The closer I get to the top of my list, the more verbose I expect my text on each game to become. We’re closing on Lungfishopolis’s two year anniversary, and I can’t speak highly enough of each game listed here.

16- Okami (Clover Studio, Playstation 2, 2006)
Okami is squarely within the genre carved out by the Zelda games. It’s based on the Japanese story of how the sun goddess saved the world from darkness, and told via a beautiful cel-shaded landscape. You play the wolf goddess Ameratsu, guided by an insect-sized Poncle artist named Issun. Your first few missions involve healing trees and landscapes blighted by darkness while battling demons. As the story goes on, there are many cities, many dungeons, and many landscapes to be freed of the cursed darkness. Along the way, Ameratsu learns sacred brush techniques, which on the Wii version of the game can be executed through Wiimote gestures. The brush techniques can be used to solve puzzles, and can often also be used in battle.

Okami is the single best-looking Nintendo Wii game I’ve ever seen, and I’ve written an article about it entitled An Argument Against Photorealism. Cartoony games tend to age much better than games that attempt photorealism.

Okami was a very long game – perhaps longer than Zelda or even Final Fantasy 12. It’s hard to believe how much gameplay they can fit on a single DVD.

15- Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, Playstation 3, 2010)So far, Heavy Rain is my favorite game of 2010. The graphics were beautiful, the voice acting was excellent, and the soundtrack was so good that I often listen to it while writing code at work. But all these things, while they do add quite a bit to the game, are not what make Heavy Rain great.

Heavy Rain was a well-written murder mystery, and the fact that it was interactive made it better. It’s a big choose-your-own-path story where the choices are sometimes unintentional. The branches can come as a result of a conscious choice, as a penalty for a failed challenge (e.g. losing a fistfight or crashing your car) or because you simply didn’t react quickly enough. All these branches split and rejoin portions of the story to create a very complex piece of interactive fiction.

But my favorite part of Heavy Rain, at the risk of repeating myself, is the way it handles the permanence of consequences. It is impossible to get a Game Over screen in Heavy Rain before the final credits roll. You can fail challenges, characters can die, but the game does not end. The story goes on, and you witness the consequences. Quantic Dream’s use of this mechanic has many excellent results. First, you never find yourself dying, reloading, and replaying the same sequence over and over. Frustration from having had to do this has caused me to rage quit many games. Secondly, because your failures are immutable, you need to be certain to succeed the first time. Because the first time is the only time. This creates a lot of tension when you’re fighting for your life, because if you die the character is dead.

I can’t say enough good things about Heavy Rain. I love the game, and I find myself wanting to share that joy. Go out and buy it.

14- Street Fighter 2 (Capcom, Arcade, 1991)
Street Fighter 2 is probably my favorite arcade game of all time. I loved playing Point Blank and Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom, but I’ve probably put more time and more quarters into Street Fighter 2 machines than into all the others put together. Oddly, when I put together my list back in 2007, Street Fighter 2 was fourth on that list. Today, I can’t see placing it that highly, but I still love the game.

When it was first released, I remember thinking how weird all the characters were, and how E.Honda’s thousand hand slap was just way too powerful. I remember discovering my first combo: the jump kick/leg sweep with Ken and Ryu. I remember first learning how to throw a fireball on the Street Fighter 2 machine at a local bowling alley. I remember the first time I saw a Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition machine at Riverside Park in Agawam, Massachusetts. I remember the yells of protest from the local players when someone got cheap with the jab-jab-throw tactics. I remember thinking how the game must have subliminal messages, because I’d see Street Fighter 2 when I closed my eyes. For a time, I was honestly worried about what it might be doing to me. I remember working at an arcade where we ran a Street Fighter 2 tournament. That’s where I learned how to use every character in the game. It’s easy when you can play free. I’ve got lots of memories of Street Fighter 2. Some bad, but most very good.

Back in the mid-90s, Street Fighter 2 was more than a game – it was a culture. And I was immersed neck-deep in Street Fighter 2 culture. I knew all the people at the local arcades who were good at the game, and I always had my quarters lined up for the next game. In these days, a four hit combo not made entirely of jabs was amazing, and there were rumors that a six-hit combo existed with Fei Long, although I never saw it. Cross-ups and cancelling special moves were new and strange techniques used only by the best amongst us, and only when needed – it was never fun to mercilessly crush a lesser opponent. There was a kind of code amongst the better players – a sense of honor. If you had a sizable lead, you’d generally back off of a dizzied opponent and let him recover. And you’d never intentionally win a game by throwing a fireball at a near-dead opponent. Doing so would risk you being labeled as cheezy. Fight with cheap moves like that often enough and nobody would want to play you.

I know that I’m not talking about the game itself so much as my own experience with it, but this is what Street Fighter 2 is to me, and this is why I love it.

Be sure to come back next week when I’ll begin with my top ten games of all time.