13 great games and 7 for future study and mediation.

 This is a rambling mess of ideas I been chewing on for weeks hope someone can find some value in it. I know I over do lists but I use it more as a structure for an essay like thesis here. So take what you want from it.

13 great games and 7 for future study and mediation.

1 Astlibra: revsion

Won’t add more sense I just reviewed this but kinda gutted my ambition of making a game because I would have to find a new angle on game because this accomplices most of my ambition and intent… this really spoke to me me and is most off what I want from video games.

2 Psychonauts 1 and 2 (parts of the same ultimate story)

A very average reinterpretation of Mario 64 with one of the most brilliant stories and a  one of the most original visual styles in all of media. The power of narrative is in meaning. Shiguru Miyamoto may have created the mechanisms of the genre (and of mode genres in the media of video games) though it is is a misson put to other creatives to make them mean anything beyond pure twitch athleticism of fingers dancing on buttons.

3 Final Fantasy 7

Machine translated nightmare fuel to English teachers…. Though, So what? At its core it is a post grunge diesel/bio punk remake of final fantasy 6 with a less competent translation, but! It had for my money… Nobuo Uematsues best soundtrack and the story under the translation is a fever dream representation of 90s teenage angst distilled into a personal mythology a generation used as a frame work adjusting to adolescence.

4 Dwarf Fortress

This is the Video game. The most important piece of software maybe ever created. A procedural generation like oracle that manipulates your brain to keep it’s vampiric soul alive. If you lived forever and could only play one video game (I know how specific that is) this would be my choice.

 

5 Nier automata

Yoko taro is the auteur of video games… his games provide a context for himself and feel incomplete if you don’t research him. That all being said I would argue in the meta textual hypertext of Frankenstein life he has created he is central to what makes video games art by making the human soul a key, if not the central ingriedient in a storm of ideas. The broken human ego holding together a series of associations with intent and heart.

6 Mother 3

Games as literature Tim Rogers… surmised once.  Probably The first successful in the competition with the greats of language in human history that is literature to tell a story that competes with those important voices. But who cares it is brilliant and I am glad to have played the whole series

7 Godhand

Ugly horny and stupid. The other side of the human condition. I can’t defend the ignorance or defend how niche a tank controlled beat them ups with an overhand camera is but still I am not going to lie to you (that kind of virtue signaling is bullshit and we all know it). Virtue fighter (yes any of them!) does what this game does with more dignity and finesse… but that is the classical sculpture of game design… I respect and admire it while feeling the shaving off the human aspects of humanity is messed up.

8 Chrono Trigger

The perfect video game that somehow still feels like it has a beating pulse. The yin and yang of video games culture reduced to a naive roadmap of the best parts of humanity doing what they are good at… what is that you ask? …showing up and giving a fuck in our insignificant and hostile lives.

9 ico

Visually the most Beatiful game I have ever played (accept the thirst trap that is Nier automata).  It is beautiful and tragic. The kind of thing we all have to respect even if most of you all (yes again with the Tim Rogers!) have been corrupted by the idea that coercion for quarters in the number goes up genre of aesthetics. Is the end all be all of game design).

10 Metal Gear Solid 3

The best Naruto game ever made. I respect and blame it for what it is and resent how it created a framework that AAA “prestige” games all seem to aspire too. It subverts subtly in the way mgs2 does obscenely and arrogantly the tropes and framework created with mgs1. Mixed feeling but the cinematic escapism is held together by the Stockholm syndrome investment in the story it inspires by playing it… then it messes with your head for caring and I respect it all the more for that

11 super Mario bros 3

The quint essential videogame. The one that matters… a e.c. Segar fan fiction held together by a physics engine for the ages. Action button innovations and a meditation machine that has nothing to say beyond what you project into cave it creates for you to explore.

12 secret of monkey island

Well written and brilliant this accomplices far more then metal gear solid as a narrative… yet less influential because you need the  super Mario bros cat nip for the soul that action games feed us. The progression of technical abilities of bushing buttons as reflex puzzles. Yeah secret of monkey island has none of that but! It has heart a point and knows how to tell an interactive story.

13 monster hunter world

I have clocked in almost a thousand hours in this series over four or five entaries. And still it is not higher on the list? The list is pretty arbitrary you can make a list of the favorite breath you have taken but the reductive frame of trying can inspire focus. But monster hunter world (as all of the series does… has a really stupid story. Great gameplay but oh it is stupid as a narative). Relies on online emergent gameplay by providing a better alternative to mmo games as a design philosophy. 

And 7 games for future speculation or reavaluation

14 Steve Jackson’s sorcery (whole series)

play this a lot on my phone. It is brilliant as game books but purely competent as a video game on a mechanical level… Sort of wish choose your path games were mixed with visual novels as a genre. Cut out the combat but the stigma the genre acquired when it was unfairly compared to literature (when choose your paths game books cam out originally) is what killed as the future of the media. As game appreciated we fight how simple the strength of choice as a way of engaging with interactive fiction is and over prioritize skill checks because “the game is in the rules”… yet the story with games is in choice we resist this. Because we are all incompetent theater kids at heart (though more obsessed with anime than we can justify).  All that being said video games as shapes in times we explore Donnie darko style is what the videos games are good at. 

15 baroque (ps1 version)

Have not played this much but damn the aesthetic speaks to me on a pure pixelated mess and polygons as art sort of way. Hope to play this more in the future because visually it is up there with ico though in a very different tradition and mode than that game.

16 Arc the lad collection

Melodramatic anime soap opera has a kind ambition for understanding why the lizard part of our brain responds so simple to video game cliches love this but the combat kinda stink it’s playable and competent at that. Though why I love it as much as I do is hard for me to justify.

17 Xanadu next

I wanted to include a Falcom game. I have not played this one much but it has a lot of potential Ys origins may be my favorite but something tells me this will be talked about more.

18 cave story

My favorite pure Metroidvania. Created modern indie games for most of us. I think this needs to be discussed but just putting foot note of sometime in the future for now.

19 13th sentinel aegis rim

Half way through this game and I know it will be a favorite though I am going to wait till I complete it, to say more.

20 septerra core

This is the main reason I included this section on this list. B-man wrote on his blog documented making this game and I started playing. Combat is clunky but there is something here. If I can get past the slow motion combat pace I think this will also be a favorite. Thought not sure yet but dang it speaks to as the western equivalent of ff7. They were riding very similar if not the same wave of cultural enegy. A kind of Freeform mashup of genres and inspirations governed by the rule of cool and heart that was undeniable. Ff7 as the better product… this is from what I have played a slower burn and maybe the better story and on top of that it perfects the ninja high school early otaku cultural that was central to my childhood (so I may be biased)

Any was rambled enough peace and love.