My 10 Favorite Games
These are among my 10 favorite games of all time, in no particular order. Well, they're sort of in order.
List items
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The only punishingly difficult game I've ever played where I actually found the difficulty to be rewarding and part of the fun. I beat it four times and at one point I actually played Ninja Gaiden as a way to relax after playing far too much World of Warcraft.
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We "broke up" and aren't exactly on good terms anymore, but there's no denying the time investment I put into this game. WoW sits on this list in lieu of Diablo II or any other loot lust game because its social structure gave the loot a purpose. When you got more powerful, you were lifting up your friends at the same time.
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One of the first RPGs I ever played, Lunar probably isn't a great game, objectively speaking. But the soundtrack kicked ass and the story, the characters, and the world all resonated with me. I have a giant framed poster with the cover art on it and I fully intend to drag that around with me for the rest of my life.
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I may have loved Lunar, but at a certain point in my life I realized that nearly every JRPG had the exact same story, characters, and plot. Persona 4 renewed my faith in the genre and turned me into a SMT zealot. I cannot wait for Persona 5 and my only reservation is that my expectations for the game are already so lofty that I'm not sure if it will be able to meet them.
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Damn I love me some Shining Force. The second one makes this list because it's better than the totally awesome first game and because Sega won't sell me the entirety of SFIII. It breaks my heart to see Sega trying constantly to reinvent the series as a lame character action game or boredom simulator or somesuch.
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Alright, for talking a lot of yang about JRPGs, I'm certainly putting plenty of them on this list. However, I couldn't in good conscience exclude Valkyria Chronicles. Despite being mechanically quite different, this game evokes Shining Force for me in a big way. Add onto that a storybook art style straight out of a Miyazaki movie and I'm in love. This game alone is why I bought a PS3.
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Grim Fandango is hands down the finest adventure game I've ever played. I like this game so much that I tolerate Brütal Legend by mere association.
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I realize now that Ninja Gaiden isn't the only viciously hard game I've ever loved. Orta was the strongest pure shooter entry in the Panzer Dragoon line. Also, I'm pretty sure its plot makes the most sense of any of the four games, Saga included. It's been awhile though so I may be remembering that wrong.
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A thinking man's Doom, the Marathon series were some of the first games I played that made any attempt at having a story that couldn't be summed up in a sentence. Marathon 2 is here because it's gameplay and graphics are significantly improved over the original and because the plot in Infinity is painfully hard to follow (still awesome though).
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Metrod Prime has an amazing atmosphere and feels like a strong character driven game despite having no speaking characters. It also showed the world that first person games didn't need to be first person shooters. It's a pity that its sequels never really lived up to the first game.
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