Rllmuk Top 100 Games 2022 - It's over!

[Benny]

25. Shadow of the Colossus

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 26, down 3)

 

Oddly enough I still haven’t actually played the remade version. I was not entirely convinced by the graphical changes - it felt like something “technically” better but, somewhere along the line, something ethereal had been lost. But still, it does have that soundtrack, which in SotC maybe more than nearly any other game is the key to the feel of all of it. I said pretty much all I needed to back in 2017:

 

“I’m glad time has still been kind to SotC, as I still think it’s Ueda’s team’s finest hour. Despite the upcoming remaster that has been shown briefly, I think the HD version of the original game will probably be considered the definitive version as it will remain the original unchanged art design, which is so important for all of these games that even minor changes, as closely or as deftly as they will try to do them in the remake, could make it like seeing an imperfect replica of a painting in some ways. Not something I thought I would ever say about a videogame remade with new technology, but for such pieces of gaming art history, increasingly relevant.

 

If Ico existed alone, there would be at least one game that could be pointed to again and again as an example of the videogame as a uniquely valid storytelling medium, but for the team’s next game they managed to outdo themselves with an experience that builds on the lessons they learned when crafting Ico’s unique atmosphere and sense of place, and soars to majestic heights of story, atmosphere, wonder and awe.

 

The opening scenes are instantly engaging, introducing you to a world that feels completely unique, with just faint shades of Ico for those familiar with its sunlit hues. This is a game that takes its time, and understands narratively the need to hold back until exactly the right moments to take your breath away.

 

From when you first begin to ride across the landscape, the simple pleasure of interacting with your horse is a wonderful experience, and the animation and control feel crafted in such a way that you are not controlling the animal, but that you are encouraging it with how you move the reigns, a huge step beyond similar interactions in other games.

 

If Ico felt like a castle that was alive and aware of your every move, here the landscape itself feels barren, yet not lifeless, but rather untouched by any people for centuries. Stone structures rise out of the mist indicating long forgotten civilizations, all overgrown and mossed over, begging to be explored.

 

There are no checkpoints, no minimap, no collectables. Just you, your horse, a vast plain stretching before you, and the one simple goal to save a loved one, though it is not clear how. And you are on your own.

 

The environment itself feels like it is just waiting to divulge its secrets to the unwary traveller, and the task of finding the titans that are your ultimate destinations is left to you to decide whatever pace you choose to take it, or even not the order you are directed. You are encouraged to get lost in this unique fantasy landscape.

 

And when you finally reach the titular guardians, the sense of scale is utterly staggering. Few other games have reached the same level of awe inspired by these wondrous creations. Many other games have creatures as big, or bigger than some in Shadow of the Colossus, but nearly all of them fail to instil them with the same sense of scale and majesty.

 

Looking up at the first Colossus you meet, you would be forgiven for simply standing and staring, as the incredible beast shakes the earth with each step towards you. The sense of panic is palpable, as the game does not give you any clues or hints as to what you are supposed to do, and there has been no helpful fellow traveller to give warnings or suggestions. It is just you, your wits, and the giant. And the resolve to toppling him is exactly what will help you win.

 

There is an exhilaration in dealing the first blow, and the music, which is perhaps one of the finest, and most rousing ever composed for a game, swells to the task of matching the struggle of epic proportions. The creature will try to shake you off, as you are of holding on to the moss that covers it like fur, one button on the controller held down as surely as the protagonist holds on for dear life.

 

And soon the struggle will end, and the feeling of triumph will be tinged with relief, and sadness. The creature of stone and earth, that is the watchful guardian of this untouched natural paradise lies slain, not through malice, greed or accident, but the hero’s necessity.

 

And that guilt will linger, as you push forwards to the next unforgettable struggle.”

 

24. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 24, up 32)

 

“People usually list Ocarina of Time as the greatest Zelda game, or even A Link to the Past. And I would often be one of them. But despite that, I actually know in my heart of hearts Majora’s Mask is the greatest of them all, and would happily argue it might be one the greatest games Nintendo has ever made, or indeed anyone.

 

I really would love to go into detail about why, and this game definitely deserves it, but so much I would like to talk about would spoil the many layers of utter genius the game is plastered with, and the process of discovery with the game’s themes, characters and individual little moments is so utterly delightful it should be played with as little knowledge as possible.

 

Just one thing that I will add: very few games, if perhaps any, are able to tackle concepts like grief for example, let alone hope to explore them, and yet Majora’s Mask does.

 

The greatest game that isn’t the best game of all time.”

 

Well, screw you, 2015 Benny, I am going to talk about why.

 

Three days to save the world. As a concept it’s about as punchy and alluring in games as you can get.

 

Majora’s Mask does feel like, ultimately, an exploration of and meditation on loss. As each of the scant few game days progress the world to its ultimate destruction, you will see characters going through different stages of acceptance as they try to go about their lives - characters that in Ocarina of Time would have been locked into their specific roles are here given the chance to be fully developed individuals with their own little lives.

 

And over those three days, you’ll get to know each of them, all with their own unique little quests and problems, and you’ll see how they react and how their lives are changed by the coming apocalypse.

 

Majora’s Mask has an air of melancholy, of finality to everything that pervades the game’s atmosphere. You genuinely feel like you are fighting primordial forces beyond anything Link has faced before. After all, how can the dark rule of Ganondorf compare to the destruction of life itself?

 

Absolutely brimming with ideas, touching moments and a daring sense of experimentation. Majora’s Mask is one of the most interesting and unique videogames ever made.

[Vemsie]

Indeed. MM is the greatest Zelda game and my favourite Nintendo game period.

[Benny]

23. OutRun 2 (006: Coast 2 Coast)

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 29, up 😎

 

Wow people really really really love them some OutRun. I liked the original of course, who doesn’t? But I never actually sampled the delights of this now criminally unavailable little gem.

 

So with some effort and determination however, I finally managed to give it a go.

 

And… I didn’t like it all that much.

 

It probably doesn’t help that The PSP version engine noise compared to other versions is absolutely horrible: it’s much louder and higher pitched in the sound mix, and drowns out nearly all other game sounds. I played with headphones and even at mild volume I couldn’t play for more than a few races before I had to give my ears a rest.

 

But as for the actual game, the pure racing and rad drifting is definitely a lot of fun, but I never really felt significantly engaged or wowed by it. It’s very refreshing, and probably one of the best examples of a game of its type but… I realised for a bit of arcadey racing I really just wanted to go back to F-Zero X.

 

Still, as a faithful and carefully considered update to the original OutRun, it’s bloody impressive.

 

No-one did any writeups in their votes this time, but what luck! There is a search function, so for balance here are some people who do love it:

 

 

Strider: 

“Quite simply the best arcade racer of all time. Sumo took the groundwork of Sega's original game and turned it into something wonderful. I still play it once a week and have done so since it was released.”

 

Treble:

 “Evoking pleasurable and joyful associations in games should be easier than it is, but it eludes a lot of studios. Not so SEGA in the era of the arcades, who attracted people with their vivid backgrounds and hyper-real scenarios. The nineties saw a retreat from exaggeration in AAA games towards more stolid-looking stuff, but we got a brief return to candy-coloured silliness in Outrun 2.

For me, there’s no better introduction to simple, stress-free than Yu Suzuki’s flagship racer – it has very little depth, limited replayability (even with all the additions to the C2C version) but is just a hefty scoop of multi-hued delight. If you want to teach someone new to the hobby how refreshing it can be, stick this on, select Magical Sound Shower, and set them loose on the highway.”

 

Qazimod:

“There's got to be a reason for why I've bought about five versions of Outrun 2/006 (Xbox OR2, PC C2C, PSP C2C, PS2 C2C, OOA.) It's classic time attack racing that is a joy to experience thanks to the ace drift handling, those gorgeous backdrops and those classic tunes. I'm still hoping for someone at Sega to forget about the Ferrari thing and announce "RunOut" or something for PS4 and Xbox One.”

 

 

 

22.  Red Dead Redemption 2

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 20, New!)

 

Such a polarizing game, apparently, except clearly it isn’t all that contentious or it wouldn’t have ranked so high. Hold onto your cowboy hats, this is a long one:

 

"There are moments in Red Dead Redemption II, when the artifice of its many systems have come together, where it feels like you have stepped into a waking cowboy dream. Pause for a few moments within a deep forest, and as you walk slowly through the bushes small creatures will dart quickly past you as you approach, every sound of your footsteps breaking the quiet whisper of the wind through the tree branches; each rustle of the undergrowth signals the presence of more living things going about their business in this incredible illusion. Break through to the edge of the forest, and as you mount your horse you may spy the sunset glinting off a lake in the distance, or a warm haze hanging over vast golden prairies. Scale rock faces and marvel as each hoof-beat dislodges tiny rocks that tumble down past you, every clink and crunch of the gravel sounding off as it falls.

 

If nothing else, if this were all the game was, Red Dead Redemption II would be a crowning achievement in the evolution of believable artificial worlds. When everything works as it should, there is not a single piece of interactive entertainment that comes close in creating another place that feels this tangible - as if you could just step through the screen and hop on the saddle of the magnificent beast before you, with all its complex quivering muscles and sinewy skittishness rendered in exquisite detail.

 

But Red Dead Redemption is so much more than that - the believability of the world it creates is an essential component of breathing life into a complex story of morally grey and sometimes not so grey actions as you ride roughshod across the landscape, laying waste to so many people and animals that it sometimes veers dangerously close to a territory that could be unrivaled narrative dissonance. Yet this dichotomy of intention and desire between the wishes of the character and player and the chaos that gradually unfolds throughout the story feels entirely intentional. Arthur is not a good man, yet he never hides from or acts differently to what he is, no matter the reservation we may have about some of his actions as we guide him along a surprisingly complex and well developed character arc. This is not the all charismatic smiles but un self-aware killer inside and easy going psychopathy of Nathan Drake - Arthur is still a complex and thoughtful protagonist, and the question of his redemption is not just the game’s namesake but forms the main conflict at the heart of the story arc, and whether heinous crimes, if not forgiven, can ever be redeemed.

 

Developing this story over the dozens of hours that it takes to see the credits, is an absolutely fantastic cast of colourful main characters. While great characters are not something Rockstar are unknown for in their games, here they are given time and space to breath, and fleshed out with so much incidental dialogue that as you travel the land with this small band of misfits you come to know them by their little quirks, thoughts about the future, how they interact with each other, the player, or sometimes the world around them. The interactions with the cast at their camp is one of the highlights of your journey, and it can sometimes even make you feel a little self conscious as you tell a character that comes up to talk to you to go away, while you are eavesdropping on an interesting argument breaking out behind a tent. Many a long journey into the wilderness will be book-ended by a rest back at camp where you will look forward to checking up on characters that will not only comment on your recent escapades, but even smaller contextual minutiae.

 

If this was just window dressing it would still be impressive, but by investing this much into small details, it lends greater emotional heft to a journey that spans across not just a significant amount of hours to develop, but over a large amount of physical distance as the gang moves about and your daily in-world focus is within different towns and landscapes. You don’t just interact with these characters, but you travel with and spend real time with them as you explore the game’s world. As the story unfolds, the fact you have effectively lived a part of your life with these people lends the story an otherworldly, almost mythical feeling that is something uniquely possible in interactive fiction, and here it is pulled off with remarkable panache through all its intriguing scripting, finally all coming together at the very end with a story that absolutely requires the investment to see the whole picture.

 

And here lie the problems.

 

Any undertaking as vast as this is going to stand up or fall on one main aspect: immersion. Decades of refinement in control schemes and systems over the years in video gaming has often produced strangely weird and wonderful ways to interact with them, from the interesting but oddly physically demanding grip button in a game like Shadow of the Colossus that heightens the tension of each of its dramatic encounters, to the smoothly refined and automated but oddly soulless environmental traversal of Uncharted - it’s not a requirement that all games distill themselves down into having familiar button layouts or interactions, but rather that they have an internal logic that suits that game’s specific mechanisms. In third person action games in particular, control schemes and game mechanics are closely interlinked, and your immersion into the game’s world will be directly affected by how well these match up for the player.

 

The systems in Red Dead Redemption 2 are complex, and necessitate therefore a fairly sprawling set of possible interactions throughout, some contextual, and some mundane. It is initially therefore, quite an impenetrably dense set of possible actions required to achieve simple tasks. For example: while holstered, your gun can be quickly drawn with the left bumper, aimed with the left trigger, and fired by pressing in with the right. To focus on someone to talk to them, you must also press the left trigger, but to threaten them you must focus with the left, then press the right trigger to draw the gun. If you press the right trigger too hard, it fires, which is a different set of actions to if you had aimed it manually. It kind of makes sense once you are used to it, but this internal logic is not always clear and often results in mistaken interactions by the player even up until later in the game. Running down to the end of an alley, you may press the Y button to quickly jump to your horse, but woe betide a person be crossing next to the horse as you press it, as then Arthur may instead decide the input meant to wrestle the person to the ground. Good luck then not getting killed as the Law is alerted.

 

Everything must be done very deliberately and with care, or it can return strange results due to the many contextual actions, and this necessitates more time to learn how to interact with the world. This is both one of the game’s greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. Many of the possible issues comes down to the animations: everything the character does is deliberately animated to an almost slavish degree, which means if a walking animation has not ended before trying to pick up a tin from the shelf, the character may move past it and require repositioning to show the contextual prompt. It makes sense in real life to only be able to pick something up when you can reach it physically, and the game in some ways increases immersion by being so exact and detailed, while as the same time shattering it by frustrating the player by not creating the shortest bridge between what they wish to do in their head and the required inputs to achieve it.

 

The control scheme is very much an acquired taste, but there are some unforgivably bad decisions that hamper enjoyment on a basic level: having the guns need to be drawn from the horse as you dismount is a nice little detail, but considering you always have your entire armoury available at any time from the menu it’s a strange dissonance of realism of the required action with the unrealism of quantity of equipment. If you have made a selection from your weapons however and have a favourite pair of long-arms, there is no way to keep these consistent - every time you enter a mission or mount your horse it will reset your guns to something different to what you select, and you have to manually go into the menu repeatedly throughout the game if you wish to use the same tools for the job.

 

There are more issues to be said in terms of mission variety - yes, this is a glorified cowboy simulator, so there are definitely going to be missions that end in shootouts. However, this happens so often at points that it occasionally threatens to descend into parody. It’s absolutely intentional in many parts of the story, and in some ways it does work for the story that violent solutions to the game’s problems are all too easy, but there is a period of time about half way into the story that it can become a little dull when the more inspired gameplay ideas in missions start to sag.

Finally, most immersion breaking of all, are the bugs. It may have benefited from just a little more time to iron them out, as the list of bugs I encountered was fairly frequent and occasionally amusing, but disappointing. These were over dozens of hours though, so it’s forgivable in such a detailed game, but noticeable.  I will not detail them here, but see below for the list.

 

When all is said and done, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a vast, magnificent, revolutionary, frustrating, touching, fiddly, hilarious, beautiful, confounding, mythical, demanding, audacious and flawed gem. It will divide opinion and be picked apart for its missteps as much as it takes gaming forward in other ways, but it’s absolutely a milestone in interactive entertainment. So excuse me, I’m off to mash the A button for another dozen hours..."

 

 

 

21. Super Metroid

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 19, up 20)

 

As great as Symphony of the Night and Hollow Knight and all other pretenders to the throne might be, the original Super Metroid still rules the roost. Absolutely nothing else compares:

 

“Super Metroid is nothing less than an absolute masterclass of design, structure, pacing and presentation.

 

From the opening level that introduces you to the overall control of Samus with a blinding set piece, to the final credits sequence, the entire game literally drips atmosphere and the routes through each level make the entire world feel like a perfectly constructed and cohesive hole.

 

Abilities are introduced with a carefully measured pace, leaving you to only just remember the places you traversed earlier and that their previously inaccessible secrets can be finally revealed. There is backtracking of course, but here it feels like you are gradually being given the tools to explore and open up the world, rather than the world forcing you to follow a path backwards.

 

More impressive still is how the game’s environments, sound design, and music tell more of a story than any number of cut scenes or dialog, and the lonely trek through each area can feel like something quite beautiful. Dark Souls get’s a lot of praise for how it delivers its story to the player almost by a method of osmosis; Super Metroid did this years ago, and with even less dialog.

 

Nearly every modern set piece driven title owes it significant debt. One of Nintendo’s finest titles ever made, and an enduring legacy for the late Gunpei Yokoi.”

 

[Down by Law]

Ah man, you ideally gotta play the Xbox or PC version of Outrun, you need that silky smooth 60fps . It's still a mindblowingly good looking game too for how old it is, the draw distance still impresses even today ! 

 

[Jamie John]

I want to to replay RDR2. Are there any plans whatsoever for a current gen remaster or FPS update?

[Benny]

32 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Ah man, you ideally gotta play the Xbox or PC version of Outrun, you need that silky smooth 60fps . It's still a mindblowingly good looking game too for how old it is, the draw distance still impresses even today ! 

 

 

I'm going to try the PC version when I can source it. That engine noise on PSP was just excruciating, I'm surprised I never saw mentioned in reviews how much worse it sounds.

[Benny]

31 minutes ago, Jamie John said:

I want to to replay RDR2. Are there any plans whatsoever for a current gen remaster or FPS update?

 

 

On Xbox One X it still looks like a current gen game. And of course there is always:

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Qazimod]

I can't disagree with the Outrun observations, but then it's not an arcade racer that you necessarily play for the adrenaline hit. It's my go-to when I want to play something but don't want to be stressed out or have to invest hours or anything.

[Benny]

5 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

I can't disagree with the Outrun observations, but then it's not an arcade racer that you necessarily play for the adrenaline hit. It's my go-to when I want to play something but don't want to be stressed out or have to invest hours or anything.

 

I wasn't very good at it so if anything the string of disappointment smileys from the increasingly bored girl in it was more stressful than not.

 

Basically I just don't get on with cars. Too many wheels for my liking.

[Benny]

Bet you're all wondering what the genre of the next HOTPICK is...

[Qazimod]

2 minutes ago, Benny said:

wondering

 

 

Surely. Er, unless it's the new one.

[Couch Corpse]

Seeing Outrun 2 so high up is a surprise, not a comment on its quality.

[Benny]

HOTPICK #3

 

Command & Conquer

 

 

(voted for by: Novelty Bobble)

 

If there’s one negative to be said about all the real-time strategy games, it’s that, ultimately, they have never really evolved much beyond the progenitors of the genre.

 

The clicks-per minute fests of online StarCraft 2, and the various tower defence offshoots of DOTA and beyond, might have become eSports darlings, but for me the most fun to be had with real time “strategy” was always a screenful of Orcas and Mammoth tanks.

 

Recently, painstakingly remastered (one of the best examples of its kind), the original Command & Conquer and its sequel are both still enormous fun to play today.

 

Long before the series would really start to go off the rails, the original Command & Conquer feels relatively restrained by even modern military themed game standards. The briefing videos are short and to the point, the plot hasn’t quite gone truly crazy just yet (don’t worry, it gets there pretty quickly with Red Alert), and the units are generally believable, slightly futuristic machines.

 

As far as the actual strategy goes, this is the build-up and send-a-big-army school of RTS gaming, and while it might seem on the “simplistic” side today, it’s just still so satisfying to actually do in C&C. Even the very soon released StarCraft required a bit more finesse. But sometimes you don’t want finesse. Sometimes you just want to crush your enemies, and see them driven before you.

 

The AI is dumb, the factions are wildly unbalanced, the commando missions are absolute BULLSHIT… But, every now and then, you just need to be served a great big, fragrant slice of highly matured 1995 cheese. In 4K.

 

And Command & Conquer really hits the spot.

[ScouserInExile]

15 hours ago, Benny said:

The AI is dumb

Theres a wonderful flaw with the AI in the original C&C. The AI won't destroy sandbags. So you can build rows of sandbags to stop them getting anywhere near you or, in some missions, getting anywhere near resource fields so you could starve them out. Plus, if you played as GDI, your artillery was longer ranged than anything JOD had, so you could carefully position them to destroy anything that had walked into the sandbags and got stuck.

 

I did the QA on the PS1 version, so put a good bit of time into it.

[Benny]

These days those kinds of things get patched out, which is a real shame. I miss the glory days of games having "features" you could exploit. You felt like a genius whenever you found them. You didn't always have to play them "properly".

 

I mean speedrunners still find stuff, but that's often breaking the game completely rather than the above.

[phillv85]

Sounds a little like the trick I used to do on Rome: Total War where you exploited the invisible walls at the edge of the map and just put rows of hoplites in a corner and let the enemy run into them. Unless the enemy smashed you with archers or artillery, or someone broke a line in your troops you’d always win killing thousands of enemies. If they broke your lines you were fucked though!

[merrychan]

The original C&C is completely brilliant, even if my tactics never evolved from "as many grenade troops as possible" and "engineers in an APC to try and take their base and sell all the buildings"

[PeteJ]

I miss the days of funky install animations. I seem to remember c&c having one of the best. 

 

I remember lugging around pcs to friends houses to play this over a Lan, good times. 

[Ry]

Nice to see Outrun so high. It's well loved here. 

 

Has any PGR or PES game appeared yet?

[Wiper]

7 minutes ago, PeteJ said:

I miss the days of funky install animations. I seem to remember c&c having one of the best. 

 

Yep, it was a good one! 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the remastered game is such a labour of love that they even made a new version of the sequence for it: 

 

 

 

 

[Benny]

Yeah the remaster is a real masterclass on how to do literally everything right. I think it's probably one of the best remasters ever made in all honestly.

 

I mean directly compare to the hack job that Blizzard did with Warcraft 3: hoo boy.

[Benny]

20. Portal

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 25, down 4)

 

What a nice way to start the top 20. The original and still the best and, in my humble opinion, still the best game ever put out by Valve. It’s an economical little game that is completely lean and fat-free. And yet so incredibly satisfying. So it deserved a compact little review too:

 

“The game that would launch so many tiresome memes...

 

Portal is, simply put, a little puzzle adventure of pure, mind bending genius.

 

Each level is its own mini story, as you fight your way out of each area chided by your AI captor, and every completed room feels like a small victory over the twisted minds of the puzzle creators. Every barrier to progress never feels like the fault of anything but your own ability to process the unique visual and spatial challenges in front of you, and you are never contained by any set pieces outside of your control that push you through the levels - your progress from completing puzzles is very much your own and at your own pace.

 

The sequel introduced many interesting additions to the gameplay, and expanded the story with set pieces to increase the length, but unfortunately while this was an admirable attempt to make it feel like a full-fat title, it lost so much of the purity of spirit and subtle humour found in the original Portal. Set pieces outside of the player control diluted the gameplay and took away some of the illusion of player freedom.

 

But not so in the first game. From the starting room to the surprising climax, Portal is clever, absorbing, funny, and singularly perfect.”

 

19. Super Mario Odyssey

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 21, New!)

 

I never quite felt like really rinsing every secret in this one compared to other 3D mario games, but my God it’s good though. Nintendo simply went and released two of the best games of all time in the same year, the mad bastards. How is this already five years old though?:

 

“Let's talk about small spaces of sheer joy.

 

Stepping into Mario Odyssey for the first time feels like putting on an old but comfy pair of slippers. Mario has largely the same actions he’s always had, and for anyone who has grown up playing these games the Mario “feel” will be instantly familiar. And yet it’s just slightly tweaked, slightly improved, and it is so utterly superbly refined that a newcomer would be forgiven for thinking that the way the game controls is nothing short of revelatory.

 

Nintendo have always been absolute masters of surprises, and from start to finish, Mario Odyssey is a game bursting at the seams with invention. Ideas that could carry entire games are introduced like so much confetti, and each of the various worlds you visit are teeming with more hidden secrets than perhaps any previous 3D Mario title.

 

The route to find some of these is enabled by a recurring gameplay ability: transformation. In a move that perhaps steals Kirby’s thunder a little, Mario’s ability to take control of nearly every enemy you encounter means every level is a treasure trove of potential new abilities and ways to approach challenges. It becomes not just a case of “how do I get up there?”, but “how do I want to get up there”.

 

These abilities are introduced and paced throughout the main story of the game as you progress, and you soon realise the game is performing a grand deception: through all this fun it’s teaching you how to play with every element of a level until you master all of the game’s various moving parts, so that you can then tackle the real challenges ahead.

 

Mario Odyssey above all else is a game that encourages you to bounce around the levels in various forms for the sheer hell of it, and you are frequently rewarded with new discoveries and challenges. Special mention should also go to the ability to dress Mario up in various outfits - this is completely cosmetic, yet there is something rather stupendous about being able to specifically dress in swim wear before embarking on a jaunt around a sunny beach level.

 

Mario games have always been incredible toy boxes of fun just waiting to be delved into, and Odyssey is no exception. Endlessly entertaining, clever, and often incredibly funny, it’s a Mario game for the ages.”

 

18. Super Mario 64

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 14, down 7)

 

TWO Mario games in a row?! Oh how spoiled with riches we are today.

 

“Yah, Wah, Whoohoo!”

 

Those few words from our favourite plumber are enough to transport you instantly back to 1996 (or whenever you played it), as they punctuate the wondrous joy you felt moving Mario around those castle grounds for the very first time.

 

It’s an evergreen classic:

 

“Super Mario 64 is still one of the most joyful things ever created, and its influence reverberates down more than two decades, with still more cleverness and genius packed into one tiny cartridge than most huge modern games can dream of having. A lesson in how to do everything right.

 

Back when the Nintendo 64 launched, it was already more expensive than the Playstation, which had been out for a little while and had some great games. To really push the system, Nintendo needed something revolutionary, something so completely mind bogglingly brilliant that it made everything else that came before it seem clunky and hard to control.

 

Enter Mario 64.

 

Introducing so many industry firsts it’s exhausting: full 3D platforming with working camera controls being the icing on the cake.

 

The full freedom of movement afforded by the analog controls made games like Tomb Raider seem old fashioned and limited - this was how 3D games were meant to play. Picking it up now, it is still a lesson in how to get so many things right first time, and while 3D cameras in games have actually come on in leaps and bounds since then, the fact that it took every other developer perhaps almost a decade to eventually catch up speaks volumes.

 

That’s all very well from a historical perspective, but does it still really hold up today? The answer is yes, oh absolutely yes.

 

Playing the game today is still as much of a joy as it ever was when jumping and skipping through those first delirious moments outside Peach Castle - a subtle training ground to let the player get used to the controls in their own time and with gay abandon, whether scaling the trees dotted around or going for a relaxing swim in the moat.

 

Every level is infused with the sheer genius Miyamoto was already famous for for the previous Mario games, and the fact that it made the transition to 3D with all the charm intact is staggering.

 

The wild flights of fancy seen in the Galaxy titles may not exist here, but there is a consistency of quality throughout the entire game that just keeps expanding as you uncover more secrets, levels and beautiful moments of wonder.

 

It has not aged, and has arguably only become more impressive over time for how few games have matched it.

 

Perhaps the greatest 3D platformer ever made. (I’m still thinking Galaxy)”

 

 

As a little addendum:

 

 

I played Mario 64 a couple of years late: my first introduction to 3D platformers on the N64 was actually Banjo-Kazooie. At the time, that game was one of the most amazing things I’d ever played.

 

The sense of freedom seemed limitless and the graphics were so tactile and detailed in everything. So much so that when I finally played Mario 64 a few months later, it didn’t wow me quite as much as it could have, being graphically “simpler” looking, and with worlds that seemed smaller and less impressive.

 

Of course, young me was an idiot.

 

I went back to Banjo-Kazooie very recently with, oddly enough, the express purpose of revisiting it for potentially honouring it in this list with a HOTPICK.

 

But, alas, time has not been as kind to it as I would have liked. The intro is interminably long. It falls at the very first hurdle, with Rare forcing their jaunty, un-skippable cutscenes on you, and making you sit through additional dialogue that is slow even when trying to skip, before you can just get in and play.

 

And when you do finally get control of Banjo, it’s fun enough, but by not having access to all the abilities to make traversal more engaging, you are limited by one bumbling speed of progress, that limits player expression. Worse still, characters and cutscenes are always, always present to hold your hand, or trigger another cutscene, or otherwise take control away from you at a moment’s notice.

 

So why am I talking so much about Banjo-Kazooie after the Super Mario 64 entry?

 

Simply put, because after becoming somewhat bored and frustrated by the harsh reality of broken nostalgia, I put on Super Mario 64…

 

And it had not aged a day. Within seconds I was in the first level, long-jumping up hills, and practically tearing around the place with absolute, cackling abandon. It was so responsive, so fluid, and lets you achieve so much with your abilities right from the very start without getting in the player’s way… I just had to grab the first star, then the next, then the next…

 

Sorry Banjo. In the bin with ye.

 

(Still not a bad game though, really)

[Qazimod]

One thing I like about 64 is how it "reuses" courses to flip your expectations in a way - you think you know your way around a course and then it turns out that there's a whole other location inside that pyramid you've been running around, or there's a miniature underwater town to explore in another course. It made you feel like you were stumbling across secrets and making discoveries, even though it's all just clever design as you're gently guided towards stars.

[Stanley]

I played through Mario 64 again when the 3D Allstars package came out, and it is still amazing. What a game, what an achievement. 

[HarMGM]

It simply boggles the mind to think that 64 was made by a team of just 15 people.

[Benny]

17. Final Fantasy VII

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 17, up 9)

 

I haven’t actually got round to playing the remake quite yet, so no spoilers please! But these votes are all, of course, for the original game, which was arguably impossible to actually remake in any way that would be the “right” way for everyone.

 

Despite playing the somewhat ropey PC conversion at first, this was probably the first RPG that I truly truly did *everything* in. I was obsessed with it to such a ridiculous degree that I probably 100%ed it on PC twice, before doing the same on the PlayStation version when I got one a bit later. Having a Soundblaster 32 certainly helped the PC version music not sound entirely like ass.

 

“Final Fantasy fans are seemingly unanimous that this is the best in the series, and the news of the remake being in the works brought with it some incredible outpourings of joy.

 

It represents a unique point in gaming history where Square shunned Nintendo to bring their flagship series to the shiny new Sony console, and in many ways it seems like their shifting allegiance may have been what encouraged many other RPG developers to also jump ship, making the Playstation the JRPG fans platform of choice for many years.

 

Final Fantasy VII stands among them as one of the finest ever made. With a large cast of actually likable characters, and story that would be right at home in an anime film (Akira springs to mind - if you are going to be influenced by anything that’s not a bad film to pick), the 60 hours or so you are absorbed in this world are unforgettable.

 

While the graphics and CG cut scenes look very dated these days, and in many ways have not stood the test of time unlike the game’s 16 bit forebears, the soundtrack is still one of the greatest ever composed for a game, synthesized rawness and all. The battle system also remains one of the finest to this day, with great scope for mixing and matching spells and abilities without too much complexity.

 

Square worked some indefinable magic with Final Fantasy VII, which they have tried to replicate in every game in the series since, but so far very few have come close. When the remake is finally finished, we can find out if a modern take will respect its legacy.”

 

Well, did it?

 

 

 

16. The Last of Us

 

 

(Relative position and change based on 2017 scoring: 16, down 10)

 

It’s funny, despite having no pressing desire to play the second game, revisiting the original is something I may do in the near future. It’s one of those games that achieves what it sets out to do very well, and maybe “part 2” also does that, but for me after the completeness of the original, a sequel story was never something I really felt needed to be told.

 

But it cannot be stressed enough just how much of an impact it must have had back in 2013. It took me a couple of years to get round to playing it though:

 

“Does it live up to the hype? Well, not in all respects, but in some ways it actually exceeds it. It takes a while for the story to get going, but this is to the game’s advantage, as so few stories in games take the time to truly flesh out their characters or indulge in significant world building.

 

The sheer detail in every environment of the game from the abandoned cityscapes to the absolutely peerless sound design (this deserves special mention as it might be some of the most immersive sound work I’ve come across in a game), creates a world that feels tangibly real in a way that has only been reached a scant few times in the past, such as in the stark beauty of Half Life 2’s wastelands or Red Dead Redemption’s vast prairies.

 

It is perhaps a shining example of both how far games have come and yet how far they have yet to go. Borrowing gameplay and set piece elements from other genre milestones such as Resident Evil 4, Manhunt, and the Uncharted series, it is often a game that struggles to match it’s extremely solid and satisfying gameplay mechanics up to the requirements of its own world immersion, as characters that have been given so much flesh and blood and feeling outside of gunfights become invisible ghosts ignored by enemies when trying to sneak past them. It is a compromise made to remove potential gameplay frustrations, though in practice the gulf between interactivity and narrative conceits is made that much more stark, especially when you enter some new areas and see so many chest high objects strewn around in ways that seem especially forced - which admittedly is only a problem for those used to the ubiquity of these mechanics - and at odds with the organic nature of nearly everything else in the environment design.

 

It is in some ways because of these small niggles that The Last of Us is shown to be such a staggering achievement, as they are the only blemishes on what is otherwise something so truly out of this world in its overall execution that it has set a high bar in gaming experiences for both what is possible in story driven gameplay experiences, what should be possible, and what should be built upon.

 

Above all else, The Last of Us is about going on a long unforgettable journey, with companions you come to care about, and what better way to tell such a story than by being able to make that journey with them.

 

The greatest interactive movie game ever made.”

 

It’s also now a few years after part 2 came out… Guess that means I’m about due to get round to that one after all.

 

[chris on the moon]

19 hours ago, Benny said:

 

18. Super Mario 64

 

 

 

You're getting pretty good at posting so-subtly-wrong-it's-annoying screenshots.

[Benny]

1 minute ago, chris on the moon said:

You're getting pretty good at posting so-subtly-wrong-it's-annoying screenshots.

 

I am the best at what I do

[Qazimod]

VI was robbed!  

 

I actually started playing the original VII again yesterday, funnily enough - I'm thinking of doing a few video captures to put online with my other gaming footage. The low-poly models and MIDI parps are a bit daft today, and certain animations in battle feel lethargic after something like VI, but it's still a fun experience.

[Tomdominer]

Great thread. But I'd also like to suggest perhaps next time we do this, we open up the blerb to people who know the game intimately if @Benny doesn't know the game that well. I would have lept at the opportunity to write the Wave Race 64 summary, as its one of, if not my favourite racing game of all time.