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.

I have a special love/hate relationship with game demos. I love the fact that they exist. I tend to think of it as good omen for a game if the publisher releases a demo as opposed to forcing you to make your purchasing decision strictly off screenshots and online reviews. Kinda like how bad movies don’t advance screen for critics, to me the lack of a demo puts up a red flag. However, the one thing I hate about demos, is just how poorly they tend to represent the game they are selling. I suppose it’s just a limitation of the format, how can you really show everything a 20 hour game has to offer in fifteen minutes? Some demos for great games just left me cold, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum or Dead Space. The games themselves are exceptional but the demos just didn’t work well enough to make me say “damn, I want this game!”

This has been a constant sticking point with me and demos for a while. At least it was until I played the God of War III demo last week. This, gentlemen, is how you create a demo that not only left me pining for more action, but so thoroughly convinced me of GoW 3’s awesomeness I’d have ran out that instant and bought the game if it were available.

The demo is perfectly scripted. It’s probably representative of the first 15 minutes of the actual game, but it hits a number of marks that need to be present in a great demo. First, it introduces you to the core gameplay in a way that is easy for newbies to the series but also serves as a great refresher if you’ve played the first two games. It doesn’t babysit you at all, but teaches pretty much everything you’ll need to play the full game in just a few minutes. Second, the action never lets up. The pacing keeps you constantly moving, fighting, and gazing at the insanity all the way up to the dramatic conclusion. I don’t think I’ve played another demo that felt so much like a polished mini-game the way that GoW 3 does.

So there you have it demo people. Make your demos as exciting, polished and well paced as God of War III’s and you will sell lots of games. You have my Personal Guarantee!

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

The game has spawned a franchise and is one of the best-known Playstation 2 games out there. Its well-implemented analog controls and fighting mechanics are legend. It brought us some of the first quicktime events. And it brought boobs in video games into mainstream acceptance. Kind of.

Honestly though, while I had some minor issues with the second God of War game, the original is a true classic. Few people will argue that. The game is as addictively fun as it is brutally difficult. Fighting a huge wave of minotaurs and gorgons, balancing across that narrow wooden beam while jumping spinning blade wheels, climbing up a sheer stone cliff while dodging falling boulders – it’s all in a day’s work for my man Kraatos.

Certain annoyances have disappeared entirely as the medium has evolved. For example, I can’t remember the last time I played a game in which you were able to save your game in a state from which you can’t possibly proceed. (stuck in terrain, having permanently lost a plot-critical item) I think the last time I played a game with that particular issue was on the Commodore 64. But there are plenty of other problems that I see all over the place.

The most recent was when I was playing Ghostbusters last week. I’d reached the edge of a rooftop, and having captured all the ghosts on the roof, I found that there was nowhere else to go. I ran around making sure I didn’t need to trap more ghosts in order to trigger an event. I checked the doors and ladders to see if there was another area I needed to go to. I tried talking to Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler. No love. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Reloading the game fixed the issue, but the same exact issue popped up again later in the game, when I was in the museum. I’d killed all the ghosts in the area, and found myself locked in the Aztec exhibit with no exits.

Ghostbusters wasn’t the first time I’d seen that issue. In God of War 2, I hit a very similar situation – I’d reached the edge of a cliff I thought I needed to jump off, but there was an invisible wall stopping me from proceeding. When I reloaded and replayed, the invisible wall was gone. In Vampire: Bloodlines, someone told me to go to the second floor of building – I hunted for that second floor for hours, but it didn’t seem to exist and I in the end I had to stop playing the game.

Another issue that I hit in Ghostbusters is that of erratic difficulty. When playing the game on normal, I found that whle certain parts had a perfectly good difficulty level, certain parts were just way too hard. I had to restart the game on easy difficulty. Maybe the game should have a Kind Code.

And then there are my gripes about partner AI. There aren’t many games that make you play with a computer-controlled partner. Enter The Matrix comes to mind. (If Niobe was a blue pill, she’d never have passed her drivers’ test) The game I’m primarily talking about here is Resident Evil 5. In Resident Evil 4, you at least had a good amount of control over the girl you were protecting. I’m sure that was made easier by the fact that she had no inventory and didn’t try to fight enemies. You could tell her to follow you, or stay put. But in Resident Evil 5, your partner tries to fight and to help you solve puzzles. And worst of all, at certain points in the game, you need her.

At this point, I need to make a disclaimer. I’m referring to the AI partner as ‘she’ because I chose to play the game as Chris Redfield. Had I chosen to play as Sheva, Chris would be the idiot AI partner. No gender bias here. Purely circumstantial.

Sheva loves her handgun so much that when she runs out of bullets, she won’t use the machine gun. I can’t count the number of times when I’m fighting a miniboss and Sheva refuses to use her grenade launcher. I’ll be out of magnum ammo, and have to resort to using my handgun and flash grenades despite the fact that my partner has a goddamned grenade launcher. Sheva also likes to run far away when I’m being attacked so that when I go down and need her to revive me, she has no way to get to me in time.

But I’m not the only one she likes to get killed. One time, she ran ahead of me directly onto a conveyor belt that led into a furnace. Another time, she refused to stay more than three feet away from a reaper with an instant-kill attack. I wish I could ask her to hide in a dumpster while I fight the enemies by myself.

The most recent thing she’s done to piss me off is when I was fighting Albert Wesker. One of the items you need in this fight is a special rocket launcher. She took it and ran away, leaving me to fight the boss who I couldn’t possibly hurt without the rocket launcher. A minute later, I died because she was too far away to revive me when I was hit. If you’re reading this and can identify with my complaints about Sheva’s mental retardation, I suggest checking out Yahtzee’s review of the Resident Evil 5. He agrees, hilariously.

My last game gripe for the day? CD checks. I could vent all day about oppressive DRM, but CD checks aren’t oppressive so much as they’re simply antiquated. Why do games still require you to leave the CD in the drive in order to play? In the days before CD burners were mainstream, it may have been an effective anti-piracy measure. Today, I think its primary effect is to annoy me and make me buy more of my games from Steam. I tend to play 3-4 games at a time, and I’ve only got two optical drives in my PC. This means constantly swapping out CDs, which annoys me to no end. I generally go out and find a no-CD patch, which I have no qualms using because I’ve legitimately purchased the game. Companies like Stardock and Steam have it right. Just let me play the game for which I’ve paid you without the goddamned CD in the goddamned drive!

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is the sequel to Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. I definitely enjoyed Umbrella Chronicles, but while Umbrella Chronicles covered Resident Evil 0, 1, and 3, Darkside Chronicles covers my very favorite title in the series: Resident Evil 2.

I’ll grant you that I’ll be playing it largely for nostalgia purposes, but I will enjoy it. Re-encountering reimagined scenes from the first console title I truly loved will be pretty sweet. It looks like I’ll be waiting until Christmas for the game, but that’s okay. I can wait.

While I found the original God of War to be a far better title than its sequel, I have high hopes for God of War 3. I’ll admit that there can be only so much that Kraatos can go through before the storyline becomes old and worn, my hope is that a trilogy is not too much to ask.

In the same way that Resident Evil 4 was a reinvention of the franchise, God of War needs something fresh and new if it’s not going to die of sequelitis. I can only hope that David Jaffee is up to it.

I’ve been a huge fan of Desktop Tower Defense ever since I found the HandDrawnGames site. I also always said that I’d love to see it on DS. On April 29th, I get my wish. Of all the many tower defense games I’ve played, this is likely my favorite, tied with Pixeljunk Monsters. While playing the flash version on the PC is fun, being able to play it on a handheld anywhere will be even better.

I’ve been looking forward to Heavy Rain since I heard about it as an unofficial sequel to Indigo Prophecy. I played Indigo Prophecy and loved it, despite the mind-bogglingly bizarre plot that emerged toward the ending. I also played the European version of the game, Fahrenheit, which was essentially the same game, only with a couple nude scenes and a sex minigame. Nothing you wouldn’t see in a rated-R movie, but I felt like I needed the full experience.

Aside from ridiculously good graphics, Heavy Rain’s main draw is dynamic storytelling. Apparently, your character can die and the plot will continue without him/her. I’m also looking forward to the mechanics introduced in Indigo Prophecy. The adventure game with action minigame elements, timed conversation responses, and minor stealth game elements. The game’s diversity is a big part of why I loved it.

Lastly, my most anticipated game: Starcraft 2. I’ve been a big fan of the original for many years, and I’m constantly impressed by the fact that it’s the only decade-old game that I always see on store shelves when I’m at a Best Buy or Circuit City.

I’m less than ecstatic about the fact that it will be packaged as three separate race-specific titles, but I have faith that Blizzard will make their product worth the cash. Aside from the MMOs, I’ve always enjoyed Blizzard’s games.