#19 Rune Factory: Frontier
This game... this game is all me. If you had asked me to describe my perfect game, Rune Factory: Frontier is probably would I'd come up with it. A fantasy adventure game with farming and a social sim that's probably too robust for its own good. All centered around a quaint village where colorful creatures float around and don't seem to do anything real helpful, but add to the atmosphere. Yes, I'm probably not the guy you want designing most of the games you play, but screw it, I know what I like. And god knows I like this game. It feels like it should be just a small game. There's only your farm, a few screens that make up the town, a beach, and a lake. But as you play you realize there's actually quite a bit of depth, literally and figuratively. At first it feels like there's just fighting and farming, but as you progress more things open up. You're raising monsters, crafting equipment, building relationships, and as you spend time with those the story starts to open up. And the dungeons, while they don't require an arduous journey to find (the first one is literally next to your farm and you find the extra when you cut some grass that grew over the entrance) are surprisingly huge. You won't be completing this in one or two attempts. They're just too damn massive. Oh yes, and there's a sentient island in the shape of a whale floating over the town too that needs exploring. Anyway, the point is, there's a lot to keep your occupied in this "little game." I think the world "dense" might be the right adjective.
Funny thing about Frontier is over the years I've told myself I would never play it again and traded it away several times. It's a very long game, and to be fair, not exactly well paced. It can be very slow at times, and sometimes in order to progress further you have to do some rather dull jobs like growing flowers to get someone to open a gate. So it's easy to want to push it aside forever and play other games. But Rune Factory Frontier has something extra going on that keeps pulling me back in. As a matter of fact, I just bought the game for the 3rd time a few days ago when I spotted it at a used game store. And now... well I'm thinking I might need to push away some of the newer games I've been eyeballing and give yet another go.
Your perfect game is your 19th best game...
Foolz said:Your perfect game is your 19th best game...
He recognizes his taste is pretty poor.
Love the stories that go with these. So rune factory huh, 19. A farm simulator with dungeons, sounds about right.
We are almost there, this is getting exciting.
SupremeAC said:Foolz said:Your perfect game is your 19th best game...
He recognizes his taste is pretty poor.
Ok no more subtle nuances in my posts. I didn't say it was my perfect game. It's just what I would come up with because it has everything I love. Also I would likely screw up any game development I was involved with.
Going forward all future posts will simply be, "this game is gud. Me likey."
robio said:
Ok no more subtle nuances in my posts. I didn't say it was my perfect game. It's just what I would come up with because it has everything I love. Also I would likely screw up any game development I was involved with.
Going forward all future posts will simply be, "this game is gud. Me likey."
I believe you said if anyone asked you to describe your perfect game, you would come up with Rune Factory: Frontier:
"If you had asked me to describe my perfect game, Rune Factory: Frontier is probably would I'd come up with it."
SupremeAC said:He recognizes his taste is pretty poor.
As we must be precise, what he's admitting to is being a terrible imaginary game designer, as well as having terrible taste.
Only foolz would turn an innocuous comment like that into a multipost debate. Just wait till my list where everything is "greatest *insert qualifier here* game ever!"
Foolz said:As we must be precise, what he's admitting to is being a terrible imaginary game designer, as well as having terrible taste.
- he did not admit to either of those, it was merely implied by his post
- I did not in any way word my reply in such a way as to imply that having poor taste was his only vice.
edit: spelling check. merely, not merrily.
Nooooooooooooooo! Damn you all to hell! 
#18 Street Fighter Alpha 2
My freshman year of college, the original Street Fighter Alpha was pretty much responsible for me making every friend I had that year. We had it in our game room, and it was pretty much the way I got introduced to everyone I would ultimately hang out with. It was a great game, amazing action and packed with secrets, but there was no denying it was an unfinished product. It was a small roster, characters shared music and stages and extremely unbalanced. Sodom players for instance could break out a juggling combo that could take about 80% of an opponents health very quickly. So when Alpha 2 came out it was a fucking event for me and my friends. It also came out right around the time of the second when arcades were starting to close once and for all, so finding it was tough. Eventually we found one in a movie theater and for the next few weeks we'd go buy tickets to movies we'd ultimately never watch just so we could dump quarters in SFA2. And in retrospect, I probably didn't miss out on much by skipping The Fan starring Wesley Snipes and Robert Deniro.
Alpha 2 was also the best of the series. The 5 additional characters and 3 secret characters from the original made for a full roster. Perfectly balanced with the ridiculous juggling and combos from the original minimized. Amazing stage designs and great music to go along with it. Really I can't think of a single area where this game was lacking. Capcom put out some pretty incredible fighting games around this time, but I always found myself coming back to the Alpha 2. Just about as good as a fighting game can get in my mind.
Alpha 2 was and still is a fantastic fighting game.
You couldn't play their arcade games without purchasing film tickets?!
#17. Pokemon Snap
Pokemon Snap isn't exactly a ballbuster in the difficulty department, but that's kind of the point. This game was designed with one philosophy (aside from making more money off of the initial rush of Pokemania) - games should be fun. And god knows Snap provides oodles of it. 7 different lands to cruise through while you take pictures of different Pokemon, while they interact with one another. And if they're not quite doing what you want them to do, you can throw apples or stun balls at them to change up their behavior. The end result is the Pokemon tend to end up doing something mildly funny and at times outright disasterous. Poor Meowth...he got his ass kicked so many times thanks to my interferring.
Snap could have very easily been a half-assed cash-in like some of the other games in the series (I'm looking at you Pokemon Collosium). When it first came out, Nintendo announced a giant deal with Blockbuster video so that you could bring in your cartridge to one of their locations and print stickers of the pictures you took. It sounded like an utterly stupid idea, but I still gave it a shot and holy hell, for the weekend I had the game I couldn't tear myself away from it. I even bit the bullet and printed out my pictures (which were stolen by an ex-girlfriend along with a large collection of NES games in a very nasty breakup). It's since gone on to be one of those games that I've introduced to all my kids when I was getting them into gaming, and it's still one of those games I know I can turn on and enjoy for 30 minutes at any given moment.
Much better than the RPGs.
I have fond memories of Snap as well. It was just so relaxed while still being challenging. Getting that Lapras to line up for a perfect shot wasn't easy. I tried to introduce my son to the game a while ago, but he couldn't get into it. Kids these days...
Foolz said:Much better than the RPGs.
No argument from me.
SupremeAC said:I have fond memories of Snap as well. It was just so relaxed while still being challenging. Getting that Lapras to line up for a perfect shot wasn't easy. I tried to introduce my son to the game a while ago, but he couldn't get into it. Kids these days...
Really?? Is he at all interested in Pokemon?
Objection!