Exactly

2) Legend of Dragoon

Correct

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Pokémon Black & White is the kind of game where I can look back on it now and think: just how different would my tastes be today if I hadn't played this?

By the time these came out, I had been falling out of the Pokémon franchise, but just before I checked off entirely, Black & White pulled me right back in with an actually compelling story, exciting characters, great music, much improved visuals and streamlined combat. Whereas recent Pokémon games had felt somewhat bland and lifeless, these two came in packing a punch, they were full of character and charm. I didn't expect much going into them, but I left with one of my all-time favorite videogames.

Of course, I have checked off entirely from the Pokémon franchise since then, but rather than moving on from stuff like this entirely, I just moved over to the next closest thing and fell in love with it (more to talk about that on this event next year!). Without Black & White, who knows, I might've stopped caring about monster-RPG-stuff altogether.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

What is there to say about Portal 2? Everyone who's played it loves it, and everyone's played it. Just an all-around improvement over the first game, with nicer visuals and music, a much longer campaign with more mechanics, interesting puzzles, and a more compelling story. It has a really fun 2-player co-op campaign, and on PC, even a level editor where people can go wild. It's a classic that blew me away back then and I'll always have fond memories of it.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

I don't know how or why, but Tropical Freeze is quite simply the most timeless and most amazing 2D platformer there will ever be.

I've had so many years where I felt like ranking this lower because it's just a game about jumping and getting bananas, but all it takes is for me to randomly boot it up again when I've nothing to do, and bam. I'll inevitably end up doing another 100% playthrough because it's just so damn good. Yeah it's just a level-based sidescroller with no story but does that really matter when every level is a masterpiece sent straight down from heaven? With an equally amazing musical masterpiece sent down from David Wise? It doesn't matter really, no. I'll gladly play as a silly banana-loving family of apes if it means getting to go through this perfect (and I truly mean perfect) selection of levels, over and over and over and over.

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Guessed by @drbunnig

For the first time in its 4 years on these lists, Alien: Isolation went down instead of up. I say that as the biggest compliment I could give it really - not every game that debuts in my top 20 goes up after that. It's been over three years now since I've played this game and I still remember it like it was yesterday. My respect for it has only grown over the years, even as it hit this minor bump in the road this time.

I don't really understand how Creative Assembly, a team known for the Total War series, came out with this absolute masterpiece of an Alien game, or even how they got the gig to make it in the first place (well, I know how they got it - they were owned by Sega, who had licensed the Alien IP, and they basically begged Sega to let them make their dream game). Somehow they did, though. They made a game that perfectly recreates the awe, tension, and horror of the original Alien movie, but in videogame form - all while telling its own story that ties in to the events of the original, and their passion for the project was so evident they even got Sigourney Weaver to reprise her role for the game.

If Ellen Ripley herself thought the game was cool, what more can I say?

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

I still can't believe this game is real, honestly. I vividly remember my disbelief when I was watching that Nintendo Direct and the words "METROID 5" popped up on the screen, and that they really called it Metroid Dread. I was then in disbelief that it was coming out only a few months after that trailer. And as fucking awesome as that trailer looked, and as much as I believed in this because of MercurySteam's previous exploits with the Metroid franchise, I was still left in utter disbelief at just how good this game was.

Dread was a proper dream come true for Metroid fans. A sequel to Fusion after nearly two decades, a thrilling conclusion to the storyline of not only the Metroids and the X, but even the Chozo themselves, who we finally got to interact with after 35 years of seeing remnants of their civilizations. The game was short but oh so fucking sweet. Everything Samus did in this packed a punch, from the tense moments against the E.M.M.I. to the incredible final battle, this entire game felt so fun and exciting, and just that extra little bit of scary, it was just so great. I love this game so much.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

I talked in my Black & White post about how I've moved on from the Pokémon franchise, and that process happened after X & Y, the last Pokémon games I truly loved - and the ones I loved the most.

Yes, starting around 2016 I began getting into the Digimon franchise, and gradually moved over completely. My love for that came mostly through its anime, however - Digimon games were always a little too limited, that is until Time Stranger came out this year and, even through its faults and shortcomings, was an absolute dream come true as a fan of the franchise. It was the kind of huge step forward, a real evolution if you will, that I'd been waiting so long for.

I've been thinking about X & Y a lot since playing that, because well, X & Y was the last time a monster-taming RPG made me feel this way. It's crazy to think it's been 12 years, but Pokémon X & Y back then was a real dream come true for me, an enormous step into new territory for the Pokémon franchise with its re-rendering of every Pokémon in 3D, and a more cinematic (if simpler) storyline. These games had a lot of shortcomings and a lot of room for improvement, yes, but for the time they came out in, they were everything I wanted from Pokémon.

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Guessed by @drbunnig

It feels bizarre to be writing about this game on the same night when I've just played Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for the first time. This series has come such a long way since then, at least artistically, but even if the original Metroid Prime had a more basic look to it, it was still an incredible piece of art - one that soars so much higher than the sum of its parts.

It's hard to explain why exactly this game feels so much better than its sequels. They all feature more visually interesting worlds, deeper lore about fully original alien races, and generally more mechanics and creative power-ups. I think the reason the first Prime stands out so much is just... it flows. Something about the way progression is handled, the way areas connect to one another, I don't know what it is exactly but this feels so good to play and replay. I wonder how much of this was by design, but given how rushed the development was, it's probably a fluke that we got something this good.

It seems like for the time being, this will remain the undisputed best of the Metroid Prime games. I do hope to see it dethroned someday, though - I see in Retro Studios a team with the potential to do that.

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