The first dungeon of Tomb Raider 2 has the best string of Indiana Jones-esque traps. Slide down the steep embankment, flip over the spikes, grasp the zip line, and land near a campfire. Wait? A campfire? In the back of this tomb?
Yeah, Tomb Raider 2 did everything bigger. You're not killing as much innocent wild life. Instead, you're going after Mafia types in Italy, Antarctica, caves. Lara's mansion is opened up a little more and has plenty of secrets. You rode a damn snow mobile, a boat. Lara got vehicles for Christ sake. And you fight a god damned dragon for the finale.
Tomb Raider 2 took the great concept of the first, but fixed many of the problems of the first.
19: Star Craft
The ultimate rock paper scissor game. Star Craft hit a perfect balance between the three factions.
Zerg allowed you to cheaply and quickly throw masses of weak creatures at your enemy, creating the term Zerg rush and forever changing a strategy in all RTS games. The Protoss cost a ton of money, but gave us "you must construct additional pylons." And then you had the Terran, which ended up defining the look of the space marine in everything Sci-fi for the next two decades.
Star Craft is still played competitively 20 years later for a reason. There's not been many RTS games that have come close to the king.
18: Resident Evil: REmake
- Year: 2002
- System: GameCube
It was sort of insane that Capcom did a from the ground up remake of the original Resident Evil, less than 10 years after it came out. But here we are, and it's a piece of history.
There weren't many remakes at this point. Metal Gear Solid is sort of a spiritual remake of the NES games, but other than that, I can't think of any.
And instead of just rebuilding the same game, but higher resolution, they redesigned the mansion to make more sense. They recorded new lines of dialogue. All the puzzles were changed. The game still looks good today, partially because of the tricks they did like model the candle light so that it still reflects off the walls.
I've memorized basically every Resident Evil game to the point where I can do an almost no gun shot Resident Evil 2 run, but there's something about the twisting corridors of the mansion that still keeps the fog of war in my mind.
17: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3 is a perfect James Bond game. Out of control super villains, some of the best of the
series. (Sniper battle with the old man, the flame throwing Cosmonaut, Bee guy, your fucking mentor)
It has the perfect music queues, even having a parody of the James Bond title sequence song while you climbed a 400 foot ladder.
Yes, the camo system and the heal system are too many menus deep, but you forget about that because you are playing on a canvas. This game is art.
You may have noticed by now that when a game is able to make me cry, it generally gets on this list. I cry every single time the credits roll on MGS3. Metal Gear Solid 3 has the best ending to any game ever made.
I can't wait for Konami to package up all the Metal Gears again, so I can buy a Metal Gear collection for the sixth time.
16: Condemned: Criminal Origins
- Year: 2005
- System: Xbox 360
Condemned: Criminal Origins was not on my radar. I don't even remember how I ended up with it. Probably some sale or something.
Condemned is the greatest hits of horror. An abandoned department store filled with creepy mannequins. You've got the school at night time. And a god damned library from hell.
Condemned is one of the scariest games I've ever played. It's one of the most intense thrillers I've ever played. Condemned belongs in the True Detective universe and would be widely regarded as the best season. All around, Condemned is a complete melding of genres. It makes you feel as if you're playing a true crime story.
15: Diablo
I used to have a Christmas tradition. We would spend all day at my grandma's house, followed by my
aunt's house, just generally having to interact with way too many people.
We would come home and all I would want to do was have some quiet and listen to some music. I've always been very excited about Christmas and unable to sleep, so I knew I would end up staying awake most of the night anyway.
I would turn the 24 hour Christmas Story marathon on, boot up Diablo, and do a run and see how far I could get.
Sure Diablo 2 is a better game, Darkstone may have some life improvements, but Diablo 1 has the memories.
14: Demon's Souls
This is one of the few unestablished franchises that I preordered a game based off a trailer. I don't know what it was about this trailer, but I felt like this was going to be big. Not only that, but I never buy deluxe editions, but I did that too.
And sure enough, Demon's Souls hit. (Maybe not as hard as Dark Souls) It was addictive to try to figure out how to get a better run. Fight your way back to the Tower Knight over and over again, only to get crushed over and over again. And when you just didn't have enough poison resistance, you could escape the poisoned swamp and go level up in the magic prison world instead.
I'm glad we're going to get an HD remaster. This is still my favorite Souls game and I can't wait to play through it again.
I sold my Deluxe Edition of Demon's Souls a few years later for $220. (Not bad for $80 purchase) and it funded me buying my jungle green Metal Gear Solid PSP.
13: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I didn't understand Deus Ex in the late 90s. I was still in the mindset that FPSs were run and gun, dodge
and hodge (?). I didn't know there was this thinking man's shooter.
So when Deus Ex was rebooted with Human Revolution, it was a life affirming game. You can play Deus Ex guns a blazing, sneaking around, being charismatic as hell. There's even an achievement for beating the game without killing anyone.
It's one of those games where you can see an alternate path and get frustrated because you don't have the perk to use it.
The sequel was a little tone deaf and probably killed another game in the current series, but I'm hoping that Square will give the franchise another chance on the next generation.
12: Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D was a refreshing pallet swap of Doom. While everything in Doom had sort of the same dark colors of the moon base, Duke Nukem 3D had brightly colored cities, apartments, and even a moon base.
On top of that, the humor was perfect for 12 year old me. You could see pixelated boobies on the strippers. You could hear Duke quip sexual innuendos. I thought Duke Nukem was so cool, I actually wrote three Duke Nukem comic books.
I had Duke fever so hard, I also learned how to setup a LAN so I could play deathmatches against my brothers in our house. I even got into the mod scene and figured out how to swap out map files to essentially have unlimited Duke Nukem.
11: Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV (North America) was the first time I felt like 2D sprites could convey real emotion.
You felt the hit when the twins sacrificed themselves. You wanted to rise to be a Paladin.
And the sprites, look at that beautiful bastard next to this. That's a damn good looking sprite.
Final Fantasy IV was the first time I felt games could be more than just a simple platformer or a simple sports game or a simple racing game. If was the introduction to a lot of the Final Fantasy menu styles, job types, even names that are still used in Final Fantasy games.
Final Fantasy IV still holds up as an epic adventure in some medieval setting. If you play a ROM, be sure not to save scum like your boy did. You may just save yourself in a dungeon you can't survive.
