Video Games

• Fighters
• Shooters
• Exploration
• RTSs
• RPGs
• MMORPGs

Fighters

• Street Fighter 2 (Arcade/SNES). The grandaddy of the modern fighting game, and still surprisingly fun even today. Chun-Li is solid in all versions, Guile's the character to be in the original, and Ken and Cammy are both rather fun in Super.
• Street Fighter Alpha, SFA 2, and SFA 3 (Arcade). A solid outgrowth from Street Fighter 2. It added some new game mechanics that spruced up gameplay a bit, yet it managed to stay away from the combo-itis of Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat 3. Charlie is awesome, although the fact that he's doomed to die if you beat the game is a bit discouraging -- his "joke" ending in SFA3 is fun, though.
• Mortal Kombat II (Arcade). The best of the series by most measures. Not as timeless as the Street Fighter series, but still has a warm fuzzy place in my heart.
• Samurai Showdown and Samurai Showdown 2 (Arcade). One of my favorites from the Neo-Geo. Fun premise, fun gameplay, and has some of the most memorable characters to be found in a fighting game (e.g. Galford, Nakoruru, Amakusa). Charlotte was my character of choice in the first game, but playing as Galford in the second one was too much fun to pass up. Galford's attacks using his pet dog Poppy are both effective and hilarious. "Secret Ninja Diving Falcon Death Teleport, Poppy!"
  
  The later games in the series, though, just weren't as enjoyable. The third and fourth installments were both disappointing to me, and I'm not holding my breath for the fifth.
• Tekken series: 1, 2, 3, and Tag (Arcade). A classic arcade beat-em-up. It's best to just ignore the storyline, but the gameplay itself is fun. Law is always fun to play as (fast and nimble, very combo-friendly), as is Paul (slow but hard-hitting). Other characters can also be fun, depending on which incarnation I'm playing. Incidentally, Law and Paul make an awesome team in Tekken Tag.
• Soul Edge (Arcade) and Soul Calibur II (GC). Another classic arcade beat-em-up, but one with a little more finesse than Tekken. The storyline is confusing, but unlike Tekken it clearly has a storyline. Li Long, Seung Mina, and Voldo were fun in Edge, while Raphael was my favorite from Calibur 2. I've never played Calibur 1 or 3.

Shooters

• Rez (PS2). On the surface, Rez is your basic shooter-on-rails: your "ship" travels through the game world on a predetermined path, and your only control over the game world is aiming your turret to shoot at enemies. However, Rez breaks that mold very quickly. Rez is set in a bizarre but beautiful Virtual Reality, and the enemies you destroy are visual representations of malevolent "firewalls" created by a benevolent but misguided newborn AI, whom you must now rescue from her own creations.
  
  The big distinguishing trait of this game is that everything, and I mean everything, is set in time with the music. The appearance of new enemies and obstacles, the timing of your own attacks, the rhythmic pulsing of the stage itself, and the constant rumble of the controller is all subordinate to the techno-trance beats that permeate the game. When you combine all that with the religious ecstasy-like final stage, it's quite an experience.

Exploration

• Metroid Prime (GC). I loved this game. While its predecessor, Super Metroid, is superior in some ways, I consider Metroid Prime to be the better game overall, albeit by a slim margin. Like everyone else, I was apprehensive when I heard that they were working on a 3D Metroid game, but the end result was far better than I'd expected.
  
  In terms of gameplay, Prime starts off by borrowing a lot from the First Person Shooter and 3D Platformer genres. However, the lock-on system breaks away from the FPS emphasis on precision aiming, and the collision physics makes jumping from platform to platform feel more like Olympic gymnastics and less like a kindergartener falling off a jungle gym. The end result is that the player is allowed to worry less about the enemies and platforms, and more about solving puzzles and exploring what's out there.
  
  Prime follows the modern trend of longer, more involved games. In contrast with Super Metroid, which takes perhaps 2 to 4 hours to beat, my first play through Metroid Prime took a bit over 20 hours. Also unlike Super Metroid, Prime rewards you more for being thorough than fast. Personally, I think this works better for the "exploration" angle.
  
  When it comes to plot and character, Prime is very much of the mind that "Less is More", an ideal it shares with the older Metroid games. While the game will give you gentle nudges if you don't know where to go next, the plot feels more relaxed than forced, and you're always free to wander off to the Hall of the Elders for some quiet reflection, or to observe the wildlife in Phendrana Drifts. Likewise, none of the characterization is up-front; there is no dialogue in the game, and all character development comes from the bits of arcana that you find scattered across the planet. The result is that the world itself almost feels like a character in itself, sort of a resolute but weary guardian of an age long past. What character development occurs in Samus, the heroine, is largely implicit and mostly a creation of the player's imagination.

RTSs

• Starcraft (PC). It's still one of the best RTS games out there, even though it's nearly a decade old.
• Warcraft 3 (PC). I never played the first two Warcraft games, but I enjoyed this one immensely. The gameplay isn't quite up to the elegance of Starcraft (four races makes it harder to balance), but the storyline is very engrossing.

RPGs

• StarTropics (NES). A very quirky game. Like the Legend of Zelda series, it's sort of a hybrid between an adventure game and an RPG. However, the gameplay itself is very unconventional -- your primary weapon is an ancient tribal yo-yo, and you solve puzzles by jumping on special floor tiles over expanses of lethal water. Just as you think the game can't get any weirder, a sudden plot twist comes out of nowhere for chapters 7 and 8.
  
  The game is classic Nintendo at its best. For instance, one of the materials that comes with the game, attached to the user's manual, is a yellow letter from Dr. J, the protagonist's recently missing archaeologist uncle. By all appearances, the letter is nearly useless, except as an introduction to the plot. However, at a memorable point in Chapter 4, Dr. J's assistant tells you that your uncle, knowing that he was likely to be kidnapped, is carrying a transmitter and sent you the radio frequency. When you dip the actual letter in water, as instructed, it reveals the hidden message, allowing you to continue the game.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC). A shockingly fun game. It blends some classical RPG gameplay elements (e.g. a world map and a separate battle arena) with some traditional Mario elements (e.g. jumping on enemies). But not in the way you'd expect, oh no. The actual combat is turn-based and requires more strategizing than dexterity; instead, you actually jump on or whack at enemies on the world map, of all places, which can give you a freebie "surprise" round at the start of the battle. Add the "badge" system to that, and you get an RPG with a surprisingly intelligent combat system.
  
  Besides the actual combat mechanics, the strong point of the game is the humor. The jokes are very strongly postmodern, with lots of self-referential jokes (e.g. an NPC in one town is playing the same Paper Mario game on his own GameCube at home, giving you tantalizing but spoiler-free hints about the ending) and meta-breaking humor (e.g. crows that, when they think no one else is around, discuss geopolitical events and environmental issues from the player's Real World). Goombella is, by far, my favorite character, as she's constantly making meta-referential jokes that poke at the game itself. Whenever the game doesn't really make much sense, such as the party walking around on the Moon with no space suits, Goombella is the one who comments on how, by all rights, it ought to be impossible.

MMORPGs

• World of Warcraft (PC). It's the only mainstream MMORPG that I'll give the time of day to. Not quite Nirvana, but it's fun nonetheless.
• Dark Age of Camelot (PC). Sucked.
• More to come? EVE Online looks promising...

Written by Chronos Tachyon.
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Last modified on Mon, 14 May 2007 at 07:50AM PDT-0700.