8 – Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

This little puzzle-adventure is one of the most delightful games I’ve ever played, and my favorite game on WiiU. Its art style is gorgeous, improving the SM3DW engine thanks to its focus on restrained levels, making this game one of the cutest on current consoles, Toad and Toadette animations are also incredibly tender, contributing to make this game a really pleasing experience.

Talking about the game itself, the level design is top notch and invites to replay them until collecting all diamonds and fulfilling secondary missions. Also, levels are very varied, going from on-rail shooter to stealth sections, and surprise the player proposing a new mechanic.

Each year I have less time to play videogames, but when I play Captain Toad I remember why I still love this medium.

Nobody guessed 9, although it was to be expected, I suppose.

Only 7 left, I think that it's a pretty known game, at least for a Point&Click Adventure. No new hints, but a little help with the previous ones: the name of the game is in the first hint (you only have to wipe 6 words).

Game #7:

Hint 1: Not sure if it's the longest, but this adventure is a great journey (and no, the game is not Journey).

Hint 2: Two worlds are going to collide in this Point & Click adventure: one is futuristic and tech-heavy while the other is fantastic and based on magic.

Hint 3: The game has had a sequel, but it departed from the C&P genre. It would later release a third sequel in episodic format that was partially financed via kickstarter.

Hint 4: One of the characters of this game is called Crow. He is, indeed, a crow.

4- Final Fantasy IX


3- Paper Mario TTYD


Hint for 2: A powerup, which could be considered cheap and easily abusable, made its first apparence in this game. That powerup hasn't made any other apparance since then, though.

For some reason I hadn't noticed these hints before. That would be The Longest Journey I think.

Correct!

7 - The Longest Journey

I’ve always felt some kind of sympathy for Point n’ Click adventures, but I haven’t played a lot of them. A friend borrowed me Monkey Island 2, and I loved it, but had to return it before beating it and never found time to go back to it. Strategy games used to take all my PC gaming time (now that time has been taken by life in general). Anyway, The Longest Journey is the only PnC Adventure I’ve fully beaten, but what a great one!

The story, filled with a great sense of humor and charismatic characters (April, Cortez and, specially, Crow!), bring us to a world that has been divided between two dimensions: the technological and industrial Stark (that would be our own world in the future) and the magic Arcadia: both were separated and now somebody is trying to reunite the dimensions again (what would destroy them). April, our character, has the power of travelling between both worlds, and has to find a mysterious character that is the only one that can save the worlds from disaster. I found the story not only very entertaining, but also significantly “mature” for the medium: with a clever writing that many times makes a delicious satire of our own current world – in the best tradition of comical fantastic & science-fiction literature from Cervantes and Jonathan Swift to Stanislaw Lem and Douglas Adams. World construction in TLJ is also perfect, making use of the two different settings (futuristic science-fiction and medieval fantasy) to create rich worlds that appear to have its own life and History outside the game.

It’s a bit strange that a game so different of the rest of the list (the Point&Click adventure and one of the few story-driven games) has reached so high in my list, but this game makes so many things right that it certainly deserved to be in my top ten.

6 – Banjo–Kazooie

3D Collect-a-thons will be back next year with Yooka-Laylee and Banjo-Kazooie, its most clear influence, is still in my opinion the peak of the genre, having obtained a nice equilibrium between driving exploration and puzzle resolution and a smooth game pace. While Banjo Tooie and DK64 feel too massive to my taste (very big levels and worlds that the player has to retrack several times in order to progress in the game), BK’s more constrained levels are perfect to compel the player to explore while not becoming boring.

There are a big variety of movements, some of them really original, that the player has to acquire gradually, what drives the progress of the game (in my opinion, with a nice pace) and allow the player to obtain the different items. Also, the transformations of the protagonist duo in different animals are really funny and introduce further variety in the levels. As in most N64 Rare games, the sountrack is wonderful and the game is packed with hilarious situations and characters.

While Super Mario 64 is probably a better game, I enjoyed more Banjo-Kazooie when was a kid. In my opinion, it’s the best Rare collect-a-thon and one of the best games of the console.

5 - Europa Universalis II

When I first read about Europa Universalis II, in a PC Magazine a friend of mine had, I realized that it was the strategy game that I had always wanted, the one that would allow me to control every aspect of an Empire. I had had this feeling many times before, but always had ended disappointed to a certain extend… Not this time. The control that this game allowed was something unseen before, from recruiting and directing armies to sending merchants to obtain a market monopoly, through total control of diplomacy; to the point of feeling really like the king of a country. Which one? Well, that was what blew my mind when I started to play: the game not only let you play as the great powers of the period (France, Spain, Russia…) but as any of the myriad of little countries, republics or independent princedoms included in the game, not only in Europe (e.g: Hannover or the Piedmont) but also in Asia (who hasn’t dreamed to play a game as the Kara Koyunlu?) America or Africa.

The game offers different historical scenarios to start the game, with the longest one starting in 1419 and ending in 1820. Historically, unlike most “historical” videogames, is quite accurate and offers a realist depiction of the political situation at the beginning of each scenario. Although of course the development of the game will differ from the historical one, there are different events that follow real (or fictitious, but possible) historical events, sometimes letting the player to decide how to handle them.

From creating a pan-asian Empire with China to saving the Byzantine Empire from destruction, I have a lot of great memories with this game. To this day, is the strategy game that has impressed me more and the only reason I haven’t played its sequels is that it’s such a time consumer that I would have to leave my job in order to enjoy it properly.

4 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has held at the first spot in six out of six editions of this “greatest game” contest. Little more has to be said about it: It’s an enormous game, a truly masterpiece unforgettable for all those who played it in its moment.

I know, I know! Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!