Your Top 50 Games: 2013 Discussion Thread (The Final Day!)

[theRepublic]

Number One

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Nintendo 64 (2000)
Nintendo
Action-Adventure

This game was built on the same engine as Ocarina of Time, so right of the bat, this game has a lot going right for it.  Almost unfair really.  Hey, let's just take the best game ever made and do a sequel.  Umm, ok.  Kind of a no brainer.

Ocarina of Time already had kind of a dark tone to it, and this game just ups the ante.  I guess a giant moon crashing to earth with a big creepy grinning face will do that.

What puts this game over the top for me, is the interaction with the NPCs.  It is like they took the item trading in Link's Awakening and mulitplied that by about 100.  You get a notebook that helps you keep track of everyone's movements, and the things you need to do to complete side quests.  And boy, is this game full of side quests.  All the interaction with the characters really brings the game world to life, and makes you want to save everyone from the fate of the moon crashing to earth.

What really adds to the fun in this game is the masks.  When wearing a mask, Link gets a special ability that only applies while wearing it.  Want to get around faster?  Wear the Bunny Hood, it lets you run at 1.5 times the speed.  Someone won't talk to you as Link?  Maybe you need to wear the right mask as a disguise.  But the best are the Deku, Goron, and Zora masks.  They actually transform Link into those races when he wears it.  Along with that transformation, you also get the special abilities that go with each race!  Awesome!  Then of course you have the Fierce Deity mask...which is pretty sweet.

I know some people don't like the three day time limit, and it does kind of suck.  But you do have the ability to slow down time, which increases the time limit by quite a bit.  I still think the mechanic works pretty damn well, and it is the only way to get the depth of interaction with the townspeople that we see in this game.

This is a fantastic game, and a worthy number one.  I hope we one day see a re-release like Ocarina of Time got recently.