480. METAL GEAR SOLID 5: THE PHANTOM PAIN
I think Hideo Kojima’s games largely suck. As far as I’m concerned all the dude’s got is that ladder, the first 2/3 of Snatcher, Olga’s armpit hair, and Otacon crying over doing incest. Rest of his shit is just a lotta bad boss fights, too many cutscenes about politics, and a whole lotta vile sex shit. Like I’m pretty sure half the interactions in Policenauts qualify as sexual assault. Pretty sure that game is the worst pretty game of all time.
The Phantom Pain is the only good Kojima game. It let me sneak around a bunch while listening to Dead or Alive, and when I had to blow stuff up it blew up real good. You could ride a horse, pet a dog, and drive a robot. I never had to pay attention to the cutscenes, and it was pretty devoid of weird shit that would have suckered me into not skipping them.
I never finished it and that is okay, cuz neither did Kojima.
I hope Death Stranding doesn’t have any shooting and if anyone gets groped I hope it’s del Toro, and I hope the culprit is the baby.
(You could pet a dog, right? If so maybe it’s better than Breath of the Wild.)
479. SPELUNKER HD
In another thread I called this game “The Demon’s Souls of 2D Platformers”. You can tell this was a time ago, cuz I said Demon’s Souls instead of Dark Souls – there was a brief window such a comparison was slightly novel, okay. The spelunker’s shuffle and his tiny hops and his fragile little ankles kinda gives Spelunker HD the methodical pace that got me all hot for older From games.
It’s also the only time I’ve had fun playing a local co-op game this century. I usually have to play with people who aren’t very good at games, and this is the perfect game for that, because everyone fucks up and ends up shouting at each other and maybe some violence happens.
If I had friends I woulda played this in co-op more than once. Then it woulda been top 10. But this is a fallen world so it’s 479.
478. The Magical Realms Of Tír Na Nóg: Escape From Necron 7 – Revenge Of Cuchulainn: The Official Game Of The Movie – Chapter 2 Of The Hoopz Barkley Saga
Here are the only two games of the future you should care about:
and
BARKLEY 2.
That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever written in my life and if I wake up dead tomorrow it’s because God is real and I paid the price.
477. GRABBED BY THE GHOULIES
As a kid I read this comment in EGM about how Blue’s Journey for Neo-Geo “isn’t as adult oriented as its title might lead you to believe” or something along those lines. And that nagged at me for years, because I couldn’t figure what the fuck they meant. I’m still not sure. Maybe like a “blue” joke? Was anyone using that term post-sexual revolution? Maybe like…a homonym for “blew”? Maybe that blurb was written by a fellow pre-pubescent who had no clue how sex actually worked??
I’ve heard talk that Grabbed by the Ghoulies is some gross euphemism but I’m American so I don’t get it and I don’t want to get it. Please don’t tell me that “ghoulies” are, like, my nuts, cuz if I ever get into a relationship again I’d probably totally ruin it by excessively using that term whenever we have a conjugal visit.
(I will be in prison before the year is out unless someone starts a fundraising drive to pay me at last 2 cents a word for every post I make.)
476. PHANTOM DUST
I think I paid $20 for this when it came out. It’s one of the few good CCG-inspired games. I ain’t gonna every touch the remake but hey, you should probably give it a shot. It’s free, right?
I think I paid full price for Psychonauts at launch. I know I went digging for change in my couch so I could buy it. I know I traded in some games that were really good. But Psychonauts was fuckin’ garbage, and it is not on this list. It is another game that would be way better if it didn’t have any game to it. That milkman stage was the biggest fucking bore and I think someone should take all the jokes, shove them into a visual novel, and see if they can get away with selling it for $2 on Steam. I bet it would be so much better than anything in Psychonauts.
Also Phantom Dust wasn’t supposed to be on this list. It was supposed to be Phantom Crash, the most 
of all times. Though I guess Phantom Dust is the better game. I suppose it belongs.
brb updating the thread title for more
475. HEBEREKE
I knew this Finnish dude who was going through a real dark period for awhile there. Started self-destructing. Started spending thousands of Euros on hockey cards and old toy sets and rare PAL NES games. Bought a complete copy of Hebereke or whatever they called it in Europe. Ufouria? I think that shit cost a fortune. Don’t think he ever played it. I’m not sure he even emulated it before buying. Think he was trying to recapture a childhood that wasn’t actually his.
Not long before he disappeared from my life he said:
And that was pretty much the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Dude was missing for years but he got back in touch with me not too long ago. He’s doing much better now. He’s in a relationship, making music, and oh yeah I just remembered he didn’t buy Hebereke. It was Mr. Gimmick. But same thing, right?
474. YAKUZA 0
I was making a real effort to be politically active earlier in the year. Felt like I had to do something, y’know? And it felt good. Made me feel less helpless. Was good meeting up with all those socialists and going to protests and getting real angry and shit.
Then I got real lazy and also kinda traumatized so now instead of taking action I’m up at 1:30AM making lists.
I went to one of the Women’s Marches. Took my mom with me. Really guilted her into doing it. Partially cuz I thought it would be good for her cuz she was feeling really low post-election, partially cuz I thought I might get pelted with rotten eggs if I showed up by my lonesome, but mostly cuz I really wanted to get a copy of Yakuza 0 before street date. If I’d gone alone I probably woulda just bought it and come straight home.
I’m sure the feds have thousands of gigs of photos and video taken by a drone showing me marching with that game in my hand, surrounded by angry old ladies in pussy hats. Bet I looked pretty good in most of those shots. Bet those cops woulda really tried to start some shit if I hadn’t been there, looking so tough.
Not saying I’m a hero or anything but I’m pretty sure I’m a hero.
At one point I posted a Yakuza 0 screenshot on my old secret personal twitter account and it went viral in a tiny way. Thousands of retweets and likes and replies! My phone was blowing up! It felt good for like 10 minutes. Then it got real annoying. Then I became just like the dude in that screenshot up there. In the end I got 2 whole new followers out of it.
Social media fuckin’ blows. Yakuza 0 is GOTY 2017.
473. PROGRESS QUEST
I will pay someone $100 to reskin Progress Quest to look like Select Button. Just make it so I get a few blood potions every hour. Then I’ll never have to log on ever again and we’ll all be very happy, right?
472. ECCO 2: THE TIDES OF TIME
Ecco is really creepy. When we were kids I tricked my sister into buying my copy of Ecco. Told her “Sure, you can use my Genesis whenever you want. Just give me all that money you got for your birthday.”
I let her play it, like, once. So I wasn’t a total liar. But I was still pretty bad. I bet I taught her an important lesson though: don’t trust anybody. Probably spared her some nightmares too. Ecco is really creepy.
471. SOUL CALIBUR 3
I won a launch Xbox 360 in a Taco Bell contest. I cheated at that Taco Bell contest. The way it worked was they had a drawing every 10 minutes for the chance to win a 360, right? And you could get one free entry per email address. So I went and made a catchall email address on one of my domains, got hundreds of free entries, and dropped them all on one spot at 5:10 AM on a weekday. I could have used a script to automate the process but I am not good with computers so I did it all manually. I thought that made my cheating a bit more honest. It also gave me a repetitive stress injury.
So yeah, I won that Xbox. Arrived early. Came with a copy of Kameo, I think. That game is not on this list. Played with it for a little bit. Then launch day came along and there was this inexplicable demand combined with hardware shortages. So I was able to sell my launch 360 + a copy of Kameo to some dude on craigslist for $1100 or so.
Next time you’re feeling low please remember: at least you’re not the guy who paid $1100 for a 360 that surely red-ringed within 3 months. Imagine being that rich and that dumb.
I took some of that money and bought a cheap HDTV. Immediately regretted my purchase. I was in a small room with no place to comfortably put a 32" TV. I also had no component cables. I also should have spent that money on food or paying medical bills. The only game I ever played on it was Soul Calibur 3. It kinda looked like the screenshot above, but worse, and with tons of input lag. I hated it. Then I hated it even more when my fat ass knocked the TV off the dresser I had it precariously perched on, cracking the screen mere hours after it arrived.
I called the manufacturer and lied and said “Oh yeah you sent me this TV and it got here all broken!” And they replaced it for free. Then I sold the replacement.
You wanna know what I did with that money? Well, gentle reader, I’ll tell you this: I went and committed even more fraud.
But that’s a story for another day! I’m going to go to bed! I’ll post more about games and how much they cost later, as long as none of you rat me out for being such a crook in my youth. I swear I’m much sweeter and do way less fraud now that I’m 49 years old.
Oh yeah and @Rudie go ahead and do those 20 games cuz if I keep this up I’m gonna run out of dumb shit to talk about by, like, Thursday.