After finishing up most of what I wanted to do in The War Within, I’ve been thinking about how I want to spend my time in WoW until Midnight drops. I spent a few days doing the Delve loop, but found myself getting pretty burnt out- this would not sustain me until March. Then something unexpected happened: my wife, after 10+ years of marriage, showed interest in giving WoW a proper try. Needless to say, I was ecstatic, and immediately created a new character to play alongside her.
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I’ve wrapped up my two primary areas of interest in the latest World of Warcraft expansion (delves and main story), and have been reflecting on the expansion overall. After a rough year, I’ve thrown myself back into World of Warcraft, which has provided a comforting escape. This is a game I’ve been playing off and on since beta over 21 years ago, and this may be my favorite era of the game.
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The list of my top 100 Nintendo games is up, so I wanted to address some of the more significant omissions. These fall under two categories: games I haven’t played enough of to have a strong opinion on (yet) and games that I recognize as good-to-great, but just aren’t my thing. The unspoken third and forth categories are games that I’ve played but didn’t make the list and those that I simply forgot.
Because one list isn’t enough, here’s another:
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Before we begin here is a brief, but sassy, preemptive FAQ:
Q: “What makes a game eligible?”
A: Any game developed by Nintendo OR published by Nintendo and will never be available on any other platform (Banjo Kazooie no, Hyrule Warriors yes. Hotel Dusk? idk but it’s on here anyway). There will be no “well it’s on everything but I associate it with Nintendo” nonsense here. Also, no multi-game compilations, that’s cheating.
Q: “Where is <game>??”
A: Either I haven’t played enough of it or it just didn’t make my personal top-100. More on this here, if you want specifics.
Q: “What’s the formula for determining where a game is ranked?”
A: There isn’t one. It’s literally just how I feel about the game.
Q: “Super Mario World came out in 1991, why does it say 1990 on your list??”
A: I ended up going with the year of whichever territory the game released in first.
Q: “OK so if you’re using the Japanese release date why is the picture of the North American box??”
A: It’s really not that big of a deal.
Q: “I stopped reading after <game> was above/below <game>.”
A: Cool, that’s not a question.
Q: “You just put <game> at <number> to get clicks.”
A: Again, not a question. But this site is not monetized in any way; I actually pay to keep it running so these hypothetical “clicks” mean nothing to me (also, I put the entire list in one post to avoid clicks; sorry if it loads like shit).
Q: “Will this list change?”
A: Inevitably. It changed significantly at least a dozen times in the week I took to write it. I plan to revisit it sometime next year, but we’ll see.
OK, with all that out of the way
The list begins with a game of aquatic intensity
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There are plenty of reasons to write off the Kingdom Hearts series. From an unnecessarily complex and confusing story to a prolonged wait between mainline entries, it’s an easy series to walk away from, regardless of your affinity for it in your younger years. I started with the first game on PS2 back in 2002 and have sworn off the series at least three times. I’ve heard every dunk on the games and used a few myself. It also doesn’t help that the franchise’s two parent companies, Disney and Square Enix, keep doing shitty things. And with all this in mind, I regret to inform you that I am playing Kingdom Hearts once again.
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Ninja Gaiden 3 opens with a series of QTEs that feel like a statement of intent. Bombastic and simplified, this is a triple-A game of its era, willing to sacrifice its identity in an attempt to find a mainstream audience. In hindsight we know this gamble didn’t pay off, with a revised version of the game released within a year to a skeptical fanbase. The Razor’s Edge version of Ninja Gaiden 3 essentially renders the original obsolete, but after playing through it over the weekend I found it to be a not-entirely-unenjoyable cautionary tale.
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Fallout 3’s legacy is a strange one. On one hand, it’s the game that not only brought the franchise back, but brought it into the mainstream. On the other, it was shown up in terms of narrative and role-playing by the Obsidian-developed New Vegas two years later. Both of these games have many quirks and technical annoyances that have aged poorly. While some of those annoyances have been smoothed over on PC and 360, the issues are significantly more pronounced on PS3.
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I never really learned how to play Tekken properly, but I’m a huge fan of everything in the games outside of the actual competitive fighting. From Tekken Ball to Bowl, I love all of the goofy side modes in the games. And of these modes, Tekken 6’s Scenario Campaign may be my favorite.
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I enjoyed the original PS2 God of War duology and Ghost of Sparta on the PSP, but by the time God of War III rolled around in 2010, I was over the character and the formula. Needless to say, Ascension was not even on my radar when it released in 2013.
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Hunted: The Demon’s Forge sure is a video game from 2011. Dubbed “Spears of War” by some, it’s a great idea on paper: a cooperative 3rd person cover-based hack and slash dungeon crawler. But in execution it falls flat in pretty much every genre it pulls from.
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