Part 3 of my reviews:
40. Fighters Megamix (Saturn): Being a huge Virtua Fighter and AM2 fan I've wanted to play this game for years, and because of some birthday money I got and a little luck, I finally purchased this game over the weekend. I will start by commending this game for having pretty much the full roster of characters from Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers, plus a bunch of odd characters from Sega's other franchises. However, my praise of this game literally stops there. Fighters Megamix is one of the worst fighting games I've ever played. I mean it is laughably bad. I beat two opponents in a row by spamming the same button over and over again, while giving most of my attention to my girlfriend playing Detroit Become Human in the same room. The complete lack of skill or complexity in this game is incredibly bad, and it has to be possibly the worst gameplay I've ever seen in a fighting game. The stages, music, and character graphics all seemed muted compared the the games Fighters Megamix crosses over. Sadly what could have been a very memorable and fun game turned out to be a giant pile of shit in the end. (6/26/18) [13/50]
41. Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers (PS4): There are few, if any, fighting games as iconic as Street Fighter 2. For me, Super Street Fighter 2 on the Genesis was the version I remember playing the most and enjoying the most, despite never being able to beat it until now. While this game is no doubt extremely iconic, and the music, stage and character art, and graphics are perfection, especially this version, the gameplay itself has some very big flaws. While it can be forgiven slightly for being the pioneer tournament fighter game, the roster is incredibly imbalanced and your route to victory with certain opponents involves spamming specific moves more than a dynamic, fluid fighting experience. While I still enjoy this game quite a bit, this lack of balance and actual skill at times is what brings the game down the most for me and prevents it from being my favorite fighting game of all time. Still, impressively, it manages to be one of the best fighting games ever and likely my favorite release of Street Fighter 2. (6/27/18) [40/50]
42. Jurassic World: Evolution (PS4): Back in the mid 90s when I was still in elementary school, we had Dinosaur Park Tycoon installed on the PC in my classroom. I loved playing this game and would pray for a inside recess day so I might be able to play it. Running my own dinosaur theme park was always something I thought was awesome, and my interest in playing video games where I get to do this has not changed. Jurassic World Evolution was definitely a great time overall despite several flaws which brought the game down for me slightly. The park and dinosaur graphics were excellent, as was progressing through the game, unlocking new buildings, upgrades, and best of all, more dinos. Funny enough, this game has WAY more of Ian Malcolm than the new Jurassic World movie did, which if you are a fan of his character makes the game even more awesome. Where this game screwed up however was how inconsistent the dinosaurs' moods were, which if not kept comfortable they'd break out and cause all sorts of mayhem. I know it is a staple of the park sim genre, but random and annoyingly frequent storms destroying key structures and letting dinosaurs was something that got pretty old too. On top of that, I would have liked for there to be more variation in the islands as well beyond elements that made some islands more difficult, and frankly annoying, to manage a park on than others. The music was okay as well, not bad, but not that memorable either. Despite all of this, Jurassic World Evolution was definitely worth the purchase and a game I had quite a bit of fun with. (7/8/18) [36/50]
43. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64): There are few games that are as important, memorable, timeless or fun to me as Ocarina of Time. Like many other games I've played this year, Ocarina has been a staple of my top 10 games of all time for many years and it was only proper that I replayed it, again, to make sure it still stood up as one of the best games I've ever played. No surprise at all, it does and retains nearly every ounce of specialness its had for me since I first beat it back in 1999. The only aspect of Ocarina of Time that I find less enjoyable is that I have played and beat it so many times that I find almost nothing about the game challenging and outside the locations of specific heart pieces and Skulltulas I can beat this game with nearly no assistance whatsoever. Because of this there are parts of the game that lack the excitement they used to, but they do very little to diminish my overall enjoyment of Ocarina of Time. The game's music, graphics and gameplay were all amazing for their time and even today they are very pleasing to the senses. Perhaps more important than reaffirming my love for this game, which I last beat on the 3DS around 2-years ago, I wanted to see how I felt about it in comparison to Breath of the Wild, the only Zelda title to even come close to touching Ocarina of Time. While there are specific aspects of Ocarina I like better, overall Breath of the Wild is the better game with no doubt in my mind now. In fact, Breath of the Wild has a very real chance of becoming my favorite game of all time, which will be determined after I beat Shenmue and Shenmue 2 later this year. But I digress. Ocarina of Time is a timeless masterpiece and I am convinced that it will always hold a place in my favorite games of all time no matter what I end up playing down the road. (7/25/18) [48/50]
44. Star Fox 64 (N64): One of my favorite games as a kid, Star Fox 64 has always held a special place in my heart as being both a really fun game and a game that carries a lot of personal value. I was ultra hyped for Star Fox 64 before it came out, so much so I got in trouble once for playing a demo of it at a Toys R' Us while my dad had the store page me multiple times after he lost track of me and was unable to find me. In my defense I was so entranced with the gameplay that I wasn't paying attention to anything else except how awesome this game was. And still to this day, the game is very fun with it's fast paces, on-rails gameplay, memorable cast of characters, and awesome levels. I am also a really big fan of the branching paths and challenges that encourages multiple play throughs. This game will never get old imo, and I will always enjoy it. The reason I decided to replay it now was to see if it had a chance of getting into my top 10 games, which it never has officially belonged to. While Star Fox 64 is a very fun game and one of the most memorable games of my childhood, it just doesn't make the cut of some of the better games I've played. Even compared to Sin and Punishment, another N64 rail shooter, it falls just short of being as good as that game. Still, what a great game and one of the best on the N64. (7/25/18) [41/50]
45. Goldeneye 007 (N64): With my plans of replaying Perfect Dark later this year, I wanted to play its spiritual predecessor, Goldeneye to see how it stacks up in comparison. I've always considered Perfect Dark to be the superior game in nearly every way, but since first playing Goldeneye at a neighbors house back when it first came out, I've always had a soft spot for it. Sadly, Goldeneye has not aged all that well. For its time it was a revolutionary FPS game and I got tons of value out of its multiplayer which at the time was unlike anything I'd ever played. Since then however, Goldeneye has been outdone and bested by so many FPS games released over the past 20-years. The game is still a classic without a doubt, but its somewhat clunky gameplay and controls, low frame rate, and very dated visuals make it somewhat hard to revisit it. I'm still a fan of the objectives, unlockables, OST, and various other aspects of the game. This game will always hold a huge sentimental value as well given how much fun I had with it growing up. Definitely a great game on the N64, but one you have to go in with lower expectations given the large amount of superior shooters that have come out since. (7/30/18) [39/50]
46. Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast): While this is definitely one of the most memorable arcade racing games of the 90s and early 2000s, I feel like much of its fame has to do with how different it was at the time and how even still to this day there are few racing games like it. Driving around a city, picking up strangers and taking them where they want, dodging traffic and other obstacles is a cool formula and all, but in execution this game falls a little short. While the game is fun, the driving is average at best and there are some annoying physics that happen when you hit cars, buildings and certain objects that make the game have a seizure and cause your car to do some pretty strange things. Even though this game is not meant to be taken seriously in the slightest, it still is rather annoying and jaring when it happens. In regards to the music and sound fx Crazy Taxi does a great job, but its lack of variety in both sound departments can ware on you after a while. Crazy Taxi is without a doubt a fun, quarky arcade racing game, however repeatedly playing it quickly exposes its various flaws which keep it from being a masterpiece of arcade gaming. (7/30/18) [33/50]
47. Crazy Taxi 2 (Dreamcast): For a really long time I always thought that I liked Crazy Taxi 2 more than the first game, however after playing them both back to back, and playing each for a while I now realize that the first Crazy Taxi is the superior game. Crazy Taxi 2 falls short on every aspect compared to its predecessor. The city and setting isn't as interesting or dynamic feeling, the ost isn't as good, and the added feature of multiple fares at the same time doesn't really add anything that great to the game. In many ways Crazy Taxi feels like a rushed, copy and paste job of the first with some new flare thrown in to make it a new game. The game isn't bad, but it lacks a lot of the charisma and charm of the first while retaining or amplifying it's shortcomings. (8/3/18) [29/30]
48. Gitaroo Man (PS2): When I first played this game a year or two ago it was one of those games that I didn't expect to like as much as I did. While I was fairly sure it wasn't a top 10 game for me or anything like that I still wanted to see where it would rank overall. Replaying Gitaroo Man, the game is still incredibly charming and fun; this game has some serious heart, humor, and its quarkiness is matched by only a handful of games I've ever played. Its unique specialness is by far its greatest asset which really goes a long way towards how much I enjoy this game overall. Luckily it does have this going for it because it is able to overshadow gameplay that is very difficult to get the hang of and frankly inaccurate at times, and also the graphics in this game are pretty poor, even for early PS2 game standards. The latter is made up for by an interesting, fun art design and some very memorable characters. Even though this game is no Guitar Hero in terms of gameplay, it outshines it by being the most charming rhythm game ever made, or at least that I've played. This game definitely captures your heart even if the gameplay is slightly above average at best. (8/5/18) [37/50]
49. Gran Turismo 4 (PS2): Gran Turismo 4 was the last great game in the series imo. I sunk countless hours into this game when it first came out and again around the time Gran Turismo 5 came out, which is when I last played this game extensively. Sadly, revisiting Gran Turismo 4 thirteen years after it came out proved to be sobering and difficult. For one, I am not nearly as into cars as I was when this game first came out, or even as much as I was nearly a decade ago. I bought a really nice sports car during my senior year of college and I quickly realized on public roads it didn't matter if I had 90hp or 300hp, it was all the same when it came to traffic, speed limited, and traffic laws. This greatly diminished my love and interest for cars, which was a huge driving force for why I loved this game so much when I was younger. The second big blow to my enjoyment of this game is something that I'm sure sports game enthusiasts run into with older titles in series like Madden or NHL; playing with rosters of characters that have been retired for a decade or longer, or players that no longer belong to certain teams just isn't as fun as playing what's current. Gran Turismo 4 is similar in a way in that every single car you are racing in that game is old now, even the cars that were new or newer when the game first came out. Don't get me wrong, I love a ton of the now classic cars in this game, but not having cars like the Nissan GTR, Toyota FRS, or C7 Corvette is a real bummer and ages this game quite a bit. With that out of the way I will now start talking about the game itself. First off the graphics in Gran Turismo 4 still hold up really well mostly and it is one of the best looking games on the PS2 by far. At the time I can't say any racing game looked as amazing and it truly is a statement that it still looks good in 2018. Also, the gameplay is very sharp and feels like a true racing sim without any sort of arcadish feel, other than the total absence of vehicle damage. I also enjoy the progression system in this one a lot more than any GT game that followed. Sadly, the sound department is where this game sucked back in 2005 and still sucks today. The car sounds do not match up at all, some even sounding like household appliances rather than fast sports cars. Also, the in race music is terrible, like generic, unlicensed, amateur rock band terrible. The menu music is really good however and keeps me from completely bashing this game's OST. Overall, I still enjoy playing Gran Turismo 4, but playing it now is difficult for me the reasons mentioned above, which is a shame because I thought this game would always hold up for me. (8/7/18) [36/50]
50. Super Smash Bros Melee (Gamecube): Very few games from console generation 6 have developed a more acclaimed reputation over the years as Melee. A lot of Smash fans, especially those within Smash community consider this game to be the seminal fighting game of all time, and certainly the best Smash game in the franchise. I will definitely say that this game is special and really embodies that early 2000s console gaming feel that gets me ultra sentimental. On top of that the gameplay is pretty fun as are the added modes and collectable trophies. I'm also a huge fan of unlockables in fighting games, however the methods which you can unlock new characters in this game are a bit unimaginative if you ask me. The soundtrack is pretty awesome too and it is in itself iconic and very memorable. Despite my praise for this game it is by no means the best fighting game ever, hell, it's not even the best Smash game. Soup box time: Melee is lauded by cheaters and people who've become adept at exploiting controller inputs in the game in order to obtain speed and exploit animation frames in order to avoid being attacked. This is not the hallmark of a solid game, especially when the guy who created the game says that this is not how the game is meant to be played. Also, I'm sure there are legions of diehard Melee lovers who enjoy this game because of their immense nostalgia for it, which is something I do have somewhat, but there were many other games around 2001 that I spent more time with and had more fun with. When played normally, Melee is definitely a good game, just not the absolute masterpiece hardcore Melee fanboys and people who spent hours at sleepovers in 2002 playing this game with their friends claim it is. (8/11/18) [38/50]
51. Ghost Blade HD (PS4): I feel like independent shmups often lack in quality compared to many other games they are trying to imitate, not Ghost Blade. I first played this game years ago on the Dreamcast and was really impressed by how high quality it was. Replaying the HD version, that quality has become even more pronounced, especially the graphics and overall presentation; aside from a few reused enemies and some of the bosses feeling similar, this game looks excellent from start to finish. The gameplay is also great, however the difficulties are a bit off balance with easy being way too easy, but Normal is just insanity. I never even attempted hard, but it's probably impossible. The soundtrack is also great, definitely edging out OSTs from far more famous shooters from more well know devs. Overall, Ghost Blade HD is a must play for any fans of the genre and a breath of fresh air in a landscape filled with mediocre indie smhups that wish they were Dodonpachi. (8/13/18) [37/50]
