Dakkster’s Top 300 Games, 90-81

Time to count down some more on the list. As always, check out this tag to view all of the posts about the list.

90: Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis (PC) – This was probably the first point and click game that I really finished. Played it on my dad’s computer and it was really tricky. I really don’t understand why they didn’t just adapt this for the big screen when they made Indy 4, instead going with that Crystal Skull BS that turned out to be extremely “meh”. This game isn’t like most of the other point and click games that I’ve tried, in that it’s not completely illogical and whacky all the time. Most of the time you can figure out the puzzles without much help. This was the last great Indiana Jones game.

89: Ikaruga (GameCube) – Shoot ‘em up’s grand master as far as I’m concerned. You kind of need to re-program your brain to be successful at this game, but when you do, you just “get it”. What I’m talking about is the polarity mechanic. When you’re light, you absorb light attacks and you do normal damage to light enemies. But you take damage from dark attacks and you do double damage to dark enemies. And vice versa of course. Since the game only uses three buttons (one for basic attack, one for the special attack you build up to by absorbing enemy attacks and lastly, one for polarity shift), it seems easy to get into, but the learning curve is crazy steep. Then one day, you just stop playing frantically and learn how to use the polarity shift to your advantage and everything is a breeze. That’s when you can get into attack combos to max out your score, but I never really cared for that.

88: Gears of War (Xbox 360) – This first game in the Gears series is pretty good, but it’s not close to the second one. You kind of get thrown into the middle of things and you don’t really understand what’s happening. But then you get some levels into it and the atmosphere really ramps up. It’s a good co-op game, but sometimes it can be a bit frustrating. Great action, though, and it’s really visceral. The soldiers are ridiculously macho, but it’s all part of the game.

87: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – Some people probably thought this would end up higher on the list, but I thought this was a huge letdown after how well the previous Modern Warfare game played. It’s still incredibly solid action and the Spec Ops missions are fun, but that doesn’t take away the comparatively sour taste the single player campaign left me with. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just not great. Now obviously, I haven’t really played it on Xbox Live, but I’ve played it on local deathmatch and that’s pretty fun, especially creating a class that runs constantly.

86: The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (PC) – Morrowind captivated me so much when it was first released. It was choppy like hell on my computer, but soooo beautiful. The music was wonderful and I could literally sit for a long time and just look at the night sky in the game. That’s how mesmerized I was. It’s a dirty, grimy RPG that really makes you feel like you’re a part of that world. The outlandish world was a bit much at times, but I had a lot of fun doing alchemical stuff, especially when it meant I could create a potion that would make me fly for three minutes while making me invisible. Lots of fun and very unbalanced. I never finished the game, but I still spent over 50 hours on it. The game is simply huge.

85: Cannon Fodder (Amiga 500) – War has never been so much fun! A game where you control tiny soldiers and kill enemies in the jungle. If one of your guys dies, you just grab another one from the long line of recruits. But you want your guys to live long so they get to go up in rank, etc. I played through this with one of my friends on his Amiga 500 and it was a complete blast from beginning to end. It has a lot of humor and you get a taste of it quickly because of the song that plays at the beginning of the game where the singer goes “War has never been so much fun!”. Why this hasn’t been remade into a current-gen game is so beyond me that I don’t know where to begin.

84: Bionic Commando Rearmed (Xbox 360) – The original was fun, this is that much fun and much, much more. The whole game has been remade into this lovechild of high definition graphics and sound and the gameplay of the old NES version. It just rocks. The feel of the game is perfect and the music consists of cool remixes of the original tunes. It also has a bunch of challenge rooms that I’ve tried to grind. I have the final room left and it just kills me. All of the other rooms have one tricky obstacle, two at most. The 56th room has an endless amount of tricky things to overcome, so you really need a perfect run to make your way through all of it. The game has co-op too, but weirdly enough, my best friend and I haven’t really spent that much time on it.

83: Condemned: Criminal Origins (PC) – A cross between brutal streetfighting, CSI and a horror movie, Condemned was a big and pleasant surprise when I played through it. As Ethan Thomas, you’re an investigator who gets caught up in a crime plot, trying to find a serial killer who imitates other serial killers. The game has an incredible amount of atmosphere and the hand-to-hand combat is really violent and visceral. Just one guy coming at you freaks you out a lot. Imagine three at once and you’re really on your toes. Awesome game. I’ve tried the sequel but that was a giant “meh” in comparison.

82: Colin McRae DiRT (Xbox 360) – I love rally games. It’s a special kind of driving challenge and you really need to pay attention to the guy calling out turns for you. DiRT has a great rally section but it also has a bunch of other disciplines for you to master. Some of them are just tiresome, like the buggy races and trucker races. But the hill climb and duel races are a lot of fun, plus the main part of the game is still rally racing. It is beautiful and it has great drive feeling.

81: Aliens vs Predator 2 (PC) – One of the scariest things in gaming is to play as a Marine in any AvP game and have a motion tracker go off and suddenly start beeping while you can’t see anything in the direction of the beeping. This game has that in spades. The only thing that’s a shame is that it’s heavily scripted. In the first game the aliens ran around randomly so you were never safe, even if you had played the level before. On the other hand, this game has a great story and great narrative. It’s also more interesting to play as the alien because you evolve throughout the game.

Alright, so that’s enough for this time. I plan on getting up part 80-71 on Saturday. Thoughts?