Who's got two thumbs and questions regarding whether this 1001 list has too many sequels? Disgaea! Dis guy. Me. Get it?
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is the sequel to Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, which I thought was alright mechanically, but didn't want to spend much time, if any, with the main characters, or their plight, in whatever the setting was. It was a nice concept for a tactical RPG but needed a different lick of paint for me to be interested.
Can the sequel sort my problems with the first game out, or is it just more of the same?
"We have discovered a new type of energy pattern that will benefit our economy by +1 percent."
I should have known. Why didn't I think about the title just a little bit harder? Why did it take so long for me to realise that Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords was Civilization in space? Well, Alpha Centauri is Civilization in space, but you get the point.
GalCiv II is the next frontier. We've conquered the lands, now we need to conquer the galaxy. Ignore that I've failed in every attempt to win any Civ game, even those not on the 1001 list. We're in space now. More freedom to move around without bumping into a single other alien race, right? Should be a doddle.
Sports and video games are an obvious pairing. Rockstar Games and video games also go well together. Rockstar Games and sports, though... that's not a combination you think about all too often, if at all. Thanks to a history of violent video games, the release of Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis turned some heads.
Rockstar? Doing Table Tennis? What? Just... what?
But here it is, in all its simulation glory. The gold standard for table tennis video games. What else would you expect from Rockstar Games?
It's that time again. The moment where we roll back the clock in the middle of rolling back the clock to assess what the clock has shown us. Except it's not a clock that has shown us anything, it's a list of 1001 Must-Play Video Games, and instead of just assessing them we're shoving them on pedestals in The 701/1001 Milestone Awards.
The very latest batch of 50 old video games, from GT Legends to Fight Night Round 3, have shown themselves to the world, but only a mere fraction of them can hope to appear in The Top Ten, and fewer still have a chance to crack into The Topper Than That Top Ten.
Do we have some more recency biases on display this time out? Probably. But these awards are a joke to begin with. I mean, who would use an IBM 701 to introduce a set of video game awards?
Kicking us off, not because they want to but because they have to are The Indifferent 5, five games that are exactly that. Games. Take 'em, leave 'em, doesn't really matter. Surprisingly not as bland as previous winners, this lot. I must have found it hard to have no opinion about the games this time around. That, or I've forgotten - and stubbornly refuse to re-read - what I wrote. In no particular order, they are:
One of my favourite awards next, because everyone loves to argue over pointless things, don't they? In a list of 1001 video games, do you know how many there are that shouldn't be there? At least 20, otherwise The Milestone Awards would be over with quicker. Each batch contains some glaring errors, as we get to ask What Was That 1 Even Put On The List For?
There can be only one, and there was only one. Potentially even taking over from Pikmin 2 as the absolute embodiment of this question.
Congratulations go to Nintendo for not winning this for once. I've probably jinxed you to appear here next time, now...
In its place, of course, we must put something new. Something worthy. Here's an idea. If a remake/remaster/rerelease in the form of Ninja Gaiden Black is fair game, I answer the question You Forgot What?! with the fantastic remake/remaster/rerelease that is Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
Look at that. Horrible camera system stripped out and replaced with something that works. New difficulty levels designed with extreme Europeans in mind. Ape Escape crossover levels. And that's before we learn about the second disc, with Metal Gear Online, as well as the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, fully playable for those of us who don't have an MSX lying around. And you know there's more.
That's how you tweak a game.
Right, moving onto the good stuff. The Top Ten. A little strange, perhaps. The objective among you will wonder what I'm smoking, but I say nothing. I am merely high on the buzz that these lot give me, whether they're the greatest games of all time or not. You're free to make your own list if you think otherwise. Here we go:
I've got a dog called Monkey! I named him that, though. It wasn't the default choice. Don't know what we'll get up to, but it'll look all kinds of weird and impressive, even if I have to rely on fan-translated ROMs.
My plans after wrapping this post up? Begin my journey through this story with Yakuza 0. Yeah, it's not Yakuza 2, but that's how good Yakuza 2 was. Got me to want to play everything else.
That's a pretty strong second place. What have I been captivated by more than any of these titles, or the 40 others that weren't good enough to get here? Spoilers: They've done it again. First with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and now with Company of Heroes. How do you do it, Relic? Have you spaced out the sequels so that the next few Milestone Awards are yours too?
Which is better, though, 40k or WWII? That's a dumb question. Clearly, 40k is better. Which makes for the better game? Can CoH kick DoW off The Topper Than That Top Ten list? Scroll on and find out.
There it is, kicking Dawn of War off the list. Every few days since posting about it, I've played another level, enjoyed another level, wondered what the next one would bring.
So good that I've been waiting for the board game adaptation for a year, and will have to wait a year longer. Would nanomachines have helped in this COVID crisis? Yes, they would have. Thanks, world, for ignoring the genius of Kojima. Thanks.
And that's that. No change at the top. No change halfway down, either. It's going to be mighty tricky to topple these titles, but there are always challengers. Next up, something from Rockstar. Oooh.
I am not a fan of boxing. Never have been, likely never will be. You might think that strange, given I am a lapsed wrasslin' fan, perhaps. It just doesn't appeal, no matter how sweaty and bloody EA can make their athlete models in Fight Night Round 3.
The game is simple: one vs one punch 'em up. But we're on shiny new consoles, and that means ridiculous control schemes to mimic the brutal reality of the sport. It means HD textures showing every cut and bruise. It means making this round the final round, the definitive round, the only round worth talking about.
Brainless games have their place on store shelves, digital or otherwise. You can't always have the epic storylines, the incredible characters, or the game-changing mechanics. Sometimes, you just need to put something into the world for people to have fun with.
That's surely the reasoning behind the release of Earth Defense Force 2017, the near-future story where the planet is descended upon by giant insects and the shiniest of robots, working together to annihilate everything in sight - which happens to be what you'll be doing, armed with every kind of weapon you can think of to deal with this monumental problem.
There's a fire in a skyscraper. Who are you going to call for assistance? The fire brigade? No, you're not thinking straight. That'd make sense. No, what you need is an Escape Contractor, someone employed to get you out of trouble by grabbing you by the scruff of your neck and telling you what to do.
Don't know what an Escape Contractor does? It's time you looked into Exit 2, originally for the PlayStation Portable, a stylish action-puzzler with a clear goal:
Who doesn't love Lara Croft? She may frustrate the hell out of us with the way she controls, and be completely unrelatable to a great many people, yet we pick up sequel after sequel because we know we'll be in for an action-packed and puzzly dive through ancient ruins and otherworldly beasts.
Or at least gamers did back in the early days. Not all Tomb Raider titles are worth your time, and in a moment of concern perhaps, it was decided that Lara needed a bit of a reboot. A new origin story. New mechanics. The result was Tomb Raider: Legend.
Music. It's there to soothe, it's there to inspire, it's there to motivate. So, too, are the Elite Beat Agents, governmental Men in Black who will dance your troubles away, their rhythmical moves turning whatever frowns you have upside-down and much more besides.
It's perhaps not the kind of backstory you expected for a rhythm game, but I for one am glad that there is at least something going on here other than my lack of musical talent. Everyone ready?
I didn't fall for the Nintendo Wii hype. Too gimmicky. Too childish. Too few buttons on the controller (which wasn't even shaped like a controller) and not enough horses under the bonnet to put on a good show, the Wii didn't raise any interest from me, and a great many of its must-play games are unknown to me.
Games like Elebits, a first-person shooter of sorts where you play as young Kai, a kid hunting for Elebits hidden inside cupboards and under desks. Hmm. Not exactly a thrilling description, but it sure fits the family-friendly approach of the console it was developed for.
How good are we at hide and seek? Well, we only need the seek part, really. How good are we are finding stuff? Let's find out.
What the hell kind of a title is Eets: Hunger. It's Emotional? What does that even mean? I know we're no stranger to weird titles, but this one must take the biscuit. And proceed to eat it, presumably.
The 1001 list has this down as a game for the PlayStation Portable, but not only does Wikipedia beg to differ, it even goes so far as to say that it was pitched as a title for the Nintendo DS and PSP, and failed to land on either.
Think 2020 is the year of the shit hitting the fan? Believe it or not, it could be worse. Much worse. You could have me in charge of defences in a global thermonuclear war. How do I know not to have me at the helm? Why a game of DEFCON, of course.
"I don't think they had zombie-infested malls in mind when they wrote those regulations, kid."
Source // Moby Games
I don't really care for zombies. Yes, I've seen a few films and games about the shambling monstrosities, but I don't seek them out above anything else. I'm not drawn towards them in any way like they're drawn towards the living. If a game about zombies wants to get my attention, it needs to be damn special, and probably focus on anything but zombies.
All that means Dead Rising has a bit of work to do...
Organized crime makes for quite the engaging story if The Wire has taught me anything. If there's another thing The Wire teaches us, it's that some stories are a slow burn, requiring plenty of investment upfront before a big payoff later on.
Enter Yakuza 2, sure The Wire of video gaming. Loads of characters, buckets of backstory, grand plans for domination of the city seamlessly interweaved with the day-to-day lives of everyone. Going to the shops. Playing some games. Just getting by.
I know very little of the now sprawling Yakuza series. Something about Japanese organized crime gangs. Lots of fighting. Lots of side content. An awful lot of story. I never got into it because I saw it as 'too Japanese', whatever that means, so let's see what epic we've missed out on.
Nobody likes a bully. But a fair few people like Bully, the action-adventure title that rips Grand Theft Auto from the city and shoves it into Bullworth Academy, a boarding school full of stereotypes and parodies that you'd expect from a Rockstar game.
Can we survive a day as the new kid, or will we be calling our parents to come back and pick us up?
I didn't know how much I would like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War going into it. I knew it was one of the highlights in the grand list of Warhammer video games, but I didn't know why. I played it, enjoyed it, played it some more, finished it, eventually got around to getting the expansions and am currently working my way through those too. And that's before any talk of sequels, which is just as exciting.
But the grim dark future isn't everybody's cup of tea. Some folks prefer the grim darkness of the past, and it doesn't get much darker than the Second World War. What if an RTS like Dawn of War was set in 1944, with much-improved graphics and new mechanics? Surely I'd be onto another winner.
Previously, we failed to work our way through much of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis,the military simulation that pulls no punches and demands your attention. I have since opened that boxed version to see what goodies were inside. Nothing, basically. The military isn't about goodies. It's about getting difficult jobs done without getting your colleagues killed.
Breaking away from Codemasters to show they could go it alone, Bohemia Interactive released ArmA: Armed Assault, the next step in their military simulator series. Just as demanding, just as convoluted, just as scary, this is probably going to turn out no different from their earlier game: I'm not going to survive very long.
"The world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told."
Video games and physics. Some games strive for realism and try their best to keep you grounded. Other games just don't care. Somewhere in the broad middle are games that have consistent, reliable physics, even if they are different from the values we're familiar with outside of video games.
So long as these predictable values stay the same, a game can make use of these 'strange' physics to give us a variety of experiences, from the wacky levels of Psychonauts to the mind-bending, portal-traversing, out-of-body moving Prey, a first-person shooter that will have you questioning what 'first-person' even means.
Tommy is dissatisfied with his life. He wants to venture out into the wider world. Unfortunately for him, higher powers have different plans...
Guns. They're seemingly everywhere in video games. Some games do them justice, for want of a better word, depicting them as miniature death-dealing cannons. Other games just don't care. One end goes bright and the enemy looking at it falls over.
After some successful Burnout racing games, Criterion Games got to work on putting as much effort into firearms as they did into fast cars. Or perhaps it's better to say 'as much effort into the effects of firearms on the environment, as they did for the effects of a fast car speeding crashing into oncoming traffic'.
How many times has this 1001 list proven that games build upon what came before, tweaking and adapting them, taking genres in new directions? It happens an awful lot. Nothing is original, after all, and taking inspiration from Resident Evil 4 and Kill Switch, Gears of War helps demonstrate the point - before every other third-person shooter started acting like Gears of War.
The description is simple enough. Battle-hardened soldiers tackle an invasion coming from beneath their very feet, using chest-high walls for cover to allow them to flank their targets, and chainsaws strapped to their rifles to save on ammunition.
1971's take that card game UNO sits, at the time of writing, as the 19003rd best game on Board Game Geek, a site created by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts. 19 thousand people have given it a rating of 0-10, with the algorithm to average them all out declaring it's a 5.4/10.
To be fair to UNO, it's more of a family game. BGG ranks them too. UNO is ranked as the 1,950th best family game. Its time has come and gone. You can do far better than UNO if you're looking for a simple card game these days.
But we're here to play video games that you mustn't ignore, and in 2006, UNO hit the Xbox Live Arcade, and apparently blew everybody's minds.
Who said the Game Boy Advance is dead? I'll hear none of it. I may not have used mine to the fullest extent, but it sure was host to a great many must-play titles. Most of which I completely missed out on at the time, and now one of which that damn near everyone outside of Japan missed: Mother 3.
The concluding part of the Mother series, you'll be controlling distinctly pixelly characters as they face off against more weird alien foes in an RPG like no other. If you can read Japanese...
