EDIT: I was informed that my spoiler warning didn't make it into my final draft, so I apologize for anything that I have ruined for anyone. It's back in now, I promise.
Aaaaand I'm back, with games 15-11! If you missed part one, for some reason, you can find it HERE!
This entry might be a little longer - my apologies if you have short attention spans, or generally have better things to do, but as I get lower on the list into games that I enjoyed more, I might have more to say about them. So, without further ado, let's get into it!
Also, fair warning - I discuss things in varying degrees of detail, so if you're at all worried about spoilers, maybe skip over those sections, just in case.
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15. Final Fantasy VII
Ok, hear me out here. I bought this game back in 1997 when it first came out. I was twelve. I remember hearing about it, seeing commercials for it, begging my parents to drive me to the Toys-R-Us so that I could get a copy, because HOLY *** THIS GAME WAS GOING TO BE THE BEST.
And, in 1997, IT WAS THE BEST! I played this game night after night, and it blew my little mind. I launched raids on evil corporations, got busted out of prison by a madman with a sword the size of a lightpost, fought a bunch of guys on motorcycles WITH A SWORD, got thrown into a desert prison, raced my way out of a desert prison (because that's how prison works), braved caves full of giant metal spiders, chased a fat misogynist around a mountain, awoke monsters bent on destroying all life on the planet, sat through more plot exposition sequences than I had ever seen in any game, ever, and fought my way to the doorstep of a self-proclaimed deity...
...and then my memory card corrupted my save. Remember memory cards? I remember them, and the mere thought of them fills me with rage because of this moment. I was devastated. All those hours... gone! I guess I'll never know how it ends.
But I was a kid, and I didn't have anything better to do, so a few months later, I did it all again. This time, nothing would stop me! I would walk down that crater, tell Sephiroth where he could stick that absurd sword of his, and finally know how it en-
Memory card, why do you do this to me? TWICE, REALLY? Why do the gods hate me so? How many puppies did I kick in a past life to deserve this?!
After that, I decided whatever it was, it wasn't worth putting ANOTHER 70 hours into. I would just never know how it ended. And, as life went on, Final Fantasy 7 was eventually forgotten, never to be seen again....
Cut to 2016. 19 years later, I was finally able to beat this game. Yes, the ending had long since been spoiled for me, but playing it alongside a lot of the GI/Overblood community really breathed new life into a game that I had long since forgotten about.
Unfortunately, this game really doesn't hold up well in a lot of ways. Animation that was groundbreaking in '97 is laughably bad now. Add a plot that gets incredibly goofy at times and really doesn't add up, especially with later additions and retcons, a clunky battle interface, and a really awkward cross-dressing sequence (it was funny in the 90's, but now it's just... yeah), and you get a game that was rightfully at the head of the class 17 years ago, but nowadays is really not the masterpiece that we all remember it as. Not anymore, anyway – time has not treated this classic kindly. But the addition of a god mode and super-speed go a looooong way towards making this game manageable.
And the soundtrack. Good lord, the soundtrack. It's perfection. Even now, it's one of the most memorable game scores I've ever heard. I still put it on every now and then, and there isn't a bad moment to be heard.
I may have been a decade and a half late to this jagged, polygonal party, but I can finally say I beat one of the most highly regarded games of all time... I just missed out on it when it could really have mattered.
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14. Life Is Strange
This was kind of a step in a new direction for me. I hadn't really played a lot of these “walking sim” type games before now, but I had heard such amazing things about this one that I just had to know what it was all about. You'd think I'd have learned by now!
I had two main issues with this game. The first, was that every character just kind of made me angry. Some of which were clearly meant to, like 80% of the children at this ridiculous school. This game has some of the least believable – and most horrifically pretentious – NPCs that I think I've ever encountered. And the ones that weren't were supposed to be... endearing? Chloe? I wanted to smack her every time she opened her mouth. I get it, you're troubled and edgy, but good lord, she was a borderline caricature the ENTIRE GAME. Also, if I hear someone say “hella” ONE MORE TIME, I'm gonna let that damn tornado come and just take me away into beautiful silence.
Ok. Spoilers will necessarily follow, because for a game with no real gameplay to speak of, all that I have to discuss is plot. My major issue was that nothing that I did, in the end, had any consequence, other than to make me make a heart-wrenching decision in the end. This is the same problem I had, if you've read it, with Stephen King's 11/29/63. You gave me the power of TIME TRAVEL, and then told me that nothing I did mattered. Things were just going to be terrible forever, and no amount of changing the past was going to fix it. Now, choose between your entire town getting annihilated, or saving your obnoxious friend. Never mind the fact that you can REWIND TIME, and change anything to your whim. I guess your power just has arbitrary limitations, when the plot requires it.
And ok, look. Even if I had enjoyed Chloe as a character – which I didn't – what kind of a psychopath would choose her over the entire town? Who would pick ANY one person over an entire town or city of people? It's a crazy decision, and I don't think the game really made that choice a difficult one.
Oh, and there's a serial killer at your school, too. But that's somehow the least important thing, at the end of the game.
In the end, I'm glad I played it, so I can finally know what I was missing out on. Unfortunately, it never really emotionally grabbed me. Maybe it was trying TOO hard, I don't know. I mean, I was never BORED – the story really had potential to go somewhere, and I was invested enough to want to know where and how it ended. Unfortunately, it just didn't have a good payoff.
OR, maybe I'm just a souless monster. I'll let you decide.
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13. Metro: Last Light Redux
Ok, so I guess technically when I was told the second one was better, it wasn't a lie. The gunplay was a little more responsive and streamlined, and the plot was actually comprehensible, for the most part, and even very well done at times.
But here, we have a very good example of a First Person Shooter that is at its best when you don't have to do any first-person-shooting. The atmosphere is dark and oppressive, and some of the best story moments are just little conversations that you might catch snippets of while wandering the halls (you've got to fight past those awful Russian accents, but trust me, there's some good stuff under there). The firefights, while technically better than those in 2033, are still clunky and uninspired, and serve as little more than filler between points of exposition. The weapons are largely the exact same, as are the enemy designs, with one or two exceptions that only appear in specific situations. The game adds nothing new or exciting to the first game's formula, and it definitely suffers as a result.
It also throws in a lot of pseudo-magical stuff that seemed really out of place. Like, there's a river in the metro that lets you go back in time? Like, I can get the whole “nuclear war, and three powerful factions vie for control” thing. It's realistic, it's dark, and it's interesting. But then there's this one mystical NPC that you follow around, and there are hallucinations and magical sewers that don't really seem to fit in with the rest of the game. There are some good twists in the story, all of which deal with the Commies v. Nazis aspect of the plot. But any time it gets into these more supernatural elements, it loses me pretty quickly.
By the time I was finished with this, I was kind of glad to be done with it. It has its interesting moments, but because more of the game was firefights with mutants than not, I really found myself trying to stave off boredom more often than not.
I just do nazi what everyone else sees in these games. But don't let my low Marx deter you from checking this out - I seem to be in the minority, but personally, there were just too many red flags for me to really enjoy this series.
COMMUNISM JOKES
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12. Batman: Arkham Knight
Ok, so this game was admittedly tough to place in my list, and here's why.
I really like the Arkham games, and this one is no different. Punching bad guys in the face with non-lethal yet bone-shattering force never felt better, getting around as Batman is fast and fun, and in general, the gameplay is incredibly solid (I didn't particularly care for the Batmobile, but it wasn't egregious, aside from the fact that every freaking boss battle was just a tank fight), and having the Joker kind of be the insane devil on your shoulder was incredibly entertaining... but the plot of this particular entry is where my problem manifests.
I'm not a comic book guy, never have been. When the game starts, and Scarecrow shows up and acts all menacing and stuff, I really got into it. He may have been, at certain moments, one of my favorite parts of any of the three Arkham titles. But the part that fell really flat, for me, was the reveal of who exactly the “Arkham Knight” was. And the reason that it fell flat for me was because, as someone who had never read the comics, and whose only real Batman experience came from the two preceding games, I had absolutely NO idea who this guy was. I could tell it was supposed to be an emotional gut-punch for Batman, but I had never spent time with this character, and the only times I had even heard his name were when it was brought up IN THIS GAME. I just didn't have the emotional connection that I think this game assumed I would have, and it really kind of killed a lot of my excitement after the reveal.
Every time something came up with the Arkham Knight in the story, I found myself wanting to get back to finding Scarecrow and punching him until his face looked... better? Worse? I'm not sure how it would work. He was the most known quantity I had in this game, and I'm glad he was as awesome and menacing as he was.
But yeah. Long story short, the game is fun as hell, and if you know who certain people are going in, maybe you'll have a stronger connection to the titular character than I did. I'm almost positive that had I know who this character was, and had all of that backstory, I would have been far more emotionally involved – but also probably would have seen it coming. Because even not having a clue, as I did, I still kind of called it, just based on little sequences and references in the game itself.
It just disappointed me that the plot element that the game hyped up and was built around was one that kind of fell flat for me. But all that said, the game plays great, and is still fun to play, and even without the powerful story beats, it is still absolutely worth playing.
You'll probably notice that I didn't mention the Riddler at all. That's because GI's blog section has a language filter, so I figured I would save it the trouble.
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11. 3D Dot Game Heroes
The whimsy! The whimsy, it's too much! Probably the most whimsy of any game on this list, with the exception of Lego HP. Whimsy is a funny word, and I'm just getting it out of my system. Whimsy whimsy.
Ok. This game is basically just a comical love letter to old-school Zelda games. Dungeons, swords, bombs, swords, item chests, swords... and Demon's Souls references?
As boring as this description is, this game is... fun. There's no deep story, there's no complicated game mechanics to master. There's just seven dungeons that need to be beaten, and swords the size of entire rooms to beat them with. It's a novelty, sure, but it's incredibly satisfying to just walk into a room and tap the button a few times while everything dies... but god help you if you take any damage at all, because without full health, this game ca n be maddeningly frustrating sometimes (at full health, your swords become comically large, swing through walls, etc... take any damage, and it becomes a normal-sized weapon and loses all its bonuses).
That being said... with the exception of whimsy (last time, I promise), this game doesn't really have much else to offer. The art style and tongue-in-cheek references to games we all know and love are fun, but the game really relies solely on that aspect, and offers little outside of those nostalgia trips, aside from some tower defense minigames (yay... tower defense...). And, if I had to sit down tomorrow and either replay this, or Link to the Past... Link to the Past would win that fight every time, even with a distinct lack of Demon's Souls references. It's a clever and whimsical (it's not the same word) look back at a classic style of video game, but it never really reaches the same heights as the games of old.
Whimsy.
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Alright, I'm halfway there! Again, if you read this far, you have my ETERNAL GRATITUDE. And if you didn't, well, I could say whatever I wanted here and you'd never know. So I hope that all the food you eat tomorrow tastes like brussels sprouts. That'll teach you.