The Real Top 30 Games
10. Twisted Metal II – Ah, Twisted Metal: The fighting game for people who don’t like memorizing hundreds of obscure moves. Nevermind all that boring fisticuffs hooey: How about getting into a heavily armored car and racing around virtual cities, lobbing homing rockets and power missiles at your unsuspecting foes? Semi-destructible environments, crazy deep gameplay and the best split-screen multiplayer in any game makes for a game that has yet to be matched in terms of time consumption. Nothing brought more band practices to a grinding halt than someone firing up Twisted Metal II: And no one really complained. No wonder we didn’t get signed.
9. Bionic Commando – “What do you mean, ‘I can’t jump’? Look at all those platforms! How else am I supposed to get up there!?” This is the brilliance of Bionic Commando: With nothing more than a funky physics scheme that made a grappling hook seem like an appropriate replacement for the genre-standard jump button, Capcom created a game that stood head and shoulders above it’s copy-cat relatives (Strider, anyone? Anyone?). A long, challenging quest with hints of open-ended play, varied gameplay, a great item system and the second-most memorable boss fight (“Dude! It’s Hitler! And his face just exploded! Sick, dude!”) ever: It’s a certified classic.
8. Metal Gear Solid – I suspect that the old Metal Gear games from the 8-bit era were ahead of their time. They encouraged sneaking past enemies rather than killing everyone in sight (“Whaa?”) and offered so many power ups and weapon choices that most people just kind of scratched their heads when they tried to play the game. But the Playstation allowed the game to work in a way that made sense for what the Metal Gear series was trying to accomplish. The stealth-based gameplay was new and, surprisingly, exciting. But what made MGS so great was the subtle touches: Snake’s laser scope filtering through the fog; footprints left in the snow that alerted guards to your presence; the Sniper Wolf battle; the frequency key on “the back of the CD case” and, of course, the Psycho Mantis fight. As I played it I kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”
7. Resident Evil 4 – For all the things that Resident Evil did for gaming, it always had a little something holding it back. Whether it was the control scheme (pretty bad for most of them), the unlikely puzzles (RE:CV), terrible voice acting (I’m looking at you, Resident Evil 1), pointless story (ahem RE3) or unconvincing characters (RE0), it was usually very much worth the playthrough, but never a spectacular experience. RE4 fixed all that and added a healthy dose of extra gore, a strong story, engaging (and involving!) cutscenes, phenomenal graphics, sharp puzzles that never got too puzzle-y and plenty of extras to make it not just a great play but a great buy.
6. Final Fantasy VI – If you thought FFVII was epic, you missed out on FFVI/FFIII. I mean, what other game has an apocalyptic, literally world-altering event happen halfway through the game? This is the fantasy role-playing game that made people realize what was possible on consoles. The only bad thing about this game is the fact that its epic story was so popular that later Final Fantasy games (and actually later console RPGs in general) began to think that story could trump gameplay and we ended up with stuff like Final Fantasy VIII and X. Still, you can’t hold that against FFVI which did everything that it possibly could just right and did so without the aid of fancy 3D graphics or even non-game engine cut scenes. The impact of this game can be summarized with Kefka’s mocking, braying laughter.
5. Super Metroid – Everything that was good about the original NES Metroid remained in the Super Nintendo update. In fact, if they had only bothered to remake the original game with the new 16-bit graphics, plenty of fans (probably myself included) would have been perfectly content. Instead they expanded the game, added new power-ups, introduced a more complete storyline and laid out the game in such a way that 2D platforming/adventure reached its pinnacle early. This game stands testament to how to do a sequel right (stick with what worked the first time, know when to tweak or refine and give ’em more of what they want) and even without the pressure attached from two previous, popular 8-bit adventures (Metroid II came out for the original black and white GameBoy) Super Metroid would have been a brilliant game.
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