List items
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Generic, ridiculous, over-the-top fun to be had from Blood on the Sand, a game that takes itself entirely too seriously for brilliantly unintentional comic effect. Hit that big-ass ramp indeed.
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An ambitious space-romp that doesn't really succeed on its own gameplay merits, with some lackluster shooting and terribly over-powered "superpowers" it seems like a case of a game being rushed out too fast. Still, it had some good ideas that could've seen blossom into a great sequel.
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Its funny that on its release it was considered a revival of the classic RPGs that had fallen out of favour, now that Baldur's Gate and its sequel are classics in their own right. Its mostly held up well, mainly due to the quality of its writing.
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Brutally hard to the point of sadism, Battletoads is a game that hates you.
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Moving the franchise into 3d may not endear itself to lovers of the NES version, but there's fun to be had in the swinging, shooting, and general "badassery" of Rad Spencer.
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A brilliantly realized world, that while not much fun to play, is certainly one you want to investigate.
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An adventure game that manages to nail the future-noir atmosphere of the movie, while giving you the opportunity to play through some of the highlights too. A branching storyline increases the replayability, though the graphics don't really hold up to modern scrutiny.
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Incredibly slow moving and not helped by its incredibly dated graphics.
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A totally whacked-out adventure game, with some RPG elements that has little or nothing to do with the original D. After your plane is hit by a meteorite and crashes in the snowy mountains of Canada, you must deal with mutated creatures bent on your destruction. Gameplay-wise, it's fairly standard, but its utterly absurd approach to storytelling makes the overall experience oddly endearing.
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It's God of War, but in a Christian version of Hell. GoW handles the bigger set-pieces better, and feels a little less padded than this game, where illogical enemy choices appear only for the benefit of lengthening the hours played.
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A bit of a slog towards the end should in no way dampen the achievement that Visceral has accomplished in Dead Space: a game that'll make you jump with its scares and make you laugh at the terrible, hilarious ways you'll die in the game.
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It's overall premise is trumped by some terrible AI and clunky game mechanics. Frank West is pretty damned cool though.
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I would never have the patience or skill to be able to play this game, so an LP was perfect in me being able to experience the delights of this particular game. Demon's Souls is, in many ways, and old-fashioned game that rewards those of you who can persevere and overcome its difficulty with a experience that seems rare on consoles today.
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Considered by some to be the greatest RPG of all time, for me this is merely just a fun game that looks older than its earlier predecessors because of the blocky 3d graphics.
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Flawed in execution, it has enough things about it to make it worth a zombie fan's while. Essentially a real-time strategy (it's shooting mechanics are too poor to consider it an "action" game) where a survivor of the zombie apocalypse must gather resources and manpower in order to stave off a zombie attack on their own designated fort.
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Some really tedious levels, but the ideas are all there and the most important aspect of the game - shooting people - is still fun.
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Its presentation may be slick, and there are admittedly some genuinely exciting moments, but Heavy Rain is an over-rated mess. Its plot contrivances, its illogical character motivations, and its final revelation all smack of a terrible b-movie just waiting to be released straight to DVD.
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Before Heavy Rain and after Omikron there was Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy). A QTE-fest that starts off fantastically well before spectacularly leaping off the deep end into a quasi-Matrix like Science-Fiction tale that makes no sense and completely divorces itself from the quite well drawn characters that populate the first half of the game.
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Though it has a silly plot, Kingdom Hearts manages to endear purely on the strength of its idea: an RPG fusion of Final Fantasy and Disney. The world hubs range from perfunctory to impressive, the combat barely rises above the "mash button to win" mechanic, and the graphics are really nice.
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A point and click adventure game that feels almost broken in its amateurish presentation, swapping between a set of art-styles for no particular reason. The puzzles are frustratingly illogical, and its clear that the dialogue between characters was written and translated by someone who is quite unfamiliar by how English works.
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The first "new" 8-bit Mega Man doesn't like you very much. Still, it's a fair representation of those knuckle-chewingly hard platformers of the 80s and those of you with patience and skill can reap the game's copious rewards. Not to mention the bragging rights that come with it.
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Snake's 3d adventures begin here. Tough to look at nowadays, it's nevertheless an important game in Playstation history.
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If you can handle the constant - and I mean constant - interruptions for cutscenes and talky nonsense, there's one hell of a game underneath. Raiden isn't as cool as Snake, but the developments that occur in the plot are interesting enough to keep you engaged. Not a patch on Snake Eater though.
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A brilliant game, ignoring all the (albeit charming) nonsense of the second game and focusing entirely on an origin story. The game mechanics are a little looser than in the previous games, allowing for a greater choice in the style of play, and for the completionists, there is a ton of goofy stuff to be found. Still beautiful to look at too.
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Equal parts crazy and dull, NMH is an attractive, flashy beat 'em up that makes little to no sense. And while there may be a lot to do in the open-world, only the boss fights show the imagination of Suda 51's addled brain.
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Smoke and Mirrors is a collection of mini-games that are possibly unique in the history of gaming: they aren't intended to be fun. At all. The game's most infamous game is, of course, Desert Bus - a real-time driving simulator that gives you the objective of driving 8 hours down a straight road with a wonky steering wheel to ensure you can't easily cheat your way through. I've seen it done, and while I couldn't quite hold the patience to watch the entire thing, the sense of futile accomplishment must be overwhelming. Especially when you're offered over-time and the chance to drive back the way you came.
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Classic platforming action with an hour time limit and some rock-hard levels to get through. The rotoscoped animation still looks nice.
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Guide your adopted daughter to barmaid or Queen (or something much more) in this weird management sim that only Japan could produce.
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An excellent recreation of the past 2 Punch-Out games, with added visual flair, some new fighters and the same precision gameplay. Beating the shit out of people is rarely as fun or funny.
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While it should really only be approached as a curio nowadays, I remember being genuinely unsettled when I played this as a teen. Now it provides nothing more than a few laughs at the horrendous translation job that Capcom did and a look at the beginning of the franchise.
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Changing up the format completely, Resident Evil 4 comes out as a winner. Its story is completely nonsensical and largely irrelevant, but that really doesn't matter much when there's a real sense of excitement and danger in the gameplay. It looks gorgeous, too.
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Ambitious and certainly not for the faint of heart, Shenmue is a classic case of a game's reach exceeding its grasp. While there's plenty to do, much of it is repetitive and dull, and while it looks fantastic, there's always a sense that there could've been so much more...
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...which is almost fulfilled in Shenmue II. Changing up the environments somewhat and giving a broader sense of scale makes the story feel more epic, and there's more things to do and to see, though again its clunky game mechanics, which alternate between QTE mini-games and sub-par Virtua Fighter arenas, let the whole thing down. If only there'd been a third...
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Easily my favourite JRPG: The game's plot, characters, and sense of style will see it past any technical limitations that people may see in it in the future. Terrific soundtrack, too.
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While it remains a classic, its sequel is superior in every way.
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Mature, intelligent, and genuinely unsettling - it's the benchmark of the survival horror genre that any other game must come up against.
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While not as thematically enduring as SH2, it's still a pretty impressive game in its own right. The female lead helps freshen things up somewhat.
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It's origins as a non-Silent Hill game are still quite clear in the the finished product - it doesn't ever feel like one of the franchise - that doesn't mean that this iteration isn't worth checking out. It's central mechanic - a man trapped in a room that seems to be possessed - is an interesting and well executed concept in itself.
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A simplistic platformer that features some nice sprites for the time, but its terrible jumping mechanics makes everything much more awkward than it needs to be.
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Worthy enough, but it's clear that the formula is getting a bit thin by this point. The next generation graphics help in preserving the strange, uncanny atmosphere of the series however.
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Roger Wilco's first appearance in this brutal, occasionally unfair adventure game that (unsurprisingly) puts a lot of effort into mocking you when you die. It's also probably the best part of the game.
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An odd "dating" adventure game set on a skiing vacation. Quite funny in places, but otherwise totally unremarkable.
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A trial and error FMV game that could probably run on your DVD player. Q takes centre stage as the antagonist that gives you the chance to go back in time to the first Borg/Wolf 359 encounter and save the crew of a ship that includes your father in its crew. John de Lancie is always good value as the omnipotent jerk, but there's hardly a sense of game here, with only 1 right path to progress to its end and some decidely dodgy performances from some of the other actors.
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Pew-pew! Lots of running and gunning in this well presented but ultimately generic Star Wars action game. The cut scenes are beautiful, but the graphical fidelity doesn't stretch to the in-game stuff, where things range from bland to muddy.
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Obsidian takes Bioware's superlative original and while it doesn't do a whole lot different, and had a boatload of cut content, the basic template still makes the game work. It has some terrific characters, too.
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While not the first Zelda game, it's arguably the most influential of the entire franchise. Due to it's cutesy 2d approach, it still holds up graphically and contains the same tried-and-tested Zelda gameplay that people love.
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Probably the most different on the 3d Zelda games and one of the best, its unique game mechanic rewards diligence and a measure of patience. Contains possibly the scariest moon in game history.
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The first (and possibly the best) 3d Zelda game, it doesn't do that much different from its 2d forebears, though its extra dimension adds a sense of scale that maybe the series had lacked before.
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It looks pretty, but everything feels just a little... rote. The most impressive thing in the game is the central relationship between Link and Midna, and its subtle shift as the game progresses.
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The cartoonish graphics may make it look like a Zelda-for-children, but it takes a mighty investment to be able to see everything in the game. Charming and challenging.
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Cruelly overlooked on its release, this point-and-click adventure is both subversive and funny (in a way that Cool World wasn't) and features a quite excellent performance from Christopher Lloyd as a frustrated cartoonist who gets beamed into a parallel world populated by strange cartoon figures that resemble his creations.
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A fun romp that although emulates a dozen other games in the genre surpasses them on the strength of its storytelling and graphics. It gets a little repetitive in its final third and comes nowhere close to being as good as its own sequel, but fun nonetheless.
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FMV ahoy! Wing Commander gets all flashy with polygonal graphics and "real" stars like Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and er, Ginger Lynn in this nevertheless fun space-combat simulator.
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Maybe not as exciting as its predecessor - the Kilrathi only make minor appearances in this one - Wing Commander IV is still an entertaining (to watch as well as to play) combat game with some quite decent graphics. Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell return and lend their own type of legitimacy to proceedings, no matter how silly things get.
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Hard-as-nails turn-based strategy that rewards precision, patience, and a keen tactical mind. I have none of those things, so an LP was perfect in helping me see the endgame, something I never came close to when I played it back in the day on my own PC.
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