IGN's been doing a favorites feature for their major staff members this year, and I felt like it would be fun to reflect and do my own list. You know what surprises me the most? I had far, FAR more Xbox 360 games on the initial list than any other console. I guess that's what happens when a long, varied console generation also happens to be the one that I find myself with the most game-buying money. Tied for second and third place were the SNES and the GameCube, and it was honestly hard to cut many games from the initial list I made. And interesting note: pretty much every game on this list has a killer soundtrack! I guess that's something that really makes or breaks a game for me, huh?
So I have an arbitrary number of 35. I wanted to do 25 at first but I just had too many games that were precious to me and I didn't want to cut. There's a lot of Zelda and Mario games but hey...it's my stinking list and I can do what I want! So strap in and get ready for the ultimate top-whatever list to date!
Showing 1-10 of 35 items
I have written about this game and gushed about it to no end. It takes me to my ultimate happy place and has a serious emotional connection to me that makes it much more significant than just another Mario game. That the sequel was equally (or even more) awesome is astounding to me. Nintendo really struck gold with this concept, and they're a part of the small handful of games that keep me from saying the Wii was a complete wash.
It's the only completely perfect (for the time) game in existence. It did all the right things at the right time and it still captivates me.
DARK SOULS IS MY LIFE
Just to prove that they could, Nintendo did something dramatically different from Ocarina of Time. Idiots and drooling fanboys hated it. I think it's one of the most well-realized game worlds in existence, with an extremely cohesive audiovisual style that's almost unmatched anywhere, especially to this scale. Also, it's loads of fun.
It's a perfect example of respecting and teaching the player without having to spell everything out, and it's also an awesome evolution of the old NES games. Tight controls, an amazing soundtrack, great boss fights, a reasonable difficulty level...this game has it all.
It's absurdly good. The gore factor made it a guilty pleasure for me at first. I just think it's an incredible action game with loads of variety, tension, genuine terror, and fantastic atmosphere.
Pokémon was my late childhood. Seriously, the first games came out when I was close to ten years old and they sucked me in. They were such magical games back then, especially with the way they managed to build such a rich, huge world on decade-old hardware. I love Red/Blue but I put significantly more time into Silver, so that's what gets the pick here.
The only multiplayer game I've consistently played and gotten great at. The series is a staple for my old friend group, and I sort of long for those days. Brawl is technically better, but Melee has a better tone and frantic pace.
I'm still shocked that this sequel was able to make my opinion of the first game take a complete 180. I hated the first one, but in order to impact the story of the second one and see everything it had to offer I ended up playing through it a few more times to import characters to Mass Effect 2. This game has it all - great characters, an action-packed story, amazing visuals, tight gameplay, variety, length...it's incredible.
So. Funny story. Or several. Bear with me here. My first exposure to the Persona series was when I watched the Persona 4 Endurance Run in its entirety here on the site. I grew quite attached to the characters and the music, the humor and the tone. When I got a PS3, I saw this game for sale on the download store for ten bucks, and I figured that's a reasonable price for a super-long RPG that I'd want to check out. I felt like there was no way I'd like this game as much as I had loved Persona 4, but the unique darker feel and the pervasive melancholy and fear that sets this game apart made it a completely different beast. Around 30 hours in, my save file got corrupted by a somewhat-common bug. I was fairly devastated, because I invested a lot in the game and had limited time since I was in college. It really took the wind out of my sails for a while, but I just couldn't stop thinking about Persona 3! So I ended up returning to it, and I carefully backed my saves up every time I was done, and I got through to the very end. I've scarcely played a JRPG quite this nuanced, well-written and engrossing. Some of the monotony inherent in this genre actually works to the story's benefit, since the characters feel the slog and get worn down over the course of the narrative too. By the wearying final battle and the epilogue sequences, you've really bonded with these people and felt their plight firsthand. I really, really enjoyed it and it's one of my favorite games ever at this point. Felt no need to play The Answer, though. Also, Persona 4 is really, really great. Just thought I'd throw that out there.