40) Okami?

39) Breath of the Wild?

38) Rayman 3? (probably not, but if the shoe fits...)

Super Mario Bros 3

Is #39 Metroid Fusion?

Yes, and that's the sixth correct guess for you.

Correct on Okami and Breath of the Wild, 38 is Super Mario Bros 3, as seen below.

Correct.

Doing a commentary on my top ten favorite video games of all time. Continues below.

Other entries in this series:

10. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
9. Perfect Tides
7. Chop Suey
6. Knights and Bikes
5. Super Metroid
4. Gone Home
3. Butterfly Soup
2. The Last of Us Part I
1. The Last of Us Part II

8. UNCHARTED: THE LOST LEGACY

I went to the extra effort of replaying this game yesterday to make sure I'd collected my thoughts on it just for @Machina since he asked why this is the only Uncharted that I have charted. (Naughty Dog will be hiring me as a writer any day now.) Was totally worth it!

The Lost Legacy is the pure escape game on my top 10 list. Yes, I need those too and this has emerged in recent years as my personal favorite of them. It's, of course, an Indiana Jones-inspired, Hollywood blockbuster-style game filled with lots of clever one-liners and carefully-scripted, high-intensity action sequences that are quite effective at conveying the feeling our heroines of sorts (and later someone else) are skating by as much on luck as skill, impossibly surviving countless scenarios by the skin of their teeth, with their wits intact. We know this. It is Uncharted. It works. It's fun. It's just dumb, ambient fun for when you're stressed out and need to relax your brain a little. That is a real need for me. The Myers-Briggs test has me pegged as a "logician", which means that my critical thinking mode is pretty much always on and sometimes I need help shutting it down so I can relax.

Fun fact: Speaking of Uncharted being inspired by Indiana Jones, didja know that when the first two Indiana Jones movies came out with a PG rating, parents complained that it should've been rated R instead because of intense violence and blood that they'd felt unprepared for. The explanation the Motion Picture Association of America provided in response has always amused me. They explained that their reasoning in giving these movies PG ratings was that they considered the films too juvenile and light weight to appeal to adults, and thus the target audience had to be someone else. Compromising with the concerns raised by parents, they invented a new film rating just for movies of the Indiana Jones variety: PG-13. And that is how what is now the leading movie score for Hollywood blockbusters came into existence. Will let you know when, as a mature adult, I stop enjoying Indiana Jones. And Uncharted.

Anyway, so why is this particular Uncharted entry my favorite? Well, on a technical level, I like the Indian setting and cultural education a lot, and also The Lost Legacy just feels like the most balanced game in the series to me, offering up a pretty equal variety of its trademark trifecta of exploration, puzzle-solving, and gun battles by increasing the presence of the first two elements (especially puzzles) qualitatively. I also like the frequent martial arts type emphasis of The Lost Legacy's approach to combat. It just feels quite distinctive and fun! Most importantly though, I like Chloe and Nadine as lead characters. They bring different vibes than Nathan Drake and it's simply a joy to watch their relationship evolve from a caustic, professional one into a genuine friendship over the course of their adventure in search of first the Tusk of Ganesh and then for more of a cause, with lots of bumps and bruises along the way.

Another positive for The Lost Legacy is the pizza factor because I'm half-turtle that way (speaking of inspiring animals).

The PlayStation 5 remaster is the version of this game you want to play, incidentally. The general presentation IS noticeably upgraded therein.

I haven't played Lost Legacy, mostly because I got a bit bored of the Uncharted formula by the time the third game came out (and I never even bothered completing that one, though I did finish the Vita game), so I was tuned out of the series long before Lost Legacy tbh. But it does star Claudia Black, which is always a plus. I used to come home from school and watch Farscape on TV most days and she played this effortlessly cool, prickly, kick ass character. Good memories. She went on to do a lot of other sci-fi shows and movies, and of course lots of video game VA, where she's almost instantly recognisable from her accent. I saw Lost Legacy came out on Steam recently, so I'll probably buy it on there eventually.

Continuing the commentaries on my top 10 favorite games, next up is that obscure title I mentioned briefly in my Perfect Tides write-up (linked below).

Other entries in this series:

10. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
9. Perfect Tides
8. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
6. Knights and Bikes
5. Super Metroid
4. Gone Home
3. Butterfly Soup
2. The Last of Us Part I
1. The Last of Us Part II

7. CHOP SUEY



I turned 13 in late May of 1995. For the occasion, my girlfriend got me a computer game called Chop Suey (playable online for frees here now) that she said reminded her of us a little. It was an atmosphere-driven, point-and-click exploration game about a pair of sisters superbly named Lily and June Bugg and their various, Harriet the Spy-style escapades around their small, working class Midwestern town after they eat too much chop suey and fall into a daydreamy haze.

The girls explore the bedroom of their aunt Vera (who they absolutely love because she's so full of life) and try on her "glamorous" outfits and makeup, pretend they're angels and fly to New York, and discover items that tell of her past as a Rockette on Broadway (including a particularly hilarious video clip where the video quality is so bad that the various Rockette's upper and lower bodies appear to shuffle onto one-another). You meet her son Dooner, get to hear his music and read his diary about his relationship to his girlfriend Monica, explore the carnival, step in shit, and visit an awesome shop called Cupid's Treats run by a tattooed biker-looking type who has, among other things, a live human hand in a jar. You also get to clothe Mud Pup the dog, listen to a bunch of legits amazing songs (my favorite being the one sung by the trio of pickles), read fortunes, play bingo, and get stalked by a black cat who turns out to accompany a witch at the edge of town who's baking a guy. Stuff like that. It's pretty funny and clever. It's a simple, anarchic slice-of-life type game with no real sequential order of events or traditional gamey challenges, but lots of personality and loads of stuff to click upon and explore, stress-free, for the simple sake of curiosity. It dares kids...and adults...to be imaginative and take risks. That's essentially what it's about.

We spent about an hour on it that evening and went back to it several times thereafter in 20-ish minute plays whenever we'd visit one-another's houses. Just under a month later, her family moved away. I never saw her again. (It was substantially a distance issue. Social media wasn't a thing back in 1995. We actually did call back and forth a number of times after that, and at one point, about a year later, were even planning out an opportunity to meet again. It kept getting pushed back though and I think after a certain point she just didn't want to talk about it anymore because she had moved on with her life, so she just stopped answering my calls.) That's how it is in the town where I live: over time, people tend to leave. They don't move in.  The game's lead creator, Theresa Duncan, killed herself 12 years later.

That all strikes me as sort of like the mood of Chop Suey itself: bittersweet. The characters in the game, and indeed the town itself, have problems (like Aunt Vera, for example, has three ex-husbands all named Bob), but there's also an aura of joy amidst the pain. Like my real-life town, Chop Suey's is one that doesn't seem to be doing so great, but who's residents find happiness nonetheless. I love my town in that same sort of way too. Chop Suey reminds me of my first love, and of the end of that love at the same time, and helps me put my relationship to my past and to my community back in perspective a little by reminding me to find the joy that's there in the midst of the suffering that life entails, like you did when you were young. And to always stay curious about life.

As I wasn't playing on console until Dreamcast and didn't own one myself until Wii and DS, I never saw or played on N64. So I never even heard of Doom 64. Until it got rereleased. It surprised me, as I thought I knew Doom iterations.

I played the original Doom incarnations, but Doom 64 I find personally better for my tastes. Levels had more recognizability than the first two, while gameplay still was working as before. The game is also much more full of secrets. And add to that a somewhat creepy atmosphere. This works well for me.

It is quite surprising the game wasn't made by id software, as it feels like the first two Doom games in many regards. But Midway very much captured the essence of Doom, while being able to inject their own identity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AADoQGgaVp0&ab_channel=GamingBolt

#42

(+2)

Still one of the most creative games I've ever played. It didn't always work perfectly for me but the blinking mechanic is so unique and allows for such a heartfelt and moving story. It may not hit me quite as hard as other games like this higher on the list but it's beautiful style and creativity elevate to keep it as one of the few gainers on the list