My 50 Favorite Games of All Time: #40-31
Nov 11 '05
The Bottom Line The second installment of my countdown of the greatest games of all time
40. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
I think many people were skeptical that an RPG featuring Mario could be good until they played this game and saw for themselves. While it was hardly the strongest Mario game ever made (it was more of a tribute to the Mario games in general), and not as complex as the average RPG, the game managed to take the best of both worlds to create something new. And to make it even better, you got to play with Bowser and Princess Toadstool, even though Luigi was oddly nowhere to be found. While the unofficial sequel, “Paper Mario,” was also a great game in its own right, the original makes the list as a game that could appeal to an even broader audience.
39. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
It wasn’t easy to choose which Warcraft game to include on this list, but this one just stands out among the consistently great strategy games in the series because of its focus on plot and characterization. Allowing the player to use Arthas, a human on his way to the dark side, and then using the undead version of that same character fighting against his former allies made for an extremely compelling storyline. If the game has any downfalls, it’s simply that missions can tend to get repetitive, often following the same premise of trying to rush out the construction of certain buildings and start building an army to defend your town, and eventually to expand that army enough to destroy other towns, but there’s still far more variety than the previous Warcraft titles. All in all, one of the best strategy games I’ve ever played.
38. Chrono Cross
With multiple endings and what feels like a gazillion (is that a real number?) playable characters to use (who all look distinctly different), this is not your typical RPG (and I would expect nothing less than extraordinary from Squaresoft). The only problem with the game having such a ridiculously large amount of characters is that there’s not a lot of attention paid to their backgrounds or character development (compared to say, a Final Fantasy title), but the unique fighting system and high replay value more than make up for that small failing.
37. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Personally, I think the Nintendo 64 was the start of the decline for the once proud Nintendo industry, as the games for that system overall just couldn’t compare to those on the previous two Nintendo systems. However, this game was a reason to get the Nintendo 64 system on its own. The Zelda games made for a much more natural transition into a 3-D world than the Mario titles, and it was so easy to just dive right into the environments provided in this game and feel comfortable, which I think is rare with a 3-D adventure game (which often leave me wandering aimless and feeling lost).
36. Super Mario Kart
Technically, it’s not much of a racing game, but I’ve played few racing games this fun, if there are any. Each racers has his own distinct personality, even though some have similar attributes (for instance, both Donkey Kong and King Koopa are tougher when they knock into someone, but take awhile to get accelerated to a fast speed). What’s really surprising about this game, however, is how one of the mini-games alone could have been its own game: Battle Mode. I think I had more fun challenging friends in Battle Mode than I did playing friends in most street-fighting games, as you attempt to pop the balloons on your opponent’s vehicle by ramming them or shooting them with turtle shells. This was a hard formula to really improve on with the Nintendo 64 version.
35. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
If ever there was an under-acknowledged RPG that should have gotten more attention, this is it. While the fighting system superficially appears about as simple as any early Final Fantasy title, there’s a whole lot more to it than meets the eye. You could train monsters to accompany your party and help you out in fights (even though you couldn’t control which attacks they performed, which was frustrating). And then there’s a lot of complexity to the dungeons that you don’t see in a normal RPG where you just walk around and get into random fights, which is reminiscent of Zelda games, as you have to use certain items to get through the dungeons. But above all else, there was the extremely challenging secret 100-floor dungeon (how you could do it all in one sitting is beyond me, but it was fun to try), where you start off at level 1 again with no items, and each level contains harder monsters, yet stronger weapons (some of which you could take with you when you left the dungeon). I think that part of the game alone I must have spent more time with than the rest of the game, as fun as it was.
34. Tetris
It might disappoint some people that such an innovative game which appeals to those of all ages and to both genders (unlike most video games, which are predominantly male-oriented) would rank so low on my countdown. And if this was a list of the most important games of all time, this could very well be #1, but it’s not near the top of the list simply because there’s not a whole lot to it. Sure, it’s still fun today, and I doubt I need to convince anyone that it’s addicting as can be (probably more so than any other puzzle game, sorry Snood fans), and maybe it’s simply my bias against this genre of games, but I couldn’t possibly put it over what remains to come on this list.
33. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Far and away, the best of the entire Castlevania series, and if you try to dispute that, it’s clear that you simply haven’t played it, this game did just about everything right. First of all, it played out a lot more like a Metroid title than you’d expect from a Castlevania game, where you have to find certain items to reach new areas, and you go back and forth through connected areas to get those items. Second, it was a whole lot more than the typical let’s go kill Dracula Castlevania game that I got so tired of back on the original NES, with some creepy bosses, and a great fighting system (with some elements of an RPG mixed in). If you can still find a copy of this Playstation 1 title anywhere (which is a challenge), you should check it out.
32. Grand Theft Auto 3
I almost feel a little silly putting this on the list, but it doesn’t seem like it would be fair to leave it off, seeing as how this game has basically spawned its own genre. Of course, newer versions like “Vice City” or “San Andreas” are superior, but this is the one that started it all (escaping from the awful overhead perspective of previous games in the series, not that anyone even heard of the series until #3). But what really makes this a great game to come back to is not the blood or other controversial content that some politicians hate so much, but the truly interactive 3-D environment that lets the player literally do whatever they want in an urban landscape. How many times when you’ve played a game where you wander around a town have you wanted to just beat up a random person walking by? Admit it, you’ve tried it in other games and you just can’t do it. As a result, I think the random playing around that you do in this game is more fun than the actual missions themselves, trying to see what you can get away with and then outrunning the police. A guilty pleasure in video games.
31. Prince of Persia
To call the original Prince of Persia an astounding achievement for its time would be a drastic understatement. Sure, it wasn’t completely innovative, as the fighting was basically taken from Karateka (which, to be fair, was made by the same guy who came up with this game), but it truly added something new to the adventure title which has been used in so many other games now that it’s impossible to count. Players got to run and jump over pits of spikes, hitting platforms to trigger opening doors, and trying to get through them before the doors closed. And above all else, there was a sense of realism to it, both in the character’s movements (which were actually based on the movements of the designer’s brother, which were studied to help make the game), and in the things that you have to do with the character, as acrobatic and difficult to perform as they would be in real life. As such, this was not your typical adventure title where you pick up a mushroom that makes you grow in size or a flower that enables you to shoot fireballs, it was grounded in reality, and could really suck players in easier.
I should note that there won’t be an update to this countdown for a little while, because I’ll be away on vacation (hurray), but when I get back and post the list for #30-21, you’ll start seeing some longtime beloved classics make the list, as well as a few surprises you might not have expected to see anywhere on the countdown. Stay tuned…
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