Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Top 200 Games of All Time: 140-131


140: Liero
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PC
I always liked Worms, but it always felt a little slow. Especially when playing against the AI where you would have to wait long periods of time for them to make a move. 

Liero solves that problem. Gone are the back and forth of turns, instead, we play for keeps. This is Worms: the Death Match. 

You move quickly through the underground tunnels, using grappling hooks, and firing wildly, cutting through the mud. Sometimes you might just carpet bomb downwind from you, hoping you'll get a lucky bounce of the trenches you were building. 

Liero was a free download I found when I was looking for a copy of Worms on the internet, and it ended up being a blast to play against my friends. 


139: Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PC
If you took a Surge commercial and mixed it with Beavis and Butthead, and then distilled it to it's 90s
Xtreme essence, you would get Carmageddon 2. This was a guitar riffing, pedal to the metal, ultraviolence decade, pressed to disk.

You could win the race in a couple ways, either play by the rules and win the race, or completely destroy all of your competitors cars. The race tracks resembled a Mutant League field, pocks of nuclear waste or spikes lining the wall. And the cities built basically out of ramps caused insane stunt demostrations.

If the game doesn't ring a bell right now, it's the one where you could plow over hundreds of pedestrians along the course. 

138: Ergheiz
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PS1
This weird game, sold solely on the basis that you could play as Cloud in a fighting game. 

Ergheiz are several ideas that wouldn't stand on their own, a 3D fighting game, a battle racing game, and a randomly generated dungeon RPG. All great packaged together, but all nothing that would survive on the shelves alone.

The fighting game was fun, sort of a wrestling match more than the 3D fighting games at the time. You didn't have to face each other to land a hit like in a pseudo-3D fighting game. 

The battle races were more fun than they should be. You ran around an obstacle course, but you would also jump kick the shit out of your opponent. 

And then there was this weird chess game included as well. 

And then there was the RPG. Taking a queue from Diablo, the dungeon was random every time you loaded up a new game. You started in a village where you could outfit yourself, and then you would travel deeper and deeper into the depths of the catacombs. 


137: Crackdown
  • Year: 2007
  • System: Xbox 360
Like everyone else, I only played Crackdown to get a glimpse at Halo 3. Like everyone else, I was blown away at how fun this arcadey super-cop-filled city was to run around in with your friends with. 

The multiplayer was seamless. Co-op chaos without much lag at all in a time where network connections were still in the single digits.

At first, it feels like a super soldier grand theft auto, but little did you know you were underpowered. One you powered up enough to never use a car again, the city was a playground. Jumping over buildings, firing rockets at cars fast moving cars, and running as fast as the Flash. This was a game not meant to stop you, it was meant for you to run over whatever you wanted to. 

136: Wolfenstein: The New Order
  • Year: 2014
  • System: PS4
The first mission was supposed to be some sort of throwback to Wolfenstein 3D. You killed around a
hundred Nazis on a huge German fortress. I didn't get the hype. Then it appears B.J. Blazkowicz might have met his untimely end.

Until you wake up in a long term care facility. A vegetable in a wheelchair. Receipting a beautiful soliloquy about the nurse. And then the Nazi's show up. B.J., despite definitely having muscle atrophy, wills himself up and goes on a rampage killing every Nazi in site. 

Ultimately, we find ourselves in an alternate version of 1960s America where the Nazis won World War II and B.J. decides to reign terror across German occupied America. The game does a good enough job of reinventing what Wolfenstein was while giving nods to the past.


135: Road Rash 2
  • Year: 1992
  • System: Genesis
God damn you Viper. Damn you to hell, you were always my demise. 

Speeding down the street, dodging cows, whipping your chain at Viper while trying to kick P.E. No. 1. Road Rash did a great job of being the arcade game it was meant to be and making you feel fast. 

I was never able to progress deep into the second level (maps 6-10). The only bike you could afford at the beginning of map 6 was hard to handle and it was nearly impossible to win without it. The only time I saw maps 11-15 was when I used a Game Genie. And I felt like I was racing at lightspeed. 

Road Rash was in everyone's Sega collection. It was like Sonic 2 or Mortal Kombat. If you didn't own it, you were bad at being a gamer. 

134: Parasite Eve
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PS1
I learned about mitochondria from Parasite Eve in an extended FMV that describes how the
mitochondria can cause spontaneous combustion within the game world. IDK, they used a lot of science until I stopped paying full attention and came back when "... and that is how your mitochondria can be used against you. Spontaneous human combustion!"

I'm always surprised Parasite Eve wasn't a bigger thing for Square. It had all the elements to be one of their franchises they dip into every so often. 

Parasite Eve was a natural progression of late 90s gaming, two of the biggest franchises at the time were Final Fantasy and Resident Evil. So why not combine the two?

133: Cool Boarders 3
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PS1
What if... like... we dig a totally rad Tony Hawk type game... but in the snow?

Cool Boarders was good because care was put into the map design. Every level had perfectly place half pipes, ramps, and rails to give you dozens of combos to pull off. 

It was fun hitting a ramp and getting enough time in the air to pull off impossible stunts.

I think most famously, people remember the avalanche level, where you race down the hill, trying to beat nature. 

132: 10 Yard Fight
  • Year: 1983
  • System: NES

As much as I don't like football in real life, two football games made my top 200 list. 

I liked 10 Yard Fight because I don't really like the battle of inches. I like either succeeding greatly and running it back 80 yards, or failing terribly and throwing an interception. 

Or starting with a formation of 8 players around you in a rectangle, supposedly blocking. I loved the simplicity of this football.

131: Duke Nukem: A Time to Kill
  • Year: 1998
  • System: PS1
I still had Duke Nukem fever, and we were still a year away from Duke Nukem Forever (ha), so when a Tomb Raider clone featuring my favorite wise cracking flat top was coming, I had to buy.

A Time to Kill takes the Tomb Raider formula, makes the things you need to be better, better. Namely the combat. 

A Time to Kill featured time travel, which was a fun way to have Duke say one-liners about the old west or medieval times as well as give you access to a wide variety of weapons like dynamite and crossbows. 

My real memory of this game is listening to Weezer's Blue Album on repeat while playing the death match mode against my brothers. 

And of course, level 1:1 had a strip club. 

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