So. Lungfishopolis.com is two years old today. Woo.

Yes, I hear the crickets. I understand that approximately three point five people visit this site every month, and it was never intended as anything other than a hobby. It was fun designing the site’s layout and all the random header and footer sidebar images. I’ve also written custom WordPress plugins to display a list of upcoming games and to draw from the Raptr accounts of this site’s authors and display them in the sidebar, which was a great learning experience.

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at my favorite articles posted over the past two years. Wednesday will bring you the final post in the top fifty series. Thursday, we’ll have a look at what’s to come for Lungfishopolis. And on Friday, we’ll review the best Free Game Friday games that we’ve seen over the past two years.

10- Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, Playstation 2, 2005)
It pains me that I’ve placed another Resident Evil game higher than my beloved Resident Evil 2, and it further pains me that it really isn’t a survival horror game. But survival horror as a genre seems to be taking a backseat nowadays, and we’re left with games like Dead Space, like Alan Wake, and like Resident Evil 4.

As you likely know, Resident Evil 4 heralded a rebirth for the series. And while I do miss some of the classic survival horror elements, Resident Evil 4 really is an excellent third-person shooter and action game. It’s got a lot of replayability, and some awesome set pieces. It uses quicktime events as well as I’ve ever seen them used in a game, and holds true to a lot of Resident Evil staples. As it’s seeming like the even-numbered titles in the series are the good ones, I have high hopes for Resident Evil 6.

9- Starcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, PC, 1998)

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I were in a Best Buy, and I pointed out to her a game on the shelf: Starcraft Battle Chest. How amazing is it that the game is twelve years old and still selling in a prominent place on store shelves? It’s just that good.

At this point, more than a decade later, I hardly need to talk about how amazing it was that Blizzard created three separate yet balanced factions which each had an entirely different play style and different tactics. We may take it for granted now, but it really is pretty impressive. I’ve reinstalled and replayed Starcraft 2 plenty of times, although I’ve only finished the single-player campaign once. I’m willing to believe that this slot in my list will soon be replaced by Starcraft 2, which I have yet to play.

8- Portal (Valve Software, PC, 2007)

If you read this site, you’re likely interested in video games. And if you’re interested in video games, you likely don’t need me to explain to you how awesome Portal was/is. Portal is a puzzle-platformer that introduced a simple concept and then stretched it six ways from Octember, and layered on some humor via everyone’s favorite passive-agressive psychotic artificial intelligence.

Dispire what a brief joy the game was, Portal is universally recognised as a kick-ass game. I, for one, agree.

7- Psychonauts (Double Fine, PC, 2005)

If you haven’t guessed by the name of this site, I really like Psychonauts. It’s hands-down the funniest game I’ve ever played. And while I can’t claim that humor games are my favorite genre, I’ve got huge appreciation for Psychonauts. At this point, I’ve only played Psychonauts start-to-finish twice, but I have no doubt that I’ll go back again someday and replay it a third time.

6- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda, PC, 2006)

Oblivion had so much going for it. I’ll grant you that the engine wasn’t ideal, but seeing physics-based traps go off from a first-person perspective, gathering wild flowers to make potions, and fighting melee battles from a first-person perspective was only part of the game’s joy. Then, the modding community took a game which on its own was simply good, and they made it great. The GUI updates, improved AI, new music, and higher-resolution graphics that the modding community introduced were simply amazing.

13- Shadow of the Colossus (Team Ico, Playstation 2, 2005)
When I think of the bygone era of the Playstation 2 and all the amazing games it had to offer, Shadow of the Colossus is generally one of the first games to come to mind. Although the graphics are grainy by today’s standards, it still stands out as one of the most beautiful and cinematic games I’ve ever played. The soundtrack is amongst the best that I’ve ever heard in a game, and the understated story does amazing things in how it shows rather than tells what’s happening.

The whole game is minimalistic. Other than the spirit sending you on your quests to destroy colossi and your own character calling to his horse, no one in the game ever speaks. You never go up levels, and you never find new equipment. The sword and bow with which you begin the game are the same ones with which you’ll finish. Your character’s only stats are his life meter and his grip meter. And while these can be improved by hunting lizards and eating fruit, this is neither spelled out anywhere in the game nor is it necessary to the game’s completion.

The colossus battles are epic, and the music and landscapes only add to the drama. I often found myself wanting to yell out loud when I found my character wildly scrambling and gritting my teeth to hold onto the arm of a hundred foot tall colossus who was flailing wildly to dislodge the human insect who was stabbing at him with a pinlike blade. yes – the game lends itself to flowery descriptions.

For a game with no dialog, Shadow of the Colossus has pathos. Nothing is ever spelled out, but as the game progresses, you find yourself asking whether slaying the majestic colossi is the right course of action. After all, what have they done? Whom have they harmed?

I won’t spoil any more for those who may still be considering returning to 2005 to play the game, but Shadow of the Collosus holds a well-earned place in my top 20 games of all time.

12- Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, Sony Playstation, 1998)
In many ways, Resident Evil 2 doesn’t hold up well. But I enjoyed the game so much that even after twelve years, it remains one of my favorite games of all time. In 1998, Resident Evil was still coming into its own. The first game had a bit of a haunted house vibe, and terrible terrible voice acting. This sequel improved the voice acting, improved the plot, and greatly improved the graphics. Plus, the scope was so much larger – rather than zombies haunting a house, the infection had spread to the entire city. The parallel storylines followed by the game’s two playable characters was a further stroke of genius.

The game’s story primarily involved learning about how the T-virus outbreak had occurred, and learning about the even worse G-virus that the Umbrella Corporation had been developing. The fun was in discovering new enemy types along the way and enjoying the scripted cheap scares, which were plentiful. Sitting in my room at night with the lights turned off, I ate that shit up.

I suppose the decision to place this game as highly as I have isn’t an entirely rational one. It’s more about the joy that the game brought me when I first played it.

11- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (KCE Tokyo, Sony Playstation, 1997)
The aspect of Symphony of the Night which I’ve lauded most has always been its amazing soundtrack, but that’s far from the best thing about the game. Aside from the soundtrack, and aside from the fact that the graphics were absolutely outstanding in 1997, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a fantastic 2d platformer that gave you an open world, RPG elements, and so much more.

Symphony of the Night was the first Castlevania game to give your character levels and an inventory. As the game progressed, you could pick up artifacts that would grant you new powers such as a double jump, flying kick, and the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, bat, or a cloud of mist. You could gain familiars who would fly alongside you, casting spells, healing you, or just attacking everything in sight.

And the boss monsters in Symphony of the Night were memorable. Trevor, Grant, and Syfa from Castlevania III made a comeback, Waterbound Sylla from Greek myth was present, and as always in Castlavania games, Death himself made an appearance. But “Granfaloon” may be my favorite Castlevania enemy of all time: a giant sphere composed of corpses. The corpses fall off and rise up as zombies to attack you. And when enough have fallen off, Granfaloon begins firing freaking laser beams at you!

As the game progressed, you could learn magic spells or buy them from the merchant. These consisted of Street Fighter-like quarter circle motions, double button presses, or something similar. They were often difficult to pull off on a D pad, but they were very useful.

Symphony of the Night gave you two weapon slots, and two buttons with which to use them. You could dual wield weapons, such as a whip and a mace, or use a two-handed weapon, or use a sword and shield. One of my favorite magic items in the game was the shield rod, which when equipped alongside a shield allowed for a special attack: when you pressed both your weapon and shield button simultaneously, you’d trigger a magical effect based on what shield you had equipped – each shield in the game had its own unique effect. And there were dozens of shields in the game. In fact, the number of different magic items in the game was so huge that it would be nearly impossible to find them all. And many had totally undocumented powers. Many were the times I’d pull off some crazy effect and have no idea how I’d managed to do it.

As I progressed through the game and watched the completion percentage counter in the inventory screen approach 100%, I grew a bit sad. i didn’t want the game to be over. How amazing was it then when I reached what appeared to be the final room in the castle and found a second castle suspended upside-down atop the first? And the meter hit 101%…

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is available as a download on the Playstation Network. If you’ve never played, I highly recommend it.

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.

Sequels. They’ve been around for nearly a century. Thankfully, in the video game world, sequels more often than not end up better than the games before them. And while I’m very much looking forward to Portal 2, Dragon Age 2, and most of all Beyond Good and Evil 2, those sequels have already been announced. What about the sequels that haven’t yet entered the conversation? The sequels that nobody’s talking about because they may very well never be developed? Here follows a list of game sequels that I’d love to see, but have heard nothing about.

Borderlands 2
It’s true, a Gearbox designer called a Borderlands sequel “a no brainer”, but there’s been no talk and no word about it yet. It’s very likely not yet in development. There are a lot of things I’d love to see done differently with Borderlands 2, and I’m really hopeful that my ideas are common-sense enough to be implemented in a Borderlands sequel. The game was a lot of fun, but it had the potential to be truly great.

Dungeon Keeper 3
It’s been a long time since we saw any kind of Dungeon Keeper game. Ten years ago, Dungeon Keeper 3 was cancelled and there’s been no real word about the series since. It’s not impossible that the series will be resurrected though, and I’m very hopeful that if it is, the third game will be more like the first than like the second.

Plants vs Zombies 2
After initially becoming addicted to Plants vs Zombies, I played the crap out of it, and it remains one of only two games on which I’ve ever gotten 100% completion on the achievements. Popcap has released sequels to Bejeweled, Zuma, Peggle, and Bookworm have all gotten sequels, so a Plants vs Zombies sequel isn’t beyond the realm of imagination.

Ultima Offline
…or something to that effect. I played and loved the first five Ultima games on my Commodore 64 back in the day. I’m ready to try The Ultima 6 Project, which is a Dungeon Siege-powered remake of the game I never played. But having missed so many Ultima games was a shame. After 2000, the only Ultima to be had was Ultima Online, and you know how I feel about MMO games. If they could reboot the Ultima series, I would be quite pleased. Of course, that’s less than likely at this point.

The Sequel to Heavy Rain
This game will almost definitely happen, although if it’s out before 2014 I’d be a bit surprised. I loved Indigo Prophecy. I loved Heavy Rain too, for different reasons. If Quantic Dream puts out another game in their interactive fiction series, I’m there.

Resident Evil 6
Another inevitable title. A Resident Evil sequel is as predictable as a Final Fantasy sequel. But so far, the series has shown that the even-numbered titles are the good ones. I’m hoping that this holds true with Resident Evil 6. Maybe they can learn something from Dead Space.

Half-Life 3
There has been no word anywhere about a potential third volume in Valve’s epic tale. Right now, everybody’s too concerned about the potential release of a Half-Life 2 episode 3. And while I admit my own eagerness for that game, I’m curious as to where Valve can go with a legitimate sequel: a third Half-Life installment. The game’s story alone is one of the biggest draws to me, and Half-Life has already brought Gordon Freeman down the rabbit hole and back more times than I can count. What’s next?

Psychonauts 2
Aside from a page on DoubleFine’s site which seems to have been set in place more to debunk rumors than to announce anything, there is no word about a Psychonauts sequel. Still, I think it’s more likely than not that a sequel will eventually appear. I loved the original game, and I’m very hopeful that the sequel will be up to the same standards.

Pixeljunk Monsters 2
There are currently four released games in the Pixeljunk series: Racers, Monsters, Eden, and Shooter. The only one I’ve loved has been 1-2: Pixeljunk Monsters. I bought the game years ago and I’m still playing it nearly every week. There’s been speculation about 1-5 being Pixeljunk Dungeons, which sounds excellent, but following word of Pixeljunk Shooter 2 and Pixeljunk Racers: Second Lap, it’s unclear as to whether these games are just expansions like Pixeljunk Monsters Encore was, or whether they’re legitimate sequels. (2-1 and 2-4) If another Pixeljunk Monsters game ever comes out, I’m buying it on release date.

Now we’re into the home stretch. We started at top fifty, but now we’re into the top twenty: my favorite games of all time. Encouragingly, three games in this list didn’t yet exist when I wrote up my original list back in 2007.

20- Ultima V (Origin, Commodore 64, 1988)
I’m a great lover of computer role-playing games, and Ultima V was the first truly great one I ever played. Before Dragon Age, before Baldur’s Gate, even before SSI’s Dungeons and Dragons Gold Box games, there was Ultima. Ultima V came out the same year as Pool of Radiance, just as Ultima IV had come out alongside Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale.

Initially, I found it amazing that you could attack enemies who were not directly above or to the side of you. You could actually fire an arrow at an orc who was five squares above and two squares over from you! The initiative system was complex: occasionally, one of your quicker characters would attack twice without a slower character getting a turn in-between. It was as if Mr. Fast attacked every 12 initiative segments but Mr. Slow only attacked every 15 segments. I loved that system.

But what really grabbed me about Ultima V was the story. Sure – it had me running back and forth, backtracking all over the huge world map many times, and took me literally years to complete, but when I was fourteen, I had that kind of time. At the outset, I learned that the evil Lord Blackthorne had taken over and was enforcing twisted versions of the eight virtues. Throughout the game, I traveled the world, picked up companions, battled enemies, and learned more of the story. I infiltrated the enemy’s ring of spies, joined the resistance, and learned mantras which let me meditate at the hidden shrines. (once I’d found them) I followed the path laid out in the journal portion of the game’s manual, which had me take a painstakingly specific route in my ship and transfer to a skiff, intentionally going down a whirlpool to enter the underworld. I then followed a river to the location where the Shadowlords had captured Lord British. There, I found Lord British’s amulet.

I undertook similar quests to get his sceptre and crown, both of which were essential. I had to talk to people to learn the magic passwords to each of the world’s eight dungeons, and then traverse each dungeon to the underworld for various reasons. Amongst those reasons was to collect the three shards of the shattered gem of Mondain, which allowed me to destroy the shadowlords. Of course, I had to follow a particular ritual and had to learn each shadowlord’s true name.

All of this took more hours than I can tell you. The story was complex, and I’ve only detailed the parts I remember now, more than two decades later. I spent hours each day for years. Ultima forces you to purchase ingredients for each spell that you cast, and there exist two ingredients that cannot be purchased, only gathered in the wild. You can ride horses, ships, skiffs, hot air balloons, and even a magic carpet – or else travel by moongate if you learn the phases of the moon properly to guide your travel.

More than twenty years later, Ultima V is a more complex game than any other I’ve played since. And I treasure the experience that I had in playing it.

19- Trine (Frozenbyte, Playstation 3, 2009)
If daddy Castlevania and mommy Gauntlet got together and had a child, it would be Trine. Trine is the modern-day evolution of these old two-dimensional sidescrolling platformers and action RPGs. The graphics and the soundtrack are both beautiful, and up to three people can play simultaneously. You get three characters to choose from, and each character is drastically different and has different ways to solve the same problems. I had an absolute blast playing Trine, as you can probably tell by the fact that it’s the only platinum trophy I’ve got on the Playstation 3. I busted my ass finishing the Tower of Sarek on Very Hard with zero deaths.

The game has three characters: Knight, Wizard, and Thief. The Knight has armor, sword and shield. His shield allows him to block attacks from any angle, which is very useful, and he’s got the best direct attack in the game. He can also jump and land on enemies, killing them mario-style. But he can’t swim. At all. In water, he sinks and drowns. The Thief is the best character in the game: she can jump high, grapple from any wooden surface, and has the game’s only ranged attack. And while swinging, if she hits an enemy, she’ll kick for massive damage. The thief is all about mobility. The wizard is the most difficult to use, but can be a lot of fun. When you play the wizard, you have a cursor which can be used to levitate objects or to create boxes and planks. You can drop things on enemies and crush them. This is the wizard’s only attack, which means that when enemies get close to you, you’re pretty much screwed.

The game has plenty of items to collect. Each level has two chests containing magic items. These can be anything from leg armor which reduces damage from hits (only the hits which connect with the character’s legs) to a magic necklace that lets the wizard create an extra box or plank. Each level also has a number of green experience vials. Collecting all of these is probably the most time-intensive achievement in the game, but the experience will allow your characters to go up levels. As they go up levels, the knight, thief, and wizard gain new abilities. which you can select. The knight gains a flaming sword, a magic thunder hammar, and the ability to charge. The thief can shoot multiple arrows or even a flaming arrow. And the wizard can create progressively more items, and eventually a floating platform.

Trine is probably tied with Pixeljunk Monsters for my favorite PSN game. If you’ve got a PS3 and haven’t picked up Trine, I heartily recommend it. It’s also available for PC on Steam.

18- Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo Wii, 2007)
Let’s face it – first party Nintendo games are just good. Whether they’re Zelda, Mario, or Metroid, the games are just good. Mario’s latest evolution is Galaxy, and the games are wildly creative. It’s got levels where you swim underwater or fly, levels where you roll around atop a ball using only the Wii remote’s tilt, and levels where you jump around atop floating planetoids which pull you in with their gravity. In an age of 3d games, Mario Galaxy may be the only true 3d game – it’s often impossible to judge which way is up!

Mario Galaxy has you surfing atop a manta ray, transforming into a giant spring or a bumblebee, and playing in old-school 2d levels. There are boss creatures, hidden levels, and an extra level of replayability created by the comets, which turn levels you’ve already played into silver coin collecting games, sudden-death levels, or a race to collect everything inside a time limit. Mario Galaxy is certainly one of the best games on the Nintendo Wii.

17- Dead Space (Visceral Games, Playstation 3, 2008)
In a time when the survival horror genre has gone out of vogue in favor of games like Doom 3 and Resident Evil 5, Dead Space took a much-needed step in the right direction – backwards towards the survival horror classics of yesteryear. Don’t get me wrong – Dead Space is first and foremost a shooter – but it’s got the survival horror chops that Resident Evil has lost. I played Dead Space only at night, and generally while wearing a good pair of earphones. Good times.

Dead Space is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played. There is no heads-up display to detract from the immersion, and the game’s sound design is amazing. When you enter a vacuum, the only cue you need is the sudden transition to the echoey, disconnected, inside-helmet soundscape that insulates you from the sounds of enemies rushing towards you. In space, no one can hear you scream.

If you know anything about Dead Space, you’ll likely know that in order to kill Necromorphs, you’ve got to cut off their arms and legs. I’ll admit that this mechanic, while novel, is hardly innovative. But it’s certainly no reason to roll your eyes and decide not to play the game. It has so much more going for it. The game’s weapons are the most diverse and fun to use I’ve seen since the last Doom game. The weapon and armor upgrade system involves welding new modules into specific nodes in your armor or weapon for different effects. And the story…

The setting of Dead Space is so rich that I can’t begin to absorb it all. But just knowing that the entire universe out there exists gives me the warm fuzzies. The immersive scenes at the game’s outset when approaching the Ishimura mining vessel really help to put you in character. They’ve gone with the Gordon Freeman silent protagonist approach with the character you play: Isaac Clarke (an amalgam of Isaac Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke) As the story progresses and you restore functionality to portions of the ship that allow you greater access to information about what has gone wrong, you’re gradulally exposed to more story through Bioshock-style audio and video recordings which are played on both wall-mounted displays and on your portable holo-projector which displays a screen right in front of you. You can even walk around while watching the video. Normally the recordings are placed where you’re unlikely to be attacked while viewing one.

I could write a whole lot more about Dead Space, but as this list nears the higher-ranked games, I should struggle for brevity and call it quits for this week.

25- Braid (Jonathan Blow, PC, 2009)
Braid took the gaming world by storm primarily because of its creativity. The game originally showed up on XBox Live Arcade in 2008, but I didn’t play it until later, when it became available on Steam. Although it’s an excellent 2D sidescroller in its own right, Braid’s greatest achievement are its fiendishly complex puzzles. Although this kind of thing generally drives me insane with frustration, I actually had fun sitting there for 20-30 minutes staring at the same level, trying to figure out exactly what I was missing. If you’re interested, I’ve written up some hints for the Braid game which attempt to nudge you in the direction of the answer without outright giving it away.

24- Plants vs Zombies (Popcap Games, PC, 2009)
My first impression of Plants vs Zombies wasn’t a good one. Made by a company that got famous creating casual browser games, this tower defense title looked shallow and boring. But one day when I was bored, I downloaded the demo and gave it a shot. I was hooked. The lanes, which had originally looked horribly limiting, create their own type of strategy. Unlike many other tower defense games, the creeps can attack and destroy your towers. Certain towers can attack creeps in lanes other than their own. There are slowing attacks and area attacks. And the different environments such as pool and rooftop introduce entirely new gameplay every few levels. Fighting off bungee zombies and zombie bobsled teams has never been so much fun.

23- No More Heroes (Suda51, Wii, 2008)
No More Heroes was a flawed game in so many ways. The open world was a disaster, and the last few fights were far too difficult. But I loved it so much. It was so over-the-top ridiculous, and it took pride in it. How many games force you to save your progress by sitting on a toilet? How many let you kill enemies and have blood and coins fly out of their bodies? Or learn new professional wrestling moves from a drunk Russian guy in a bar who instructs you in “the technique of crazy awesomeness” by beating the living crap out of you? No More Heroes succeeded in being awesome not dispite its absurdity, but because of it. If you’re a fan of RealUltimatePower, you should have an appreciation for the style of humor that makes No More Heroes shine.

22- God of War (David Jaffe, PS2, 2005)
God of war took the 3D beat-em-up genre and brought it to new levels. The refinement that exists in the God of War games is hard to find elsewhere even today. Never have I seen a game with better camera angles, and rarely have I seen such epic scope in a game. God of War uses puzzles, platforming, and hordes of enemies to create wonderful gameplay. It also makes the best use of quicktime events that I’ve seen in a game. The environments where the battles take place are often as much a part of the challenge as the enemies – when you’re battling minotaurs on a conveyor belt, falling to your death is as much a danger as being gored.

21- Fallout (Black Isle Studios, PC, 1997/1999)
I’m including Fallout and Fallout 2 here, as they ran on the same engine and could have been two halves of the same game. Seldom has such a kickass combination of story, gameplay, and humor made an appearance in a game. Fallout was brilliant because it salvaged a good bit of the adult dark humor present in Wasteland and refined it into an isometric post-apocolyptic RPG which in its day was absolutely brilliant. It’s even possible to play through the entire game with a character whose intelligence is so low that he can only speak in grunts. Yeah – it closes off a lot of options, but it’s pretty damn funny.

My wife and I have always played video games together. Back when we were first dating, she bought a gaming PC and left it over my house so that she could come over and play Neverwinter Nights and Baldur’s Gate with me. Later, we played Dungeon Siege, Champions of Norrath and Gauntlet Legends together. These top-down or isometric action RPGs are amongst our favorite games to play together. Recently, we’d been looking for a game of that ilk to dive into on the Playstation 3. While Sacred 2 is by no means the most recent PS3 game, it was well-spoken of, so we figured we’d give it a shot. On a whim one weekend afternoon this past spring, we popped by a GameStop and grabbed a copy. I’m not a big fan of teh Gamestop, but it’s good for impulse purchases.

Sacred 2 is awkward and difficult to understand. Each character has three skill categories, and four skills in each for a total of fifteen powers/spells/techniques. Most of them are difficult to use well, don’t do much damage, and don’t seem very cool. You can combine two into a single power and slot that power on a given button, but I have yet to find a good use for that, as the powers are mostly useless anyway. The game’s weapon system is similarly opaque. You can see the damage and level of weapons, but is a level 8 weapon that does 10-28 damage somehow better than a level 5 weapon that does 12-36 damage?

So far, it’s nearly impossible to die in Sacred 2. And while this is infinitely preferable to an error on the opposite side of the scale, it means that strategy is absent. In Diablo 2, you’d dodge incoming enemy fire. In Champions of Norrath, you’d use area attacks to take out enemies before they could close. In Sacred 2, this is not an option, nor is it necessary.

There is so much more I could complain about in Sacred 2. And yet we continue to play. The game mechanics suck, but the running around and killing things is somehow enjoyable.

This week is all about the PC games. In looking over things, just about half the games on my top 50 list are PC games. As an aside, twenty-two of them have zombies in them.

List analytics aside, let’s look at the next five games.

30 – Dungeon Keeper (Bullfrog Productions, Windows, 1997)
Despite being more than a decade old, Dungeon Keeper is still a lot of fun. The graphics are horribly dated, but the mechanic of digging out an area for your dungeon – creating your own space – is a lot of fun. I’ve never realized it before just now, but Dungeon Keeper really has a lot in common with Desktop Tower Defense. In both, you build a maze to channel creeps through so that you can kill them. In Dungeon Keeper, you’re just building traps and placing creatures instead of building towers and cannons. You’ve also got to mine gold and keep it away from those pesky adventurers. Ah, there’s nothing like laying waste to the kingdom…

29 – Fallout Tactics (Micro Forte, Windows, 2001)
The consensus about Fallout Tactics was that it was a pale shadow of the two main Fallout titles, and I’ll admit that the story and the RPG options present in the original were missing. Fallout Tactics is just a series of missions. But it lets you form a full party and control each of them in combat, which is something I’d wanted badly in the main games. It allows for quite a lot of strategy, and that’s where the game shines.

So you can create a party that consists of a ghoul with a high driving skill behind the wheel of your APC, a sniper who sits up on a fire escape, a sneaky guy who gets close, plants land mines, then waits nearby with a shotgun, and a deathclaw who sneaks in close before attacking. Then, BOOM! Your shotgun guy pops-up at point blank range and cuts two slavers in half with a shotgun blast just as your deathclaw charges in. The other slavers go after the deathclaw but hit landmines. And the ghoul driver comes in and runs down some others with the APC. Meanwhile, your sniper picks off strays. I love it.

28 – Wasteland (Interplay, Commodore 64, 1988)

Wasteland had a release on both the Commodore 64 and DOS platforms, and as such there’s still a version floating around that’s playable on modern computers. Wasteland was a hugely influential game – it ended up inspiring a little title you may have heard of: Fallout.

Wasteland is Fallout, only more so. It’s less tame. Sure, the Fallout games have plenty of blood, but in Wasteland you could do a lot of things that you just don’t see in more modern video games. In Wasteland, you’re attacked by a ten-year-old boy after you kill his dog, and you’re forced to kill the lad. And this is in the first 20 minutes of the game. One of Wasteland’s climactic battles has you battling nuns with assault rifles. And you can sleep with a prostitute and contract wasteland herpes. Good times.

27 – Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance (FASA Interactive, Windows, 2000)

Another reason I loved the old Mechwarrior games was because they were so unlike other mech games. Armored Core and Chromehounds are twitch games. Mechwarrior is not. Even when you’re in battle using jump jets to dodge gunfire, locking on with your missiles, and aiming your PPC shots, it isn’t frantic. The timing feels so much more relaxed – like a real time strategy than a shooter.

26 – Typing of the Dead (Smilebit, Windows, 2000)

Before the Sega Dreamcast version of Typing of the Dead was released in 2001, this was a PC title. It’s now very rare and difficult to obtain, but it’s very much worth it. It’s so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking it up.

Typing of the Dead is a game about which I may never tire of ranting and raving. It’s got a lot of camp value, and to fully enjoy it you need to enjoy the humor of the terrible voice acting and outdated graphics as much as the humor of the ridiculous things you’re typing. I keep Typing of the Dead installed on my PC and play it from time to time when I don’t have any other games lined up. It’s always fun, and since it’s already so old, it never gets old… er.

Insanely ridiculous. That’s how I’d describe No More Heroes. And I love it.

I was a fan of the first game, but it had issues. In the sequel, many of those issues have been fixed. And as far as over-the-top goes, they’ve outdone themselves. It’s like the boss battle in the first game in which the boss kills himself before you have a chance to fight him. It’s like the shopping cart lady with the giant laser.

I’m not far into No More Heroes 2, but in one of the boss battles, I was surprised when my opponent suddenly flew away. To outer space. Then, he got into a mech. I was further surprised when my own character (in a cutscene) mounted his motorcycle, fired its rocket boosters to follow his opponent into outer space, and nonchalantly entered his own mech, commenting on how he’d been itching for a chance to use it. The boss battle became a mech vs mech battle. It’s insane out-of-the-box moments like this that make me love No More Heroes.

No More Heroes consistently goes where I’m not expecting it to go, and it makes me laugh my ass off.