My Favorite Video Games (#10 to #6)
Here we go…my top ten favorites and the diatribes to go with them!
10. Shadow of the Colossus (PS2).
Gorgeous game. A great fable. You can really feel for the guy as you battle your way through all these colossi. He’s doing this all for the girl he loves, and with every monster he takes down it corrupts his soul. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is. The world is immense, but mostly empty except for lizards you can eat to increase your health or stamina — I forget which, but goddamn that LOD terrain shit they’re doing is amazing. The fur on the Colossi is doubly amazing. If you refuse to believe me, then get the game, or check out this article on the making of Shadow of the Colossus. Climbing the beasts is a mixture of fun and frustration, but the controls mimic very well what you would expect the guy to be doing as he hangs on for dear life. You’re literally clutching the controller and sweating it out with him. Finding out how to take down a beast and then doing it is a strong sense of accomplishment, but just remember you can’t save during the middle of a fight, and this has led to some frustration on my part. I really shouldn’t blame it on Team ICO for the lack of saves, but rather my “just one more before bed” drive to play the game. I blame Team ICO for making a game that makes me want to play it. Not many developers can be blamed for that, and that’s why it’s in the top ten of my favorites.
9. The Sims 2 with Open for Business expansion pack (PC).
Or, as I like to call it, Sims 2: Open fo’ Bidniss. The Sims has always been a unique game in my eyes, but for the first game, I got tired of it after two weeks of being the deity telling virtual people where and when to pee. The second game’s got more of the same, but now in true 3D and you can zoom right up to the action (i.e. while they pee). Open For Business is by far the best expansion back, because it’s gamy (gamey? Game-y?). There’s a business tech tree that lets you earn abilities as your business grows a customer base. You can literally turn anything into a business. Want to turn your house into the cathouse? Put a fun-o-meter (or whatever it’s called) outside and charge money for entry. I have a house where my two sims live and they run a piano lounge that costs money to enter and inside there’s a small robot shop where I’ve actually sold robots. I’m trying to expand the wife into having a small cafe in the back patio. It’s too bad there aren’t many Sims 2 expansion packs that focus on adding more gameplay of this kind into the Sims 2 base game — not that I can, at this very moment of writing, think of anything that might further the gaminess (game-iness?) of the Sims 2. Oh yes, the image for this game…is actually from my Sims 2 Family.
8. Command and Conquer: Red Alert (PC).
I loved the alternative history setting that Red Alert took place in. The game plays out in an era where Einstein kills Hilter and creates a power vacuum in Europe just in time for Stalin to push in. Who doesn’t wet their bed dreaming of that historical timeline playing out? Even more, I enjoyed the multiplayer settings, there were two types of games we played. One was based on a mod called “Nurple” that basically put both players into a M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) scenario. You could build a fuck load of cruisers, tanks, and nuclear trucks for dirt cheap and you had a vast field of crystals to supply your bases with. Battles would begin with 100 cruisers, 50 nuke trucks, and companies of tanks and end with nuclear waste irradiating the map as the nuke trucks blew up in domino fashion while your cruisers and tanks duked it out at point blank range. Even after hours you would get nowhere. Fun, I say. The other mode we enjoyed I called “World War I style.” No mechanized units, no planes, just fresh meat, an MCV, and a bunch of harvesters. The land gets littered with pill boxes and fire turrets and massive infantry waves get crushed under the wheels of your harvesters. Prepare for Glory, bitches. Command and Conquer is still my favorite RTS game, but Starcraft is better, you say? Much as I love Blizzard’s attention to detail and wonderfully built games, I just never got into Starcraft. Maybe that makes me “lamez0rz.”Maybe I just need more of a Korean influence in my life. Maybe Starcraft 2 will finally get me into the game.
Update: Wow, some info about Nurple Maps… I didn’t even think that the Nurple Maps still existed, but apparently they do. Just check out the Urban Dictionary entry for Nurple. I would link to the Nurple site itself, but it’s also a Warez site. Nice.
7. Wii Sports (Wii).
For years I’ve always thought, if you wanted to play football, why don’t you just go outside and play it? I’ve never been a big sports game fan. The 8-bit simulations weren’t satisfying and I never cared for watching sports on television, which translates into my disinterest in the subject as a video game genre. I did enjoy playing sports, but not in a highly organized fashion. As kids we played tackle football using our front yards, we played kickball in the street intersection between Karen Drive and Thomas Road, and we played whiffle ball in my hilly backyard and jumped the fence and trampled my neighbor’s magnolias to get our ball back. That was more fun to me. The moment my parents enrolled me into Little League, I became disinterested. Where was the fun in playing? Everyone was so goddamn serious, and if you have to be serious about something that’s “fun” then it’s not worth playing. I digress…Wii Sports merges the best of both worlds. You get to move around as you would be if you were playing the sport and you get to play a video game at once. Just like DDR even. It’s not totally realistic – Wii Bowling won’t make you better at real bowling, but it’s incredibly fun and intuitive with the wii-mote and that’s why I love it. I never had so much fun flailing around like an idiot. Even people who get hurt playing this game are smiling. How Nintendo managed to pull that PR off is pretty damn incredible.
6. Starfox (SNES).
This was true 3D on the SNES and it was cool at the time. Not that Mode 7 sprite rotating bullshit, which was neat in its own way, but this was neater. The FX chip was something embedded into each SNES game cartridge that required it. I think Nintendo made the only two or three FX chip games for the console. I only remember this one and Stunt Race FX. Starfox was, to me, the 16-bit era’s Star Wars, and you know what, the Starfox theme is more bombastic than the Star Wars one. Take that Star Wars fanboys, John Williams, and your orchestra too. I knew this game was good because I replayed it over and over just to hit 100% in the completion score. I think I managed it because I took a blurry picture of my accomplishment for posterity.
