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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 9 months

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About Me: Favorite Video Games

So you may not know this, but I’m a gamer. Shocking, right? Who’d ever have guessed it? But to be totally fair here, I rarely talk about video games on Tumblr. I talk about movies, and there have been a handful of times where I reviewed video games, but I focused more on the story, characters, and all that then I did on whether or not the gameplay was good. In my earliest days, before I found my niche, I talked about games a fair deal, but that fell by the wayside so I could focus on films (my true passion).

So hey, look at this! You’re all going to get to see what my favorite video games are now! Remember, everything here is just my personal opinions; I'm not trying to give actual reviews of each of these games in a couple of sentences or trying to sell you on them, I'm talking about the stuff in them that makes me love them. All of this is my subjective opinion, and I'm not asking you to agree with me here, I'm just trying to talk about stuff that I love.

Oh, and here are some honorable mentions: Super Mario Bros. 3, Banjo-Kazooie (I still haven’t finished it and I don’t want to include games I haven’t played through), Kid Icarus: Uprising, Bayonetta 2, Injustice 2, BioShock, Doom Eternal, Super Metroid, Dragon Age II, God of War II, Castlevania: Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, The Wolf Among Us, The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando/Up Your Arsenal, and Heritage for the Future. Also a shout out to Tell Me Why and Life is Strange, games I watched my wife play and loved the story of but that I didn’t actually play myself; the former in particular has all sorts of elements I love in my stories.

Now, without further ado, here’s my top 50! Oh, and only the top 30 have pictures because there's image limits on posts! What a load of BS!

50. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Ok, maybe this game is lacking in a few areas at the expense of its massive customization system… but boy howdy what a system it is! I cannot tell you how much time I’ve sunk into decorating my island, reorganizing my villagers, and just making all sorts of weird themed areas. It’s a lot of fun, and I get to do all this work while hanging with a bunch of weird, cute animals.

49. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R

The original game was a lot of fun, but even I’ll admit it felt like it was missing something. That something was probably Foo Fighter, but guess what? She’s in the updated rerelease, along with aslew of other new characters like my favorite minor antagonist Mariah and the bane of Heritage for the Future players, Pet Shop! Add onto that a much better campaign mode with some fun little AU shenanigan matches and you have the most loving fighting game tribute to JJBA imaginable! Now if only they’d give Part 8 a little more love...

48. Batman: Arkham Origins

This is the redheaded stepchild of the Arkham series, and on some level I get why. It is very much aping City, right down to the map despite their being some expansions here and there, and the combat is much more of the same with little in the way of evolution, and don’t get me started on the fucking Joker showing up again. But this game also features some of the best bosses in the series such as Firefly and especially Deathstroke, a Bane who isn’t just a mindless mass of muscles like in the other games, and some interesting sidequests that make this early look at Batman’s superheroics a worthwhile entry in my eyes.

47. Miitopia

This is one of the easiest games out there, what with the autopilot combat and minimal difficulty (though there is a big spike late in the game). But the sheer vastness of the facial customization means that literally anyone from all of art or history can take part in a wacky, cliché RPG adventure. Hank Hill can fight the evil overlord Seth MacFarlane with a crew consisting of Chowder, Thor, and Japanese comedian/director/actor Beat Takeshi. If that’s not worth the price of admission, I don’t know what is.

46. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

The DS is where Castlevania truly shined, and my favorite of all the handheld entries is this portrait-hopping journey to defeat a mad artist and his evil vampire children. The locations are pretty great, there’s tons of sidequests and alternate game modes (my favorite is the one where you play as the Old Axe Armor), and there’s an awesome brutal bonus dungeon where you get to fight the bosses from Dawn of Sorrow without the stupid drawing bullshit!

45. Maximo vs. Army of Zin

The original game was a fun, yet very flawed action platformer. This game veers more into the hack-and-slash genre to great effect; it’s not the deepest combat ever, but it’s a lot of fun, with much better platform, bosses, and story than the first game. There’s just something cool about a world that mixes Gothic horror, steampunk, and other fantasy elements together all in one place.

44. God Hand

This is one of the most deceptive games you’ll ever come across. On the surface, it might seem like an ugly beat-em-up, but it’s so much more than that. The bosses are brutal yet fantastic, the music is fucking incredible, and the humor is just the right level of absurd to be incredibly charming. It’s ball-bustingly difficult, but let me tell you, when you finally overcome a fight or a boss battle that’s been giving you trouble? It is literally the best feeling in the world.

43. South Park: The Stick of Truth

‘Member when South Park was funny? I ‘member. And The Stick of Truth really brings back all those memories because this is a hilarious and loving tribute to the series made with the help of Trey Parker and Matt Stone to deliver the playable South Park experience of your dreams. It’s gross, immature, raunchy, and funny, and best of all it doesn’t get too preachy or up its own ass with messages—no, it gets up Mr. Slave’s ass to defuse a bomb. Peak South Park right here, though the gameplay is kind of basic. It’s all carried by that stellar writing.

42. Crash Bandicoot: Twinsanity

This game mainly scores a spot on my list for being fucking hilarious. This is the funniest Crash Bandicoot ever got, with all sorts of wacky gags and clever dialogue. Cortex really is the MVP here, with the constant slapstick that befalls him combined with his snarky dialogue making him a standout. It’s a bummer so much was cut from the game, and it does feel a bit incomplete in some areas, but for what it is it’s a damn fun time.

41. Pokemon White/White 2

It was genuinely hard to pick a single game from the series to go on here considering how much I loved Gens III – V. Emerald perfected the generation I first got into the series, LeafGreen is the definitive Kanto experience to me, Platinum polished up Gen IV’s uneven debut and made it incredible, and SoulSilver is a fantastic remake of the first Pokemon game I ever played (Crystal). But I think I have to go with the Gen V games I played as my favorites. They’re fun and challenging, and while the first game has a ridiculously restrictive regional dex and the second has an overreliance on defunct wi-fi features, the fantastic story and fun new Pokemon make up for it. Can’t be too mad at the games that let me make trashy cult classic B-movies with my boy Garbodor, can I?

40. Batman: Arkham Knight

I put off playing this for years, because I wasn’t happy with some of the things I heard about it, such as a lack of traditional boss battles and an overreliance on the Batmobile. These are still problems, but not near as bad as I feared (obviously, since it’s on this list); everything about the gameplay is the series at its peak. The main story is a bit lacking and ends up being a tad too predictable for me to love it as much as the other entries in the series, but the fact it has Professor Pyg and Man-Bat really helps make up for its shortcomings.

39. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

This game is just as silly and clunky as I imagined an older Bethesda game would be, but to my surprise I think it holds up incredibly well even compared to Skyrim. It’s a bit more complex in a lot of areas, but it’s not too daunting. What really strikes me is how this game actually has a really good story; it’s nothing groundbreaking, but when you look at how bad the Civil War plot in Skyrim was it feels like Shakespeare in comparison. Throw in a ton of unique sidequests with interesting plotlines, a gruesome Dark Brotherhood plot, an interesting villain, and Patrick Stewart for all of about five minutes, and I’d almost say I like this more than Skyrim. Almost.

38. Wolfenstein: The New Order

Sure, it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to FPS games, but does it need to? All I want from a Wolfenstein game is a horde of Nazi motherfuckers to mow down, and guess what this game gives me? What really surprised me was how genuinely cool and likable BJ was. He might be one of my favorite heroes ever after this game. It’s a shame they couldn’t keep this level of polish up in the sequel.

37. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

In a lot of ways, this game is objectively worse than its predecessor. Like the story is ass for sure; I could not give less of a fuck about the Stormcloaks and the Imperials and their stupid civil war if I tried. But the vast world filled with things to do is so much fun to explore, and there’s all sorts of sidequests and shenanigans to get into. This game is pure, stupid fun, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve restarted it just to play as a different race or class. Maybe someday I’ll make it to the final boss. Maybe.

36. Psychonauts

The original Psychonauts is one of the last great platformers, and among them it’s a lot more unique than many of its peers as you’re platforming through the minds of all sorts of wacky characters to help them overcome their issues. Bouncing through the conspiracy theory-addled brain of a disturbed milkman or decimating a city kaiju style inside the mind of a hyper-intelligent mutant lungfish are the kind of off-the-wall ideas this game throws at you, and in my opinion the only thing that could hold it back is if it had a really janky final level that combines meat, circuses, escort missions, and an underwhelming final boss… Oops. Still a great game in my eyes, one that’s 95% perfect.

35. Final Fantasy VI

For a lot of people, this is the best Final Fantasy game, and I definitely see why. It has a truly massive playable roster of unique characters with their own special gimmicks (of which only a handful are actually useful, mind you) and one of the greatest video game villains ever conceived in the mad clown Kefka, plus it is so focused and tightly plotted for the first half of the game. I think that after Kefka takes over the story becomes a lot more aimless and unfocused, but that’s also where the game becomes a lot more fun and challenging too. It’s a bit uneven, but after how hard the opera house scene goes I think it’s allowed to trip a little bit.

34. Dragon Age: Origins

A lot more praise is thrown at this series’ sci-fi sibling Mass Effect, probably because that series is a lot more consistent with how good it is across the board (Andromeda notwithstanding), but I’m much more fond of fantasy settings myself and this game delivers a fantastic one in ways its sequels couldn’t quite manage. This is the only game in the series where I genuinely loved every single party member (especially Leliana) and actively tried to get them the happiest endings possible—yes, even the douchebag anti-villain who joins you if you play your cards right), and the plot is just the right level of epic fantasy cheese seasoned with some delicious side quests. If the dwarf plotline wasn’t such a slog and if Varric was in the game, this would be a lot higher on the list, but this game still holds a special place in my heart.

33. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Our first trip into the Asylum really did kill the notion that licensed games had to be the most obnoxious shovelware schlock imaginable by making a Batman game that actually makes you feel like Batman. Sure, the detective part is a bit minimal here compared to the sequels, but the combat is so fun and refreshing that I’m not too bothered by the lack of crime scene investigations. There’s a clear love for the entire mythos here, and best of all a clear love for the animated series—Hamill and Conroy reprise their roles as Joker and Batman respectively, and Arleen Sorkin gives Harley one last ride before her retirement. It’s a real love letter to the Dark Knight, and it spawned one of the most consistently good video game series around, so I’ll forgive it for having the lamest final boss I’ve ever fought just this once.

32. Kingdom Hearts

What I like about the original game is how it struck such a nice balance in its absurd premise, with it never feeling like the Final Fantasy or Disney elements are really overpowering each other. We have the grandiose, convoluted plots of the former and the magic, whimsy, and awesome villains of the latter combining together into one impressive package. Yeah, a lot of the level designs are dogshit (looking at you, Deep Jungle and Monstro), and some of the stunt casting is really bizarre (Lance Bass as Sephiroth?!) but overall this is a game way better than you’d think by hearing that it’s a game where Mickey Mouse and Cloud Strife exist side by side.

31. Super Mario 64

Mamma mia! It is genuinely impossible for me to not feel nostalgic for this game. So many 3D platformers that came out in its wake took what it did and polished it to absurd degrees, but there’s still something so special about diving back into one of the portraits in Peach’s castle and going through those levels again and again. The music and atmosphere of the game add onto it; every time I play it, I feel like a kid again. It’s just such a charming game.

30. MediEvil

If Tim Burton made a Gothic horror fantasy movie, I imagine it would be something like this game. It really uses the limitations of the PS1’s graphics to the fullest extent, with the jagged polygonal looks of the characters enhancing the experience, and it has such a crazy variety of levels and enemies, from a phantom pirate ship to a crystal cave with a dragon to a village of posessed villagers to an ant hill. Sir Daniel Fortesque is one of my favorite video game protagonists around because of his posthumous journey to live up to the legend fabricated around him.

29. God of War III

Every single one of these games just escalates from the previous one. Oh, you fight the hydra in the opening of the first game? How about you fight through Rhodes and then battle the animated colossus that once stood in its port in the second? And how do you top that for the third game? Beat the ever-loving shit out of Poseidon and gouge his eyes out from his POV. And this game only gets more brutal from there! Titans and gods all fall to Kratos in epic and gory boss battles, but honestly even without that I’d put the game on this list for the simple reason that you get to fucking murder Kevin Sorbo as Hercules.

28. EarthBound

Nintendo’s quirkiest RPG makes the cut, mostly on the basis of how weird and charming it is. At this point I’ve essentially memorized everything you need to do in this game, which is good because if it’s your first time you desperately need a guide or you’ll be fucked. There are points where things get a little too grindy (mostly for Poo’s weapons) but it’s genuinely a game whose charms outweigh any negatives there are. Plus, that final boss battle is something else entirely.

27. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Rebirth and all of its DLC updates took everything great about the original game and polished it into absolute perfection, with so many different item combos you could potentially get and so many bosses and endgames you could encounter. No two runs ever really feel the same, and it’s so satisfying to become so overpowered you nuke the screen every time you attack. The fact there’s a thriving modding community to continually generate new and crazier content also adds to why I have a ridiculous number of hours dumped into this game.

26. Resident Evil VII: Biohazard

This is the first Resident Evil game I ever played and, wow, I sure was missing out all those years! This is one of the most tense survival horror experiences I’ve played through, with a creepy family of hillbilly horrors to avoid as I creep through their ramshackle domicile. It’s fun, creepy, and even a little campy, and it has raised my interest in the rest of the series. Hopefully the game with the giant vampire mommy will live up to how good this one is when I finally get around to playing it.

25. Portal 2

Yes, the puzzles are great, but this game really soars due to its writing. The first game was fun and all, but it was mostly just GLaDOS insulting you the whole time with Chell being an entirely silent protagonist. In this game, we get the lovable idiot Wheatley and the greatest mad scientist ever conceived Cave Johnson to listen to as well, and the way GLaDOS bounces off the former and reacts to the latter help make this game a fun and engaging puzzle-solving adventure.

24. Doom

The legendary FPS series got revitalized after years on the edge of relevancy, and its return is one of the most metal games imaginable. Slaughtering your way through the forces of Hell while heavy metal blares in the background? It really doesn’t get much better than this. While I do think Eternal improved the formula and gameplay in a lot of ways (particularly with the addition of an awesome hub level), I find the original to be way more fun and balanced in terms of difficulty. The lack of Marauders is really what gives it the slightest of edges.

23. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Nobody got left behind for this one. Everyone across the series came back, and then they went and added even more to give us the most ambitious crossover of all time. Ridley, Simon Belmont, Sora, Sephiroth, Kazuya, and more all get to duke it out on the best stages of the series as well as some fresh new ones, and every character plays even better and more balanced than they ever have before. While the single player campaign isn’t quite as exciting as Subspace Emissary from Brawl, it still manages to be a pretty epic quest with fun boss battles. This is just the definitive Smash experience in my opinion.

22. Red Dead Redemption

My daughter has affectionately labeled this game “Horse Movie,” and she’s not wrong. This is a true cowboy experience right here, with lots of gunfights and horse wrangling, and it’s all a blast. The story in particular is really well done, and there’s plenty of fun side quests too. Maybe the gunfights get a bit samey after a while, but it’s an enjoyable open world to explore and is filled with oddities and mysteries galore.

21. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The first Metal Gear game to make the list, and easily the most underrated of the bunch. It gets a lot of flak for the missing final episode that would have had Venom fight the young Liquid Snake, and while it does suck that that moment isn’t in the game, the story still feels plenty complete and well-done without it. Venom might be one of the most fascinating characters in the series, and the game has some of the most brutal gutpunches and tearjerking moments in the franchise. Maybe it’s just because I’m predisposed to love Metal Gear, but I loved this game even though I was well aware of what it didn’t have.

20. Final Fantasy VII

Not to be a basic bitch, but this is my favorite Final Fantasy. I mean, the cast is all so cool and fun, the story is great, Sephiroth is an amazing villain, and there’s plenty of obscure and obtuse ways of finding secrets that make a strategy guide practically mandatory if you want the most out of the game. What’s not to love? I think I was mostly surprised by how good the game actually was; it’s always high on lists of the best games ever, and it definitely earns that. The fact that Aerith’s death still made me tear up despite being common knowledge is a testament to just how amazing this Fantasy is.

19. Mother 3

EarthBound coasts by on its fun, lighthearted quirkiness… but what if you took that and applied heaping helpings of darkness and a more solid story? That’s Mother 3, a beautiful tale filled with the same out there humor as its predecessor as well as a lot of more mature and deeper themes than even the original tackled (mind you, Earthbound wasn’t devoid of deeper themes to begin with, so this is saying something). The ending is one of the few times I have openly sobbed while playing a video game. They need to officially release this in the West, because I will buy it day one. Fuck, I’ll pre-order it!

18. Yoshi’s Island

If this game was only one of the most charmingly animated games ever made, that would be enough to earn it at least some respect. But it’s also one of the best platformers in a series that invented the genre, centered around a truly inspired baby-carrying gimmick and featuring all manner of creative boss battles and one of the most earwormy soundtracks ever made. That’s enough to get it a spot on this list, but the fact it solidified Shy Guys as a Mario mainstay and not just a one-shot enemy? That gets it into my top 20.

17. Spyro Reignited Trilogy

It’s kind of cheating since it’s all three games in one package, but it’s my list, I make the rules. I view this as the definitive way to play Spyro; the redesigns are all fantastic (especially Elora) and the fact Tom Kenny is now the lovable purple scamp across all three games is wonderful. They even made the first game more enjoyable and even visually interesting, even though it’s still the weakest link in the series! And as much of a Crash Bandicoot stan as I am, the fact this game allows you to switch between the newly composed arrangements of the songs and the original Copeland tracks is a big W over the Bandicoot remakes only having the new versions of the songs.

16. Metal Gear Rising

This is perhaps the most badass game ever made. The first level has Raiden battling through a war zone and then fighting a RAY singlehandedly, leaping across missiles and slicing it in half while the most fucking awesome metal music blares in the background. The game just decides to get even more insane from there. People have argued against it being canon for years, but these people are stupid. This game is just as insane and politically-charged as the rest of the series, so in my book, it’s fucking canon.

15. Undertale

This game’s time in the spotlight has faded a bit, but that only makes it easier for me to look back on it and say, “Damn, that’s one of the finest games ever made.” It has all the quirkiness of the Mother series with unique combat and a stellar story, a cast of likable characters, and some of the best boss fights I’ve ever been through. Best of all, it’s a game that practically encourages and even rewards you for being nice! I still love it, even after all the discourse and skyrocketing popularity, and nothing will make me budge on that love.

14. Hades

I’m a big fan of Greek mythology, so this is yet another game that would have had to try really hard to make me hate it. Thankfully, all its efforts were put into areas that made me love it instead. While the roguelike gameplay is well done, the writing and story are really the stars here, with fantastic character interactions between desperate god Zagreus, the gods of Olympus, and the various denizens of the underworld really making this game something truly special.

13. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

Sometimes this game feels like the designers saw all those articles and reviews comparing the first game to Dark Souls and took it to heart, because some of the levels in this game are absolutely brutal—especially if you’re going for 100% completion. But that same difficulty makes playing through the levels a lot of fun as well; it’s probably the most challenging Crash outing to date. It really polishes and updates the Crash formula for the modern age, and hopefully they expand on this in a future game. If nothing else, it finally lets you play as Dingodile, which is a dream come true.

12. Grand Theft Auto V

It’s wacky. It’s cartoonish. It has a surprisingly good story about three criminals from different walks of life becoming fire-forged friends as they violently work out their emotional issues. There’s just so much to do and so much to see, all sorts of collectibles and side missions, and more black comedy than you can shake a stick at, and all of it is made all the more enjoyable because the main villain protagonists are a likable bunch of nutjobs. Hell, sometimes I just like to hop into a car, put on some tunes, and cruise around until I can cause some mayhem, and the fact that’s just as valid as doing a bunch of story missions really makes me love the game.

11. Silent Hill 2

While the first and third games are good in their own rights, I vastly prefer the psychological horror and the monsters manifesting as living allegories for trauma with heavy and dark symbolism as opposed to the evil cult narrative. Plus, you know, this one has Pyramid Head in it, and his presence makes sense instead of simply being there cuz he’s cool.

10. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials & Tribulations

The Ace Attorney series is one of my favorites, and I love just about all the games in it and even the ones I don’t love always have one or two solid cases that keep me coming back. But pound for pound my favorite game in the series is the third one, the one that lets you play as Mia Fey, introduces the callous murderer Dahlia Hawthorne, and has you match wits with the coffee-guzzling prosecutor Godot. Even the filler cases are entertaining, with the one where Phoenix has to get to the bottom of a murder involving his evil doppleganger being wildly amusing (which is more than can be said for that circus case in the second game or cases two through three in the fourth).

9. Live A Live

Few games can boast the sheer variety this game has on display, with levels changing up their style to give everything from standard RPG fair to a prolonged timed puzzle to a fighting game pastiche to an incredibly tense survival horror experience. We also have the precursor to Undertale here in a ninja-themed level where you can spare everyone you come across or otherwise brutally murder them. And while the stories remain relatively simple in every time period you visit, it doesn’t stop them from hitting hard when they need to, like with the fantasy RPG deconstruction that is Oersted’s chapter. This game would easily have switched places with the next game if the final level played a bit more to the game’s strengths, but hey, it’s still good enough to be in the top 10.

8. Chrono Trigger

Square’s other time travel story is definitely the superior one even if it’s a traditional JRPG through and through. Of course, that is because it completely and fully takes advantage of its premise, with actions you take in one time period affecting others in turn, not to mention the vast amount of bonus bosses and sidequests there are to keep the multiple playthroughs to acquire all the endings fresh and fun. I’ve sunk so much time into getting all the endings on the DS version, and I’ve never once been bored even after visiting the Middle Ages or the ruined future world a dozen times.

7. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

There are few games that I love revisiting more than this one. This is Metroidvania at its peak, a perfect blend of action, platforming, and RPG elements into one glorious Gothic horror monster mash package. What’s truly fun with this one is the myriad ways there are to bust the game right open. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve grinded for hours so that I could dual-wield Crissaegrims and trivialize the Dracula and Galamoth battles.

6. Psychonauts 2

The original Psychonauts is fun and quirky, and is only really held back by a pretty sloppy final level. This game, though? This game is damn near perfect. Nearly every level here is fun and memorable, and the ways Raz has to help each person deal with their mental trauma is a lot more nuanced and tasteful than the original game’s fair-for-its-time takes on dealing with mental illness. The minds of Ford’s old crew as well as Ford himself provide some of the best Psychonauts content to date, and really, who can hate a level that ends with Jack Black as a gay psychic rock star viking performing a musical number to obliterate his own insecurities?

5. Kingdom Hearts II

This is where the Kingdom Hearts franchise peaked, and it’s a high note they’ve yet to reach again. Sure, the tutorial prologue level drags on for quite a long while, but once you get to play as Sora again, ooh boy is this basically the perfect meeting of the worlds of Disney and Square. The Disney worlds are a lot more fleshed out and have twice the plot due to midgame return visits, the combat is more exciting with fun little reaction commands to let you pull off crazy maneuvers, and you get to hang out with Tron and the most based of all Disney heroes, Chicken Little. Best of all, the story manages to strike the perfect balance between being complex and silly without disappearing all the way up its own ass like later entries would.

4. Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

In my house, there was a legend that I had beaten this game to completion one hundred times. I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is, but considering how often I replayed this growing up it can’t be too far off. This is one of the most gorgeous platformers around, and Naughty Dog’s final shot at a genre they’d perfected with their Crash Bandicoot games. Even all these years later the visuals are breathtaking; I still am in awe at how you can see the entire world from atop Snowy Mountain. Every day I cry because they decided to turn the series into GTA clones instead of continuing to explore the gorgeous fantasy world they created in this game.

3. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

The original Crash Bandicoot was the first game I ever played, and the rest of the series were cornerstones of my childhood. Imagine how elated I was when they not only remade the games, but they created the single definitive way to play them! Sure, the soundtrack being redone can be a little hit or miss, but they completely unfucked the brutal difficulty of the first game (and this is even with adding back the ball-bustingly hard “Stormy Ascent” level) and for the most part left the latter two games entirely untouched save a graphical boost and the ability to play as my girl Coco. Playable Coco alone makes this a dream come true.

2. Batman: Arkham City

The Arkham series is one of the most consistently great series, and this is its greatest entry. The titular city is massive, with so many things to do, and the combat and puzzles are polished to perfection. Add in some actual detective work, some truly epic boss battles against iconic Batman villains like Clayface and Mr. Freeze (and also Solomon Grundy, because why the fuck not?), the ability to play as Catwoman, and one of the most shocking and tragic tales the Dark Knight has ever been in, and I’m more than happy to call it my second favorite game ever.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Of course, there was no hope Arkham City had at overcoming this game. This is Kojima’s magnum opus, not least because the entire rest of the Metal Gear series revolves around the events that transpire in this story. After the mindfuck that was the second game, it’s nice to return to a more coherent story, one detailing how Big Boss came to be the man that Snake fought in Zanzibar Land. Everything in the series sprang forth because of the actions the characters take here, and each subsequent game just makes this one better and better. Every single boss battle is unique and engaging, and the final battle is one of the most heartbreaking moments in all of gaming. I still cry every single time I get to the ending. It's such an amazing game, with a relatively simple yet still strong and convoluted story populated with a Russian madman with inexplicable lightning powers, a spirit medium's ghost, and a man who controls bees. God bless Hideo Kojima, that absolute madman.

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hardpacker · 2 years

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i kept starting this post and then kept realising that i needed to provide more context for basically everything about this, and now i've started a whole second post! jesus.

JJBA: The games

last autumn i secured a physical copy of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Heritage for the Future edition of CAPCOM Secret File. the secret files were a series of booklets, 27 in total and 12 pages each, published by CAPCOM between 1994-1999, about their various games. There's a list of them here.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, JoJo's Venture, JJBA: Heritage For The Future... these games are all called JJBA, but, they're all just part 3, Stardust Crusaders. i'm not sure how much i need to say about JJBA/Stardust Crusaders here, because you probably either know what it is or have (voluntarily or otherwise) absorbed information about it thru like, a collective unconscious or something.

why so many?? why do people like this so much?? well, at face value, Stardust Crusaders is appealing for a lot of reasons.

Part 1 - Phantom Blood is a period piece/vampire story set in the late 1880s, introducing us to the central Joestar family and their adopted son turned enemy, Dio Brando, along with the existence of magical/supernatural objects and abilities.

Part 2 - Battle Tendency is a more Indiana Jones/Sherlock-esque narrative set in the late 30s. continues with a new Joestar generation, new abilities, jokes, and tragedies.

both of these have a smaller central cast and there are early themes here that the manga author, Hirohiko Araki, didn't keep as he was fleshing out the story. so, unlike its predecessors, most of the themes and ideas Stardust Crusaders explores are carried throughout the rest of the parts.

Part 3 - Stardust Crusaders takes place in the late 1980s. this one is more of an ensemble with a very modern/popular shounen setup which makes it more familiar to people who've grown up with The Big 3 (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) and other popular series (Boku no hero Academia, Kimetsu no Yaiba) that all have more in common with this setup. A band of weirdos, a legacy, a taciturn protagonist, a big flamboyant villain with villainous friends, powers, monsters of the week, compelling emotional beats... it's got broad appeal and is the easiest entry point into the series. this part introduces more special powers, specifically Stands-- a sort of spirit or aura with a typically (but not always!) humanoid form that can make attacks or take damage for its host/user.

there are 8 parts in total, with plans for a 9th recently announced. and while all related, each part takes on different things-- different protagonists, with different lives, exploring different aspects and exceptions to what's been introduced already. a lot of fans might just stick to their favourite part and not continue with or have the same relationship to the other parts of the series, if they even read/watch them at all. the parts do, though, reference one another, sometimes in small ways, but typically plot-relevant ones, even tying up or bringing back plot points from much earlier, thereby expanding this immersive world. the scope is limited to the family, but their roles within and relationship to that family evolve and intensify in emotional complexity as the series continues. the series also shifts from shounen to seinen (switching too from Shonen to Ultra Jump) although it bridged this from the beginning, and even as a shonen, employed adult themes with older characters. in fact, if shounen is for "adolescent boys," a slim few of the characters themselves fit this description, never mind the makeup of the fanbase.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (1993)

the first JoJo's Bizarre Adventure game was developed for the Super Famicon/SNES system by WinkySoft and released in 1993 as part point-and-click, part side-scroller RPG.

here's a promotional video for the famicom release,

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and if you've ever seen screencaps like these, that's where they're from:

JoJo's [Bizarre Ad]venture (1998)

in 1998, Capcom made the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game for the CP System III arcade boards and for the Playstation 1-- in the west, this game was simply known as JoJo's Venture. this was the final game made for the CP System III and the last proprietary system board Capcom produced before moving to the Sega Dreamcast-based Naomi platform (which, while an acronym-- or technically a backronym, because-- it was named after Naomi Campbell, apparently.)

in Jojo's Venture, there's also a mistranslation where Jotaro's mom refers to Joseph Joestar as her uncle, rather than her father/Jotaro's grandfather.

Re-release (1999)

in 1999, that game was further revised and re-released into arcades and onto the Dreamcast. if you're interested, here's someone comparing the Dreamcast experience to the PS1, although iirc they don't take into account elements like the loss of Story Mode.

when these games were brought to the US, they were at the time the only English-language JJBA material available, and so most people were primed for Stardust Crusaders before any other part of the series. as far as i've been able to confirm, the subbed and dubbed edition of the collected JJBA OVA would come later, in 2003-2005.

within this, i get a little lost about which assets belong to which edition, so forgive me. i only have a japanese version of the Dreamcast edition, but i've encountered the 1998 version of the game in the wild, at a dusty old arcade on the coast of Maine, USA. from what i understand, the first releases were both fairly simple , with major alterations made to the story in order to fit on these systems.

my favourite villain in Stardust Crusaders is N'doul, and that's the whole reason i got the Secret File.

why is he my wife? i don't fucking know it will take a million years to explain (and something i'll do gladly) because it's heavily based in context and framing, tonal shifts and such. it makes as much sense as anything else, which is none or a lot. this series is a circus and no matter who it is, your fave is the king clown.

essentially, what got me is that N'doul is the first enemy the group fights after arriving in Egypt, their ultimate destination, which marks a tonal shift in Stardust Crusaders (whether you're reading it, or watching it, or playing these linear games) that i find compelling. at the very least, he comes with implications of a shift, including in how each character reacts to the fight and the expanse of the fight itself in the desert, and what their enemies' fealty to Dio means. in the manga, in the OVA, in the anime, in the games, Jotaro reacts the same way: first horror, and then admiration.

here's N'doul in the booklet for the famicon release, along with some fellow freaks.

not only is he a honey, he's objectively a honey compared to his squad.

while only the Crusaders are playable in the 1993 version, many of the enemies are playable in the next versions, including Dio, Anubis-possessed Polnareff, young (Battle Tendency) Joseph Joestar, Matrix Mode Kakyoin, Hol Horse...

here's some shit that really cuts me up! N'doul, too, was originally planned as a playable character in Heritage for the Future, to the point of him having both sprites and artwork assets that are easily acquired via hacking, and concept art in the design files describing how he would fight.

in Stardust Crusaders, there's a stand user named Alessi who uses his powers to de-age his enemies, turning them into children. (it sucks mostly.) so basically anyone who might fight against Alessi gets a kid/younger version to match. in addition to the above concept art, there was also this

here are some of his game sprites, as ripped by Magma MK-II:

there's more information and opinions about this on The Cutting Room Floor:

Due to the fact that many of his stand's attacks are drawn with the reflection of the desert in it, it's likely that he was kept a sub-boss so that Capcom didn't need to redraw all of his stand's sprites.

you can see what the writer on TCRF meant by the added complexity in the water, potentially necessitating detailed edits that wouldn't be required for other stands.

here's someone's playthrough. as you can see, his water-based attacks are mostly at ground level-- you have to run/jump through the desert until you finally reach him, at which point you can kill him in one blow because he has only 5HP.

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this should start at 1:00:27, but if it doesn't, that's where you need to be!

one fun fact is that in order to fight N'doul in story mode, you must play as Jotaro 😌 (in Oingo & Boingo's Gallery Mode, you can fight him as any of the characters.)

however, if this is Super Story mode, it seems to be missing some of the background assets, parts of the cutscenes, and/or may even be a censored version (the censored versions crop up a lot in the Western releases.) i know for a fact i've played a different version: as you move through this boss fight, you see a downed helicopter and the body of its pilot. this follows the manga and anime plotline, where N'doul uses his water to attack them. The pilot was wearing a wristwatch with an alarm, and when it starts beeping, N'doul reacts harshly to the sound and destroys it-- cutting off the man's hand in the process.

here's that moment in the manga,

and here's how that looks in the uncensored game,

hell yeah. really freak em out.

N'doul's theme in the game is also a straight up banger!!

the full soundtrack is available for download here.

Since then

in the mobile game JoJo Stardust Shooters (which ended in 2021) N'doul's skills formally classify him as a Sniper. he's a long-range stand user, patient, traveling from place to place in pursuit of his enemy, waiting for long periods of time until his prey is exactly where he needs them to be, and then takes the shot. then he will fall back, and because of the distance, the enemy (whether or not they can detect a fellow stand user) may not be able to track him. not all stand users can take advantage of distance; many stands are close-range only.

when we look at his stats, it's clear that sniper suits him perfectly and differentiates him from other characters, including their iterations as playable characters in video game format:

if i'm understanding correctly, we're meant to interpret the low precision this way: being blind, he can't 100% accurately choose his target through sight, only guessing at them through what he infers through sound. it's weird though, because in the manga and anime we basically only see him nail the right person, decimating the main team quickly, and in his very first appearance, catches fly mid-air. so idfk!!!

not everyone likes to play as a sniper, and it might be especially confusing in a fighting game that's so similar to the Street Fighter format-- where incorporating a distance aspect to each stage might not be appropriate, ultimately. in 2015, n'doul was included in the roster for the Bandai-Namco joint Eyes of Heaven, developed by CyberConnect2 fr the PS3/PS4.

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#jjba #jojo's bizarre adventure #games #stardust crusaders #heritage for the future #n'doul #n'dour

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