Favorite video games of all time: 40-31

By Jeff

Before I continue with the list, I'd just like to point out that "Mega Man 9" on the PS3 and XBox 360 is evil. Don't get me wrong, the game is a blast, but it's evil in how hard it is. One of the beauties of the "Mega Man" series is that they are challenging, but you don't need a tutorial to play them and you don't need to know what's coming up.

Challenges will present themselves, but you have a chance to overcome them. Maybe I have just lost my "Mega Man" skills, but I find "Mega Man 9" to branch away from this trend. There are levels where you are screwed because you don't know what's coming. I'm thinking of Plug Man's stage. There are disappearing blocks, a staple of "Mega Man". But unless you have played through the level already, and most likely died, then you don't know where the next block will appear and you fall to your death. My personal favorite was where it had a ledge to jump on, but as you jump from the last block to the ledge, another block appears above the ledge, preventing you from reaching said ledge. The result? You fall on spikes and die.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my love and hate for the game because it is one of the most recent games I am running through at the moment.

You can find 100-91 here, 90-81 here,  80-71 here, 70-61 here, 60-51 here and 50-41 here.

40: Metal Gear Solid (Playstation) - This may be the first game I played where stealth was so important. At first, it was a strange sensation to not be able to just run through a fortress and kill everything without a care in the world. But then it grew on me and was a truly wonderful gaming experience. The guy is a top notch soldier/spy, but sometimes has to resort to a cardboard box to hide. Brilliant!

Also, you have to love a game where one minute you're in a sniper duel, then you're taking on an attack helicopter, then you're hiding in a box, and all the while there is an invisible ninja running around slicing people's hands off.
39: Dead Space (PS3, XBox 360) - Remember when "Resident Evil" games were actually scary? More on those later (Spoiler alert!). Anyway, "Dead Space" revived the whole survivor horror genre. You just have no idea what kind of abomination is coming next and where it's coming from. And on top of that, for some parts of the game you don't even have proper weapons to fight the creatures. Just make shift maintenance tools.

Mike would probably have nightmares if he played this game. And he wouldn't be alone.

38: Command and Conquer: Red Alert (PC) - I'm a democrat, so of course I love a game where I can actually be a communist. Especially when said commies have Mammoth Tanks that destroy everything that gets in their way and Tesla Coils that eletrocute anything that comes near my entitlements... er base. And with a code, I can just produce minerals (money) whenever I need it!

Conservatives can love this game too! You can have as many nukes as you want, as long as the mission keeps going on. Drop one and the next one starts production.

37: Metroid (NES) - If I had known when I was little that Samus was a woman, I would not have played this game. Totally didn't like girls back then.

Of course, trying to play this as a little kid was just a bad idea in general. See, "Metroid" is a very open game. You can pretty much go anywhere and need to retrace steps after getting certain items or clearing certain areas. Well, as a little kid, I had no idea that's how it worked! Needless to say, I failed miserably at this until much later.

36: Fallout 3 (PS3, XBox 360) - Post apocalypse games and movies are bit cliche. Mostly because if you've seen one post-nuclear winter world, you've seen them all. But "Fallout 3" was anything but cliche. You could be a great guy and do all the right things, end slavery and save towns from evil raiders. Or, you could do the opposite. You could make bounties for enslaving people, kill anyone you want to get their stuff and actually set off a nuclear bomb in a peaceful town. The choices were all yours.

The game also presents an interesting challenge. You can get the best gun in the game almost immediately, but then the real problem is finding ammo for the damn thing, as ammo and money to buy ammo is very scarce early on.

The battle system is a bit funky and annoying at times, but if the game were perfect it would be #1, right?

35: Castlevania (NES) - The only problem with this game is it led to "Castlevania II".

34: Wild Arms (Playstation) - I have never played a one-player game with friends as much as "Wild Arms". Swan and I were in an epic, but friendly, battle to beat Mike and our friend Josh to defeating this title. You see, between the four of us, only Swan and Mike had copies, which led to me heading over to Swan's house and Josh heading over to Mike's house to see the game completed.

We would help each other out on the tough puzzles, like the damn treasure chests being opened or closed or the blow up the green statue trick, but make no mistake, we all wanted to beat all the secret bosses and the game first.

I don't remember who won, I think it was Swan and I, but I could be mistaken. Either way, the game had a great battle system, because each character had skills unique to them. It's not like you got one spell for everyone, spammed it and dominated. You needed to master each character in order to stand a chance when Boomerang suddenly reappeared in the arena.

Epic game. So epic, I didn't even mind the characters in battle had no mouths...

33: Legend of Zelda (NES) - OK, I've mentioned countless times how I played a lot of these NES games as a little kid and was terrible. But I was actually good at "Zelda"! Why? I saw my babysitter play and remembered all the places she bombed for extra hearts and where the dungeons were. Miss Sue was great at the game and I just copied her. Although, I'm pretty sure I was never able to find the Silver Arrows in the final dungeon in the "Second Quest" (Harder version)...

The one huge problem with this game was the saving. I don't know if it was our machine or our copy, but if you saved the game and went to turn off the machine, you had to press power and reset at the same time. If you didn't, the game would be lost. Man, Miss Sue got mighty pissed at me when I messed that up one day.

32: Donkey Kong Country (SNES) - The Blockbuster by my house used to have summer video game contests. The first year they divided it into three games. So each day you came, you had to do well in a different game. In the second year, they just did three days of "Donkey Kong Country". I came in third. My brothers' friends, who were older than me saw my name on the board and mentioned to me how cool it was. I have never felt so cool in my life...

31: Goldeneye 007 (N64) - This game would probably be higher if I was traumatized by the pure domination my friend Josh boasted at this game. Seriously, it would be 3-on-1 in multiplayer, and he would crush us. Also, when you get farther in the game, the bad guys just keep coming. Just infinite terrorits coming to get you because you didn't use a silencer.