SB 64 part V: the vth vanguard (voting ends october 28!)

oh it’s time for the exciting resident evil 2k2 vs. metal gear solid 2 matchup!! i think silent hill v. earthbound will be fun too

this week, it’s time to discuss:

  • SPELUNKY
  • DISCO ELYSIUM

0 voters

  • RESIDENT EVIL (2002)
  • METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY

0 voters

  • EARTHBOUND
  • SILENT HILL

0 voters

  • SONIC 3 & KNUCKLES
  • GIMMICK!

0 voters

  • METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER
  • SUPER MARIO BROS.

0 voters

  • GOD HAND
  • EARTH DEFENSE FORCE SERIES (DEVELOPED BY SANDLOT)

0 voters

  • WARIOWARE, INC.: MEGA MICROGAME$!
  • LSD: DREAM EMULATOR

0 voters

  • BLOODBORNE
  • DRAGON QUEST III

0 voters

  • F-ZERO GX
  • MOTHER 3

0 voters

voting starts october 24th and ends on the 28th! after this group of matchups we will be moving into our first loser’s bracket matches… how exciting!

7 Likes

Still so weird that EDF is on there as a whole series because man are the iterations there significantly different.

3 Likes

Also this is reminding me of how my department at work a year ago held a bowling competition to determine what the best episode of Star Wars is, and the guy who had the Phantom Menace actually bowled the best game of his life, so that is officially the best Star War in the department now.

And it will remain as such for the foreseeable future. Thanks, pandemic.

5 Likes

MGS3 has to get in over 2. I feel like MGS2 being here is some weird mistake.

SPELUNKY
vs.
DISCO ELYSIUM

Abstaining here. Spelunky is the kind of game I know I would enjoy if I had different brain chemistry, and I have not played Disco Elysium at all.

RESIDENT EVIL (2002)
vs.
METEAL GEAR SOLID 2: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS

Ah geeze I gotta abstain here too!! I haven’t played either of these and probably will not in the foreseeable future.

I have played RE in its original format, but only for a few hours. I beat RE4, and played a bit of RE7. That’s all of my RExperience

I have played MGS about halfway, and a few hours of MGSV. I don’t think either is amazing? But I dunno.

EARTHBOUND
vs.
SILENT HILL

I played through Earthbound twice in a row because I thought I had to level up more to beat Giygas, and I got stuck in the last bit so underleveled I couldn’t beat any enemies. Turns out I’m just a dingus, but even playing that game a second time right away was great. I love it.

I need to give Silent Hill a fair shake, but EB is in my top 10 games of all time, sooo

yeah

SONIC 3 & KNUCKLES
vs.
GIMMICK!

I frickin hate S3&K and I don’t know why, exactly. It’s just…a mess.

But I have never played gimmick! Abstaining…again…

maybe i just dont like video games enough to be cool…

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI III: NOCTURNE
vs.
ELEVATOR ACTION RETURNS

fuck i gotta abstain again??

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER
vs.
SUPER MARIO BROS.

I dunno, I dont like MGS that much, even never having played the 3rd one. I don’t think it will change my mind. SMB is good though,

GOD HAND
vs.
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE SERIES

Fuck

I haven’t played like, most of these games so far.

But every EDF thing I’ve touched has brought me some level of joy and it’s one of the first five games I played co-op with Alicia, before we were married. It was a good time.

WARIOWARE, INC.: MEGA MICROGAME$!
vs.
LSD: DREAM EMULATOR

This is a tough one. They’re both, in a weird way, surrealist games deconstructing the very notion of play. What does it mean to play a game for 4 seconds? How do you design a game that has no continuity whatsoever to actually feel continuous?

What does it mean for a game to have physical spaces that link in unconventional ways? Is logic even necessary for a game?

I gotta go LSD even though I’ve played Wario Ware a billion times longer. It sticks in my head and stands out as a game that embraces the limitations of its medium, for the best. Love it.

BLOODBORNE
vs.
DRAGON QUEST III

Bloodborne looks miserable to me. I am not fast enough to play that game, and it’s dreary as fuck. I enjoy it in theory, but I don’t think I’ll ever play it. Plus I don’t have a PS4

DQ games always bring me joy so, clear winner.

F-ZERO GX
vs.
MOTHER 3

Look

I don’t think I like Mother 3.

I mean, I respect it. I think it has high aspirations and I love how it complicates Mother 2 and its fandom. But it’s just too bleak. It’s so fucking bleak. I can’t deal with it.

F-Zero GX is pure canned excitement and astonishment. I am amazed by that game every time I play it. I love it more than I love almost anything. It’s so good.

4 Likes

This is an attack on me personally and I will not stand for it

4 Likes

Guns of the Patriots is MGS4. MGS2 is Sons of Liberty.

I mean you’ve got the basics, like EDF 2 adding in more roles, EDF 3 taking flyers away, EDF4 adding Flyers and the Tanky slow guys. And then there’s Insect Armageddon, which is super different, and that offshoot of 5 that was a different developer that I haven’t played. Oh and the STG game.

And that’s just in basics. The tuning of the flyers, for example, changes decently between games though this doesn’t become super apparent until late in the games. The enemy variety saw a definite big jump with 5, though it had previous spikes in earlier gens as well.

There’s probably more, but yeah, there’s a lot of difference in these games.

2 Likes

Even just in the main series, I can’t see 3 and 5 as the same games. There’s just such a difference there in even the tactics you need to win, let alone the roles themselves.

the only thing more boring that mgs3 being the mgs to get in would be mgsv being the mgs to get in

god who cares about gameplay and more open environments and more tools to play with zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

6 Likes

since nocturne is here i’ll repost the piece i wrote about it a few months ago

REmake vs. mgs2 is going to give me an aneurysm, but i have to follow my heart

10 Likes

The PS2 Metal Gears are (edit: wait, shit, Mother 3 notwithstanding) the best video game sequels ever made.

Also, in support of The Daphny Hypothesis, I submit the following

6 Likes

this is what resident evil 1995 looks like


weird and interesting and creepy otherwordly feeling mid 90s saturn era 3d/prerendered 3d


this is what resident evil 2002 looks like. instead of an anime tactical team everyone looks like zonked out silent hill characters and the mansion now aesthetically fits with later resident evil entries by being a obviously haunted mansion. to me this is not an improvement, 2002 is the weaker less interesting entry

*forgive the bad upscaled screenshots for gamers know not what they do

8 Likes

what are the more open worlds of later metal gears when they are empty of anything close to experiencing the colonel breaking down and telling you to turn off the game console at 2am after playing the game all damn day other than a short interruption where your friends brought over their just newly released “the fast and the furious” dvd? what are more tools to play with (when it’s all just more ways to incapacitate enemies anyway), when instead you could be having your girlfriend constantly calling you in the middle of your special operations mission trying to get you to open up emotionally?

metal gear solid 3 is such a boring safe choice they added a third person camera, aka “the coward’s camera” to the game for all the safety sally’s. the beginning of the end continued in mgs4 moving the shooting controls to the shoulder buttons. and no later metal gears feature anything like a scene of two bro’s doing an elaborate bro handshake in one’s attempt to cheer the other up over incest.

metal gear solid 2 was released november 2001, two months after 9/11 and nearly twenty years ago. you crash through half of lower manhattan in a giant ship and fight the former president (who wants to liberate the u.s. from the deep state and the 1%) in the middle of wall street atop federal hall (next to the trump building). earlier when you meet the current president of the united states he greets you by sexually assaulting you. a tyrannical synthetic consciousness has evolved from the primoridial soup of american patriotism itself and wants to control society and censor the internet to keep people from going insane from fake news and conspiracy theories. one characters every line of dialogue is just stating how much she wants to die. her devoted simp who follows her around saying “yass queen” is inexplicably a vampire. in the middle of a tragic death scene a man suddenly confesses to having had sex with his step mother. every facet of the game is a response to being a sequel to metal gear solid. the tanker section is setup as a traditional sequel might be only to “kill” the protagonist early on. the plant section is a complete artifice designed to evoke responses based on it’s similarities to the first game. the game suddenly replaces the familiar solid snake with a surprise effeminate protagonist who is an uncertain, emotionally deadened, videogame trained dupe who is gaslit so hard by his commanding officer he is only able to finally reassert his hold on reality and own identity many games later after repeatedly destroying his own body and becoming a high heeled death machine wandering the earth, waging a personal war against memes and imperialist intervention in africa and the middle east. this is the game of our age if there ever was one. there could never be anything like it again. and was there ever anything before where someone could look back at a single piece of media from 20 years prior and see how it so specifically laid the track to the present like we can mgs2 now? who knows what we’ll be seeing when looking back at it another twenty years from now

21 Likes

Yeah 3 only has better theming, characters, script, boss fights, pacing, moments, gameplay, setting, setpieces, cutscenes, eroticism, gunplay, secret shit, collectables, kuwabara, systems, stealth, storytelling through systems, gadgets, sequence breaking, and has codec conversations that aren’t the length of a Star Trek episode.

2 Likes

tried to be drawing but didn’t feel it so I’m spending brain power on this instead

Spelunky vs. Disco Elysium

I like spelunky just fine, but I’ve never been compelled by it. my laptop won’t be able to run disco elysium but the trailers alone have convinced me this is something I’d be very interested in. an rpg without combat, in which the rpg stats are focused on your characters personality traits, which act like intrusive thoughts. where your control of what he’s like is part choice, part random chance, and the outcomes vary from depressingly comical to absolutely horrible.

I just get the impression I’ll have all kinds of feelings about disco elysium

Resident Evil (2k2) vs MGS2

both of these are like, action puzzle boxes with very rigid rulesets and awkward controls and that’s a point I love both of them on.

resident evil wins out by being in a horror mansion though. the most GORGEOUS horror mansion! with cool monsters. and I don’t feel guilty using lethal weapons.

about mgs2 and mgs3, I have always opted to play them as non-lethally as possible just cause they give the option to. I legit think it’s worse to end up killing an enemy than being found. this does come at some detriment though, because at least in mgs2 the nonlethal options aren’t very fun to play with.

Earthbound vs Silent Hill

how much doubt is there I’m picking the horror game?

earthbound is also the only mother game I haven’t finished, I should fix that at some point. think I got as far as fourside.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles vs Gimmick!

oh, s3&k is sort of tied for me with mania as best sonic game! super enjoy these pretty zones in these games and all the fancy stunts they pull.

gimmick tho… I love the general handing of gimmick. the way you kind of slip and immediately accelerate on slopes is super satisfying!

and every level has so many super cute endearing and unique things going on! like, the crowned enemy riding a giant bird in the desert whom you can unmount and then claim the bird for yourself. or the spiny enemies on stage two who when flipped on their back still “walk” their legs, and how if you stand on their belly their legs slowly push you off?

how about when you platform through a waterfall and logs fall from the top, and later you jump across logs, dropping them below, on the same waterfall?

or the fact that enemies can platform?! in an 8-bit game?

gimmick is just… really, REALLY amazing and special, and adorable, and I love it!

SMT3 vs Elevator Action Returns

ONE MORE GOD REJECTED!

MGS3 vs Super Mario Bros

so like, I play mgs non-lethally, and mgs3 actually lets me do that better than mgs2 cause whenever I get discovered and quickly need to deal, the cqc moves are immensely satisfying. on the other hand I don’t like the camo system because there’s just a few too many layers of menu’s to change camo which I feel compelled to do constantly.

oh, I’m voting mgs3 over smb by the way. like, I don’t know how to compare them, they aren’t comparable at all, but I’m voting mgs3

God Hand vs EDF

oh, I played god hand on hard mode (at least the hardest initial difficulty) up to like, stage 7? I confess I don’t quite understand it cause the forward dodge seems good enough for almost everything, so fighting eventually got kinda rote? apparently I fucked up my combo ability by adding extra move slots? got annoyed at that. may get back to it at some point to finish it, and maybe I’ll really love it then, but right now I kinda just think it’s neat, with a bunch of extra stuff (customizable moveset) that I don’t really care that much about.

similarly think edf is neat, which I also have finished none of. I think I could go either way on this vote

Wariowarez vs LSD

oh, I played and had a lot of fun with a few wario wares, but they really don’t age well, outside from some of the goofy party modes in smooth moves. played lsd a bit in prep for this and that’s way less immediately entertaining, but it does stick with me. wandering and exploring dreams, someone else’s too, is really fascinating.

I like this video about it which covers some interesting background, particularly when she reads passages from the book lsd is based on (which I didn’t even know was a thing while playing)

https://youtu.be/xI53DE82vdo

Bloodborne vs DQ3

excuse me one of these options is not only horror but a fromsoft arpg, there’s no doubt in my heart, none at all. I bought a damn console for bloodborne.

wanna say the different direction bb took from souls wrt to action was a really fitting choice. souls games are mostly careful and measured and nervous. bb is also nervous, but fidgetty and panicked. it’s a game where getting hit may prompt you to swing wildly at your attacker, splattering blood all over. it feels visceral and satisfying, and always unhinged.

F-Zero GX vs Mother 3

I HAD MANY EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO MOTHER 3 AND I THINK I CRIED AT LEAST 5 TIMES!

voting f-zero gx tho, sorry. this game feels amazing. I love racing on that thunderstruck half-pipe track!

6 Likes

in my teens me and all my friends, regardless of gender, were crushing hard on the snakes. just a nice thing to bond over in that age

3 Likes

SONIC 3 & KNUCKLES vs. GIMMICK!
I’m not a big fan of Sonic, I like the labyrinth zone and hate the spin dash. I still want to check out sonic cd eventually. The only complaint I care to share about Gimmick is that it’s too short.

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER vs. SUPER MARIO BROS.
I loved VR Missions when I was a kid, I also loved mgs1 when I finally played it as a teen, but 3 was closer to what I dug initially. Super Mario Bros feels closer to the ideal game, but it’s still not as good of a toy imo.

GOD HAND vs. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE
I remember xoxak describing edf as borderlands for people who like the Dreamcast and arcade games. That sounds like a mean extrapolation at best, but from what little I played of it I can tell I don’t have the itch this game is supposed to scratch. I love Godhand and want to always feel like a dancing tank.

WARIOWARE vs. LSD
I grew up with warioware and it’s probably why my bug brain thinks anything about game design. LSD is way cooler, but I’m a fool for Wario.

F-ZERO GX vs. MOTHER 3
I played a lot of X, but I barely played GX I’m ashamed to say. Even considering X, I have more fond memories of playing Mother 3 when the fan translation was released and I played it with my sister.

1 Like

thus far mainline EDF series is rebooted with every odd numbered entry. each pairing has been steadily improving on the previous

1 was pretty bare bones; 2 was one of the best, most generous sequels ever

3 (2017) was the reboot of 1 for the 360, it dropped the flier class, had less missions than 2 but revamped the enemy aesthetic. it’s clearly better than 1 but arguably not better than 2; 4 (2025) brought back the fliers, and added 2 new classes, plus online play; 4.1 added more giant robots and several QoL improvements

5 is the latest reboot of 1, new aesthetic again but this time all of 4’s classes are present but significantly tweaked. it replaced the giant robot enemies with frogs and greys with destroyable body parts that gloat when they hit you. it’s probably the best entry so far though i prefer 3/4’s look

despite the huge chasm between 1 and 4.1/5, i agree with the mainline series being grouped for this poll

1 Like

life goals tbh

7 Likes