Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

"You there, in the bushes. You have until the count of five to show yourself before I start throwing sharp objects"

Tactical, turn-based video games. I seem to like them. Advance Wars is some kind of phenomenon, though as time has gone on I've mellowed on it a little. The likes of Tactics Ogre appeal, but I'm still yet to dive into them full-time, so to speak. Is there, perhaps, a game that blends the two together? A simple enough system to get my head around, but with a fantasy setting?

It is an understatement to say that Intelligent Systems have been busy working with Nintendo platforms, and now they've gone and answered my pondering in the form of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, a fantasy tactical role-playing game that requires no prior knowledge of any Fire Emblem game.

Perfect.

Guild Wars

"Prove your worth in a world where skill decides victory"

Source // MobyGames

All the social interaction we learned from Façade can already be put to use in MMORPG Guild Wars, where players go through a fantasy world, slaying monsters and levelling up and all that cool stuff without endless queues of random strangers with weird names turning in the same quests to the same NPC.

Wait, what? So where's the interaction then?

Façade

Uh, ha, yeah...

Games can simulate a lot of things. The physics of a race car, the communication between alien species, the horrors that lurk in the night. They're not always perfect simulations, sure, but they don't always need to be.

Case in point, social interaction and awkward conversation simulator, Façade, a three-person one-act play of an evening with Trip and Grace. On the surface, you would be forgiven for passing this one by. A play? Talking? About marital arguments? No, thanks. But this isn't any old game. This is more of an experiment in Artificial Intelligence. One we really need to see first hand.

Fable

"If I have mentioned any feature in the past [that], for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise."

Games get hyped. Developers talk big. Some things just don't come to fruition. Such, so I read, was the tale with Fable, an action RPG for the Xbox where everything matters - or so we're lead to believe.

The story is as old as time. A child destined to become a hero. Tragedies are to be overcome, lessons to be learned. But how will it all unfold? I've very little knowledge of the Fable series, so I'm starting where it all began, back at the beginning.

Fahrenheit

a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy

Video games. Interactive Movies. You might know of the arguments that follow on from there. What is a video game? Is a game still a game if we're just interacting with a bunch of cinematics? Are Dragon's Lair or Another World games or movies? Does it matter?

These days, you'll perhaps know of Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human, two big titles that raise these kinds of questions. Before both of them, however, there was Fahrenheit, an interactive story of supernatural murder, and the investigations into uncovering just what on Earth is going on.

I've actually watched this, a long time ago, and have thankfully forgotten the story, and can relive it all over again - this time at the controls.

F.E.A.R.

First Encounter Assault Recon

If there's one thing we know about fear, it's that eventually, it'll lead to suffering. If there's one thing I know about F.E.A.R., it's that I've never played it, mostly because I wasn't too interested in the idea of psychological horror creeping into my FPS.

There are genre crossovers that not only work, but perhaps make sense, and horror witnessed through the first-person viewpoint is definitely one of those merges that live long in the mind - providing, I suppose, that the game that comes out of that merger does something worth remembering.

Does F.E.A.R. provide us with something worth remembering other than all the periods in its title?

Golden Tee Live

BORE?

Golf. Where would we be without Golf? Enjoying the countryside that bloody Golf courses take up, for starters.

I don't like Golf, but video game Golf can at least go wild and wacky and bend physics for the sake of a good time. And if it does try to stick to real-world physics (sadly, most of them do), then at least the courses - real or imagined - take up significantly less space than their real-world counterparts.

Golden Tee Live is the arcade smash hit of the Golden Tee Golf series - I think. It's hard for a non-Arcade Golfer to pull apart which line is which. The 1001 list wants us to play the game that brought the Internet and online leaderboards to Golfing arcade cabinets in airports, released in 2005, if that helps you narrow it down.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

GOOD!

The last time I played an Advance Wars entry on the 1001 list, I played for hours. Something about it was addicting. I couldn't put it down. But the Game Boy Advance is already a memory. Technological progress marches onward, and the Nintendo DS needs an entry in the turn-based tactics genre. It's time for Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Dual Strike. DS. Get it? There's more to the title than that, of course. COs teaming up to pummel dinky little tanks into dust. This should be good.

Yoshi Touch & Go

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's...

Games that show off what a brand new console can do, especially in the gimmick department, seem to have a good chance at landing on a 1001 Must Play Video Games list. I suppose it's to be expected, to some degree. A game doesn't have to be phenomenal to warrant playing it, and by most peoples accounts Yoshi Touch & Go sure isn't anything remarkable - but here it is, showing the world what the Nintendo DS can do.

What's this thin, pencil-like stick? What's a 'touch screen'? What are the laws of physics? Let's find out.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I'll be gone when the morning comes.

Ugh. It's here again. Not only on the 1001 list, but all I'm bloody hearing in 2020 is Animal bloody Crossing. While everyone, apparently, is enjoying New Horizons (sadly not the space probe, but the Nintendo Switch title), I'm here seeing what I've read was the turning point of the Animal Crossing series; the moment of its explosion in popularity, for reasons unknown, though highly likely to be due to the portability of the Nintendo DS.

I am, of course, sadly, talking about Animal Crossings: Wild World.