If it made the original cast look weak, wouldn't that be doing something better? 
#11. Heroes of Might and Magic 3
There are a lot of older games I like to go back and play, but usually it's for a couple hours or maybe a day or two at most. Heroes of Might and Magic 3 on the other hand... everytime I return to this game I'll play it for at least a month. I come back to it every couple years, and as I look through this list I don't think there are many games I have put more hours into. Every part of this game is super addictive. The story mode is excellent, as are the individual campaigns, and it even has a pretty decent online mode which is fairly impressive for the time it came out. It's a perfectly balanced strategy game (or at least was until the second expansion that introduced a ridiculously overpowered mega archer type recruit that could pretty much fuck up any other character at any place on the map), and to this day I don't think it's ever been surpassed, even by later games in the series (which we can probably blame Ubisoft for).
When I first played it, I was delightfully unemployed and had the kind of time one needs with a game this robust, but getting a copy wasn't real easy for a broke guy. A friend had previously given me a pirated copy of it, but it was missing some key features so I decided I'd rather own it and get the full experience. I ended up finding a new copy of it for a mere $8 at a used bookstore. Unfortunately once I got home I realized I had picked up Linux version of the game, and that was rather unplayable for me and my Windows 98 set up. Finally I broke down and picked up the Complete edition at Best Buy at a reasonable price, even for a guy who was close to becoming a hobo. At the end of the day though just about any price would have been worth it. HoMM3 is a priceless game, and one that I will be playing for many years to come.
#10. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
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When it was first announced that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night wouldn't feature a Belmont or even a fucking whip, I was not impressed. Why fuck around with something good? The first time I played it I was living in my first apartment and I lived in next to a great little mom and pop video store that had a surprisingly strong collection of Playstation games and much better prices than Blockbuster. I figured, even with the ridiculous changes, it was still a Castlvania game so how bad could it really be? Well, that weekend I pretty much did nothing but sit in front of the TV and play this game, with the only break being to get online to figure out where to get the fucking Spike Breaker armor, which was holding up a key storypoint to get into the second half of the game. That was also one of the great "holy shit" moments of gaming. When you beat the wizard controlling Richter and reveal the second upside castle!?!?! Jesus Christ, the game instantly doubled in size!!!!
Yep, turns out it was one of the most brilliant ideas the series creators ever, and the result was the "Metroidvania." Dozens and hell maybe hundreds have come around since. Some have better combat. Some have better stories. Some have better layoutouts. But none of them do as much so well as SotN and none of them have the god-tier soundtrack that this game does. Castlevania's have always had great OSTs, but there was something especially impressive about SotN's to the point where I had to get a copy. And something that I think gets overlooked is how it was maybe the best looking 2-D game made up until that time. Most everything on the Playstation, Saturn, and later N64 was focued on 3-D games (most have now aged like a mayonaise sandwich), but Konami stuck to their guns and made a gorgeous game that still looks pretty good today. This game had mulit-layer backgrounds and the way everything moved was so smooth. There was something satisfying just watching Alucard run around with his cape flowing behind him. Then again, the game is satisfying in pretty much ever way.
Too high. 
. Seriously, I’ve got a trip planned for the new year so no new games at the moment.
Playing Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the first time when it came out on the PlayStation was really quite the experience. The music is amazing especially The Tragic Prince.
Yes yes yes these games are worthy! Great picks.
How do the other Heroes of Might and Magic compare to it?
Foolz said:How do the other Heroes of Might and Magic compare to it?
I don't remember much about the first, but compared to HoMM2, it's pretty similar, but much more robust and much better balanced. There really isn't one class that is dominant compared to the others. The story is quite a bit more interesting too.
Unlike the later installments, your hero is almost entirely passive in combat. You can cast spells and such, but other than sharing his stats in proportion to his or me, he doesn't really do anything. I think from 4 on, the hero could actually be controlled and fight in the battles. Leader installments also had a more three-dimensional world to explore. That was a nice idea, but it slowed down the game a little bit and was never quite as interesting as the 2D worlds from before.
#9. Tetris
Well honestly I'm not sure what I can say about Tetris that hasn't been said before. It's the greatest puzzle game of all time, and lord knows I've played my share. From the introduction most of us had to it on the Gameboy to all the new dazzling versions with trippy colors, puyo pop blobs, 4 player competition, to whatever other features they throw into it in the new version to keep it "fresh" (silly developers), Tetris has been good and always finds a way to stay good...even with that infinite spin bullshit.
That said, even if my go-to is still the NES version of Tetris, I am happy with the majority of the newer features, particularly with different kinds of online and competitive head-to-head modes. Anything beats having to use the link cable to play with a friend. That damn requirement almost broke my original Gameboy when I was a kid. I was in a school carpool at the time playing again a friend who was one of those guys who would gets his whole body in motion when he plays a video game. He jerks his arms around, flails, etc. And when your two systems are linked together with a cable.... well that can and did create a problem. Bastard moved his arms (logically thinking that would help a piece fall in the right direction) and it ended up pulling the gameboy out of my hands and almost sent it flying out of the car window. Odds are the Gameboy would have been fine, and would have only left a small crack on the road, but it was a scary moment. Of course, even after that frightening moment, we went straight back to the game beause... well it's Tetris.
#8. Red Dead Redemption
I'm a fan of Westerns which is kind of unfortunate. The entire genre was once the single most popular genre of entertainment in the the US for over 30 years. Finding something with cowboys in it was just a matter of going to a movie theater or turning on the TV. By the mid 60's though, that was starting to change as burn out was setting in and the space race was creating more science fiction fans. And finally in the early, 70's Blazing Saddles, the greatest genre parody of all time, put the last bullet in the corpse. So, now a good Western film or show comes around every few years, but in video games.... there was pretty much nothing. You could maybe count the good Western games on one hand before 2010. And then Red Dead Redemption came along. And while the number of good Western games hasn't changed much it doesn't matter. RDD (and now it's sequel) are arguably all you need.
When I played RDD it was nothing short of a dream come true. This great open world, with all the classic trappings of a closing of the West story. And as open as the world was, it was never long before you'd come across something of interest (usually a bandit trying to rob you). And if that weren't enough, it also had the single greatest piece of DLC in the form of Undead Nightmare. Now it's Cowboys and Zombies (and poor Bigfoot). I literally have only one complaint about this game. It gives me a headache. Something about the motion of riding the horse actually makes my head hurt. Not sure what, but if I play for more than 30 minutes I end up with a migrane. Didn't stop me from playing for a very long time though. Some things are worth the price of pain.
So take whatever you liked about RDR1 and multiply it by 10, that's RDR2.
I've mainly played random PC versions of Tetris, from flash to freeware to God knows what. I'm not sure it's possible to make a bad Tetris game.
#7. The Last of Us
As a general rule I don't like games with realistic depictions of violence. Give me happy and fluffy or give me something that's so over the top violent that all you can do is laugh at it (i.e. MadWorld). But when a game is as critically acclaimed as The Last of Us is, you got to give it a shot. And damn, I'm really glad I did. The story may not be completely original in the greater world of media, but in the world of video games I don't think I've seen something like it or even a story told as well as Joel and Ellie's jaunt across post-apocalyptic America. The corpses, the blood, the cannibalism, the torture, and attempts of child rape are all pretty awful and disturbing, but Naughty Dog displayed it all in a way that made it compelling and made you want to see if things get just a little worse or a lot worse. And having to wait for a kid to go to bed in order to find out was a torture in its own right.
And to cap it off, holy shit what a great online mode. Too many times a piece of shit online/multiplayer mode gets thrown onto a single player game and you can tell it's an after-thought. Not with "Factions." It might be simple, but god damn is it addictive. I utterly sucked at it, and no that's not just my opinion. I had more than one asshole with a microphone bitch at me and ask me if I knew what the hell I was doing (to be fair I did not, I was new). That hardly matters though. Once I had a general understanding of what I was doing, I was having funeven if I did continue to more or less suck. And remember, as bad you might be, everyone can get lucky with a molotov cocktail once in a while. The game is a total package. An absolute must-play no matter what kind of games you like.
Well the good news is that The Last of Us doesn't depict realistic violence, so your prudery remains intact.
The finale is great, as is the ending to the story. The rest is pretentious mediocrity, but it's worth it for the pay off.
Foolz said:Well the good news is that The Last of Us doesn't depict realistic violence, so your prudery remains intact.
Thank goodness for that. My prudery is what makes me, me after all.
travo said:I loved the online mode. It’s so different from any typical online game. I love that stealth is key. How come we never played it together?
Because I never played it until last year. I think everyone else had moved on to other things by that time.
Yeah Chrono Trigger is my all time favourite RPG and may very well be my all time favourite game period. As much as I would love to see another Chrono game get made it would have to be godly because I really don’t think that I could accept anything less.