Tower defence games thus far have been simpler affairs, notably in the graphics department. I don't remember all the tower defence games the 1001 list has put in front of us, but the majority have been Flash-based lunchtime entertainment, not detailed 3D polygon models of animated alien invaders stealing chunks of our blummin' core, as is shown in Defense Grid: The Awakening.
Is a considerable bump in graphics enough to get me to pay more attention to the genre, or does the idea of tower defence just turn me off at its first utterance?
When all you know is war, I guess it's inevitable that the war won't stop. When all you are is an impossibly proportioned man fueled by diesel and wearing parts of a car for protection, you probably don't get up to much else other than shooting things. It's a good job Gears of War 2 exists to keep the guys employed, is what I'm getting at, because I've no idea what they'd do without it.
Marcus Fenix and the gang return in a sequel supposedly bigger and badder than the first outing, the game that effectively unleashed cover-shooters into the world. What form will the chest-high walls take in this game? What horrors will we willingly march into for the sake of mankind's survival? Just how gruff can we shout this line of dialogue?
Let's time our reloads right and kick down the door to find out.
"To break a man's will, to break his spirit, you have to break his mind."
Source // PlayStation
I liked my time with Far Cry, difficult though it was, but it wasn't my first taste of a Far Cry game. That would be in the form of its sequel, Far Cry 2, developed by a different team entirely and making its way onto the PlayStation 3, where I could actually play an open-world first-person shooter.
Like other titles in the genre before and since I spent a sizeable amount of time roaming a fictional African country consumed in war, and causing just as much - if not more - carnage by my own hands. There must be something about the immersion of a first-player game that hooks me, and if it's the attention paid to the little things, then Far Cry 2 is an example of showing us how it's done.
Grab your bottle of malaria pills and pick the least rusted weapon you can find, because we're about to be thrown into the furnace.
It's not the devil that may cry when playing these games, but me. As time goes on and I notice more and more of my skills drip away from wherever I store them, playing a game like Devil May Cry generally results in sadness and disappointment.
Devil May Cry was new and different, and button-mashing wouldn't be anywhere near enough to see me through it. Devil May Cry 3 cranked up the style, and with it the difficulty, but it was technical problems that finally put an end to my (pathetic) run through its early missions. Once more, my skills just weren't up to scratch to make progress, let alone make progress in style.
Now it's time for Devil May Cry 4, a new entry for a new generation of consoles, and I'm playing it with a hand in need of rest for some mysterious (and maybe even wholly psychological) reason. My hand feels... off. A little weaker and a little slower than I know it to be, but it does work. Enough to grasp a PS3 controller and carve up some demons? Let's find out.
The 1001 list deems Bangai-O Spirits "a game that defies description", a shooter merged with a puzzler with levels inspired by other video games. Wikipedia just goes with "action" because you do things, I guess.
The name rang a bell, but I think I was confusing it with something like Boktai for the Game boy Advance. Playing the original Bangai-O for this 1001 list a few years back clearly didn't leave me with a lasting impression...
What, then, does this handheld sequel that diverges quite a bit from the first game have to offer us? Some kind of chocolate firework? I think the 1001 list needs to go and lie down for a little bit.
"I don't want to set the world on fire." Where were you when that Fallout 3 trailer landed? Alright, as far as monumental occasions go, the trailer for Fallout 3 isn't exactly earth-shattering, but this would be the first Fallout title in a long while, and not only was it coming to consoles, but it was coming from the folks behind The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I could not be more interested. Oblivion With Guns was coming.
My literal first encounter with the series was an afternoon at a friends house, watching him on his computer, but I consider Fallout 3 to be my introduction to the Fallout universe. For those familiar with the isometric RPGs of the past, the drastic switch to a first/third-person perspective would be controversial, among many other topics for discussion, but for me, this was simply kinda cool. I played the hell out of Oblivion and wanted to play the hell out of Fallout 3 as well.
Survival horror is not my favourite genre of video game, not by a long shot, but since playing a fair few titles for this 1001 list, I've got more of an understanding about what it is that fans of the genre admire.
Most of my issues with these games are the limiting controls, be they because of hardware limitations on the early consoles, for example, or design choices to keep you on your toes, and not let you get on top of your surroundings.
Resident Evil 4 was a turning point for the way the genre was presented and, importantly, controlled. It was easier for new players to grasp and it was still just as spooky to play as any other survival horror game, but for me, it was still a bit of a slog. I liked the over the shoulder camera, but not the controls that go along with it, even knowing they're a vast improvement over earlier titles.
What I need is Resident Evil 4 with a bit of refinement. And a plot that isn't too bonkers. And maybe set it somewhere that isn't brown? What's Dead Space?
The physics playgrounds return to haunt me, as does Flash, this time in Fantastic Contraption, a little toolbox to play around with on your lunch break. Your goal is clear. Can you get there?
Yeah, right. Like I've got the brains to get there. Come on then. Let's see how fast we fail.
Nothing says "classy minimalism" quite like a string quartet and a wobbly man. But you can't just have a wobbly man chilling on stage in front of a string quartet. No, that's not classy enough. That's not minimalist enough.
You need to drop the wobbly man into an Oscar Reutersvärd-inspired impossible geometry platform puzzle, where he'll casually walk around his environment as best he can to the laid back sounds of a string quartet, contrasting with your frantically working brain as you try to work out how to manipulate the perspective in Echochrome.
This was a sight to see on the PlayStation 3, and one I'm finally giving a proper look towards.
No mono anymore, I want them to turn red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple...
Colour. It's everywhere. Sometimes it isn't very apparent, though, looking a little drab, a bit bland, and generally miserable to look at. A bright and colourful space, if done correctly, can bring new life to the area, sparking positivity and creativity and good vibes all around.
So when an evil corporation takes over your town and saps the colourful life out of every single thing in sight, and you happen to be a watery blob capable of absorbing paint pigments and splattering them upon every surface imaginable, you know what to do, don't you?
Nintendo Wii title de Blob puts you in such a circumstance. Obviously, otherwise, this would be an absolute waste of an introduction. Let's paint the town.
2D platformers often require a degree of precision that no other games do. To miss a jump is to die. To breathe on a threat is to die. In N+, to not even get through the stage in time is to die, so you better get a grip on the physics of being a minimalist gold-hunting ninja pretty sharpish.
I wasn't too pleased with Fable. Even with the English language being correctly represented through all kinds of colourful accents, a lengthy beginning section sapped all the enjoyment I may have had for the game itself, and I haven't gone back to it since.
Perfect time to see if the sequel has improved on things, then. Enter Fable II, open-world action-RPG where everything matters, and by everything, I mean how long you maintain a fart for. Don't understand? Neither do I.
As Adobe Flash dies (or has it finally actually been killed off by now?), we get to experience another little gem of a game that I have never come across on my travels, Cursor*10, a small puzzle game where you've got to be a team player... with yourself.
My time with Civilization games has been long and fruitless. With multiple paths to victory, there are multiple ways to fail, and I have seen them all it seems. Nothing I do is good enough, fast enough, precise enough. Another nation always pips me to the post, rubs my nose in it, and kicks me when I'm down.
But like an absolute idiot, I keep coming back for more. This very second I am re-installing Civilization VI because of my experience playing Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, a "simpler" game designed for consoles and handhelds that aims to give you a considerable chunk of the full Civilization experience.
50 minutes of downloading to go, let's see how I got here.
Hack & Slash. Beat 'em Up. Button mashing. There's pleasure in the simple things. Following an intricate story, solving a challenging puzzle, mastering complex mechanics... sometimes you're just not in the mood. You want to sit back and press an attack button over and over, watching the chaos unfold.
It can be too simple, though. You'd prefer it if your button mashing made you look cool, or if the context was humourous. It'd probably be much better with co-op partners, too, to really hammer home that old school feeling of fighting your buddies as much as you fight the baddies.
A game like that could take many forms, but chunky colourful visuals from the golden era of Flash gaming, from the folks at Newgrounds, no less, sure sounds like a damn good idea, and that pretty much leaves us with Castle Crashers.
Will the knights in shining armour please rise and promptly run out of the castle to hack and slash everything in sight? And try not to hit each other?
Who doesn't love a good quiz? Me. It's got to be a good quiz, mind you. None of this Mensa application rubbish, or intellectual nonsense that only strokes the quiz-masters ego, no. I like my quizzes to be sensible for the most part, and humourous for the rest.
It's fair to say I was never mad for the Burnout series. Enjoyable, but I wasn't desperate to own or play each and every title. When the series went open world, giving players the playground that was Paradise City in Burnout Paradise, it still wasn't a title that entered into my thoughts.
So far as I can tell, it wouldn't be until 2011 when I got it as part of the apology deal for the massive PSN outage, and even then, I was more interested in inFamous and whatever else I downloaded. But, eventually, at some point in time, I played Burnout Paradise for some six hours or so, and it wasn't bad at all.
When was that and what did I get up to? I've got no idea. It might as well never have happened, so let's consider this hectic street racer a fresh new title to sink my teeth into. Probably right into the dashboard, if it's a Burnout title...
The two-dimensional platformer is a solid starting point for independent video game developers. It's a safe idea, as it's a genre that has been around since, effectively, the dawn of video gaming, and has been shown to work in a variety of situations.
When technology advanced enough to add a third dimension, platformers adapted well and spread out into yet more environments, challenging players to use what they've known for perhaps years already but in another axis of direction.
What if the third dimension that platformers found wasn't a dimension of space, but of time? It's not a question often asked, because the answer is Braid. Braid is what happens when 2D skips 3D and enters 4D.
At last, we have made it to the final Mario Kart title on the 1001 list, Mario Kart Wii. The series has been a bit hit and miss, highlights including DS and, obviously, Super Mario Kart, and the games have been a clear example of knowing what you're going to get.
New Nintendo console? New Mario Kart title. New controller gimmick? Better show the world how to use it. Grab your plastic steering wheel attachment and stick new batteries in your Wiimote, because we're about to go racing.
Jumping. Don't you just love to jump? It's so freeing. It's like flying. And video game jumps are often ridiculous and gravity-defying, which makes them all the more useful. But not all games have a jump, of course. Platformers do, though, don't they? I mean, you wouldn't want them to not have a jump, would you?
Apparently, some folks do, and those folks are fans of Bionic Commando Rearmed, a remake of an NES title from 1988, and a rather faithful one at that, based on a quick glance at some screenshots.
How does not jumping fly in 2008? We'll be doing a lot of climbing instead, right?
"Oh look. New guy's dead." "Already? I was just about to learn his name."
Source // EA
How do you bring the Battlefield experience to consoles? Eventually, I'd find out what I was missing in the form of Battlefield 3, my introduction to the series, but this was a smaller, limited version of the real deal. Player counts were capped and some maps shrunk in size, but when you don't know what you're missing all is good, right?
Case in point, perhaps, is Battlefield: Bad Company, a sort of spin-off game designed for consoles to give players a taste of Battlefield. Squad-based gameplay across vast expanses of land traversed on foot, in vehicles, or through the air, where seemingly everything can be blown up and reduced to rubble.
I've heard a lot of praise for its sequel, but have checked out neither title. I'm not even sure why I wasn't interested in it in the first place but would be devouring everything I could find regarding Battlefield 3 a few years later.
Let's see whether my console FPS history should have taken a different course.
Galactic battles between hundreds of ships can be presented to a gaming audience in many ways, most of which involve, well, space ships, unloading all kinds of futuristic weaponry through the void towards their target, but unless if you're in an epic EVE Online war, does any galactic battle feel galactic?
And even if you do find yourself in the thick of it in EVE, your computer may struggle to render the view at all. You didn't ask for a photo of a galactic battle, you want to experience one. Ships from multiple planets being flung at a target in, hopefully, overwhelming numbers, but in a readable way.
Enter the cold hard stats and triangular representation of ships in Galcon, a rapid-fire RTS that will not hesitate to fight back.
"Believe it or not, they really like being exploded!"
The 1001 list does group things together in the most unusual ways sometimes. First, we had an addictive mobile puzzler Bejeweled Twist. Then we had wildlife photography simulator Afrika. Now, somehow, the two are combined as we watch a wildlife documentary about the fascinating lives of critters in addictive mobile puzzler Critter Crunch.
The closest I've ever come to an African Safari is whatever the BBC Natural History Unit decides is worth sitting in the blistering heat for years on end with an HD camera to capture and preserve for Sir David Attenborough to narrate over.
Wildlife you've never heard of performing extraordinary feats of survival in some of the harshest conditions for life there is on this planet. Wildlife you have heard of, personified and made relatable. Wildlife, out in the wilderness, minding its own business while we marvel at it all.
From my computer desk, I can glance out of the window and see the wilderness of a weed-covered patio, the odd bird hopping around P2's elaborate feeder, now overgrown with neglect because it's bloody cold out there this time of year. I could never see one animal hunt another unless the cats get lucky. I can't see anything big or bouncy or goofy looking, unless, again, the odd fat cat wanders through.
What I need is a digital safari. A hunt where the only shooting you'll do is through your camera, and where the playground is an entire continent. I need Afrika.
About a year ago the 1001 list threw up the casual gem-matching monster that was Bejeweled 2, for which I didn't have a great many kind words. Addictive and tacky, effectively, but who am I to argue with the millions who played it on their phones or whatever.
How do you go about developing on that idea? What do you do to warrant the purchase of another tile-matching game involving coloured gems and explosions of points?
How about you put a little twist into things? How about Bejeweled Twist?
From one musical puzzler to another, this time Auditorium, which gives you no choice on which music to listen to, and one heck of a particle puzzle to piece together before you're allowed to listen to the oh so chill tracks it offers.
Sit back, relax, and get ready to fiddle with some particle streams in an attempt to bring the orchestra to life.
If Patapon is too heavy on the drums, and Guitar Hero too focused on guitars, and Frequency too far in the past to remember much about, where are you going to turn to get your rhythm game kicks? What title will offer you the best selection of music tracks to zone out to? What game serves you your own music tastes to play with, and actually makes it all sound good by not cutting your favourite tracks up and forcing you to get good to hear them again?
Apparently, it's Audiosurf, a rhythm puzzler that has you drift and zip along whatever music you want in an attempt to hit the high scores. Let's find some tunes to surf.
SAVING CONTENT. PLEASE DON'T TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE.
Source // MobyGames
I played Banjo-Kazooie and liked it more than Super Mario 64. I played Banjo-Tooie and was bored out of my mind, almost angry that it was something I had to play. After a long, long wait, fans of the series would finally see a third entry, on the Xbox 360 of all things.
But Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts isn't just an HD version of a Banjo title. It isn't just a third-person hunt for collectables. It's something much, much different.
I've left the series alone, content with having nothing to do with it. I'm certainly in no rush to return to the Nintendo 64 anytime soon, but I did make a note of the Rare Replay ports being a possibility, and now there's this modern Banjo-Kazooie to show me what I've missed out on. Is Nuts & Bolts going to be the Banjo-Kazooie game to finally get me on board with the series?
Buckle up and we'll find out.
SAVING CONTENT. PLEASE DON'T TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE.
It's no surprise that I like video games. I wouldn't be going through this many of them if I didn't. I've grown up with video games, I've not really stopped playing video games, I get a lot of my entertainment from video games.
But my other big passion is gaming on the tabletop. It was once in the form of mass-market board games, then of pencil and paper RPGs, and then, a few years ago, mostly thanks to P2 (though I will admit I took the ball and didn't so much run with it, but outright blast it off to space), board and card games.
They're big business these days, we're quite defensive about them, we will fight you on your incorrect opinions - it's very much like video gaming, actually. Give it twenty years and we'll all look back with a different set of eyes and appreciate some of them a little more, though The Mind can piss right off.
That's another topic for another day because we're talking about a video game version of Carcassonne, which, according to P2, is the absolute best you can get from a board game. She's wrong, but not by much, and it's the Xbox Live Arcade that plays host to this version.
Grab your Meeples. Yes, the things that look like fat people. Just pick them up already and let's get tiling.
The PlayStation Portable was home to a fair few oddities, with two big titles coming to mind, famed for their charmingly simple looks and catchy music. The one I'm more familiar with will appear elsewhere on this 1001 list, but the other is the rhythm strategy side-scrolling beat 'em up, I guess, that is Patapon.
You are the Almighty, God of the Patapons, beating the drum that leads them towards... It.
What is "It", anyway? I've no idea, but it's all the way over at Earthend, presumably quite far to the right. Get your rhythm going and watch your believers march to the beat of the drum.
What's the difference between strategy and tactics? Semantics? In video games, there is a difference between the two, which may become apparent in World in Conflict, an alternate history real-time tactics war game marketed and styled like a real-time strategy game.
You won't be base building or mining for resources here. There's just no time. A surprise invasion on American soil needs quick reactions and smart execution of orders as you use your environment as best you can to repel the Russian forces.
For a game critically hailed as an excellent demonstration of how the Nintendo Wii and only the Nintendo Wii can do this kind of thing, and one that had the potential to change how we all interact with adventure games, there really isn't a lot of Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure out there for us to have a look at.
I've certainly never heard of it, but then I didn't pay much attention to anything that came out on the Wii. Now I've got a copy of this mysterious game, I might as well find out what it seems so many other players never did. Just what is Zack & Wiki?
The 1001 book contains a lot of pictures, and it usually brings out a chuckle when I find that the imagery chosen was one of the first you could find with a basic image search. What puzzles me from time to time, though, is imagery that doesn't quite represent the game that it's attached to.
You see, I'm lead to believe that Warhawk is about flying a fancy looking futuristic jet fighter through the skies as war rages below you. At least that's what the box art shows me. And doesn't 'hawk' lend itself to aircraft more than tanks?
A multiplayer exclusive game for the PlayStation 3, whose single-player content was supposedly cut for lack of quality. Ooh. This is going to be tricky.
"There's a reason we drive Axon vehicles... they're the best."
Unreal Tournament 2004 was a solid first-person shooter. Sure, I still haven't experienced the multiplayer modes against humans, where I would be utterly wrecked in seconds, but I played enough of it for me to like it. An old-school shooter with glowing powerups and bloody and burnt chunks of meat scattered all over the floor.
How do you follow that up in the era of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and their push for more realistic graphics? They're beefy enough machines for all the giblets, aren't they? Should Unreal Tournament make its way to consoles?
Well, whether you agree or not, Unreal Tournament 3 made itself known on the homes of Master Chief and... what's the big Sony FPS? Killzone? Whatever, the point is that the tournament is more accessible, and now doesn't seem to be much of a tournament at all.
Keyboard and mouse at the ready, let's ignore the consoles and see what's what.
After briefly skimming through my thoughts on the previous two Wipeout/wipEout/wipE'out" titles the 1001 list insisted we played, I have to conclude that the series can come across as a bit of a mixed bag. The games are a phenomenal blend of techno and action, set against the most stylish graphic design languages gaming has ever seen. Probably. But they can be a right pain in the arse to play sometimes, even when you call yourself a fan.
I do call myself a fan, but I must admit that, like the 1001 list, I kind of ignored the series in its middle. I can't actually remember if I ever owned the seventh entry - blimey, seventh? - the PlayStation Portable's second Wipeout, Wipeout Pulse. wipEout pulse. Whatever.
If I do still own it, I was a clever enough sod to leave it a few hundred miles away in the safety of a garage, which is a tad unfortunate, but there are ways and means to play video games, aren't there. And I'm not talking about the PS2 port of this, either...
Nintendo leaks? Old news. We've smuggled out information about the 801/1001 Project from IBM themselves. Must be concerning The 801/1001 Milestone Awards, some dork's attempt at ranking a bunch of old video games for no apparent reason other than that he can. Who gave him a free platform to host this 'content' on? Google? Write their names down, we'll get on that as soon as we see how laughable his decisions are.
Fifty games go by so quickly. It feels like only a few months since the last time I had a refresher on how far I'd come. 4/5's of the way through the 1001 list. Blimey. Just think if I'd have been an idiot and insisted on completing them all. I'd be stuck on... well, I shudder to think. We might still be farting around on the NES after 5 years.
But here we are in the late-2000s checking out titles from FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage to Wii Fit. Quite the contrast in games there, that's for sure, but where will they end up ranking?
Before even trying to think about the best, we've got to weed out the titles that don't have much of chance in featuring. Titles that exist, but don't really evoke anything one way or the other. Might be good, might be bad, definitely be, in the Shakespearean sense. Here are The Indifferent 5.
Ooh, crikey. Bad time for puzzle games, eh? Even Puzzle Quest made the shortlist for this, but I don't think that belongs in the same list as this lot.
I do like the next award. What Was That 1 Even Put On The List For? always gets me going. What I do when collating these awards is scroll back through the blog posts. That's all. A little refresher of what I've recently played. Enough to remind me of the good times and the bad. One title stood out for this award, and by 'stood out', I mean 'leapt about like an idiot, shouted really loudly, dwarfed all other contenders and even started to make my blood boil'.
What an absolute waste of an entry, much like Ninja Gaiden: Whatnot before it.
But what do we replace this rubbish with? Preferably a game we've not played before. Maybe a genre or series that doesn't get enough attention.
There were two contenders that I was thinking about here. One was Stuntman: Ignition, because the idea of a stuntman having to perform ridiculous routines timed to perfection for a bunch of gold stars is amusing, though the gameplay isn't exactly easy.
As such, the answer to You Forgot What?! needs to be the kind of game where you can zone out a little and just button mash your way through hundreds of enemies like they're made of paper. And if possible, such a game, perhaps based on Ancient Chinese history, should feature giant mechs.
Oh. There is such a game. Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. I've not played it, but for a series as long-lasting as Dynasty Warriors, a series no stranger to spin-off titles, I'm surprised that not even one of them made it to the 1001 list. Alright, they may not be the greatest video games of all time, but everyone's impressed by how many enemies they put in your path, and how wonderfully easy it seems it is to swat them out of the way.
Plus, this one has mechs. I've not played it, could be garbage, but I'll take it over Mercury bloody Meltdown bloody Revolution, that's for sure.
And now to the main event, where all the cool games hang out. This one, from the looks of it, is rather swayed by nostalgia and personal preference, I must say. Objective rankings won't be seen here, and nor will they ever on a Milestone Awards post, except by sheer dumb luck.
Sneaking into the top ten is Gabe Logan and his almost impossibly good PSP game - a title that actually made me seek out a nearly 4-hour video of every PSP game to see what other hidden gems I've missed.
A cheeky entry this, seeing as I've played basically ten minutes of it, but that brief glimpse felt like more over the top action-packed fun, and I like the sound of that.
Another cheeky entry, but I felt at home when playing it, the art style is great, and I can scribble on maps. I want more games that allow me to scribble on maps.
It's the game that got me to admit there was something to all of these Mario games. The game I begrudgingly accept to be pretty damn good, simply because I wrongly want to treat all Mario games as games for kids.
As far as racing in the mud goes, there were better looking and sounding games in this very batch, but Motorstorm hasn't gone on to give me another 4 games to sink tens of hours into like the DiRT series has - and I'm counting DiRT 5 in that list, and I don't even own it.
Part nostalgia it, part brand new adventure with characters and gameplay I love. It was hella frustrating at times, but I pushed through because I wanted to, and enjoyed doing so.
Short, sweet, humongous impact on video gaming. Can't be ignored.
But it's not number 1. Nope. That goes to the birth of the wonderful Uncharted series, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Perhaps not quite as quotable as Portal, but much longer and more impressive to look at.
Is it impressive enough to break into The Topper Than That Top Ten though? The frontrunners of this list haven't budged in bloody ages. Is it possible to do so, or do I now just stubbornly refuse to rank anything higher than Snake Eater? Let's find out!
Must be included simply because it sort of allowed me to relive my youth, in the same way I hope the rest of that trilogy will do, if and when I get around to them, and of course the PS5 outing somewhere in the future.
I was uhming and ahhing over which was the better jungle, this or Snake Eater, for a while. Believe me, I was mighty tempted to put this above MGS, but I think that'd be saying that story is more important than gameplay. Yeah, I know that's what I tend to prefer, but we are talking about MGS3 here, remember.
MGS3 doing all the technology before Uncharted and its water. Oooh, water, big whoop. Let me just dig this crossbow bolt out of my leg and I'll show you what 'technology' really is...
A game so good that even if you tried to remake it, you'd only end up failing to capture whatever it was that made MGS so special in the late-1990s. It just is amazing. How I'm not always sure.
Close change in the middle, but this list is getting mighty familiar now. There are only 200 games left to fight for these awards. I'm looking forward to the next lot, especially when the next game on the list takes me back to a series I'm all over: Wipeout Pulse. How is this one styled? wipEout pulse. Eh, could be better.
The days are getting shorter, and bathing your face in the warm glow of the TV gets more and more appealing. It's that or venture outdoors, but out there is the winter of 2020, so that's not happening. Stay safe, and game on.
Now there's something for your body to do while you're Brain Training.
Source // Nintendo
For the longest time now, I've owned a Nintendo Wii balance board and have done nothing with it. I don't get drawn to the Wii for my entertainment. Never have been. But then this 1001 list tends to point out what you've missed out on quite a bit, and in an attempt to broaden my knowledge of video gaming for reasons I don't quite know for sure, I've gotten hold of a balance board, enough AA batteries to power it, and a copy of Wii Fit.
"You act as if you've never seen a German U-boat in the middle of the jungle before."
Source // Naughty Dog
One of the first video games I got was Tomb Raider on the PlayStation. I wasn't terribly good at it, but the mix of action and adventure, of shootouts with dangerous wildlife and clambering up ruins, was a key part of the fun. On top of that, of course, you had in Lara Croft a main character that was more than likeable and impressively capable for the many challenges she would face.
She was originally going to be male in a game that would very much be Indiana Jones-like because the idea of a treasure hunting smart-ass is an appealing one. It's just that we didn't quite get a treasure hunting smart-ass until Lara had retreated to the shadows and the PlayStation 3 loomed on the horizon.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune follows the story of Nathan Drake as he attempts to hunt down El Dorado, the lost city of gold. He's not alone, though, and the competition isn't the type to want to put lost artefacts on display in a museum.
Limber up, because treasure hunting isn't quite what it used to be.
Do you remember when the future of warfare was all interlinked video feeds and heads up displays and tactical battle maps fed directly into soldiers' brains or something? A future where every aspect of the fight was data-driven? Satellites buzzed overhead and beamed down what might as well be live footage of the battlefield, soldiers scoped the field with drones and robots, augmented reality displays told you exactly how close to death an enemy combatant was, as well as allowing you to see him through walls.
This is the kind of near-future that makes for great video games, and it's the kind that authors like Tom Clancy can run with. What would it mean to lose your electronic connection in the war? You'd have to use your own eyes and your own brain. That'd be barbaric, and I'd be lost.
As it happens, Tom Clancy lent his name to a series of tactical shooters called Ghost Recon, and as the series went on, the future became more futuristic and it adopted this hyper-connected digital battlefield experience in the form, ultimately, of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, a bit of a mouthful, but basically a way to say "Future Soldiers, look!"
And who doesn't want to be part of a cool squad of near-future soldiers?
Did someone ask for a direct sequel to The Wind Waker on the Nintendo DS? Because that's we've got in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, an action-adventure that will take you back to the seas and have you swiping and slashing and 'hiyah!'-ing your way around the world you wish Nintendo used more often.
I don't quite know where my love of The Wind Waker comes from - I still haven't made any progress out of that prison, but sure intend to. Now I learn (yeah, I'm not on top of the Zelda series, who knew?) of a sequel that I can hopefully enjoy just as much? Where do I sign up? Get me a ship!
Inspiration for video games can come from anywhere. Books. Films. Fever dreams. Shopping districts? Shopping districts is a new one, but Shibuya and its youth of the mid-2000s were ripe for use in an action-RPG on the Nintendo DS.
What would such a game look like? Thick stylized artwork and colours that pop. What would it play like? Different. Fairly different. What's it called already? The World Ends With You.
A bold title for a game based on a shopping district.
"Chief I'm picking up something. A distress signal."
You might think third-person shooter action stealth games are both hard to succinctly describe and dominated by the likes of Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, but there are entire series of games in this vein that players could enjoy just as much. Well, in theory. One of those series is Syphon Filter, of which I know so little about despite there being six games over the span of just 8 years.
As a fan of MGS, you might have thought I'd be somewhat aware of its competition, or at least somewhat similar games, but with regards to Syphon Filter and it's sixth and final entry, Logan's Shadow, that just isn't the case.
I was shocked to learn that this game was the sixth entry in the series, and shocked once more when it was initially a PlayStation Portable title, only getting a PlayStation 2 port three years later. To complete the shocking trilogy, it plays rather well. Let's find out how.
A long time ago, this 1001 list had me playing Total Annihilation for the first time, a game I didn't know existed, and one I saw as a hidden gem of the RTS genre - and not because it had big mechs.
Time passes, technology develops, but there'd be no more Total Annihilation until spiritual successor Supreme Commander came along, which is basically the same deal as before: big stompy mechs building and manufacturing the machines of the Infinite War.
Do we have what it takes to end such a vast battle?
This must be the 'spherical worlds' section of the 1001 list, as Super Stardust HD comes in hot on the trail of Super Mario Galaxy to show you that you don't just have to guide a plumber around to have a good time. That didn't sound good. My point is that if plumbers aren't your thing, you could always pilot spaceships instead in space shooter Super Stardust HD.
After the big drip that was Super Mario Sunshine, I would probably say that I wasn't eagerly awaiting the next 3D Mario instalment at all. I never really have, to be honest, and am only getting around to them because of this 1001 list.
The next up, though, promises to take us on a journey through the galaxy, navigating three dimensions in ways you never thought possible, or are at least new to a lot of people now in possession of a Nintendo Wii.
How will the one and only Mario make use of motion controls in Super Mario Galaxy? Let's stick some batteries in the damn thing and find out.
I have never seen the appeal of Team Fortress 2. I mean, I understand how a first-person team shooter can be engaging, and unique classes can work together to form a formidable threat, and how cartoony characters and aesthetics can make it stand out against your more run-of-the-mill FPS titles, but I really, personally, cannot find a reason to pick up Team Fortress 2 and play it for myself.
Except, of course, that the 1001 list says we should. So there's that, I guess.
I know Team Fortress 2 only for it being vastly popular for some reason and having too many hats or something. I don't know, and to be honest, I don't care, but lets at least give it a shot.
At what point did people start thinking that video games could truly be cinematic? It must have been around the time of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, right? When graphics were a clear leap above and beyond the previous consoles, which simply couldn't come anywhere close, and PC gamers didn't care. A cinematic game that pushes the hardware and delivers all the action and thrills of a Hollywood film is something now within the reach of a storyteller. Visually, I mean. To some degree.
So how do you go about showing that these modern machines are capable of such a spectacle? Maybe you reunite director John Woo with star Chow Yun-fat to make a sequel to their 1992 hit Hard Boiled. Maybe you show Stephen Spielberg that there really are better things than the Nintendo Wii to make- oh, you really do want a sequel to Hard Boiled? Okay, uhm, what about John Woo Presents Stranglehold?
Inspector Tequila Yuen returns, weapons in both hands, muscled stretched and limbered up ready for diving and clambering and showing off how stylish John Woo can make his movies. Only this time, it's a game.
"People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. They feel better then. They find it easier to live."
Source // MobyGames
Geralt of Rivia hasn't been around the video game scene for too long, but over the course of just a few games that lean heavily on the more mature side of fantasy monster hunting that the source material provides, he has become one of the all-time greats.
Originally starring in a series of novels and short stories, it'd be a decade before he was picked up by a developer who wasn't really a developer, but a publisher of foreign games in their native Poland, CD Projekt Red. You might know their development history. The Witcher, The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077. And like Valve with Steam, they're the brains behind GOG as well.
They've done well for themselves since their first game, an action-RPG in the world of the supernatural and the fantastical, of monsters both inhumane and mere man and woman. The Witcher is here to collect the bounty and move on, and he's damn good at it.
As of 1986, 'Chernobyl' means only one thing, and it doesn't matter when you were born, you know what that thing is. The exclusion zone is still home to life but not quite as we know it, and the mysterious nature of an entire city being effectively frozen in time and swamped in radiation inevitably leads to other-worldly stories.
Video games are no stranger to the call of Chernobyl. We've already gone through the eery stillness in one of the greatest levels in video game history in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and now, sort of via a book and film, comes S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, an alternate reality first-person survival horror game set in a region where nothing is quite as it seems.
