oh yeah baby time for me to post more of my weird inconsistent opinions all over select button!
mario 64! don’t get me wrong, ikaruga owns, but there’s this sort of weird magic to mario 64. it looks like a playable version of those tech demos you would see on tv whenever there would be a news story about those newfangled computers and their fancy graphics, which is pleasing to my eyes. and goddamn if dire, dire docks is not among some of the best games music.
dark souls! i have played it inside and out. all different builds. different covenants. different ways of making progress. one of those pieces of video game comfort food that i’ve played at least once a year since it came out, and own on more systems than i do resident evil 4. the only game of its generation that can match the horribly oppressive atmosphere is its own spiritual prequel. but even then, it still has a sense of progression that a lot of games, even ds2 and ds3, couldn’t get right. a shame that “game is hard” is the only lesson people took from it.
portal. this one was pretty close, but portal’s style and way of solving puzzles was more creative than ico’s. the writing was a lot more fun, too. so portal gets the nod, even if the writer is responsible for starting gamergate, according to an idiot-ass crackpot on the internet.
link’s awakening. k&l2 is amazing. it’s raw, kind of sickening at times. it does almost it sets out to do wonderfully. a game that was all about presenting the ugly underbelly of what violent, sociopathic protagonists actually are in an era where nathan drake was murdering hundreds to thousands of people while trying to be a wisecracking, debonair everyman. but like i said before, link’s awakening is the best zelda, and among the best game boy games. so i’m going with link’s awakening again.
sonic adventure. sonic adventure is a top 5 sonic game and a must-play dreamcast game and you should also spend the $5 or whatever to play it on pc with all the cool dreamcast mods turned on. it’s a ludicrously saccharine, saturday morning cartoon of a video game. but that’s what makes it so great. it is stupid, colorful fun, and i love it to death.
doom. the thing about doom is that you can run it right now, no specials mods or anything, and it’s as great today as it was in 1993. doom is timeless. it is the proverbial catching lightning in a bottle, this perfect (ion) storm of creative minds firing on all cylinders to create a piece of magic.
nier. this was a similar vote, in my eyes, as kane and lynch vs zelda. but i like zelda more than i like donkey kong. and i also like nier more than i like donkey kong. yoko taro has this talent to write extremely unlikeable characters into being likeable. every time a character fucks up, gives into emotion, it’s pretty powerful. the world of nier is full of mystery, accompanied by haunting music, and this plot that i spent one determined winter uncovering every inch of. then you finish the game and realize that this many-hour action-rpg that brought people to tears is a sequel to what everyone thought was a joke ending in drakengard. that in and of itself is powerful.
chrono trigger. bubble bobble is great, and i love all the cutesy taito games. but chrono trigger gets the edge because of the end of time, one of the most gorgeous areas in any game i’ve ever played. it’s cool in a lot of other ways, too, but the image of an old man under a streetlight got my imagination going as a kid.
umihara kawase. it’s cute as hell and has significantly more personality than dragon’s dogma.
gunstar heroes. already gave my reason why last time. but as far as mario goes, it’s fine; not “skip my grandmother’s wake” good, though. give me smb1, world, land 1/2, or 64 any day.
streets of rage 2 gets the nod on its aesthetic merit alone. but it helps that there’s a great game underneath it. the game’s foundation is strong enough to make up for the fact that you play as cops. quake is fantastic too, but it’s not doom.
