Torchlight

Dog! To the shops!

Loot. Everyone loves loot, right? Ever since Diablo, crawling through a dungeon to shove everything that isn't nailed to the floor into your inventory is pretty cool.

I didn't have particularly good experiences with Diablo itself but casting my mind back to any of The Elder Scrolls games, I'll have memories of not being able to move because of being weighed down by loot. Remembering Borderlands, I'll be reminded of how difficult it can be to drop one weapon for another, even if, strictly speaking, the numbers are better on this new one.

But these games aren't pure dungeon crawlers, are they? Not like Diablo, and not like spiritual Diablo sequel, Torchlight.

One down. One very big dungeon. Are you ready to push deeper into it?

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

We're going to need more dish soap.

Source // MobyGames

There have been some strange titles on this 1001 list, hasn't there? Titles that don't give anything away, titles that don't seem to make sense in English, and titles like The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.

I always mistook it for The Dead Dishwasher Samurai, which is also somewhat accurate to who the main character of this game is: A dishwasher who was dead but has come back to life with flashbacks of being a samurai. At least, I think that's right. There's a lot more going on than that.

To find out what's what, we'll just have to let the hacking and the slashing commence.

Bayonetta

"Do you naughty little angels deserve a good spanking?"

Source // PlayStation

"Can you make a Devil May Cry game with a female lead?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"Can she be an 8-foot tall witch who strikes all the poses, speaks in an almost impossibly English accent, and wears a catsuit made of her own magical hair with guns for shoes?"

"..."

And that's how I'm going to introduce you to Bayonetta, an action title that is all about the action, with an awful lot of it. If you think Devil May Cry got a little silly and over the top, wait until you dive into this one.

Ninja Gaiden II

Slow down there, Ryu. You'll cut someone's arm off.

Source // Moby Games

When I said that Ninja Gaiden Black killed ninja games for me (what a bastard), I didn't think it would literally kill ninja games for me, but it did. Sat next to it in the DVD case was Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360, the new and improved (again?) sequel to Ninja Gaiden. Not a v1.5, but a v2.0.

With poor Internet, playing games offline has been basically all I can do, so it's a good job I've got hundreds ready to go, physically, digitally, even those made of cardboard. I am all set for having no Internet and playing Ninja Gaiden II.

But it has been killed before it even left that DVD case...

Devil May Cry 4

"Listen to my voice"

Source // MobyGames

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.

Castle Crashers

No, don't beat me up...

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?

No More Heroes

"I know a lot of gamers out there don't have much patience"...

Source // PlayStation

What happens when you give Johnny Knoxville a battery-powered lightsaber and tell him he's the 11th highest ranked assassin in the world? You get No More Heroes, a bizarre, almost cartoony, action-adventure hack and slash that will see you doing a little waggling with your Wiimote as you carve through your opponents.

I picked up this game from a charity shop in Edinburgh, but the box is covered in Spanish, so I might be in for a rather European affair when I pop this into my Wii. I bet the batteries in this need charging, as well...

Heavenly Sword

"There's something about that man I don't entirely trust."

Source // PlayStation

Are you a fan of God of War? Would you prefer Kratos to be a slim woman, with lots more hair? Are you desperate for a motion-controlled game of twing-twang?

No, I don't know what that is either, but I know all this can be found in Heavenly Sword, the action-adventure hack and slash title for the PlayStation 3 that showed what a mix of Hollywood and video games could result in - mixed reactions, obviously.

Clear your afternoon, because Nariko is about the clean house.

Devil May Cry 3

Sweet dreams...

The white-haired, trenchcoat-wearing devil-killer Dante is back in action in 'please forget about Devil May Cry 2' prequel to Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening.

I am quietly confident that I owned DMC3 way back when but absolutely confident that I didn't do a whole lot with it. I liked the idea of the DMC games more than I liked actually trying to play them. I wasn't very good, and if my recent(ish) time with Devil May Cry has shown me, I sure haven't gotten any better over the years.

As I've not gotten better, and therefore not finished DMC, and as DMC3 is an origin story, of sorts, there's no reason to put off playing this any longer. Let's don the jacket we probably don't deserve to wear and get to sleighing some nasties.

Oh, and once again:

Lovely.

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner

High Speed Robot Action

As a fan of Metal Gear and most things Mech, you'd have thought that I would be on board with Zone of the Enders, a space epic featuring orbital frames capable of destroying whatever stands in their way.

Its main selling point (arguably) was that it came with the playable demo of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but I was quite happy to wait for a demo from elsewhere. I didn't need to buy a whole other game just to get my hands on it, and in truth, I probably wasn't as big a mech nut back then as I am now.

Z.O.E. wasn't met with massive acclaim but was rewarded with a sequel that did exactly what needed to be done in the form of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner... and I've still not played that either. And yes, I own multiple copies of the series...

Let's see if we can change that.

Maximo: Ghosts to Glory

"If there's no more dead, then I'm out of a job. Now go!"

The dead rise from the underworld. Royalty needs saving. Your underwear remains your last line of defence, as the Ghosts 'n Goblins series enters the third dimension in Maximo: Ghosts to Glory.

The jump from two dimensions to three is not always a pleasant one, but some games can pull it off. A hack and slashy platformer shouldn't have too many troubles in this generation, but will we? It is, after all, a homage to the no-nonsense, high difficulty Ghosts 'n Goblins, and I didn't get too far through that...

Devil May Cry

"Well, well, what do we have here?"

When this game was initially released, it passed me by. When the sequel came out, I was more aware of it, but I don't remember biting. When the sequel to that came out, which is apparently a prequel to this, I think it's safe to say that I was definitely on board with Devil May Cry as a concept, and hopelessly inept at playing it.

Because I did play it. At some point, I owned Devil May Cry, and potentially DMC2 and/or DMC3, but I barely got into any of them owing to my inability to grasp their gameplay. I wanted to see more, but couldn't, so didn't.

Fast forward to the present and Devil May Cry 5 is showing itself off, and still, I sit here looking at the series, rather than playing it. In some form or other, I own most of these games. I've clearly not got a clue what it means to 'game', and must actually be nothing more than a collector.

Let's change that. Let's fire up the PS2 with Devil May Cry and start from the beginning.

Oh, and in case you need warning:

Where have I seen that before?

Diablo II

"What choice did I have? I ran."

Source // Moby Games

We're going from the oft-voted 'greatest PC game of all time' to a Guinness World Record holder with this entry: the fastest selling video game of its time, players the world over couldn't get enough of hacking and slashing their way through thousands of foes in Diablo II.

The first Diablo title has already had its time to shine on the 1001 list, and I wasn't really taken with it. Does the mega-selling hit sequel do anything different in order for me to see it in a better light?

Diablo

Hello, my friend. Stay a while and listen.

Source // Wikipedia

"Mindlessly satisfying", they say. Just clicking here, clicking there and watching monsters explode. Why, then, is Diablo on the 1001 list?

This action-heavy, hack and slash RPG was inspired by Rogue, the developers seeking to emulate not only the stories players found themselves in but the strategies of when and where to move and act so as to not die as soon as you enter a room.

Then, after a vote to turn the game from turn-based to real-time, gaming changed a tad...

Strider

He will never leave Eurasia alive.

Source // Wikipedia

I own but have never played the 2014 remake of Strider. I've seen it, as well as the 1989 arcade original, but haven't played either. I haven't schwinged Strider Hiryu's sword like a maniac, I haven't scaled the walls and flipped over platforms, I haven't slid under stage hazards.

What am I missing out on, I wonder? Perhaps a strange choice of words, considering I've seen them both in action, but I've forgotten much of what I've seen.

If Strider is good enough for a remake, then I better play Strider.

Splatterhouse

The horrifying theme of this review may be inappropriate for young children... and cowards.

I'm generally not one for horror games, but Splatterhouse is about as horrific as... blimey... it's so not horrific that I can't even come up with a good analogy. Ah, there we go - it's as scary as not being able to come up with a decent introductory paragraph.

Oohohohoooohoh, spoooohohookey...

Splatterhouse is a sidescrolling beat 'em up that chose to go down the 'have fun' route, in terms of design, rather than the 'scare the player shitless' one, and I'm looking forward to finally playing it - I'd heard about it here and there, but don't really know why.

Will we be able to navigate the hideously scary hallways and corridors inside the Splatterhouse? Let's jump scare our way into the rest of the article.

Gauntlet II

Please, stop shooting the food.

Source // Arcade Museum

If one Gauntlet wasn't enough for you, perhaps Gauntlet II will be more to your liking. Released just a year after the original game, Gauntlet II takes what works and runs with it, adding plenty of extras to keep the gameplay addictive and varied.

It looks largely the same, sounds largely the same and plays largely the same, and that's great, because that's all many of us want from a sequel.

Still no luck playing the arcade version though, so I'm hoping the NES port is as colourful as the first game at least.

Gauntlet

Remember, don't shoot food!

Source // Wikipedia

Like many titles on this list so far, I seem to have only a passing resemblance when it comes to Gauntlet. Do I know the game, Gauntlet, or do I know the word gauntlet...? I'll have to go with me not knowing the game, because it's probably the more likely.

Gauntlet is an arcade co-op hack and slashy dungeon crawler where you and three allies can team up to grind through level after level of enemies absolutely intent on hunting you down and halting your progress.

Will their overwhelming numbers lead to your downfall? Will you not be able to find the level exit and see time get the better of you? Will you remember to not shoot the food?