9. Yakuza 3 (PS3)
A Japanese crime-dramedy sandbox game with the soul of a beat 'em up, Yakuza 3 is as good as its American boxart is bad. And that's pretty fucking bad, which means Yakuza 3 is pretty fucking good! Kazuma is a strong contender for the best protagonist of all time. His whole stoic former-gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold thing really gets my motor running, but I love it even more when he lets his hair down to sing karaoke or smash some dude in a Bill Cosby sweater in the face with a bicycle.
8. Age of Empires III (PC)
Fuck Starcraft. This is the epitome of RTS goodness to me. Age of Empires III is remarkably well balanced given how many factions there are to choose from, and the Home City feature gives a nice sense of persistence as well as allowing you access to a increasingly broader range of strategic options. It's also very easy on the eyes, both artistically and technically. The destruction is just beautiful, and few things in gaming are more comely than seeing a pretty little Dutch windmill blown to pieces in AoE3.
7. Rez (DC)
A game about hacking into... a supercomputer or the mind of God or something. I'm not really sure, but it's a total trip. Whenever people shit-talk rail shooters, I think about this game and laugh at their small-mindedness while reaching for my trance vibrator.
6. EarthBound (SNES)
One day in the summer of 1995, I received in the mail a scratch 'n' sniff card that was supposed to smell like pickles or farts or something. It had something to do with some new Nintendo game, although they were kind enough to warn me in advance that, "This game stinks." So I shrugged and tossed this smelly thing in the garbage. When I finally got around to playing EarthBound some years later, I was shocked to find that it was actually a loveably quirky and startlingly original RPG, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Thank you so much, Nintendo, for making such an awesome game, and fuck you very much for mishandling it (and the whole Mother series) to such a phenomenal degree.
5. Front Mission (DS)
Speaking of mishandled franchises... I give you Front Mission, ladies and gentlemen! Originally released in 1995 but didn't make it out of Japan until 2007, proving that Squaresoft was quite capable of fucking us around long before they merged with Enix. I love strategy RPGs, and I looooove mechs, so this is pretty much video game heaven for me. Oh! And Yoshitaka Amano was the character designer! Hat trick! (Plus it looks like they're fighting in SimCity, which is undeniably rad.)
4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)
With Symphony of the Night, the venerable Castlevania series moved away from its rock hard platforming roots to Metroid-inspired level design with RPG elements. That was bad news if your idea of fun is the kind of difficulty that induces players to hurl their controllers, but it was very good news if your idea of fun is... fun. Aside from the shift in styles, SOTN is also memorable for its gorgeous 2D art, the best soundtrack in Castlevania to this very day, and best of all, its epically cheeseball voice acting.
3. Flower (PS3)
Surprising, I know, since I typically like to keep my love of this game on the down-low.
2. Final Fantasy IV (SNES)
I'm not sure exactly why this boxart called out to me in the video store (which always smelled like a barn, btw). I had never played the first Final Fantasy, so the name really meant nothing to me, but I was quite taken with this simple red box. Maybe it was the promise of "8 Meg Memory", I don't know. Whatever it was that compelled my 12-year-old self to bring it home, Final Fantasy II (as we called it back then) was a total epiphany for me. I'd never really thought of video games as a vehicle for storytelling, but that was irrevocably changed as I was totally spellbound for the next few days, playing night and day just to find out what happened next. FFIV also set the standard for what I expected in terms of art and music, and the holy trinity of Sakaguchi/Uematsu/Amano pretty much ruined me for a long, long time. I adamantly defended this game as the best of all time for many years, and it still comes very close for me, but I now recognize the superiority of...
1. Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
It took me a long time to admit it, probably because I "discovered" Final Fantasy first but my friend played FFVI before I did and I was a stubborn little bastard like that. But FFVI is basically everything I liked about FFIV, only better. Kefka is surely a much better villain than the not-really-a-villain Golbez, the World of Balance/World of Ruin thing is a much bigger mindfuck than going to the moon, and the entire ensemble cast is superbly well developed. Okay, maybe Mog isn't, but even Gau is. Hell, especially Gau! I always get a little misty during his story arc. "Gau... ha-ppy..." And he should be happy; he's in the best game ever.
