rented the first one and HATED it, but picked this up on a whim and played it over and over again, seeing all the dozens of different ways the story could be played out. It just seemed to have a lot more style and flair to it than the first one, and I think people fail to understand that the fact you can "finish" the game in a couple of hours is kind of the *whole point*. Taking its inspiration from classic samurai flicks like Yojimbo and Rashomon, the game makes a point of examining all the different sides of the overall story, letting you see things from *everyone's* perspective and showing how the decisions of a single unexpected participant completely change the way everything plays out each time. Think of it as a kind of Reservoir Dogs-style storytelling, and the whole thing makes a lot more sense.
Like I said though, *hated* this one. Just seemed as dull as dishwater.
Going by what I've seen on GB, this one doesn't look a whole lot better, either. Possibly I'll check it out when I finally get my PS3 and have already played Yak 3 to death. I'd much rather be playing Yakuza: Kenzan! though.
Yeah, this one. Yakuza game set in the samurai era. Seems like it would be pretty awesome, but at this point there's no chance of it being localised.
This, on the other hand, might have a chance if Yakuza 3 sells well enough over here. Don't get me started on all those people who lobbied so hard for that game t oget a western release, then started bitching about it getting a few minor cuts. The hostess clubs were boring anyway, people. And there's still so many sidequests in any of the Yakuza games that you'll never notice the ones missing. JUST BUY THE GAME, we won't get 4 or 5 unless Sega sees the series getting a hike in sales in the west.
People like to compare the Yakuza games to this a lot, despite them not really being similar outside of being set in a modern city with a bunch of irrelevant stuff to occupy yourself with. Played this on the Xbox and just got bored after maybe 20 hours. These Shenmue games were REAL slow. Never played the first one but the Xbox version came with a kind of machinima/cutscene video going through the events to get Xbox players up to speed. Kind of a cool "playable kung fu movie" concept, but done in such a dull way I never really understood why it has such a fervent cult following.
This is another one of my all-time faves. Admittedly it didn't really *do* a whole lot with its open-world setting, but after the all-round goofiness of the previous games based on the GTA3 engine, the focus on telling a gritty, convincing story about people who could easily be real was hugely appealing to me. I really can't stress enough how much of an impact the quality of the writing and characterisation had on the way I played this game. I had never before played a game with characters who seemed so real, so convincingly flawed. I KNOW people like Brucie Kibbutz (unfortunately), I KNOW people like the McRearys, they are like REAL people to me. I'm actually glad Rockstar left out the crazy Saints Row-style shenanigans out of this one.
I fucking hated the 80s, and by extension, I fucking hated Vice City. Sure, it was Rockstar's first attempt at telling a coherent story with quality voice talent, but Flock of Seagulls and pink pastel blazers with rolled-up sleeves should have stayed dead, buried and forgotten about. Fuck irony. That shit is just LAME.
This was a *really* big deal when it came out. It was the first proper 3D open world city, and it was absolutely amazing at the time. Going back to it now, though, is like going back to watching cartoons on one of those little spinning zoetrope devices when you've just got back from watching the latest Miyazaki film. It is *rough*.
Never really got into this one, either. Definitely appreciated the first step into a more gritty style for GTA with the '90s 'Boyz N the Hood' setting, but there was just too much stuff going on and a lot of it was kind of janky. I don't know if you know this, but having to spend half an hour in a rough-looking gym mashing buttons so you can run faster is *not much fun*.
Man, I remember going to school and hearing everybody quoting all the hilarious lines off of the fake radio chat shows in this game. Classic. Not really all that playable today, though. How did we get by with all those weird keyboard controls on PC games back in the day?
I really ought to check this one out, one of these days. Looks like it has an appealing mix of old-school bird's eye view GTA, with the slicker design of the post-GTA3 era. Heavily positive reviews, too. PSP or DS version, though?
Again, don't know what made me think of this, except that it's another one of my semi-obscure PSP games. I REALLY wish Capcom would give Darkstalkers the SFIV treatment. On a recent Bombcast, Brad was saying how he thought Darkstalkers was just a Street FIghter reskin. NOT the case. By the time Darkstalkers 3 came out, the series had really gone its own way, being a way more fast-paced and insane chain combo-driven game than SF. It also marked the beginning of the crazy-OTT Super moves that fed into the fast-paced madness of the Capcom VS series. I don't think people realise just how much Guilty Gear owes to the existence of this game, either.
This never really came out in the UK up until the SSFIIT Hyper Anniversary edition, or whatever the hell it was called, on the Xbox. Maybe the Dreamcast version came out here before that, never had one so I dunno. Really, really enjoyed it eventually, but not knowing anybody else who played it, and not being able to play it online until recently (GGPO = awesome), I'm afraid it sort of passed me by. Fantastic game though, arguably as good as SFIV in a more heavily technical, twitchy sort of way. Bring it out on XBLA please, Capcom!
...like this! I was SO hyped when I found out this was getting an XBLA release. Having played it on a friend's Neo Geo years back, I just inherently knew it was one of the best fighters out there. Imagine my chagrin to find that a combination of terrible net code and the fact that I was pretty much brought up on Capcom-style fighters (SNK never really hit big in the UK) meant that there was really no chance of me getting any good at the game at all. Ah well, more time for playing SFIV I guess!
Got this on the 360 when it came out, having really enjoyed VF4 on the PS2, and briefly loved it. Now that SFIV has gotten me so fully back into 2D fighters, though, I really can't seem to get behind the 3D variety any more. They just feel kind of slow and imprecise by comparison. The ability to sidestep takes away from the pin-sharp quickness of 2D fighters and makes the whole concept of zoning go out the window, so it seems like 3D fighters have this mashy, flailing-around kind of feel to me now, which just isn't so satisfying.
Played this to death on PS2 when it came out. Managed to beat Jinpachi with everyone except Yoshimitsu, too. That cheap-ass mofo. It realy betrays a certain laziness on the part of the developer when the boss AI resorts to spamming cheap moves so hard, the only way to beat him is to *out-spam* him with the one move your character has that he doesn't seem to know how to defend against for some reason. Great game though, but I subsequently feel absolutely no compulsion to play *any* subsequent Tekken games.
Now here's a blast from the past. I played this game over and over, back in the day. Had a pretty cool finishing move system involving some kind of dial-a-combo input, if I remember correctly. Really nice slick futuristic presentation on the PS1. I seem to remember this crazy bird-man guy being my favourite character. Zelkin, I think he was called?
Toshinden, dude. I really can't remember whether this game is ANY good at all, but I loved it at the time - believe it or not, it was playing this game at a friend's house that made me finally want to get a PlayStation. I'm determined never to play it again in case I find out it was actually terrible.
This, on the other hand, was definitely awesome. Don't know if it would still hold up today though - I remember the animation being amazingly slick and smooth, but that was paid for in seriously blocky character models. I seem to recall it had some kind of really involved system of grapples and counter-moves. Damned if I could remember how to play it now, though.
I remember renting this once and thinking it was one of the best fighting games I'd ever played. It probably has some kind of really bizarre N64 control scheme that would be impossible to get into now. Watching a few Youtube vids of it, I had forgotten how it worked by points-scoring based on knocking down the opponent in a variety of very technical ways, rather than a straight-up "knock the other guy out" system. An interesting curio, if nothing else.
Speaking of N64 curios... there seems to be a little contingent online these days talking about it was this game, not GTA3, that really paved the way for sandbox games of the modern era. All I remember is renting it once and hating it, I seem to recall it worked on some kind of strict time-limited system that was very frustrating. I know it wasn't particularly popular at the time, either, so I'm not sure it really counts as part of the main historical lineage. Maybe it was better than I remember, I don't know.
This, on the other hand, was just fantastic, through and through. It got INSANELY hard in the later levels though. I seem to remember getting stuck on a level where you just had that weird spinny dump-truck thing, and an extremely limited amount of time. I just gave up at that point.
Why I thought of this, I don't know. Had a lot of fun with it at the time, kind of a scrolling brawler in which, for some reason, your characters were all on rollerblades for the purpose of beating dudes up. I love the way that, back then, that was all the concept you needed to get a game made.
I still have a deep fondness for this game, despite its unbearable bullshit. That dam level probably shortened my lifespan considerably, even at a young age.
This was awesome, too. One of those games I could just play through and finish over and over again, as it was so short but a lot of fun.
I don't think this is actually the game I'm looking for, but there was a gameboy game of the same name that was sort of like "Kung Fu" on the NES, except you moved to the right and there were a bunch of different levels, like one set on the back of a moving train and so forth. You could do a sweet backflip kick, and I think you could somehow throw enemy grenades back at them too. This was another one I could just play over and over again. It was pretty hard but once I'd figured out how to beat it, the sense of satisfaction at being able to play through it at will was intense.
Okay, bear with me because once again, I cannot find the game I am actually looking for, here. Methinks I shall make a couple of new Wiki entries. Basically what I'm actually looking for is "Probotector", on the Game Boy. We didn't get "Contra" games here in Europe, we had them reskinned because of weird German censorship laws, so the main characters were changed into robots and the whole thing was given a sort of more sci-fi makeover. That might sound kind of silly, but even after I found out what the original "Contra" games were like, I still prefer the strange robot version. I had "probotector" on the gameboy (again, doesn't seem to be a page for it on GB) and Super Probotector (Contra III) on the SNES. Great, great games. Gotta check out Contra 4 on DS one of these days.
Edit: Okay, it was called "Operation C" in the states, apparently, and it totally is on the site. Needs an alias for "Probotector" in the search, though.
Yeah, this one. Damn hard to find a copy over here, though.
Never did finish this one, but I still have it knocking about somewhere along with my original grey-brick GB. Kind of impossible to play without a map system, but I'm really interested to see what happens with this homebrew remake I hear somebody has been doing.
So much better than the actual original Metroid, it's not even worth comparing the two. Brings all the up-to-date, Super Metroid improvements back to the original template, and adds a huge second section to the game. Must-play.
This one, not so much. It's a fine game but adding a mission commander who gives you orders about where to go, and giving you all the upgrades from boss battles just isn't Metroid. Too linear, lacking in solitude.
The daddy. One of the best games of all time, hands down. What I wouldn't give for a brand new 2D Metroid on Wiiware.
The Prime games are some of the best of all time, too. I'd love to get my hands on the Wii Trilogy release, go back and play the first two with Corruption's fantastic Wii controls. Once I'd gotten into that game deeply, I found going back to playing FPS on analogue sticks to be just clunky, sluggish and messy. I'll be interested to see how Other M turns out, sounds like it could either be a really refreshing new experiment, or a crazy mess of a game. We'll soon see.
I actually played this before I ever went back and played Super Metroid, and I really can't decide which is better. They're both SO damn good, in so many ways. I bought Dracula X Chronicles on the PSP pretty much just so I could have a copy of this game on the go, and it's somehow almost better that way (although they did commit the sacrilege of getting rid of the "MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS!"). I actually had an original copy of this, complete with OST CD and art book, and traded it in a couple of years later, having NO idea it was going to become the huge collector's item it ended up being. Idiot! Years later, I paid an obscene amount of money to get another original & complete copy off of eBay.
I did the same with this. Picked up a really cheap used copy back when it was an obscure, artsy critic's choice type of game. Never really got round to playing it though, and wound up trading it in for peanuts. Then when SHadow of the Colossus was announced, I figured I really needed to play through this properly so I paid over the odds for an old original edition, with art cards and suchlike. Then it got re-released alongside Shadow. Needless to say, faces were palmed.
I still have yet to finish this game. Got hung up on that one boss that's a really small bull-looking thing, and you apparently have to climb up on some pillars to stun him or something. What kept happening is that I got knocked down, and then got into a horrible cycle of being knocked down as soon as I got up, over and over again. After that happens enough times, you'll throw down even the best of games in sheer disgust. One day, I'll go back and finish it. Maybe I just need a "benepause", heh.
HA! Gotcha. You know what, I actually kind of enjoyed this when it finally came out, and I'm not ashamed, so there. It was a fun, unusual shooter, even if it was somewhat hamstrung by boneheaded AI. I mean, it was better than the Barney AI in Half-Life (a game I never really enjoyed as much as everyone else seemed to at the time) but at least HL didn't *require* you to babysit Barney through the entire game. Whatever though, there's my 95 games. I'm actually now bursting with a bunch more I'd love to mention, but this list has to end somewhere. I started with Ion Storm, and I'll end with Ion Storm. It's actually a shame, they brought out Deus Ex, Thief III and Anachronox, some of the best PC games ever, but that idiot Romero had to ruin their reputation with his dumbass chest-beating and his luscious, flowing hair.
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