Number 3

Mother 3

Do you know what art is? Art is the power that we have to make each other feel, to reach into the depths of the human spirit and drag out memories and triumphs and heartaches that we never realized we had experienced and maybe never wanted to. Art is our ability to evoke fear and courage and nostalgia, to make us look at the person next to us and say "I love you" because we realize, in that moment, that we do, even if we have said it a thousand thousand thousand times before.

Mother 3 did a lot of things that I thought Gameboy Advance games were incapable of. In the first hour you are presented with scenarios and scenes that reach out and shake you with how jarring they are, how simple but how profound they are, casting aside the light-hearted horror of EarthBound for the more visceral and equally real reactions we have to tragedy. Shigesato Itoi is the creator of the Mother series, and in many ways he understands people better than anyone else on this list. Mother 3 was something of a gaming swan song, wherein he invested all the things that reached out and throttled me so fantastically.

Mother 3 is an excellent piece of craft, and I believe that craft can be art, too. THis game takes the best elements of EarthBound and builds on them, increasing the importance of the rolling HP meter and the Defend command, taking the Dragon Quest-esque battle system and invigorating it with rhythm-based combos that vary based on the song that plays for every battle(!). Mechanically it is so simple but so sublime, a design philosophy that has been carried through in every part.

It's beautiful and has wonderful music and excellent gameplay and writing that's out of this world, challenging your assumptions about JRPGs, RPGs, and your very reactions to these genres, calling into question how you see games and how you ought to.

But that is not where Mother 3's power lies.

Mother 3's power lies in how it makes the player consider themselves, how the elements that it presents echo the heartaches and loves that every person has alternatively felt. It makes us recall a time when the people who raised us were good and strong and perfect, when the world was inherently good - and then how all of it falls away, and we are left with an awareness of oruselves, how we changed in reaction to the world around us. We are made to miss those days when the world was good, and in its events Mother 3 makes us look at the world as it was and the world as it is, at the things we have lost, and how we have toiled to recover our own happiness.

Number 2

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Man, what a great game. There is no part of this that wasn't great, that didn't live up to or even surpass its predecessor.

Everything that I said about Ocarina of Time applies here, really. It's true. I have even less to say about this game, certainly less that's worthwhile. My expectations for this game weren't as high as you might have expected, but when I was younger I was wary of sequels. This game summarily broke me of that fear and the presumption at its root. This place didn't take place in Hyrule, didn't involve the locales or the people I knew so well. What's more, it was better for that fact.

Majora's Mask is a world as fully-realized as any other game I've ever played, but much more dense and organic and real-feeling. Focus was given to the people around you, the plot of the game hinging on your ability to help people as much as your ability to kill monsters. The dynamic it created was wonderful in that it encouraged sidequesting while creating personal investments in those same quests - every time I'm able to make room in my schedule, I finish the Couple's Mask quest. No exceptions. No questions asked.

The game was made great by its differences. I loved the time mechanics, the ability to transform into different bodies, the ability to come back and refight bosses as many times and as often as I wished.

Come to think of it, the option to refight bosses should be in every Zelda game. No excuses!

I have a lot of highfalutin' reasons for a lot of games being on this list, but not Zelda games. No, this game is just a great game, with some scenes that bring a tear to my eye (I am a sensitive man with a beautiful young wife; the Couples' Mask quest is precisely calibrated to annihilate me) and plenty of sequences that are thrilling and some excellent dungeon design. It's got a weird, dark sense of humor, a sense of the world really ending, and small salvations that end up being irrelevant - only they aren't in the end, are they?

It may not be my favorite Zelda game on some days, but it was the day I made this list. It's the best of the best of the best.

awesome Game. but

MGS is a PSX Game and MGSTTS is on GCN Game MGS isn't on PS2

Can you explain to me who Darth Nihilus was?

7. Uncharted 1/2

I cheat! My list doesn't contain a top 50, it contains a top 51 and nobody can stop me! HAHAHA

So an explanation... Uncharted contains so many moments of awe that if I didn't put this game on my list, I would be lying to myself. Just think of the Submarine in the first game or the opening to Uncharted 2. Hell, the entire train level is just one big moment of awe. Getting to the top of the Tibetan hotel was another great moment... in that particular scene, there's a swimming pool and bar. The player can decide if he wants to skip the pool and search for the way down, or jump in for a little swim. If the player chooses to swim, they are rewarded with a little nugget of genius from Naughty Gods. Uncharted 2 also has this scene halfway through the game where the player is saved by a Tibetan man from freezing to death. Drake recovers and you're allowed to explore the village. A number of things could be done, like kicking a soccer ball to children or messing with a yak. It was a somber moment after the train levels over-the-top action, and a very special one.

It's moments like these that define the series.  And considering there's so many of these moments and they're so diverse in execution, Uncharted is quite easy to define. A master of the pulp fiction genre and something relateable instead of ripoffable (is that even a word?) to Indiana Jones. And considering Indiana Jones is one of my favorite series of all time, it's no surprise Uncharted made it this far up the list.

I'd also like to add, I love Ucharted's platforming. It feels so organic and intuitive. I believe in a world where Mario and Drake can live together in peace! And maybe even Laura Croft can live there? Nope, no girls allowed!

A victim of Malachor V.

LOL!

What?

No, seriously, that's who he was. He's the counterpoint to the Exile.

Oh... In that case, I take back my LOL!...

It's generally assumed that he was one of the Jedi under the Exile's command - one of the Jedi who was groundside when the Mass Shadow Generator went off. He was at the center of it.

He's kind of the direct result of the Exile's past actions - the largest and most destructive example of the past coming back to haunt you.