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StingerMK2

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My Top 10 Games Ever

I felt inspired to make this list after user lmephisto created this thread http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic/31/your-3-top-games-ever/550576/?page=4

it made me sit there and think really hard about the games I have enjoyed the most over the years, you will probably notice lack of big Sony first and third party titles, ill touch on this a little bit later. Ill admit some of the list is fuelled by nostalgia, but every single game has been replayed within the last 5 years so i know that for me at least, they hold up still.

I also want to give a massive shout out to a lot of awesome N64 games that didn''t quite make the cut, Banjo Kazooie, Space Station: Silicon Valley, Blast Corps, Body Harvest, all uniquely awesome experiences that i can't quite justify putting in this list.

(currently a work in progress)

List items

  • I never understood the need for RPG's to be hundreds of hours long, clocking in at around 20 hours Panzer Dragoon Saga feels perfect. It has a distinctly eastern aesthetic and the sound design is stunning, I can still hear the exact casual intonation Azel says "Ne-Rai" during the urgency of the boss fight music, and it easily has the best dragon design in gaming. Panzer Dragoon Saga also has one of my favourite battle systems ever, it lends real sense of scope that is unmatched in the RPG realm. I know the game is hard/expensive to get hold of nowerdays, but it is certainly a treat to the senses to experience, easy to call it my favourite game ever.

  • it feels a little disingenuous putting this high in the list, as I have never finished it. 14 years and 5 separate play-through attempts later and I finally managed to get to Year 4 in the game, a bit of a gaming white whale for me, but the process of playing through the opening 3 years of this game are unparalleled when it comes to adventure games. The world that Tim Shafer and the team over at Lucasarts crafted is a magnificent example of the power of gaming as an artform, bringing in influences as wide as the Mexican day of the dead and 1940s era cinema. The dialogue and characters are so strong and the story just keeps you gripped the whole way through. I have absolutely no idea why I haven't sat down to bash this out yet, but I feel one of the big reasons I take to this game so much is the almost casual approach I take to wanting to complete it, especially in an era where "must play" games are a dime a dozen, and there always seems to be a need to finish games before they're spoiled for you, just slowly drinking in the beginning that game again and again over the years has been a deeply enjoyable experience, and one day, I will catch that white whale!

  • I fucking love this game, slightly jankey combat mechanics can't hurt the generation spanning masterpiece of a horror story contained within. I got really excited recently when Patrick said that he'd be playing this through for the first time, I love hearing people talk about this game, even if he ends up bashing the aforementioned gameplay quirks (personally, I find them endearing) i can't wait to hear him talking about his experience with the game. 3 separate play-throughs of the game can feel quite different depending on which Ancient you align yourself with, using magic a lot in the game, i found having it drain whenever an enemy sees me a particular challenge. Having a decent pay off for when you finish the game with the 3 different alignments also went a long way to concrete this game into my list, and I would love to see a modern developer try and tackle a game with a story of this kind of labyrinthian scope, iv never played anything like it, and hell, if your reading this and have any recommendations i'd like to hear them.

  • over 100 hours on the Dreamcast and probably the same on the Gamecube, this game is easily the most addictive thing I have ever played. The rhythm you tap out attacks and seeing the damage done to the enemies can almost get me into a zen-like state, as well as a decent cycle of loot collection and really strong audio/visual design, PSO goes a long way to keep me coming back time and time again, and thats before you even consider it being my first ever experience of online gaming. My username on this website actually started off as a HUcast on the Dreamcast version (I was playing Blue Stinger at the time, and added the MK2 to make it sound more roboty, at the time I felt really clever because my real name is Mark). Whilst actually having a lot of fun with episode 3 and enjoying the story mode on PSU, I haven't thought any Phantasy Star games since have had the same magic as this one. I am currently eagerly awaiting a translated version of PSO2 to come out, im ready for it to absorb all of my time all over again.

  • I am afraid I am one of "those" Resident Evil fans, everything that made these games great to me, from the tone to the story and the characters, fell apart with RE4. It's not that I hate those games, they are well made, and RE4 in particular pushed gaming in some really cool directions, but I don't like them as RE games. Resident Evil 2 however is the pinnacle of those earlier games, blowing the story set up by the original game up to its logical extreme, whilst bringing in some corporate and political intrigue along the way. The way RE2 was designed to essentially be 2 games with the A and B scenarios having and cool story looping back and forth over itself with the 2 main characters directly and indirectly helping each other out as the game progresses is brilliant, I love the fact that they bring in the tyrant for scenario B to give that second game an extra sense of constant threat, that leads to the greatest jump scare in gaming history (tyrant bursting through the wall after just having fought him in the previous room, iv seen a friend involuntarily throw his controller at this part) Resident Evil 2 is my sole entry here for Sony consoles, I bought a second hand Playstation basically because of this game, and had a pretty crummy time with the console on the whole, hence the lack of Sony games in this list, iv always gone against Sony in the console war, I think its mainly because I'm bitter about how the whole thing went down with Sega.

  • I'v always considered myself more of a SciFi fan than Fantasy, I really like the science and philosophy that SciFi tends to pose, and bringing bigger ideas into something that is essentially entertainment is always something I can get behind. Mass Effect is a series that sets up a BIG universe for SciFi fans to get their teeth into. The Story and Characters are obviously brilliant, but I REALLY liked the combat in this game, less an emphasis on cover based shooting than the sequels, my favourite play-through of this game was my 6th. It was on insanity difficulty, i was playing a soldier rolling around with Liara and Wrex (because on NG++ you dont need to bother with hacking things any more)and every single encounter was a hot mess of biotic powers and crazy shotgun goodness, so fun, but with Bioware adding universal cooldown on abilities and more of an emphasis on cover based shooting the combat in the sequels felt a little more stale to me. Long story short Mass Effect is my favourite game of this generation, its sequels are also great and the overarching story is actually magnificent, but the seeds of the series that were planted in this game is really where my imagination went wild with the possibilities, and it definitely hooked me into the universe the same way that Star Wars and Star Trek have been doing to SciFi fans for years

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