Fairytales can make for dark narratives when told with a twist, and video games can make stories of all kinds more interactive and approachable to many people. They don't even have to be gamey in the traditional sense of having challenges to overcome and enemies to defeat. They can be works of art in their own right. Or walking simulators, if you prefer.
The Path, on the surface, is simple. Walk a girl through the woods to grandma's house. But it's more than that, right?
A long time ago, I praised Super Punch-Out!! for being one of the best-looking boxing games I was aware of. Admittedly, the number of boxing games I was aware of was quite low, and there is something about pixel art that shines above even the most glistening of HD sweat effects, but the statement still held: it was a looker, even if I wasn't any good at it.
In the many years since Super Punch-Out!!, boxing games grew to become slobber knocker simulators for the die-hard fans of the sport, but a controller can only go so far. A motion controller and balance board can go much further, and a console that can't put out all those droplets of blood, sweat, and tears needs to shine differently. It needs Punch-Out!!.
Whether you see it as a remake or a series reboot, what matters is that Punch-Out!! has returned to the ring. Can it make the knock-out blow so that it can be crowned the champion?
"My name was Alex Mercer, and my work is almost done."
Source // Steam
It's easy to compare games to each other, especially when they share the same kind of DNA. Open-world American city besieged by viruses and plagues and a huge military presence, watched over by a single white man with no memory of how he got all these powers or why he was chosen to have them in the first place - because surely they are behind this, right? Whoever they are...
Are we talking about inFAMOUS or are we talking about [PROTOTYPE], another comic-book-like story of a guy with a lot of questions capable of causing an insane amount of damage to everything that stands in his way of the answers?
The two games were compared to each other a decade ago and it's easy to see why. While it took me a couple of years to get around to playing inFAMOUS, it has taken me more than a decade to get around to [PROTOTYPE] - should I have tried to save Manhattan sooner? Or are we just in this to save ourselves?
Would it surprise anyone by now that I haven't played Plants vs. Zombies, at all, ever, in any form, on any device, since the 12 years that it has been out? I've not exactly got my finger on the pulse of what's hot or not, even when living right in the middle of it.
I guess I always cast it aside as little more than a mobile game, tower defense with silly characters. A game I just didn't want to play, no matter how easy it would be to do so. But here we are, finally seeing whether I was wrong or not. Again.
The living dead are approaching, and our last lines of defence are a bunch of plants. We're doomed.
Can you make an RTS for consoles? Yes, of course you can. It'll just be a little lite to account for having to support inputs from a controller.
Can you make an RTS for the Nintendo Wii? Well, now you're just being silly. That'll be a right pain in the arse to get up and runni-oh, Swords & Soldiers, no, I've not heard of that one at all. Real-Time Strategy, you say? Doesn't look it, but let's see...
Now we're talking. The UFC might be entertaining to you, but the weird world of professional wrestling is entertaining to me. Or was. Still sort of is, but not so much the WWE.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that ever since WWF SmackDown! on the PlayStation (yeah, that's right, too late for the N64 greats), I have had, on and off, a damn good time with WWE video games. Professional Wrestling doesn't make sense, and so neither do the video games based on it. Whether you're making your own superstar, picking the coolest of finishing moves, or smashing your opponent through all the announcer tables in every single match, these games are about having fun.
I've not played them all of course - as my interest in the 'sport' comes and goes, so does my interest in the video games - and one of the (lengthy) lulls in my attention meant missing out on WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010.
What was happening in the WWE at this time? Who were the main eventers? This is as much a trip through video game history as it is wrestling history, and after my poor performance in UFC 2009, I'm ready to dive right in.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship is, I hear, pretty big. It's quite popular. If boxing isn't exciting enough for you, you might want to check out the UFC where the ring is now a cage and one of the boxers isn't even a boxer, but a martial artist, or a wrestler, or whatever.
Boxing isn't exciting to me, and neither is the UFC. I can name four people to have stepped inside the octagon for a fight. Three of them I know from the world of professional wrestling, and the other is Conor McGregor.
But there's potentially good news here, as UFC 2009 Undisputed comes to us from Yuke's and THQ, who are pretty much synonymous with the WWE games for the better part of a few decades. This will be a different experience for sure, but they must have learned something down the years.
What's that? Do I regret this nonsense about trying to tie each Milestone Awards into a video gaming related number however tenuous the link? Yes, very much, but look how far we've come! They've not all been bad, have they? They've gotten worse, I can say that for sure.
Anyway, here we are, once again, rounding up the latest games to feature on the 1001 list for this, The 951/1001 Milestone Awards, an excuse to make me feel like I've accomplished something, and to spur me to continue doing it for at least 50 more games.
Fighting to appear in the Top Ten and desperate to avoid the Indifferent Five in this batch are everything from Half-Minute Hero to Shatter. I don't think it was too difficult to dish out awards this time, but there may well be some that raise an eyebrow. Which ones? Better get started and find out.
The Indifferent Five is a list of video games. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now then. Eyebrow raising time. What Was That 1 Even Put On The List For? could have been asked of a fair few games in this batch. LostWinds 2, Assault on Dark Athena, Left 4 Dead 2, and so on, but these sequels were better than their original games, so I'd have preferred to put the first games on instead, but they're not in this batch.
"What about Pikmin 2?" I hear a tiny corner of my brain shout. I strongly disliked its inclusion in the list at the time but, perhaps having mellowed over the years, I would also want to go back and replace it with Pikmin itself.
I'm not too sure, but the gist of the argument is that if a sequel is so similar to the first game, why not pick it for the list instead of the original? Well, the answer is probably the historical significance of the first game and running out of ideas to hit that 1001 target. With another decade of video gaming to wade through, any 1001 list written today would, I'd hope, have a much easier time of shouting at you to avoid earlier titles in a series.
But we're not in that lovely sounding world, oh no. We're in 2010, where I've got to play far too many bloody Guitar Hero-like games.
So, what game is infinitely better than Guitar Hero? That'll be the answer to the question You Forgot What?! and once again, little eyebrow-raising, perhaps.
We've got to acknowledge the position the editors of the first release of the 1001 list were in. It's 2010, or thereabouts, and Minecraft is publicly available but not in a finished form. It won't see an official release for a few years, and even then it's a Beta release. 12 years later it's still only v1.18, and the thought of it being 'finished' doesn't seem to apply.
Minecraft is its own thing, part game, part tool, but there had to be some rumblings, even in 2010, that it was going to be something special - or at least something you ought to check out, right? It's not like this 1001 list hasn't had its misses.
But it's not here and Guitar Hero is. Mistakes have been made and I am here is correct them. You're welcome.
Now that that's sorted out, we've got a Top Tenlist to fill, and let me say once again that this one is going to be skewed. Recency bias. Favouritism. Nostalgia. It's got the lot. Objectivity makes a brief appearance. See if you can spot it.
It surprised me, and lite games that allow me to get stuck in without any hassle are more appealing as I age. Come at me, covenant. Are we fighting the covenant in this one? Halo lore isn't my thing.
Am I ever going to get good at it? No. Do I admire its gameplay and the patience and skill of those that do get good at it? Very much. Would I love an easy mode? Are you kidding me? Of course I would.
Now look, I hear you, inFAMOUS isn't going to command the kind of attention that Demon's Souls gets, but while I was playing it way back when, I was having a blast, and I was having fun, and fun trumps frustration.
Oh, look, an eyebrow. If you want me to separate the two games, it's Ballad all the way, but these expansion offerings to the great city of Liberty are wonderful.
I like going around and around in circles, what can I say? I needed a Gran Turismo fix and the 1001 list wasn't going to give me anything after GT3, so here we are.
Hook, line, and sinker. I've latched onto this entire series over the course of doing this 1001 list, and I've been all the more entertained because of it. How do you not smile driving sideways on a narrow dirt road, or flying through the front doors of a stadium?
What could possibly be better than all of those games? What could be number 1 in the Top Ten list? The greatest aesthetics in all of video gaming/my memory/my nostalgia, it is of course Killzone 2. How could it not be? That little squealing electronic blip when you kill someone in multiplayer brings delight to my ears.
How strong is that nostalgia, though? Will The Topper Than That 10 list be broken into? It's looked pretty solid for absolutely ages, hasn't it? Not long to go before the list finishes...
Unlike ACII here, which did bring a load more eyeballs to the AC series, introducing us to one of the greatest characters in Ezio. I'll get around to playing Valhalla when it's cheap enough, and I'll enjoy that too, but just not in the same way as this.
I was watching a let's play of this recently and was still learning new things about the game. How is that even possible? Don't we know everything about MGS3 by now?
You damn right it broke into the Topper 10. Did you know Edge gave this a 7/10, where everyone else was correct in giving it at least a 9? Madness. Edgy, you might say.
Rumours and rumblings of remakes just aren't exciting me, partly because I'm not going to be able to get hold of the PS5 they'll inevitably be released on, and partly because MGS belongs in the past, where we can cherish it as it was. But for the love of all that is holy, someone please get in touch with Emerson Matsuuchi regarding the board game. We need it, and we need it to have the MGS license.
There you have it. The penultimate Milestone Awards. The final stop before the end of the line that is The 1001/1001 Milestone Awards. Don't know what'll change for that one. Nothing, I suspect. Change requires effort, and I've got something to finish first...
Fifty games. That's all that stands between me and finishing this thing. UFC 2009: Undisputed has got its nose all up in my face first. Can we knock that one down and out quickly?
Breakout didn't necessarily need another game, but when Arkanoid showed what you could do with the Breakout formula, apparently there was a need for another Pong-like block-smashing arcade game.
Fast forward an awfully long time, and the PlayStation Network is a new home for smaller titles to shine, and what better way to grab some attention than to stand on the shoulders of giants?
One part Breakout/Arkanoid, one part physics playground, Shatter wants to show you how far this gameplay can go.
The world can't get enough of Richard B. Riddick if anyone associated with the Riddick series is anything to go by. Films, animations, video games and now a sequel to the surprisingly good Escape from Butcher Bay in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
Straight after the events of the first game, still before the events of the first film, Riddick continues to be the killer that lurks in the shadows, so efficient in his craft that some of these mercenaries really ought to know better by now.
It started life as an expansion to Butcher Bay, but things happened and now here we are, a full sequel to enjoy, much the same as the first game. And to prove that point, here, we've bundled the first game in here too...
