I haven't cared about fighting games in a long, long time. I really hadn't dedicated any time to the genre since Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution came out. Only briefly did I play some Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur 4, and while T5 is excellent, SC IV just seems awful to me. I also have never cared for 2D fighters outside of Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear, so the likelihood that a fighter would please me so much in this day and age was already pretty unlikely, but a 2D fighter no less? Yeah, I love MvC 3. I don't care how many people hate on this game: I have fun playing it, a concept that used to escape me when I was younger and focused more on learning the engine of each fighter I played. Mind you, that can be fun too, but I don't think I had quite as much fun then as I am having now with this game. I guess that somewhere along the way I stopped giving a sh!t about tournament and super competitive play. MvC 3 has been a blast for me and regardless of its flaws, it's made me enjoy fighting games again, which is quite a feat. I definitely did not expect that at all.
Also: Phoenix rules.
I had no idea what to expect out of this one. A game by the same company that made the God awful Half-Life 2? It was worth giving them a second chance, I suppose. One that is focused entirely on puzzles? I was dubious. I reluctantly picked up Portal, thinking that at worst, it hadn't cost me much so I didn't have much to lose. It turns out that Portal is a piece of game design genius, one that breaks almost every rule set up about basic coherent game design and still manages to be a million times more entertaining than half the titles being released today. A first person game with no actual shooting? Check. A game that's basically a long tutorial? Check. Repetitive looking environments? Check. Incredibly short length? Check. Everything that could possibly make a game bad was there, and yet Portal turned every single one of those issues into an advantage. The humor, the clever puzzles, the characters, and even the setting were all top-notch and perfectly fitting to the overall experience. Portal is one of those games that every gamer should, at the very least, experience. It managed to take my opinion of a company that made a pompous, bloated, boring piece of software that was, in my opinion, unfairly praised (Half-Life 2) and turn it completely around 180 degrees.
A game featuring SEGA's best characters in death-defying kart races seems like a dream come true to any fan of the company. But of course, as any real fan will tell you, SEGA hasn't been the same in a long, long time. My expectations for this one were mild, but I bought it anyway as a way to show SEGA that their older franchises still had selling power. Turns out that it's the best kart racing game ever made, even toppling my previously beloved Diddy Kong Racing and Super Mario Kart. The controls are incredibly tight and forcing the player to drift really changes the dynamics of an increasingly stale genre that was topped off by the only so-so 3D Mario Karts (cue my boyfriend yelling at me that Mario Kart 64 was excellent). The tracks are all brilliant, the music is excellent, the multiplayer is wonderful, and the All-Star moves are a lot of fun to pull off and watch. There's nothing more entertaining that being in last places as the Chu Chus and then turning into an enormous cat that goggles up everything on the roadway. A lot of the favorites are here, with the only flaw for me being that there are too many Sonic characters and not enough of certain others. I mean sure, it's HA-LARIOUSLY embarrassing for your friends to lose a race against you when you're using Big the Cat, but was there really a need to add Amy Rose in there too? It would have been great to see some Skies of Arcadia and Panzer Dragoon characters instead. No, really! How fuckin' cool would it have been to race on Orta's dragon or on the Little Jack?
But those are all minor gripes. The game delivers brilliantly in every aspect. It didn't surprise me to discover the this game was actually not developed internally by SEGA, which explains why it turned out to be so damned good.
The zombies are coming...and you have to fight them...with plants! A ridiculous set up. My boyfriend introduced me to this game and originally I thought it would be nothing but a minor, if cute, distraction from my other games. Fast forward several hours later and I'm absolutely glued to this game, frantically screaming at random zombies that are eating my plants and taking down my defenses (FUCK YOU, POLE VAULTING ZOMBIE! HOW DARE YOU JUMP OVER MY WALLNUT! AND FUCK YOU, BOB SLEDDING ZOMBIES! JUST. PLAIN. FUCK YOU!). I picked this game up and for a few days completely and utterly ignored my (ever growing) backlog of expensive, full length games that developers probably spent well over a year working on. This is what video gaming brilliance is all about, ladies and gentlemen: Plants vs. Zombies takes an incredibly simple concept, uses an incredible simple design, and manages to completely take over your gaming time with its oddly deep, addicting gameplay.
Unlike most other people, I honestly never cared for PopCap before. Why would I? All they made was Bejewled, and God knows I 'effin' hate Tetris-like puzzle games (I know it's not the same as Tetris; don't misquote me here.). But Plants vs. Zombies turned out to be absolute magic. Can't fuckin' wait for the sequel!
This is probably the biggest surprise for me this entire generation. I have always, and I do mean always, hated Splinter Cell as a series. I remember when the first game came out so many years ago and how apeshit everyone went over it. Everyone said it was the new measure by which all stealth games had to be compared, so I brought it home for Christmas and as a Metal Gear Solid fan, I was terribly excited for another good stealth franchise. Boy, was I terribly disappointed! I think Splinter Cell still remains one of the most overrated P.o.S. games I've ever had the misfortune of playing. The gameplay is painfully slow and beyond boring. You basically sit around in a dark corner for minutes on end, then strike, move ten feet forward, and repeat the process. I get that realism can be cool, and I love it in certain games, but here? Didn't work. At all. I pretty much avoided the rest of the series after this, briefly playing a few of the sequels to see they were any better, always coming to the same conclusion.
Fast forward to this year: I got myself a copy of Splinter Cell: Conviction for really, really cheap. I thought: "why not?" Well, be ready to watch me eat my fuckin' hat! It turns out that Splinter Cell: Conviction is actually an amazing game, and a lot more fun than Metal Gear Solid has been in nearly a decade. It just hits all the right notes: the graphics are beautifully polished, the settings are interesting, the story is pretty good without becoming a needless mindfuck (*cough*MGS 4*cough*), and the gameplay is where it really, really shines. The game allows you so many options to get through each challenge, and it's awesome that I can choose to take on enemies head on and dispatch them or that I can pull them out of a window after luring them toward me, and both are perfectly legitimate options. It's a robust system with a lot of choices, and the cool gadgets make it all the better. The missions are all actually pretty entertaining too, and I love the variety they have.
I don't usually do "honorable mentions" because I feel it kind of cheats the restriction of having to pick just five, but I think this game absolutely deserves it. I love Monkey Island, and when it was announced that Telltale Games would resurrect the series, I can't say I wasn't worried. Transitioning an old franchise to something new has never been easy, and even the original development teams can still royally fuck up a continuation (I'm looking at you, Sonic Team!). But Tales of Monkey Island is an amazing game, with all of the humor and great gameplay of the original series. I loved every last minute of it, and seeing what Telltale Games did with this game and with Sam and Max, I can honestly say I'm extremely excited about them tackling King's Quest next.
- Kharlo -
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