My Top 100 Movies of All-Time (25-1)

December 9, 2024December 9, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

25. Heat (1995)

“Epic” is one of those terms that can get thrown around willy-nilly, but Michael Mann’s crime drama really earns the moniker. We get both the cops and the criminals’ perspective on this heist, so when their storylines converge, it is truly explosive and tense. The film goes to great lengths to fill out the details of its world, even down to the getaway driver who only shows up for a couple scenes. We get a whole backstory and motivation for him, only for him to suddenly get gunned down in the climactic shootout after the heist goes wrong. In any other movie, he’d be cannon fodder, but because Mann bothered to give him a real characterization, it’s actually pretty tragic seeing him get killed.

That shootout, by the way, is one of the most insane gun battles ever put to film. The gunfire is loud as shots echo throughout the open streets of Los Angeles. The sheer number of bullets fired and the carnage that erupts is comparable to the infamous jungle shootout in Predator, but with actual people involved on both sides of the exchange, and you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens to these characters that we’ve come to sympathize with on either side. Oh, and it’s a Michael Mann film, so everything is stylish as fuck.

Also, this is the movie where Al Pacino’s eyes bug out and he yells “SHE HAD A GREAT ASS”, and I’ve never quite recovered from the laughing fit it put me through.

24. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Quentin Tarantino’s debut film is still one of my all-time favourites. It almost feels like a stage play, as most of the film is confined to a single warehouse, where a group of criminals try to figure out which one of them is a police informant after a heist gone wrong. The drama and paranoia which plays out is intense, as you are left constantly guessing and as events escalate in some unexpected ways. It helps that the cast are masterful here, from Harvey Keitel’s professional Mr. White, to Steve Buscemi’s weaselly Mr. Pink, to Michael Madsen’s quietly psychotic Mr. Blonde.

Oh, and I said it when I first watched the film, but it has held true all these years later: I will never be able to hear “Stuck in the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel the same way again after watching this movie.

23. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

As much as I love Reservoir Dogs, I do have to agree with Aldo Raine that Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s masterpiece. This alternate history World War II film largely earns those accolades thanks to a scene-stealing performance from the (at the time) basically-unknown Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa. He is a terrifying villain, one who is calculating and sadistic, who loves toying with his victims. His introduction (one of the best character introductions in all of cinema) makes all this very clear, and makes every subsequent scene he’s in nail-bitingly tense, as you cannot tell if he knows or suspects more than he is letting on, or how he may press his knowledge for his advantage.

Of course, it’s not all about Hans Landa, as Inglourious Basterds is chocked full of great performances. Michael Fassbender is only really in one scene, but my God, what a scene that is; “intense” and “unforgettable” only scratch the surface of how good it is. Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine and the titular Basterds are also great: a bunch of meat-headed Americans who, despite blundering their way across Nazi-occupied France, manage to win the day with some good ol’ fashioned American stubbornness. The real highlight though is Mélanie Laurent’s Shosanna, a hidden and hunted Jew who finds herself in a position to destroy the Third Reich once and for all, if not for one pesky Nazi who has an infatuation with her…

Inglourious Basterds is a great film, one that has some interesting commentary on topics ranging from America’s unilateral relations with other countries, to the danger of cultural ignorance, to the power of film, to the nature of evil, to toxic masculinity. I loved it when I first saw it, and I’ve only grown more affectionate over time.

22. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

As I said back when I did a retrospective on this series, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of my all-time favourite horror movies, and easily the best slasher film ever made. There are several reasons for this, but perhaps most important is the film’s documentary-like cinematography, which lends the film a very grimy and unsettlingly realistic feel. As a result of this, the relatively tame violence feels so much more disturbing and intense. Hell, the scariest parts of the film aren’t even the acts of violence, it’s the scenes of Sally going mad as she sees the disturbing sights at the Sawyer’s dinner table. The screams, lingering shots on the macabre objects, and the camera getting uncomfortably close to her terrified eyes are so much more unsettling than even the infamous meat hook scene. There’s so much more you can say about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I’d really recommend reading my retrospective on the film: it says so much more than I can really cover here.

21. Die Hard (1988)

Die Hard is one of the most perfect screenplays ever written. Everything is so efficiently presented and the pay-offs are setup so well. Outmanned and out-gunned, hard-luck New York cop John McClane needs to use his wits to survive and rescue his estranged wife, Holly. The odds are stacked against him, but seeing him slowly even them as the film goes on is thrilling, and the more grounded take on an action hero was such a breath of fresh air at the end of the 80s. I also just love how the world of the film slowly opens up, with this claustrophobic siege in an office plaza eventually expanding to provide the perspectives of the police, FBI, and the media as well. Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber steals the show, of course, but you really can’t understate just how good Bruce Willis is here as John McClane, especially considering he was known as a comedic actor at the time. That said, Die Hard is also one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, so perhaps he was putting those talents to good use.

20. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a quintessential Charlie Kaufman screenplay. He’s the guy who also wrote Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, so the guy has some pretty wild ideas in his head. The film sees Jim Carrey (in a great dramatic role) playing Joel, who discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Kate Winslet’s Clementine, has undergone a procedure to erase all her memories of him. Hurt by this revelation, Joel does the same to her in retribution. However, in the middle of the process, he regrets undergoing the procedure and he falls back in love with her, only to have these memories torn away from him one-by-one. It is such a beautiful and tragic way to present love and the cycles of pain and joy it can put us through over the course of a relationship.

19. Up (2009)

As I said before, Pixar have some of the stupidest premises in the history of cinema. “A man uses a bunch of helium balloons to lift his house so he can fly to South America” is the sort of insanity you overhear in the dementia ward, not the premise of one of the greatest films of all time. The balloons that I laughed at end up being a delightful kaleidoscope of colour to liven up the film. Everyone knows just how devastating the opening sequence of this film is: it’s a masterful piece of wordless storytelling which conveys a lifetime of hopes, dreams, and tragedy in a scant four minutes, and it absolutely gets you on-board with Carl’s curmudgeonly antics for the rest of the film. Seeing Carl slowly open up and grow over the course of the adventure is delightful. I also love how this is contrasted against his childhood hero, Charles Muntz, who is incapable of letting go of the past, to the point where it turns him into a monster.

18. Nightcrawler (2014)

Nightcrawler is a disturbing film, one which reveals the seedy underbelly of America that we try to keep hidden. The film is a scathing indictment of how late-stage capitalism corrupts everything (especially the American media) and the sort of psychopathy and moral bankruptcy it requires from you in order to get ahead when you’re starting with nothing. The film works so well thanks to the confident writing and direction of Dan Gilroy, and an unforgettably slimy performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom. Honestly, I don’t want to say too much more than that: it’s a film that demands to be seen, and I don’t want to spoil that experience for you.

17. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

It’s Star Wars, what else can I say? Of the original trilogy, A New Hope is my least-favourite, but considering it’s still this high up, that really says a lot about how good these movies are. A New Hope is the most efficient of the original trilogy, introducing this universe, its concepts, and some of the most iconic characters of all-time in a fairly lean two hour runtime. The special effects still look incredible (depending on which version of the film you watch), putting most modern films to shame, and the action sequences are all-time classics of the genre.

16. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

I will never get over how overtly feminist The Silence of the Lambs is. The entire plot revolves around Clarice Starling trying to prove herself as an FBI agent, but she is constantly underestimated, objectified, and harassed due to being a woman. Meanwhile, the villain is obsessed with the idea of being a woman, but simultaneously does not view women as people, enabling their horrific acts of violence against them. It’s one of those movies that would absolutely be decried as “woke” if it released today, but, because it pre-dates that discourse, is grandfathered in as the “right” way to write a female character by those chuds.

And then, of course, there’s Anthony Hopkins’ spellbinding take on Hannibal Lector. He’s hamming it up a little bit for dramatic effect, but the character is at his peak here, a calculating predator who is toying with Clarice and the FBI to achieve his own ends. He works best here as a supporting character, before subsequent sequels would force him into the narrative as much as possible. Lector is electrifying, but Clarice Starling is the real emotional core of the film, and The Silence of the Lambs really keeps that in perspective, to great success.

15. The Raid 2 (2014)

I liked The Raid, but I couldn’t help but be a bit underwhelmed by its very rudimentary narrative. However, The Raid 2 takes all the balls-to-the-wall, visceral action choreography of the first film, and then transplants it into an undercover cop movie which is already solid in its own right. This is largely thanks to a great performance by Arifin Putra as Uco, the son of a mob boss who is frustrated by his father’s conservative approach to business. This frustration is preyed upon and causes Uco to perform a coup to take power for himself. Of course, the action sequences are the real draw for a Raid film, and The Raid 2 does not skimp on the mind-boggling, over-the-top fights and colourful villains (including one guy who executes people using literal baseballs). While they are more spaced out than they were in the first film, the additional narrative weight makes these fights even more effective, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more impressive collection of action sequences.

14. Whiplash (2014)

Of course, it’s one thing for a movie with elaborate and visceral fight choreography to get your heart pumping fast. It’s a whole other thing when one of the most intense films you’ve ever seen is a goddamn drama film about a student musician, but Whiplash really needs to be seen to understand just how stressful this film is. J.K. Simmons is terrifying as Terence Fletcher, a musical professor with a short fuse who attempts to break his students in order to see if they can transcend to something truly great. The film is somewhat controversial for arguably justifying physical and emotional abuse in order to create art, but I do not feel like it is necessarily saying that Fletcher’s actions are right. Fletcher’s abuse of Andrew causes the two to absolutely despise each other. Andrew’s obsession with becoming a great drummer is clearly keeping him from having any sort of happiness, and the film implies that achieving his goal means that he’s probably going to die young, unsatisfied, and unappreciated. The film asks if that is all worth it, and the answer there is much more unclear and personal. Whichever side you fall on, Whiplash is an enthralling film, one you will struggle to look away from. I have never seen another film where, even to the very last second, you are absolutely glued to your seat, waiting to see what happens next.

13. Jurassic Park (1993)

When I was a kid, I loved Jurassic Park. I loved the tense dinosaur attack sequences, and it created an obsession over dinosaurs in me for several years. Then, around the time The Lost World came out, I suddenly started to get scared of this movie I had been fine with for years, so I avoided it for a while. It wasn’t until around the release of Jurassic Park III that I got over this and started indulging in my love of Jurassic Park again and really got to appreciate what a masterful film this is. It’s insane that the CGI has held up as well as it has after thirty years, but people don’t really appreciate how good the practical effects are and how the CGI supplements them. It also helps that this is a Michael Crichton adaptation, so it’s got that great mixture of heady sci-fi ideas, grounded explanations, and rip-roaring action spectacle.

12. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Like I said earlier, The Last Crusade used to be my favourite Indiana Jones movie, but the more time passes, the more I appreciate the straight-forward, action-packed, pulp adventure approach of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The action sequences are exquisitely crafted and choreographed by Steven Spielberg, allowing for some of the most creative, death-defying, and exciting stunt work of all-time.

Then there’s the characters. I’d argue that Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford’s greatest character: scrappy, smart, quick-thinking, and cultured, Indiana Jones lights up the screen and I cannot imagine anyone else playing him. Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood is also fantastic, an extremely fierce and independent companion for Dr. Jones, who puts the rest of the series’ stable of love interests to shame (and, again, someone who would definitely be accused of being “woke” if this movie came out today).

11. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

When I was a kid, I found The Empire Strikes Back to be a bit boring. Sure, the opening battle was cool, but all the stuff on Dagobah and the asteroid field kind of dragged out for me. Having gotten older and more mature, I appreciate these moments of downtime a lot more, as these are the source of some much-needed character development. Mark Hammill is given a lot more to chew on, as he finds himself desperately trying to become accepted as a Jedi, but constantly falls short in his lessons as he puts the lives of his friends first. Meanwhile, Han and Leia’s relationship suddenly heats up, and makes things take a turn for the tragic when fate starts to tear them apart again.

Plus, y’know, that Battle of Hoth is one of the greatest sci-fi spectacles in all of cinema, really setting the bleak and tragic tone this film is going for. The lightsaber battle towards the end of the film really cannot be underestimated either. It is one of the most emotionally-charged battles in the entire franchise, as Vader toys with his prey and Luke seems to be teetering on the edge of giving into his hatred for the man who killed his mentor. And, obviously, the film features one of the greatest twists in any piece of media, ever.

10. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It’s not often that a pure action movie generates legitimate Oscar buzz, but it’s even more remarkable when it’s nominated for Best Picture and ends up winning the most awards of the entire year. Hell, it’s worth remembering that Fury Road is a sequel to The Road Warrior: at the time, The Road Warrior was one of those all-time great sequels that you compared to The Empire Strikes Back and Aliens as the way to do a sequel that’s better than its predecessor. Fury Road is so good that it has made people forget about The Road Warrior in that conversation. All that is to say that Fury Road is an adrenaline-fueled, hyper-focused, action thrill-ride which takes everything we loved about previous Mad Max movies, cranks it up to eleven, and then features one of the most efficient action movie narratives of all-time.

9. The Thing (1982)

The Thing is a remarkable horror film, one which earns its reputation as one of the best in the genre. The premise is just ripe for suspense and paranoia, as a shape-shifting alien infection works its way through a team of scientists in Antarctica and preys on the survivors one by one. It is a masterpiece of implementing the horror rule of leaving things up to the audience’s imagination. We never truly know who is a Thing and who is not, nor are we given clear answers about when certain characters become infected, leaving a lot of gaps to fill for the audience. However, that ends up being half the appeal, and there are fierce fan debates to this day about the fates of certain characters.

There’s also the film’s incredible practical effects, which bring the body horror to life in disturbing detail. While I think that the paranoia is the real draw for The Thing, the much-lauded effects are a close second, making the alien antagonist one of the most visually-arresting foes in horror cinema. The cast are also fantastic, especially Kurt Russell, and the film defies genre conventions by having its lead characters actually be quite smart and level-headed while dealing with this existential nightmare. There’s a reason why so many hardcore horror fans cite The Thing as their favourite of the genre and, while I can’t quite agree, it’s certainly one of the greatest horror films of all-time.

8. Aliens (1986)

James Cameron’s follow-up to Alien shakes-up the formula you’d usually expect from a sequel, especially at the time this movie released. Usually, a sequel will just do what worked before and retread the original, ultimately leading to a movie which is a lesser version of its predecessor. James Cameron says “fuck that” and takes a legitimate effort to expand this universe, build upon its characters, and try to tell a bigger, more explosive story using the original is a foundation. The result is a movie which adds a lot more action, but still has more than enough horror to feel like a satisfying follow-up to the original without lazily rehashing its plot structure. While it does actually have several of the same plot beats, so much has been added that you wouldn’t really notice unless you sat down and thought about it. You’ve already seen Alien, so why not see what happens when we get a whole bunch more aliens involved, and actually have them annihilating trained soldiers while they’re at it?

The expanded cast are great, from the all-business Hicks, to the insecure macho posturing of Hudson, to the slimy company man, Burke, to the unsettling, inhuman android, Bishop. Many of these characters don’t get a whole lot of time to make an impression, but they make the most of it, and it really sucks when they meet their fate at the hands and inner jaws of the xenomorphs. The special effects are also phenomenal, utilizing suits, animatronics, projection, and miniatures to flawless results. Aliens is so good that it is basically the template for how to make a sequel that stands on equal footing with its predecessor.

7. The Matrix (1999)

I remember around the time that Inception came out, there were debates about whether it was better than The Matrix. I scoffed at those comparisons, because there is no comparison to speak of: The Matrix is superior in every conceivable way. You really cannot understate what a monumental film this was at the turn of the millennium. On top of being one of the most kick-ass action movies ever made, The Matrix also deals with real-world philosophy and theology in a way that is digestible to general audiences. It’s also just got such a distinctive style, aping 80s and 90s anime in a way that we hadn’t really seen before in the West. The film’s action sequences would go on to inspire countless imitators in film and (especially) video games. Sure, its sequels could never match the brilliance of the original film, but does that really matter when The Matrix is such a good, stand-alone film in its own right (and, for that matter, the sequels are all pretty decent, they just aren’t this good)?

6. Alien (1979)

When I first went through the Alien franchise, I liked the action-packed bombast of Aliens the most. However, as the years have passed, I find myself loving the original Alien more and more with each rewatch. This industrial, corporatized, analog vision of the future is still fascinating and not explored nearly enough nowadays. I like how the cast are all a bunch of normal people whose choices throughout the film are fairly sensible (even Kane sticking his head in the alien egg – there’s no way he could have expected something to be able to get at him from in there). It’s also pretty cool that the “main” character is not revealed until very late in the film, as everyone has pretty equal billing until they get offed one-by-one. Of course, this is also the debut of one of the most iconic monsters in all of cinema, and the xenomorph has never been scarier than it is here. HR Giger’s design is fascinating and disturbing, capturing his unique art style to create something unforgettable. I’m still in awe of how they were able to bring this thing to life in 1979 so flawlessly.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

The Fellowship of the Ring has a daunting task in front of it: faithfully condense the first part of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic into a three hour film. This had long been considered impossible to pull off, but Peter Jackson brings Middle-earth to life so flawlessly that he makes it look easy. The mythological opening sequence gives a taste of the epic scale to come, but the sleepy opening sequence in the Shire does a great job of establishing the home that is in danger of getting swept up in this conflict. We are introduced to our colourful cast of hobbits, wizards, and rogues as they try to escape the menacing Ringwraiths, who feel like they’re ripped straight from a horror story.

Then the film does something really special – halfway through, it basically becomes a second movie, introducing a new quest, several more characters, and escalating the stakes and danger far beyond the mortal peril we had already endured up to that point. This second half is every bit as strong as the first, utilizing the diverse New Zealand biomes to make Middle-earth feel like this breath-taking world full of ancient history that we barely get to scratch the surface of.

I find it really hard writing about these sorts of really famous, highly-lauded films. For one thing, you’ve probably already seen them, so I’m just telling you what you already know. However, if you have not seen them, then I don’t really want to spoil it for you either. The Fellowship of the Ring is a must-see film, the sort of movie that comes around once in a generation, which really is the most important thing I can convey about it.

4. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)

Look, I get that A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are generally considered more even experiences overall than Return of the Jedi. Frankly, I do not care. I am a sucker for an epic, satisfying conclusion, and Return of the Jedi is about as good as you could ask for (and, to all the Star Wars fans who say that Return of the Jedi is not even a good movie: fuck you). I’ve commented on the structures of some of the greatest sequels of all-time while making this list, and I love how unique Return of the Jedi‘s take on this is. The first half is basically spent reuniting the cast and cleaning up the messes left from the previous film, introducing its own self-contained antagonist, unique locales and exciting action set pieces.

The second half is then spent concluding the trilogy’s overarching storyline. Again, we’ll get people complaining about the Ewoks here, but they’re completely fine. They fit in with the series’ themes of plucky, outgunned and underestimated people winning the day against the evil empire. The best parts about this portion of the film are the climactic lightsaber battle (which, in my opinion, is maybe the best in the entire franchise), and the epic space battle. The amount of work that must have gone into bringing this battle to life in 80s technology is mind-boggling to consider. Taken all together, the finale is easily the best epic sci-fi battle sequence in cinema, and makes for a great conclusion to the original Star Wars trilogy.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is perfect. I can scarcely imagine what you could do to make a better sequel than this. This largely comes down to the big twist: the Terminator from the last film is the good guy this time. Right away, this turns the entire premise on its head and keeps T2 from being a lazy rehash (even though it’s still basically the same premise, only with a more dangerous Terminator variant). This story adds much more depth compared to its predecessor by making Arnold’s Terminator slowly learn what it means to be human and the importance of being a hero. Linda Hamilton has also gone from being a helpless damsel to one of the most kickass action heroines of all-time (again… this movie would be “WOKE!!!” if it came out today).

Also, and this needs to be emphasized: the action sequences in this film are incredible. The motorcycle chase. Arnie going ham with a minigun on the police (zero casualties). The helicopter chase. The steel mill finale. Any other action movie would be jealous to have even one of these sequences, but T2 is stuffed with exhilarating sequences which are all the better due to their practical stunt work. In the annals of unnecessary sequels, T2 is just the best, making the case that every other unnecessary sequel is just doing it wrong.

2. Planet of the Apes (1968)

If there’s one good thing that came out of Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake, it’s that it caused the 1968 original to start getting broadcast on TV at the time… which is how I ended up watching it. I wasn’t really expecting much of it at the time: what is it, some dumb, hokey sci-fi movie about evil monkeys? I wasn’t planning on sitting around and watching the whole thing through.

However, as soon as the hunting sequence began, I found myself getting drawn hard into Planet of the Apes. Seeing Taylor get captured, wondering what happened to his companions, and seeing this ape society unfold before us, you’re left with so many questions that you need to find the answers to. The film just sucks you in to its satirical reflection of the worst of human society. The satire touches on all sorts of topics, ranging from animal experimentation, to the separation of church and state, to nuclear war, and class conflict. The ape makeup holds up a lot better than you’d expect, still allowing the actors to emote and display the personalities of their characters. I also think that Charlton Heston is an absolute legend for his performance as George Taylor: he goes from misanthropic dick, to extremely sympathetic, then back to a selfish prick for the finale, all while hamming it up deliciously. As much as I like most of this movie’s follow-ups, nothing will ever top the original for me. It is such a special film in my heart, and I will treasure it until the day that they put me in the grave.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Confession: I was actually a bit underwhelmed when I first saw The Return of the King. I remember writing a class project in eighth grade that I thought that the video game adaptation was better. However, as soon as I had rewatched it once, I already had no idea what that stupid little child was saying: The Return of the King is a singular experience, one which defines and even transcends beyond the bounds of “epic”. Like I said, I’m a sucker for a satisfying, epic finale, and The Return of the King is about as grand a spectacle as you could ask for. The Siege of Minas Tirith and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields are shot and directed on a scale that I have never seen replicated (and, trust me, I have been looking desperately for twenty years for anything to come close). The battle is a roller-coaster of emotions, seeing the hopelessness of the defenders as they get battered by Sauron’s armies, only for the Riders of Rohan to show up and turn the tide… only for the Mumakil to show up and throw everything into disarray again. And then it just keeps going and building from there. This battle literally makes me cry, it is so epic and unrivalled that I cannot contain myself.

Of course, The Return of the King isn’t the king just for its epic battles. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum’s storylines really hit a crescendo here, and this is the point where the unassuming Samwise Gamgee becomes one of the greatest heroes in all of cinema. I cry just thinking about “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you! Come on!”, it’s one of the most beautiful expressions of loyalty and friendship ever put to film (note: yeah, I literally just had to wipe the tears out of my eyes while writing this… that is the power of The Return of the King)*. This is a once in a lifetime film, culminating more than nine hours of story in such a satisfying way. This has been my favourite film for more than half my life at this point, and I do not expect that any film will ever hold a more special place in my heart. I cannot wait to share this movie with my own family when they are old enough, and I can only hope that they experience the same magic that I did.

_{*Okay, this is just getting ridiculous… while going through this article for a final pass-over before publishing, just reading that line made me start tearing up again.}

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My Top 100 Movies of All-Time (50-26)

December 8, 2024December 3, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

50. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

The Last Crusade used to be my favourite Indiana Jones movie while growing up, but as I’ve gotten older I find that it’s somewhat uneven. The first act is pretty cartoonish and the film doesn’t actually get properly stellar until the last thirty minutes or so. That said, once Sean Connery gets involved, the film gets a major shot in the arm, and there are so many funny, iconic moments and some well-crafted action sequences which make it a real blast to watch. In terms of pure, unadulterated fun, The Last Crusade is definitely a highlight of the franchise.

49. Predator (1987)

At first glance, Predator seems like it’s just a standard, macho, 80s action movie. However, what really elevates it is its genre-bending horror twist, a star-studded cast, cool creature design, and underrated direction by John McTiernan. The way that the film slowly reveals the antagonist piece-by-piece is a masterclass in leaving the audience in suspense. The premise of having an incredibly powerful alien monster hunting the most dangerous men in the world is also just badass as all hell. For being an all-time great action movie and a surprisingly good horror flick to boot, Predator really stands out as something special.

48. Se7en (1995)

After years spent cutting his teeth on music videos and the infamously troubled production of Alien 3, David Fincher finally got the chance to show off his talents for Se7en, and the result was one of the bleakest, grimiest noir cop movies of all-time. The central mystery, revolving around the hunt for a serial killer who is theming their murders around the seven deadly sins, makes for a captivating watch. Seeing how each kill plays out also has a sick fascination to it and the ending twist is one of the bleakest in cinema history.

47. Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club is a film that seems like it should not work, especially coming from a major studio. The narrative is very post-modern, it has a punk edge to it, and the fact that half the audience seems to miss that it’s a commentary on toxic masculinity doesn’t really help matters either. However, David Fincher once again brings it all together in a mesmerizing mixture of violence, dark humour, and anarchistic political commentary.

46. Pulp Fiction (1994)

I used to be pretty unimpressed with Pulp Fiction, but my most recent rewatch gave me a lot more appreciation for the film. It is very disjointed by design, using Tarantino’s signature non-linear storytelling approach to dole out its narrative in bits and pieces (even going so far as to kill off a character and then have them back at a time before their death occurred in the narrative later on in the film). Each segment plays out like it’s own self-contained narrative, but each one is extremely memorable and cool. Quinton Tarantino is clearly just showing off with his dialogue writing, but who cares how extra it is when the results are this entertaining?

45. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The perpetual number one movie on the IMDb top 250, The Shawshank Redemption is an all-time crowd-pleaser of a movie. It is unquestionably one of the most hopeful films ever made, taking the audience through a journey of injustice and darkness, only to bring them through to a happy ending where everyone gets their comeuppance and our heroes are able to finally find some justice. While I certainly think that there are plenty of better movies than The Shawshank Redemption, I cannot deny that this is a great little narrative and the sort of movie you really need to pop on every once in a while for some motivation.

44. The Dark Knight (2008)

As good as Batman Begins was, The Dark Knight blows it out of the water. The narrative is more twisty and complicated than your average blockbuster, often cutting back and forth between multiple characters before it culminates in some big, shocking reveal that shakes up the narrative from that point onward. Much has been said about Heath Ledger’s Joker, and deservedly so, but what’s really remarkable is how well we he works compared to his countless imitators. Ledger’s Joker is definitely one step ahead of most of its foes, but it feels like he uses chaos to create opportunities for himself, whereas the Joker rip-offs just seem to have a supernatural knack for planning things they could not have possibly predicted (looking at you, Raoul Silva). Also, for as much as this film is remembered for being the dark, gritty take on Batman, hindsight has shown that the film was a lot more fun and measured than we gave it credit for.

43. Pearl (2022)

I liked X a lot. I LOVED Pearl. Mia Goth is so good as the titular Pearl that her performance alone elevates this movie to the stratosphere. The film shows Pearl’s slow-burn descent into madness as she desperately tries to become a Hollywood star to escape a life of rural, domestic drudgery. It plays out like a twisted, Technicolor fairy tale as she comes to realize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way her mind works. Then, when you consider that this movie was basically made on a tiny budget, using left-over bits and pieces from X, and Pearl is a truly astonishing accomplishment.

42. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

The Bourne Ultimatum unfolds like a stealth-action video game. Each action sequence plays out like an elaborately-structured “level”, with Jason Bourne messing with the enemy agents, thwarting security, and using crowds of people to sew chaos so he can reach his objective. Then, at the end of each level, we get a big, climactic boss fight or vehicle section to cap that section off. It makes for a thrilling, constantly-escalating series of showdowns, thanks to expert direction from Paul Greengrass. I don’t even mind the much-maligned shaky cam here, I think it just adds to the chaos in this particular film.

41. The Terminator (1984)

Jason Cameron’s original sci-fi epic feels a bit aged thanks to its special effects and very 80s soundtrack, but that doesn’t really take away from what an accomplishment this film is (and especially considering the miniscule budget it was made on). It’s basically a high-concept, sci-fi slasher flick. The film absolutely nails Arnold Schwarzenegger’s strengths as an actor at the time, showing that he has more to offer than mere imposing physicality, and the action sequences are as thrilling as ever.

40. Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a balls-to-the-wall, irreverent, bloody action spectacle. Fans of that film likely expected more of the same for Volume 2, but instead, Quentin Tarantino pivoted to a much more subdued, contemplative, and philosophical tone for its follow-up. As a result, I can understand why Volume 2 is divisive, but for my money, it is so much better than its predecessor. Giving us more information about The Bride’s backstory makes her significantly more identifiable. She was cool before, and we sympathized with her desire for revenge, but getting more context about what led her to this point, and about the sort of person Bill is, makes the film so much more compelling. The climactic showdown with Bill plays out more through words than it does actions, and while that might be disappointing to some, it makes for a truly unforgettable finale.

39. Ratatouille (2007)

Pixar movies have, objectively, some of the stupidest premises for a major studio film, and Ratatouille might be the stupidest of them all. A rat wants to become a chef, so he hides under a fuck-up chef’s hat and uses his goddamn hair to direct him to become an elite cook…!? In what world does this premise make for a good movie? Well… this world, apparently, because Ratatouille is a triumph of cinema. It’s got everything you’d expect of a Pixar classic: charming animation, strong writing, fun characters, and lots and lots of heart.

38. The Descent (2005)

The Descent is, unquestionably, one of the best horror movies since the new millennium began. The film is already frightening enough when it’s just dealing in claustrophobia, paranoia, mental illness, and the tension between its cast of spelunking women, but then the monsters finally show up, all hell breaks loose. In particular, Juno is one of the most badass characters in any movie, to the point where you start off hating her, but really start to sympathize with her in spite of her moral failings when it becomes obvious that she really does care about her friends in spite of her actions. There’s an overbearing sense that you can’t truly trust everything you’re seeing, which leaves plenty of room for interpretation as well. This is especially punctuated by the film’s gender relations, which lend a lot of thematic depth to the proceedings (especially since nearly all the crawlers they encounter are male, and the lone female emerges after Sarah kills its child…).

37. The Founder (2016)

The Founder is one of those biopics that just shouldn’t work. Oh wow, a movie about the guy who turned McDonald’s into a national chain, how good can it be? Turns out that this movie is enthralling from start to finish. Even something as simple as the McDonald brothers explaining how they turned the restaurant experience into an assembly line is brought to life in fascinating detail. Michael Keaton is as great as you’d expect as Ray Kroc, and he gets truly sinister towards the latter-half when he goes from down-on-his-luck businessman to outright predatory monster. It’s also worth noting that this film came out in 2016 when America was first in the grips of MAGA fever, which lent the film an unintentional air of relevancy, as the parallels to Trump’s own sinister capitalist rise are palpable.

36. Jaws (1975)

Jaws is a movie you really need to see to understand just how good it is. The first half plays out as you’d expect a creature feature to: big shark goes around picking off swimmers, the sheriff tries to prevent this from happening, but is overturned by his higher-ups, until a very public attack forces the town’s hand. As good as the first half is, it’s the second half, where Brody, Hooper, and Quint try to hunt down the shark, that Jaws becomes legendary. The three characters have such clashing personalities and we get some of the earliest examples of Spielberg’s trademark sense of wonder, until we reach the bloody, tense finale.

35. Silence (2016)

Silence can be a pretty rough watch. A slow-burn, religious epic about the enduring power of faith in the face of intense persecution, the film poses some pretty serious theological questions about whether denying faith is more Christ-like than standing firm and allowing others to suffer as a result. The film ultimately leaves the answers up to you. I don’t imagine this will hit nearly as hard for the non-religious, but for someone like me, the journey is spell-binding, thanks largely to a committed performance from Andrew Garfield and deft direction from Martin Scorsese.

34. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

This first Pirates of the Caribbean film is one of the funnest scripts ever put to screen. There’s just enough Jack Sparrow here to make his roguish antics charming, without being annoying (like in some of the sequels). Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are also quite fun as the star-crossed lovers, and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa makes for a fantastic villain. The film is packed full of the requisite swashbuckling action, and the horror twist at the end of the first act makes for a devilishly clever way to up the stakes.

33. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead feels like a big movie, with hundreds of extras, wild special effects, huge sets, and lots of gory action sequences. The fact that it was filmed on a budget around half a million dollars just makes the resulting film even more remarkable as a result. Much has been said about this film’s social commentary on consumerism, but it really does bear repeating, as it makes the film a lot more interesting than if it was just a simple zombie exploitation film. Night of the Living Dead set the template for the modern zombie, but Dawn of the Dead really cemented the concept, especially the prevalence of over-the-top gore and societal collapse which are staples of the genre now.

32. The Incredibles (2004)

The Incredibles plays out like a kid’s version of Watchmen, with some libertarianism thrown in for good (?) measure. The first Pixar movie to really feel properly mature in its storytelling, The Incredibles brings bombastic action, heart-felt emotion, and some really funny moments together inside its Art Deco-inspired setting to create a truly special film. As good as the action sequences are though, it’s the family drama that really makes this film so good. Seeing how Bob Parr’s mid-life crisis throws his family life into chaos, and how he comes to terms with that, is every bit as compelling as any battle with Syndrome or the Omnidroid.

31. Taxi Driver (1976)

Taxi Driver left me fucked up when I watched it. Another one of those films I watched for my film elective, I felt like I was having a mental breakdown watching this story of weirdo loner Travis Bickle descending into extremism. I definitely was not in the best headspace at the time (maybe due to university-related stress, or maybe due to being a lonely weirdo myself at the time), but the movie left an impression on me that few other films ever have. It’s a dark and scary film in unconventional ways, featuring an all-time great performance from Robert De Niro.

30. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth is a haunting and beautiful film. My first exposure to it was at a movie rental place, where it was playing on one of the TVs there. Seeing the creepy makeup effects for the titular Pan, I instantly knew that this was a must-watch for me. Guillermo del Toro’s creature designs are so unique and frightening. The fairytale adventure we go on is decidedly dark, violent, and adult, but what makes it truly remarkable is how it is contrasted against the real-life horrors of fascist Spain during World War II.

29. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Some people say that Saving Private Ryan‘s first twenty minutes are amazing and then the rest of the film is mediocre. Those people are wrong. Obviously, the opening carnage as Tom Hanks’ Captain John Miller and his squad storm Omaha Beach is harrowing and pulse-pounding, resulting in some of the most visceral war scenes ever filmed. However, their journey across Nazi-occupied France to try to bring home James Ryan, whose brothers were all killed in action, is still very compelling. As Miller’s squad starts suffering casualties of their own, they begin to question their role in what basically is a PR mission for the US army. Notably, James Ryan himself is left haunted by his unwitting and unwilling role in all of this, spending the rest of his life questioning whether it was all worth it just to save him.

28. The Iron Giant (1999)

It has been said that The Iron Giant is the best Superman movie of all-time and I can’t really disagree with that assessment. The story of a boy and his secret giant robot friend, things begin to escalate when a pesky government agent starts investigating rumours about the robot. As fun as those hijinks are, the film really gets good as the robot begins to learn about humanity, morality, the thin line between life and death, and the importance of choosing the kind of person you want to be. The ending makes me bawl like a baby, it is so beautiful.

27. Dredd (2012)

I gushed about Dredd more than a decade ago, about how it is such a well-constructed action movie that it transcends the sum of its parts. Like John Wick, a lot of this comes down to really efficient world-building. Dredd does not waste a lot of time explaining its dystopian sci-fi world and how it works. Instead, it manages to communicate everything with quick environmental details or background dialogue. The action is also just kick ass, featuring gorgeous slo-mo shots that put Zack Snyder’s filmography to shame. The characters are also great. Karl Urban’s Dredd is a stone-cold badass, but Olivia Thirlby’s Cassandra Anderson is the real emotional heart of the film. Lena Headey’s Mama is a blood-chilling villain, one who acts aloof, but is clearly a barely-restrained psychopath who will happily commit acts of brutality with little provocation. Hell, even Wood Harris’ Kay, a low-level thug who’d be cannon fodder in any other movie, leaves lasting impression here. The movie is also unexpectedly and subtly feminist, which is always nice to see!

26. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 is, hands-down, the best superhero movie of all-time. Doctor Octopus is one of the best comic book villains ever put to film, a tragic and sinister villain in equal measure. The action sequences are spectacular, featuring great special effects and swooping camera work which shows off the epic scale of these battles. What makes this film so goddamn amazing though is Peter Parker’s personal drama. He’s so down on his luck and his life is such a chaotic mess that you can’t help but sympathize for him, especially considering how much good he does for the city in secret. Seeing how he struggles to juggle his busy schedule, hold down a job, try to help Aunt May, and figure out how to deal with his feelings for Mary-Jane Watson is every bit as compelling as seeing him punch Doc Ock in the face. I used to really dislike Mary-Jane, but in my most recent rewatch, I really started to sympathize with her: she clearly loves Peter, but he can’t be honest with her and keeps giving her mixed signals, which forces her to give him an ultimatum to decide what’s truly important to him.

Oh, and the horror hospital sequence is one of the scariest and most intense non-horror movie scenes of all-time. It’s insane that Sam Raimi managed to put a three minute Evil Dead sequence in his family blockbuster.

If you’re reading this the day it comes out, then be sure to tune in again tomorrow for the third and final part of this countdown!

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My Top 100 Movies of All-Time (100-51)

December 7, 2024December 3, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Surprise! Like I said in my favourite video games list, I’ve been tracking every movie I’ve watched for about twenty years now. In that time, I’ve compiled ratings for nearly fourteen-hundred films, so making a top one hundred list is simultaneously trivial, and yet, even harder, because I have so many more pieces of media to pick between. One hundred picks seems like a lot, but it really is not: several movies that I love didn’t even make the list. Furthermore, I didn’t include several classics that I’ve seen, but haven’t watched in over a decade, so the details are too fuzzy for me to include them in good conscience (The Godfather movies, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Apocalypse Now, etc). As usual, this is entirely subjective and only based on the movies I have seen, so leave your angry comments about me omitting Norbit down below. Got it? Let’s go…

100. Tropic Thunder (2008)

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Tropic Thunder. I was sleeping over at a friend’s house and had to work early the next morning. Around midnight, we put on the TV to the movie channel to kill a few more minutes before bed. Tropic Thunder was playing, and I figured we’d turn it off pretty quickly. You see, around the same time that Tropic Thunder released, we got the critically-lambasted Delta Farce. For some reason, I thought that Tropic Thunder was a similarly-bad military comedy and paid it no heed.

However, I quickly found that my initial assessment of the film was incorrect. Tropic Thunder was fucking hilarious. The whole thing was just comedy gold. We stayed up the whole time to watch it and didn’t get to bed until around 2am. I was bloody tired at work the next morning, but it was completely worth it.

99. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

This is a rough film. Tilda Swinton puts in an incredible performance as a mother who struggles through life after her son, Kevin, went on a mass murder spree. Seeing how Kevin got to the point he reached is gut-wrenching. The really remarkable aspect though is how it forces you to interpret Kevin’s actions: was he born evil, or was he made this way by his mother? The film leaves this entirely up to you, and it can lead to some pretty fierce opinions. This film is beautiful, and horrifying.

98. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

A pitch-perfect horror/romantic comedy, Shaun of the Dead is fantastic. Very funny, very sweet, sincerely romantic, and legitimately gory and scary by the end.

97. Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott brings to life a stunning, noir-cyberpunk realization of the future through jaw-dropping 1982 special effects. The results look incredible even today. The narrative is phenomenal, exploring existential themes about life, duty, and what makes one “human”. It’s the sort of cerebral blockbuster that we just don’t get enough of these days.

For the record, its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, just barely missed the top one hundred. If you have not seen it, fix that.

96. Nope (2022)

Nope is a remarkable film. It’s very Spielberg-ian: it’s got moments of wonder, then moments of excitement and suspense, and then moments of pure terror. I’m not kidding, this movie’s horror is so effective because of what it doesn’t show and what it implies. There’s a subtlety to it that allows for the horrors to arise after you’ve watched it, creeping in when you’re thinking about it later and leaving you properly disturbed. For the most part though, this film is quite exciting and wonderous, and yet another feather in Jordan Peele’s cap.

95. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

How to Train Your Dragon is one of those classic kids movies that can be enjoyed by all ages: full of wonder, emotion, and with a strong story at its center of growing up and earning the acceptance of your peers and family by being yourself.

94. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa has the impossible task of following up on Fury Road, one of the greatest sequels of all-time. While definitely a weaker film overall, it manages to still stand out thanks to not being a simple retread of its predecessor. Furiosa is a grandiose, myth-making epic, chronicling the history of the wasteland, as seen through the eyes of its titular character. Like any good prequel, Furiosa lends its main character a lot of additional depth, and it really makes Fury Road all the more satisfying.

93. The Kid (1921)

The lone silent film on the list today, The Kid is classic Charlie Chaplin: lots of silly, physical comedy, backed up by an extremely moving narrative. It’s a truly timeless film, one which can easily be enjoyed even today.

92. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

I love me a good Godzilla movie, but Godzilla Minus One is by far the most impactful in terms of the human drama. Unlike nearly every other Godzilla movie, spending time with the human characters is never a drag. We see first-hand how the people of Japan rebuild their lives from nothing after World War II, so seeing them brought low again by Godzilla makes the requisite destruction all the more stomach-churning and effective. This rendition of the monster even reminds us that the terror of war and nuclear devastation never truly leaves you. It is insane how Godzilla is still resonating with audiences in new ways seventy years later, but Godzilla Minus One is a testament to the creativity of the filmmakers Toho employs.

91. Shrek (2001)

Shrek has to be one of the most quotable movies of all-time. Like, do you really need me to spell out why this movie is so good? I love Shrek. You love Shrek. It’s funny, exciting, and heart-warming in equal measure.

90. Casino Royale (2006)

I’ll admit, I kind of hated Casino Royale when it first came out. My family had been binging the 007 DVD collection which had recently released at the time, so we picked up Casino Royale to continue the collection. However, Casino Royale feels nothing like any other Bond movie released before it, which really turned me off of it for a while. However, in the years since, I’ve found myself really drawn to it. It ditches the traditional Bond formula and is much more of a conventional action/spy thriller, with some of the best writing, direction, and performances in the franchise.

89. Shrek 2 (2004)

I give the slight edge to Shrek 2 over its predecessor, but it is very close. What really makes Shrek 2 work so well for me is the whole second half of the film where Shrek is, well, not “Shrek”. You can clearly tell that Shrek believes that all of his problems stem from people being prejudiced against him for being an ogre, so seeing him get to turn that around and then find out that, actually, his problems can’t just be magically solved gives the movie a lot of emotional weight. Plus it’s every bit as funny and exciting as the first movie, although I definitely have to give the edge to this movie for the fantastic “Holding Out for a Hero” finale.

88. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

I don’t tend to be a big fan of war movies: most of the time, they want to have big, exciting action sequences, but they also need to have an anti-war message, so they end up feeling schizophrenic. These sorts of war movies also often have way too much time wasted on a requisite romantic subplot, and it absolutely bogs the entire thing down. Letters From Iwo Jima is one of the good ones. At the time of its release, the Japanese side of the conflict was never really addressed in western media – they were the bad guys, a bunch of kamikaze sub-humans who would rather die than dishonour their country, with the Battle of Iwo Jima representing the height of their bloody conviction. Letters From Iwo Jima paints the Japanese soldiers with a far more sympathetic and human brush. They’re just regular people who are pressured by their superiors and country into doing awful things. There are some truly intense scenes here, all punctuated by fantastic performances, and the overwhelming dread that comes from knowing how hopeless the characters’ defense of the island is.

87. Schindler’s List (1993)

The most famous Holocaust movie, Schindler’s List is obviously not a great time at the movies. The film is bleak, depressing, and emotional, showing how society slowly devolves into fascism, how that affects the lives of the scapegoats that the fascists have marked for death, and how individuals choose to react within this system. A very difficult film, not one that you want to rewatch often, but one which is more relevant today than it was thirty years ago when it released.

86. Akira (1988)

The animation in Akira is simply stunning, bringing to life a bleak, cyberpunk vision of the future. We see the friendship of Shōtarō and Tetsuo get torn apart after government experiments grant Tetsuo god-like power and he goes on a rampage.

85. Shin Godzilla (2016)

A lot of people preferred Godzilla Minus One, but for me, Shin Godzilla is the stronger and more original modern Godzilla movie. Shin Godzilla is the first film to feature an evolving Godzilla threat – at first, something alarming, but not so dangerous as to be unstoppable. However, due to government inaction, the threat escalates until it is something overwhelming and destructive. It isn’t until actual experts get involved and people start working together for the common good that the threat becomes in any way manageable. Shin Godzilla moves at an incredibly fast pace, making it constantly engaging and a very easy watch, while Hideaki Anno’s signature abstract, evocative style makes Godzilla the scariest he’s been since the 50s.

84. Tarzan (1999)

Everyone has their childhood favourite Disney movie, and for me that movie was Tarzan. It came out at the perfect time for me, and I loved its exciting action sequences, music, and more mature storyline. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate it in more ways: the film is explicitly about growing into an adult, and so it has an additional emotional weight to it now that I’ve watched this as a kid, an adult, and now a parent. Soon I will share it with my own children, and the cycle will continue.

83. Godzilla (1954)

It is truly remarkable how effective Godzilla is seventy years after its release. In so many of its sequels, the destruction sequences are fun and exciting. Here, they are terrifying and horrific, especially for a film released in the 50s, keenly evoking the horrors of the atomic bomb which were still fresh in the minds of the people of Japan. The special effects also are impressive for the time period and the film moves at a very quick pace, even with its grand scope. Finally, the human element of the film is extremely compelling, a factor which its successors almost always fail to recapture even to this day.

82. The Shape of Water (2018)

It’s wild that this film won Best Picture for 2018, but I’m so glad that it did. I loved The Shape of Water. It’s so easy to meme on it for being the monster-fucker movie, or you can be a tool and say “the monster can’t consent” when it very clearly can… that’s all missing the point. The Shape of Water is legitimately, and sincerely, about the power of love outside of the accepted norms of society. The main characters are minorities forced into positions of servitude: a mute woman, a black woman, a gay man, a fish monster, etc. They use their positions on the outside in order to circumvent the monstrous, patriarchal villain. The scene where Richard Jenkins tries to express his feelings to another man, only to be met with scornful rejection and homophobic panic, is truly heartbreaking. His decision to then, in response, try to help Sally Hawkins to be with her own lover is inspiring and really hammers home the film’s message. The Shape of Water is such a great film, don’t be a fucking cynic about it and you will have an amazing time.

81. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Full Metal Jacket is notorious for having one of the best first acts in movie history (largely thanks to a transcendent performance from R. Lee Ermey), only to fall off for the rest of the movie. While this assessment isn’t entirely wrong, the second half of the film is better than these people give it credit for, showing how the dehumanization of the military system turns soldiers into emotionally-stunted psychopaths. That said… yeah, the first half has some of the best lines in all of cinema, which is even more insane when you consider that R. Lee Ermey made most of them up on the spot. Fucking legend.

80. Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

First of all, Kubo and the Two Strings is a gorgeous film, utilizing state-of-the-art stop motion animation to make a film where every single frame is a work of art. However, what really earns it a spot on this list is its narrative, which is mature, emotional, tragic, exciting, and even scary. It’s a film for all ages, a tale about the power of stories, family, and how your ancestors have helped shape you into who you are today.

79. Tokyo Story (1953)

I took a film elective back in my first year of university and was introduced to several interesting films that I never would have encountered otherwise. Tokyo Story stands out among them for how unusual it is. It is an incredibly slow and deliberate film, to the point where the camera barely moves and there are long shots which just show the characters going about their business at home. The film is about an aging couple who go to visit their children, but find that they have grown up to be selfish and ungrateful. The one exception is Noriko, their widowed daughter-in-law, who is the biggest sweetheart in the entirety of cinema. The film itself clearly has themes about family and how traditional Japanese society post-World War II was impacted by Western influences. Not the easiest watch on this list, but a very rich one if you can deal with a slow pace and are looking to branch out to something a bit more different and cerebral.

78. Red Cliff (2008)

Anyway, fuck the cerebral, Red Cliff is a historical epic by John Woo. Set in the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China, we follow Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang as they flee the despot Cao Cao, who has taken control of the imperial court and is on a campaign to eliminate all his potential rivals. Our heroes seek shelter with the warlord Sun Quan and his advisor, Zhou Yu, and quickly establish a hasty alliance as they make their stand at the titular Red Cliffs against an army several times their size. The film then features several impressive battle sequences, often employing elaborate, clever strategic gambits which make the film endlessly entertaining and keep the audience on their toes, wondering what sort of genius move Zhuge Liang will spring next. As someone who loves Dynasty Warriors and Romance of the Three Kingdoms in general, Red Cliff left me overjoyed at how well it captured one of the greatest chapters of this period of history.

77. The Bourne Identity (2002)

The Bourne Identity came out at a time when action movies had started getting really over-the-top, and it was a breath of fresh air as a result. The amnesia aspect lends the plot a strong, central mystery, and the action sequences are fantastic. The film is also kind of ahead of its time, steeped in post-9/11 paranoia and US government overreach which they couldn’t have possibly known would be so relevant and defining for the time it released. It also made Matt Damon into a legitimate action hero, which was an incredibly risky move at the time when he was just “the Good Will Hunting” guy.

76. Ben-Hur (1959)

There’s nothing quite like a 50s film epic, and the Charlton Heston-starring Ben-Hur is certainly one of the most remarkable amongst them. Trying to figure out how they shot the massive sea battles and the climactic chariot race with 50s technology is mind-boggling, and the story itself is simultaneously personal and epic in scope.

75. Toy Story (1995)

Another all-time classic family film, Toy Story kicked off Pixar’s fifteen year dominance of the animation industry, and remains amongst their best to this day.

74. Paths of Glory (1957)

Another one of those films I watched for my film elective, Paths of Glory is a tragic World War I film by Stanley Kubrick. The central narrative revolves around generals sending men to die, and then sending even more to die to take the blame for their mistakes. It reveals the nasty side of military hierarchy and the injustice of war.

73. District 9 (2009)

District 9 is a remarkable film, mixing a very overt South African apartheid allegory with a kick-ass sci-fi action romp. The special effects are really good, doubly-so when you consider it was made on a fairly low budget. The narrative is the real highlight though, laying bare the exploitation, isolation, and dehumanization of marginalized groups and how the dominant group enforces this order. Even if you somehow can ignore all that, the film also has some real nasty body horror and an explosive finale where people are literally getting blown to bloody bits by alien weaponry, making it easy to enjoy on multiple levels.

72. Her (2013)

Spike Jonze has such a wild filmography, often taking a weird and intriguing concept and then playing that out over the course of a feature-length film (in that regard, Being John Malkovich barely missed the top one hundred, largely because I haven’t seen it in more than a decade, so the details are a bit fuzzy now). Her follows a lonely, isolated man who purchases an AI assistant and then finds himself falling in love with her. True to form, Spike Jonze then explores this basic premise quite thoroughly, making for a fascinating watch. Her is a film which was remarkable at the time, but has only become moreso in the past few years with the rise of AI “girlfriends” and even the founder of ChatGPT trying to contract Scarlett Johansson herself to voice their own AI due to an obsession with the film (tech bros never understand the movies they claim to love, eh?).

71. A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place came out at the right place and time for me. As much as I loved the slow, paranoid, post-apocalyptic horror movie, It Comes at Night, that film’s marketing notoriously promised an intense creature future, which it definitely was not. Then came A Quiet Place, which was everything that film promised to be. Not only that, but it came out just over a month after I found out that I was going to be a father, which provided the family-based storyline an added weight and gravitas. People nitpick the shit out of this movie, but I think it’s entirely unfair. If you can leave your cynicism at the door, A Quiet Place is incredibly well-directed (especially for a directorial debut!), well-acted, and intense as all hell (which is even more notable considering that it’s a PG-13 horror film).

70. Toy Story 2 (1999)

Toy Story 2 does everything you want a sequel to: it’s bigger, funnier, more impressively animated, it expands the series’ world, and it introduces several fun, new characters. If you don’t cry at the “When She Loved Me” sequence, you don’t have a heart.

69. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

The Naked Gun is easily one of the funniest films ever released, one which I find myself quoting all the time. It is a pitch-perfect noir cop movie spoof, with fantastic sight gags, a memorable third act, and a effortlessly deadpan performance from Leslie Neilsen (who was mostly known for dramatic roles up to this point).

68. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Of all the movies spewed out by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the past decade and a half, the ones that have held up the best have to be the Guardians of the Galaxy films. These movies were a major gamble at the time, a property that basically no one had heard of or cared about, starring untested leads and directed by a man best known for making gross-out horror and comedy movies. However, James Gunn really brought his love of comic books to the screen, crafting a hilarious and compelling world, thanks in large part to a star-making performance by Chris Pratt, and supported by colourful performances from Dave Bautista, Zoe Salanda, and Bradley Cooper. This particular film is one of the tightest and most fun comic book romps of all-time, making it an easy recommendation whether you like the MCU or not.

67. Dune: Part One (2021)

Despite influencing all of sci-fi media, either directly or indirectly, for the past sixty years, Dune remains a unique sci-fi vision for how rich and elaborate its worldbuilding is. Denis Villeneuve brings this universe to life with his signature eye for scale and gorgeous cinematography, producing a film which is just plain epic in an era when blockbusters are falling apart at the seams.

66. Get Out (2017)

Jordan Peele’s directorial debut created waves upon its release, and for good reason. This is a damn good horror movie which introduces its mysteries and then slowly pulls the back curtain on them before the frightening and visceral conclusion. Its racial themes were especially relevant at the time, and lend the film much more depth in the process.

65. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

For a long time, the original Mission: Impossible was my favourite movie in the franchise by a pretty wide margin, even as people sang the praises of each subsequent sequel. Nah, I preferred the more grounded, paranoid, and intriguing approach Brian De Palma took as opposed to the bombast of the sequels. That is, it was my favourite, until Fallout released. Fallout is just the best, hands-down. We’ve got some of the most insane stunts of the entire franchise, we’ve got the fun extended cast which have built up over the past few movies, and we even have some of the more compelling villains to round it all out. It’s just an incredible action movie, top to bottom, and easily the best movie in the franchise.

64. The Witch (2015)

The Witch is one of those horror films which crawls under your skin and demands your attention long after it’s over. As someone who studied Renaissance and early-American literature, it’s fascinating to me that this feels like a direct adaptation of the sort of cautionary stories which would be told at the time: tales of witches committing acts of evil against Christians, the importance of obeying the church leaders, and the corruption of nature against the God-fearing. As a result, it’s arguably a Christian film in some respect, a warning against consorting with the devil. However, remarkably, it is just as much a Satanic film, since you can interpret it just as easily to be a liberation for Thomasin from her harsh, religious family into a world where she can live deliciously. Add in the gorgeous cinematography, the keen eye for authenticity, and the more subtle scares, and The Witch is an all-timer horror movie.

63. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dead is one of those movies that you have a bunch of pre-conceived notions going in: it’s a low budget, black and white zombie movie from the sixties, how good can it really be, especially after decades of gory successors? The answer is that Night of the Living Dead is shockingly good, even today. The racial elements of the film have long been acknowledged as a happy accident, but seeing the tension between Ben and Harry is palpable and unmistakable, especially given the civil rights battles occurring at the time. There are also some surprisingly brutal zombie scenes, and the ending is incredibly bleak.

62. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

As good as the first Guardians of the Galaxy is, Vol. 2 is even better due to its much stronger emotional core. I remember being a bit mixed on it when I first saw it, since it’s much more unfocused. However, the film has strong themes about family… but not in a simplistic way, it’s all about the messy aspects of family: found family, estranged family, abusive relationships, jealousy, selfishness, and the love that can still be found in spite of all that. All of that, on top of the same sort of mad-cap humour and action of the original film, make Vol. 2 arguably the best movie in the entire MCU.

61. Parasite (2019)

Parasite was such an enthralling film. When I watched it, I got about halfway through and then I needed to take my dogs out to do their business before bedtime. “That’s fine,” I thought, “I’ll just watch to the end of this scene and then I’ll take them out.” That scene suddenly and unexpectedly became extremely tense and just kept escalating. Every time I thought it was reaching a crescendo, it just kept wringing more and more tension out, before finding more unexpected ways to make things escalate. After about thirty minutes of this I just resigned myself to watching the rest of the movie (the dogs were fine, by the way).

Parasite is fascinating for how it handles class conflict. It’s not morally black-and-white like you might expect from a poor people vs rich people movie. The impoverished heroes of the film are scheming and taking advantage of the rich characters, and there’s definitely a sense that they’re not exactly in the right. That said, the rich characters are also ignorant, lazy, and dumb. Their wealth is clearly not due to merit, they just got lucky to get where they are, whereas the poor characters have to work like mad just to stay alive, and screwing over others is just what they have to do to survive. It’s such a fascinating film and far more tense, funny, and nuanced than you’d expect going in.

60. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film that was formative to me growing up. As a result, it pains me that I can never watch it again. I have carried so many little life lessons and quotes from this movie with me and I treasure them dearly. This is also a film that left me bawling, even as a teenager. Just imagining reliving some of these moments now when I have grown older and have my own kids gets me choked up, and I can’t put myself through that kind of emotional turmoil. That said: this is a must-see film, especially if you’re still young enough that it’s not hitting so close to home.

59. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One is, by far, my favourite Star Wars movie of the Disney era, an opinion I’ve held since it released (I remember a lot of people saying it was mid, or that the characters are uninteresting, and I will not hear that shit). The climactic, third act battle is incredible and deserving of its accolades, but I think that the first two acts are also underrated. Seeing a scrappier, more morally-compromised Rebellion is fascinating, and seeing them learn to unite under a more idealistic ideology is cool to see. I also do, legitimately, like the characters and seeing them getting cut down one-by-one in the finale is heart-breaking.

58. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

My least-favourite of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers is still an all-time great film. It’s got everything that makes the other movies as good as they are: great characters, fantastic writing, epic battle sequences, and ground-breaking special effects, but it has the most prominent flaws in the trilogy. Most notably, after the first half, the film drags when it is not following Aragorn’s storyline. When the action cuts to Merry and Pippin, Arwen, or Frodo (after he gets captured by Faramir), the pace slows to a crawl. Even Aragorn’s storyline suffers at times, as the whole section where Edoras is evacuated and until they get to the warg battle is just kind of dull. That said: it’s still The Lord of the Rings. Even at its worst, it’s still miles ahead of most other films, and the duller moments just feel worse due to being juxtaposed against some of the greatest moments in cinema.

57. Batman Begins (2005)

Batman Begins, along with Casino Royale, ushered in the brief era of “gritty” reboots in the mid-2000s. A lot of those movies ended up being laughably bad, but Batman Begins was really remarkable for how well it nailed the idea of a more grounded take on Batman, especially after the disastrous reception of the Schumacher films.

56. John Wick (2014)

After years of Taken rip offs, the conventional action movie was feeling tired. John Wick seems like it’ll be another one of these, but it ended up being something unexpected, new, and special. The subtle world-building makes the film’s relatively simple setup feel so much more grand. The action sequences are fantastic, aided by a thumping EDM soundtrack. It also helps that the film trims all the fat that action movies feel they need to throw in to make you interested: there’s no obligatory romantic subplot, just a cute dog and a bad guy that you want to see punished so badly. It’s also worth noting that, at the time this released, Keanu Reeves was kind of a joke for how wooden his acting can be. However, John Wick absolutely nails Reeves’ strengths as an actor, putting in one of the best performances of his career and, once again, turning him into a beloved icon that he has remained for the past decade.

55. Titanic (1997)

James Cameron can do no wrong. Titanic is one of those films that has something for everyone: the romance parts are fine, but if that’s not your cup of tea, then you’ll love the spectacular sinking sequences, which remain some of the most tense, exciting, and tragic set-piece action sequences in all of cinema. This movie started a life-long obsession with the great ship for me, and for that I’ll always have a place in my heart for this film.

54. Hot Fuzz (2007)

My personal favourite of the Cornetto Trilogy, Hot Fuzz brings Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s signature British humour to the action/cop movie genre. The result is a film that is equal parts side-splitting comedy and rip-roaring action film, with more memorable lines than you will be able to deal with (yeah, motherfucker!).

53. War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

The finale of the modern Apes trilogy promises action and spectacle, but ends up being a far more emotional, dark, and contemplative film than you might expect. This will likely divide fans of the previous two films, but for my part, War is a grand finale to Caesar’s story. The film is structured like a Biblical epic, creating the foundation for a myth which will lay the bedrock of the new ape society.

52. Sicario (2015)

Sicario is a spectacular action-thriller, featuring spellbinding performances from Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin, and with the adept direction of Denis Villeneuve. The film shows the ugly side of America’s war on drugs, how it affects Mexico, how it causes those involved to dehumanize Mexicans, and the ways that America perpetuates the conflict for their own benefit. Easily the best part of the film is the sequence where a convoy of DEA agents cross the Mexican border to apprehend a senior member of the drug cartel in order to provoke a response. You’re left on the edge of your seat the entire time, waiting for the cartel to strike, watching them circle like jackals. It’s easily one of the best-directed thriller sequences I’ve ever seen, a nail-biting scene that you need to see for yourself.

51. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

For about thirty years running, The Road Warrior used to be the template for a sequel that is bigger and better than its predecessor. That reputation is kind of forgotten now considering how monumental Fury Road was, but it really has to be said that The Road Warrior is still a hell of a great action film. This film’s car chases are still some of the craziest action sequences put to film, and its depiction of the post-apocalypse has gone on to influence every other vision of a hellish future we’ve gotten since.

And that’s it for part one of this list. If you’re reading this the day it releases, part two will be out tomorrow!

If you liked this article…

My Worst 25 Games of All-Time

December 5, 2024November 18, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

So, since I went through my top 100 games of all-time, I thought it might be interesting to flip the script and see what my least-favourite games ever were! Important note: I’m only covering twenty-five games on this list. Put simply, it’s a lot harder to get through bad video games as opposed to other forms of media: you either know the sorts of games you’re into, or you are so put-off by a game that you drop it immediately before you can make any impressions. As a result, I don’t have a lot of games played that are truly awful (even the first few entries on the list aren’t all that bad). And, again, these are all very subjective opinions and are based on the games I personally have played. Got it? Let’s get into it.

25. The Simpsons: Road Rage (2001, PS2)

The Simpsons do not have a good track record with video games. There are a few gems, but Road Rage is not one of them. It’s literally Crazy Taxi, but with a Simpsons skin over it. As you might expect, the entire premise is extremely thin: pickup passengers, drive them to their destination as fast as possible, get money based on how quickly you get there. The one thing that makes Road Rage sort of worth it is the quippy writing, which should give you a few laughs. However, there’s not a whole lot to do here and you’re going to hear the same lines over and over again, so it’s an experience that is going to grow dull pretty fast.

24. The Incredibles (2004, PS2)

If you grew up in the PS1 and PS2 era, you probably went through a “licensed games” phase where you were too young to realize that these games sucked. I used to play through anything back then, having not developed any standards of what proper game design was like yet. The Incredibles is the first game where I can remember myself getting close to the end, getting killed over and over by the bullshit controls and balancing, and just deciding “I’m done, this game isn’t worth it.” It’s a very simple, but poorly balanced beat ’em up. Not a game I truly hate, but one that I can’t say I ever actually enjoyed myself playing.

23. Dead Space 3 (2013, PS3)

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit harsh here, but I really do hate Dead Space 3. It killed off one of my favourite franchises, and shit all over its story and gameplay on the way out. If you think I’m just being harsh, then feel free to ignore this entry and put Turning Point: Fall of Liberty on the list… I really couldn’t justify it myself though. Turning Point left me feeling indifferent. Dead Space 3 fills me with disappointment and anger which invalidate any of its positives. As I said in my Love/Hate analysis of the game, it’s a fundamentally compromised experience, one that is worse than its predecessors in every way, and not even good compared to Uncharted and Gears of War, which it’s trying so hard to be like. Perhaps it’s for the best that Dead Space died here, I’d hate to see what would have happened if they paraded its corpse out for a fourth entry.

Oh, by the way: the remake pisses me off too. EA shuts down Visceral and then gets a new studio involved and parades Visceral’s work out when there’s greater profit potential? Fuck you, EA.

22. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006, PS2)

This one makes it onto the list for a very specific reason. Back when Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter came out, the gaming magazines were singing its praises, calling it the best shooter on the market and a must-play. As a fan of the genre, with that kind of endorsement, I knew I had to check it out. I bought a copy for my PS2, fired it up… and I was bored shitless. The gunplay was so mediocre, the squad controls were a lot less in-depth than I had been led to believe, and there was no cover system… What were the game journalists thinking…? It’s like they were playing a completely different game.

Well… turns out that they were. At the time of the Xbox 360 and PS3’s release, Ubisoft had a fucking scummy policy where they would release completely different versions of games on last gen consoles. The differences between the current gen versions (which got all the coverage and accolades) and the last-gen versions were barely communicated, so I (and many others) got duped with low-effort junk after being told it was gold. The fact that the next-gen version was so good makes it sting even more, I am so annoyed that I got hyped up for this experience and then bought the “wrong” game.

21. Friday the 13th: The Game (2017, PS4)

I actually Kickstarted this game back in the day and, while I didn’t have particularly high hopes, I figured it would at least be interesting. Little did I know that Friday the 13th: The Game would play out pretty similarly to the movies themselves: pretty bad in its own right, but made all the worse due to legal battles over the rights. Friday the 13th was one of the earliest asymmetrical multiplayer horror games: one player plays as Jason against a group of survivors, who need to complete objectives and survive in order to win. While the core of the experience was kind of fun (whether that be sneaking around to find a way to escape the campground, or hacking up teens with a machete), the game was buggy beyond belief. It felt awful to play: the controls were janky, the graphics and animations were very poor (it would have looked dated even on last gen consoles), and the netcode was pretty bad. It was unique enough an experience that I did forgive a lot of this for a while, but I was never under any illusions about how badly made the game was.

That was all bad enough on its own, but what really sank Friday the 13th was that the franchise became embroiled in a rights legal battle, halting any further development of the game for years. There were more game modes, characters, and cosmetics planned, but they never got the chance to implement them, and the game basically withered away on the vine. As we have seen with Dead By Daylight, there was definitely a market for this kind of game, but it’s sad to see that Friday the 13th didn’t really get a fair shake to carve out a proper place for itself.

20. Resident Evil 6 (2017, PS4)

Resident Evil 6 is an exhausting game. There’s just too much stuffed into this bloated mess of a game. In trying to appeal to everyone, it leaves nobody satisfied. There’s so much here that much of it isn’t given enough attention, leaving half-baked mechanics and level designs. Of the four campaigns, the only one that I kind of liked was Jake & Sherry’s. However, I’ve heard just as many players say that Chris or Leon’s campaign were the only one they liked, so you can see how polarizing this campaign structure is. The four campaign structure also screws over the plot (which is easily the dumbest and most over-the-top in franchise history). Then spread this out over a twenty hour playthrough, and you can see why Resident Evil 6 just generates exhaustion even thinking about it.

19. Twisted Metal 4 (2017, PS4)

I loved Twisted Metal as a kid. We had a PS1 demo disc with Twisted Metal 2 on it and my brothers and I would play split screen matches against each other in that demo, it was awesome. Unfortunately, after Twisted Metal 2, the original developers moved onto other projects and the franchise was handed over to 989 Studios. Twisted Metal 3 and 4 are both pretty notorious for how badly they screwed up the franchise’s tone. For my part, I think 4 is worse (hence why it made the list): Twisted Metal 3 feels like the previous games, just… significantly dumber. Twisted Metal 4, on the other hand, turns the franchise into a cartoonish joke. Sweet Tooth pulls off a coup and takes control of the contest, which could be a really cool concept. Unfortunately, they’ve also interpreted Sweet Tooth by putting more emphasis on the clown part, so all of his scenes have him juggling in a circus while surrounded by goofy clowns… it’s something, alright. That’s not even taking into account the actual game itself. The cars look like toys and control like ass. The only cool things are that you can create a custom car (with, like, a grand total of nine options to pick from) and Calypso enters the contest with a goddamn nuclear rocket truck (which is dumb because it makes him by far the coolest driver in the game, why the hell would you play anyone else?).

18. Star Wars: Episode I – Jedi Power Battles (2000, PS1)

You really had to be there for Star Wars: Episode I. Lucasfilm were milking the shit out of it, licensing Star Wars all over the place. The film had 5 video game tie-ins just in that first year (which isn’t even counting all the handheld ports those games got). One of these was Jedi Power Battles. My brothers and I enjoyed it as kids, largely because it was the most “violent” game we were allowed to play at the time. I enjoyed the hack ‘n slash combat for the time, and the blaster deflection parry was really cool, but even back then we had one major complaint… See, Jedi Power Battles isn’t just a hack ‘n slash like it is advertised to be. Oh no, the game is also secretly a 3D platformer… and the absolute worst 3D platformer ever made, I may add. You spend an inordinate amount of time in this game jumping over bottomless pits to land on platforms. With this game’s slippery controls and isometric camera, it’s legitimately difficult to make some of these jumps. Making matters worse are that the game has some extremely precise jumps, to the point where there are jumps in the first goddamn level that you will not make unless you start jump after you’re already off of the platform. It’s fucking ridiculous, but it reaches a zenith during the Coruscant level. You spend 99% of this level jumping on platforms… oh, and it also happens to be the longest level of the entire game. You have a limited number of lives in this game: on more than one occasion, we had to restart the entire level, because we kept falling into bottomless pits over and over again.

By the way, this wasn’t just me being a scrub as a kid. I recently fired up Jedi Power Battles on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro and, as soon as I got to the platforming sections, I just kept dying. It was flabbergasting how much they were asking of you and how badly it controlled. It’s too bad, the game is pretty fun when it’s actually being a hack ‘n slash, but the platforming is such an inordinate problem that it sinks the entire experience.

17. Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6 (2002, PC)

Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6 is clearly a budget title. That is fine. You get a relatively large open world in which to go hunt animals (large enough that there’s an ATV you can drive), and there’s a pretty impressive number of real-life gear in the game that you can use. The problem is that the game is clearly trying to be a hunting simulation, and expects you to treat it like one: slowly, quietly sneaking up on your target to land the perfect shot.

Unfortunately, the illusion shatters as soon as you get bored. “Fuck these deer, I’ve got things to do,” you say and then you just start sprinting headlong at them. The game’s animal AI is too dumb to react appropriately to a screaming monkey with a gun blasting at them, and so they stand there dumbfounded as you close the distance with them in the blink of an eye. Then, when they do run, you’re supposed to track the blood and figure out where they went. Instead, you just sprint after them, continually blasting the poor deer in the ass with your Cabela’s-branded gun. I legitimately wish that they had put some mechanics in to prevent this from happening. A hunting sim could be pretty interesting as a unique, niche experience. However, if you have to force yourself not to play like a moron to actually get that unique experience, it kind of ruins the whole thing.

16. BloodRayne (2002, PS2)

I had always been kind of interested in BloodRayne. I was nothing if not an edgelord when this game came out and I thought that her character design was cool. Given my love for shit movies, I had also seen two of the Uwe Boll adaptations (honestly… BloodRayne 2 ain’t bad). I recently decided to try out the games to see how good they were…

This game left me infuriated. The graphics are terrible (at least, they are in the PS2 version that I played). The art design makes the whole game unpleasant to look at. The voice acting is bad. The level design sucks more than our half-vampire heroine does, especially when the game turns into a finnicky platformer. The melee combat is just the worst though. In order to make a melee attack, you have to press L1 to attack. This would be awkward enough, but there’s absolutely no tracking or enemy lock-on and the attack animations lack impact, so you might as well by attacking with a wet noodle for all the damage it’s doing to the enemy. Add this all up, and melee combat feels like you’re flailing around in thin air all over the place. This gets so much worse later in the game when enemies that are immune to your ranged weapons are everywhere, forcing you to engage with this shitty melee system.

It’s wild how far a great character design can get you. This game was shit, but it still got multiple sequels, films, and a Playboy spread, all because the main character looks fucking cool. Actually playing the game though? I forced myself to get through, but the bright spots were few and far between.

15. Shrek 2 (2004, PS2)

My youngest brother was really into Shrek as a kid. Naturally, he was given the Shrek 2 game as a gift, and it was up to my brothers and I to join him for some co-op, isometric beat ’em up… fun? Yeah… surprise, surprise, Shrek 2‘s one of those shitty licensed video games. The beat ’em up gameplay is extremely simple and tired. For a game with a fixed, third person camera, you’d think that they’d be able to keep all the players and enemies on-screen, but somehow this game struggles to even do that consistently. There’s also just too much slow, dull platforming, often tied to specific characters’ abilities (meaning that everyone else just sits around and waits until the other player does their chores).

14. Resident Evil Survivor (2000, PS1)

I hated Resident Evil Survivor when I first played it. Having played much worse Resident Evil games since (spoiler alert), my opinion has softened on it somewhat, mainly due to its ambitious branching pathways and its hilarious voice acting. However, that’s not to say that I’ve forgiven it. Survivor is still a shockingly bad game: terrible graphics, terrible gunplay, idiotic puzzles, and the lack of saves is fundamentally moronic, not to mention that it’s only like two hours long. Survivor is not this underrated, misunderstood hidden gem. It sucks. It has some cool ideas, but it fails to do them any justice. It just sucks.

13. Super Noah’s Ark 3D (1994, SNES)

Yes, this is a real game. It’s literally running on the Doom engine. It also was unlicensed, meaning that video game retailers were not allowed to stock it. It’s also just laughable on its face: you’re playing as Noah, firing sleep-inducing food at animals (mostly goats; suspiciously, there are way more than two goats on this boat). You then do the “classic” Doom thing of hunting around a maze for keys… it sucks. Like, the joke was funny, but actually having to play it for any length of time is just not worth it.

Also, while writing this entry, I found out that Super Noah’s Ark 3D spawned from a failed attempt to make a Hellraiser game!?! It’s a wild story, you legitimately need to check it out.

12. Dead or Alive Paradise (2010, PSP)

I recently covered my problems with Dead or Alive Paradise here on IC2S, but put simply: it’s the most inessential Dead or Alive game of all-time. The DOA Xtreme gameplay is severely lacking in things to do. The hardware is ill-suited to provide the sex appeal this kind of game is supposed to deliver. Worst of all though, the gameplay changes have turned this already content-thin game into a grindy slog that is just not worth the effort it asks of you. If you have to play a DOA Xtreme game, then make it literally any other one.

11. I Am Alive (2012, PS3)

This game was one of my biggest video game disappointments. I remember back when I Am Alive was first being teased, it sounded really unique: a stealth-survival game where you play a normal guy trying to make his way through a destroyed city after some sort of disaster. Having the environment be the primary antagonist rather than combat encounters was really intriguing and I waited eagerly for more info on it… Well, I was waiting a long time, because it took about four years for this game to re-emerge with a release date. I heard from the reviews that it wasn’t very good, but I had waited so long for this game that I had to try it out anyway.

Just by playing I Am Alive, you can feel the developmental struggles it faced. Everything looks and feels janky. The game was also very buggy, straight-up crashing on me on multiple occasions on PS3. It got to the point where I just had to admit it: the reviewers were right, after all the struggles that went on during development, the devs weren’t able to make the game they had wanted to. It’s too bad, I still think that the concept of I Am Alive is great, which makes what we got sting all the more.

10. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (2012, PS3)

If playing your new Resident Evil game makes me start saying nice things about Resident Evil 6, then you know that you fucked up. Slant Six Games made multiple SOCOM games, so why is the shooting in this game so bad? Guns either do piddly damage, or they do a normal amount of damage, but run out of ammo extremely fast. Gunplay is also frustratingly inaccurate, and predictably dull. Most frustratingly, enemies are absolute bullet sponges, taking a ridiculous amount of ammo to take down. It takes me three whole clips from the strongest assault rifle to down one hunter, does that not seem excessive? Don’t even get me started on Tyrants or Nemesis, who ran through max ammo at least three times for my weapon before he went down. It is just so badly designed that it is not fun to play in the slightest.

9. The Lord of the Rings: Conquest (2009, PS3)

Oh man, every time I think about my biggest gaming disappointments, I go back to this game. As you saw on my top one hundred games of all-time list, I loved the original Star Wars: Battlefront games. At the time, the only thing I loved more than Star Wars was The Lord of the Rings, so naturally I thought that The Lord of the Rings: Battlefront would be an awesome idea. Lo and behold, a couple years later they announced that this idea was actually going to happen, and that the original developers of Battlefront, Pandemic Studios, were going to be the ones to make it. This was incredible news, as Pandemic were renowned for making good games, so there was pretty much no way this could get screwed up. At this point in time, I was usually reading reviews before buying new games, but this game was such a slam-dunk that I ignored the nagging doubts and paid sixty dollars up-front for it.

So… turns out that I overlooked a key difference between Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings in video games: Star Wars: Battlefront is pretty easy to pull off as a large-scale shooter. Conquest, on the other hand, is mostly melee-based, with archers and mages there to provide some ranged attacks, while being annoying as fuck. Melee combat was not implemented well, making the entire core gameplay a slog. The game was also far buggier and unpolished than Battlefront, making it feel very last-gen. Not even the alternate history campaign, where you play as Sauron clubbing hobbits to death, was interesting enough to warrant a look. This game absolutely broke my faith in the games industry, and I am extremely judicious about buying games after doing some research about them now.

8. Godzilla (1990, GB)

If you buy a Godzilla video game, you have some pretty basic expectations for what that is going to entail: either something like Rampage where you smash a city, or a fighting game where you beat the shit out of other kaiju, like Primal Rage. What you do not expect is a cartoony puzzle game where you climb vines, push a bunch of rocks around a maze so that you can smash all of them against another solid object, while occasionally swatting away other cartoony kaiju that wander too close. Oh, and if you take too long, King Ghidorah shows up and will instantly kill you. This is a baffling game on so many levels, I am not sure what the hell they were thinking. Surely the Godzilla license was just slapped onto some random video game to make it sell more? This was such a weird game, it was one of the first games I had for our Gameboy (which my brothers and I traded some other kid at school for), and I distinctly remember playing it and getting to a point where I had to question what I was doing with my life.

7. Bible Adventures (1991, NES)

Oh look, another Wisdom Tree game! Growing up in an evangelical household which was pretty strict about the sorts of games were were allowed to play, I actually had a copy of this game back in the day. The game plays a lot like Super Mario Bros. 2, acting as a 2D side-scroller where you pickup objects and avoid enemies. The game consists of three parts, the first of which is Noah’s Ark, which tasks you with grabbing animals and bringing them back to the ark. This game is full of frustration due to the shit controls and how easy it is to get damaged, causing all the animals to get scattered and run off, forcing you to chase them back down. It’s mired in frustration, and that’s the best game in the collection. Baby Moses tasks you with babysitting the titular Moses, with controls which are just as bad and gameplay just as frustrating as in Noah’s Ark. While you will accidentally cause Moses to get killed over and over, you can choose to chuck him in the river if you want to, inadvertently making it one of the few games where you can straight-up murder a baby (Grant Theft Auto would never). Then there’s David and Goliath, which just fucking sucks.

6. Revolution X (1994, Arcade)

Revolution X has to be the cringiest game ever made. It’s an arcade light gun shooter, and in that regard it’s pretty bog-standard. What makes the game so bad though is that it takes place in a world where the New World Order has taken over and hate youth culture, so they ban music, movies, and games. The only way to fight back is through the power or rock ‘n roll! And, to make things even more cynical, it features the likenesses and music of Aerosmith. Yeah, this game is basically wearing the corpse of revolution in order to advertise for a rock band which sold-out decades earlier. While the game itself plays… fine, I guess, the entire premise is so lame that it ruins anything it might have been going for. The sort of game you only play for a joke or if there’s literally nothing else available.

5. Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation (2017, PC)

Writing the Love/Hate entry for this game literally made me angry. This game represents everything that I hate about the modern gaming industry (games designed to be addictive and predatory rather than fun), but it is so much worse due to how this game has supplanted the mainline Dead or Alive fighting games in Tecmo-Koei’s eyes. Worst of all? The predatory shit works. I hate the game and I have not picked it up since I finished the article, but goddamn if I do not see it in my Steam library and get that compulsion: “Oh, I am missing out on using some of my limited energy points for the day, it will only take a few minutes to use them all…” And, for what? To unlock some more worthless swimsuits in hopes of getting a low drop-rate swimsuit that doesn’t even look good? Nah, fuck this shitty fucking game.

4. The Simpsons Wrestling (2001, PS1)

The Simpsons Wrestling was a game I rented for a laugh back in the day. I was aware of its reputation, but I was a dumb kid and didn’t think it would be that bad. Hoo boy, was I wrong. For one thing, the game is wildly unbalanced, making the main Simpsons family get outshone in their own game by fucking Bumblebee Man of all characters. On top of that, Ned Flanders is apparently considered to be one of the most broken fighting game characters of all-time (although at least in his case I can understand it, stupid, sexy Flanders…). The controls feel like ass; you’re flailing around for the entire fight. The graphics and camera are awful, even by PS1 standards (the fact that this released late in the PS1 lifecycle makes this even more egregious, but it would have no better in 1995). The only nice thing I can say is that at least I didn’t buy the damn game myself, which is more than I can say for most of the games on this list.

3. NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 (2009, PS3)

Around the time I played this game, my brothers and I were really into paintball. We would take part in large-scale mil-sim events with hundreds of people on each side blasting away at each other. One of my brothers was also on a speedball team, so I was also fairly familiar with the more competitive side of the sport. NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 is based around the competitive speedball side of things, but it ultimately just seems kind of pointless. Paintball is cool, because it lets you simulate video game-like combat scenarios in real life (without having to worry about serious injury, death, or police response). However, when you turn this back around and translate paintball into a video game, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially when the translation is incredibly janky, cheap, and broken. Much like Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6, the enemy AI is only programmed to deal with you playing the “right” way: if you just charge straight down the middle and shoot everyone you come across, you’ll end every match consistently in less than ten seconds, breaking the entire experience. I promise you, if you tried this in real-life paintball, you would be downed immediately, but here the enemy AI is so bad that they do not know how to deal with it. At that point, just play a competitive shooter, you’ll have a way better time.

2. Resident Evil Survivor 2 – CODE: Veronica (2001, PS2)

Resident Evil Survivor 2 left me shocked at how bad it was. I wasn’t expecting much after slogging through its predecessor, but Survivor 2 makes that game look like a masterpiece. It’s the cheapest, laziest game imaginable, made up of 99.9% reused assets. I mentioned this in my Love/Hate entry, but I really need to reiterate that this is a shooter whose maps and assets are literally ripped right from a survival-horror game. They’re completely different genres, so these maps make no sense for a run ‘n gun experience, and the graphics look really bad, because they weren’t supposed to be seen up close. Hell, even the “new” stuff in this game is just assets ripped from the Dreamcast ports of Resident Evil 2 and 3 (and you can tell, because they look worse than the CODE: Veronica assets). Add in that somehow this game is even shorter than its predecessor, and this isn’t even a dumpster fire: it’s just a travesty.

1. Umbrella Corps (2015, PS4)

Umbrella Corps is the worst game I’ve ever played, in part because it should know better. This game came out at the end of Capcom’s half-decade of bed-shitting, with one final shart as they tried, once again, to make Resident Evil into Call of Duty. The game has aspirations of being a highly-competitive, esports shooter, but it just plays like ass. The UI is cluttered to hell, with all sorts of messages and redundant notifications telling you that you can move into cover or do a melee attack, which make it hard to actually see what’s happening on-screen. Of course, this part of the game was dead within a week or two of release, and at this point, Umbrella Corps as it has existed for most of its awful life is an over-glorified series of spec ops ~~missions~~ chores. These missions are tedious, dull, and infuriating – easy to cheese, but if you do, they take forever to complete, so you risk losing just to not have to play this game anymore. I bought this game on sale for six dollars, and I still feel like I got ripped off. I don’t understand how a major publisher releases a game like Umbrella Corps in 2015. We had long figured out shooters by this point, which just makes it so much more egregious than anything else on this list.

If you liked this article…

My Top 100 Games of All-Time (25-1)

December 2, 2024November 16, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

25. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003, PC)

Knights of the Old Republic has some of the best writing in all of Star Wars. Back when Disney bought Star Wars and everyone was still excited about the possibilities of new movies, I had a pretty simple request: adapt Knights of the Old Republic to film. You could adapt this game’s script with little changes required and it would be a hit (assuming they didn’t screw up in the execution). The twists would be able to land too, because most mainstream Star Wars fans haven’t played it, so it would still have impact. Oh, and most importantly, adapting KOTOR would not ruin the ending of Return of the Jedi and piss off the fanbase.

KOTOR is just the ultimate union of Star Wars fantasy and Bioware RPG gameplay. Customizing your character and slowly developing their Force powers and lightsaber over the course of the game is awesome. The real-time with pause combat is simple, but flashy in-motion. Seeing what the Star Wars universe was like long before the original trilogy is fascinating. The way that your affinity towards the Dark and Light sides of the Force affects your character, your companions, and the way the story plays out. If you love Star Wars, then you owe it to yourself to give KOTOR a try.

24. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002, PS2)

Another one of those games that was bought for me as a gift and that I wasn’t too interested in until I started playing, Sly Cooper is a fantastic blend of 3D platforming and stealth gameplay. In order to emphasize stealth, Sly (and most enemies you face) will die in one hit. This might sound rough, but the game is balanced around it and it feels very fair – if you are being sneaky, then you should have the upper-hand in every encounter. In fact, I actually prefer this system over Sly‘s sequels, which give everyone health bars… presumably because it is more “expected”? I guess it makes combat have a bit more depth? Whatever the case, combat isn’t really the focus of these games and I much prefer the snappier system in place here.

Like many 3D platformers of the day, Sly Cooper features collect-a-thon elements, but they aren’t just here to give you something arbitrary to do. Levels are littered with coins to steal, which will net you lucky charms (which allow you to take up to two hits before dying) or extra lives. You also collect bottles containing pages of the titular Thievius Raccoonus, which will eventually unlock really useful new moves and abilities that you can use, such as slowing time or creating a decoy to distract enemies.

So the core gameplay of Sly Cooper is rock solid, but the game’s presentation, characters, and story really elevate it. The game has a cartoonish, 50s noir style which is complemented by its cel-shaded graphics which have aged very well. The characters aren’t revelatory, but they’re fun: Sly’s your charming rogue, Bentley’s the high-strung brains of the operation, Murray’s the dumb-but-eternally-loyal and eager getaway driver, and Carmelita is the cop who will stop at nothing to put Sly behind bars… but is her obsession purely professional…? The whole thing is wrapped around a plot which is just perfect for video games: Sly comes from a line of master thieves who have recorded the techniques they have developed in the Thievius Raccoonus, but the book is stolen and his family murdered by a group of rival thieves called the Fiendish Five. Sly and his friends then need to reclaim his family’s knowledge and get revenge on the Fiendish Five. It’s a fairly simple setup, but compelling. Sly Cooper is just an extremely well thought-out video game: everything has been carefully considered and maximized to make Sly Cooper the best it can be.

23. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (2005, PS2)

Sly 3 doesn’t evolve the formula of the franchise very much: gameplay-wise, it’s more of what was established in Sly 2 (basically: Bentley and Murray are new playable characters, the one-hit-kill system is gone, stealth is de-emphasized, and guards can be pickpocketed for easy cash for upgrades). What really makes Sly 3 stand out is its exemplary writing, which builds upon all the developments made over the course of the trilogy. In this game, Sly is putting together a team to pull off a heist against Dr. M, who has taken over the island housing the Cooper family vault. Dr. M has been attempting to break inside to steal the generations of hoarded treasure held within. It seems like a pretty simple setup, but there are some major revelations and developments which twist the way we view our characters and the Cooper family in surprising ways. We also get several returning characters from the previous two games, some of which have undergone major developments. Most notable of these is Panda King, one of the Fiendish Five who killed Sly’s parents. The gang finds themselves having to recruit Panda King in order to successfully pull off the heist, but the tension between Sly and him is so taut that feels like it could snap at any moment. It is great writing, daring to take the difficult route, and the game is so much more rewarding for it. Dr. M is also a surprisingly complex villain, who I’d argue is the best antagonist in the franchise. Building up the gang and then executing this final heist makes for one of the most enjoyable game stories in its own right, but when you combine that with the things this game is doing as a trilogy-ender, it is a monumental achievement.

22. Ninja Gaiden (2004, XB)

Ninja Gaiden is notorious for its difficulty, demanding precision and quick reflexes to survive on higher difficulties. The game’s hero, Ryu Hayabusa, is a demon-slaying ninja badass and one of the coolest game heroes around. The story is functional by video game standards: Ryu needs to get back the Dark Dragon Blade, which was stolen from the Hayabusa ninja clan by the Vigoor Empire, all while battling ninjas, Fiends, and the Black Spider Clan. That’s right… there’s actually a game in my top one hundred which is here purely because of the gameplay. Ninja Gaiden‘s harsh challenge is tough, but fair, demanding that you learn its systems if you want to succeed. When you do overcome a fight that has been challenging you, the feeling of satisfaction is palpable, and the the fight is all the more manageable for it. Something I like about this game in particular which makes it stand out from its sequels is the hub-based world. For most of the game, you explore the streets of Tairon, battling enemies as you gain access to new areas and uncover some cleverly-disguised secrets that only a true ninja could perceive. I know that it’s been said before about this game, but it really does bear saying: Ninja Gaiden makes you feel like a true ninja badass and is well worth experiencing if you can stomach the challenge.

21. Bioshock (2007, PS3)

Whenever I recount my time with Bioshock, I always go back to the very first thing that happened to me in the game. You have an extremely brief opening cutscene where your plane crashes into the ocean and your character rises to the surface of the water to see flames from the wreckage. I sat there a good twenty seconds or more, expecting some object to come into frame from off-screen. Then it hit me: No… these are the in-game graphics!? The reflection of the fire on the water looked so good that I literally thought it was a CGI cutscene. The game was that immersive at its very first second. Then you travel down into the undersea city of Rapture and your mind is in absolute awe of what you are seeing. An art deco, undersea, libertarian dystopia is such a unique setting. And then the horror elements creep in, as you see what has become of the city and its denizens. By that point, you are just fully invested in Bioshock‘s atmosphere: this is just the coolest world design in videogames. It also, quite famously, has some of the best writing in any game of the time, being philosophical while also keeping it entertaining. It also has one of the best twists in gaming, a mind-blowing revelation that makes you re-evaluate your sense of self. And then there’s the plasmid powers you collect and upgrade during your journey which shake up the gunplay in unique ways.

Oh, and who could ever forget the first time they saw a Big Daddy? How about the sheer terror the first time you had to kill one? This game is fantastic, full-stop.

20. Metal Gear Solid (1998, PS1)

Since release, Metal Gear Solid has rightly been praised for pushing the boundaries of cinematics and storytelling in videogames. It’s a staggering achievement for a PS1 game, boundlessly creative and quirky in equal measures. There’s so many legendary moments in this game, that I’m not even sure it makes sense for me to recount them: you either know about them already, or you need to experience them for yourself. So, instead, I’m gonna use this space to describe my introduction to Metal Gear Solid…

This was a game that I had heard about while growing up. I was really into gaming magazines around 2001. One of the first gaming magazines I bought was the Metal Gear Solid 2 cover story for The Official US Playstation Magazine, which really hammered home to me that these games were must-plays (I can still remember their guide on how to fake being sick to get a whole extra-long weekend off to play it). They all sang the praises of the Metal Gear franchise, and they said that Metal Gear Solid was the best one. That said, I wasn’t able to play them at the time: I was eleven when MGS2 came out, I was not allowed to play any M-rated video games, and I didn’t have any money to get them myself.

Around 2005 or 2006, I had fallen in love with the stealth action genre after playing all of the Splinter Cell released to that point. I was itching for some more top-tier stealth games, so obviously Metal Gear Solid was at the front of my mind. I managed to get a ROM of Metal Gear Solid, which I played on an emulator on my PC. I’ll tell ya, over the course of the next few evenings, my mind was blown. I loved the over-the-top action and characters. I loved the equally philosophical and farcical narrative. The presentation was incredible. I loved the insane, fourth-wall breaking gameplay moments. The boss fights were incredibly unique. It was just such a good experience that I started checking out the other games in the franchise as well, and soon Metal Gear Solid was even more important to me than Splinter Cell itself.

19. Shadow of the Colossus (2005, PS2)

Another one of those “early, undeniable examples of games as art” games, Shadow of the Colossus is unrivalled in its atmosphere. The colossi are these majestic, sombre beasts who you have been tasked to slay in order to resurrect an mysterious woman. The resulting journey is nearly wordless, which just absolutely sucks you into this game’s world. Each colossi is not fought in the traditional sense: they are all have a fairly simple puzzle based around their movements which, once solved, will allow you to climb onto their body and stab a weak point until the beast dies. Each colossi is unique and memorable, and the minimalist story really packs an emotional wallop. It’s just such an impactful and artfully-crafted videogame, you just can’t help but be in awe of the talent on display here.

18. Nioh (2017, PS4)

Once again, Team Ninja have an entry that I love entirely for the gameplay. Nioh has the best combat system of any game I have played, bar none. It plays largely the same as any other Souls-like: a stamina bar, challenging difficulty, if you die you lose your souls, etc. The main differences are that Nioh has a loot-based item drop system and that the game is linear and mission-based, rather than having you seamlessly navigating an open world. However, Nioh introduces two mechanics that shake up the Souls formula in some genius ways:

Weapon Stances – Each weapon you get has three stances for your attacks: high for a slow, powerful attack, mid for a standard attack, and low for a quick, weak attack. Right away, this wildly expands the options you have at your disposal for any given combat encounter, but certain enemies are also immune or vulnerable to specific stances.
Ki-Pulse – Nioh has a sort of “active reload” system to instantly replenish your stamina bar if you time a button press correctly. You will quickly get to grips with this maneuver when you play, it makes for a really cool system where you encourage aggressive combat maneuvers in order to maximize your damage dealt.

The game also retains Team Ninja’s pedigree for difficulty. In that quality, Nioh definitely stands out compared to its peers, with a level of precision required that rivals Ninja Gaiden. And I just love the guardian spirits, a charming gang of adorable, magic spirit creatures that give you special powers if you become friends with them. Nioh is just a great game to play, constantly pushing your limit and forcing you to get better.

17. Halo 2 (2004, XB)

Halo holds a special place in my heart. Some of my fondest gaming memories are playing Halo and Halo 2 at a couple youth group LAN parties as a young teenager. I loved the first few Halo books. The writing and world-building was (and still is) top notch. Despite this, I didn’t have an Xbox or a decent PC growing up. So, when the LAN parties stopped happening, I never really got a chance to play them again. I did, briefly, have an Xbox 360 and I attempted to play through Combat Evolved a couple times, but found that I didn’t like the game’s design. As a result, I never made it to trying Halo 2.

Fast-forward to a earlier this year. The Master Chief Collection was on sale for cheap on Steam, and I finally have a PC capable of playing it. Fuckin’ sold, that was an awesome deal. Once again, I found myself growing tired of Combat Evolved‘s design, but I forced myself through. Even then, it took me a couple months to get through to the end.

But then I started Halo 2. MY GOD, the sheer leap forward in every single way is spectacular. The story presentation and writing are legitimately film-like. The level design is much clearer and more distinct. Gameplay is improved in every regard. Dual-wielding guns is such a power trip. Even the small changes to the shields system make you feel more like a badass than before. I would turn off Combat Evolved after one or two levels, but for Halo 2 I blitzed through three levels back-to-back without breaking a sweat, and the only reason I didn’t go any further was because I badly needed to sleep. I got through Halo 2 in about a week, and loved it the whole way through.

16. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007, PS3)

The release of Call of Duty 4 was a bomb-shell in the gaming industry. This one game effectively killed the World War II shooter, which had been a gaming staple for a decade. Suddenly, every shooter had to be a modern military game. Its set-piece moments were jaw-dropping and influenced countless imitators. Halo had been the top dog shooter up until that point, but then this game dropped and arena shooters were decimated. Given that we were still early in the Iraq War at the time, the game had an extra layer of relevance. At the time, this game felt kind of dangerous and daring for how much it invoked real-world politics. This also, of course, started the annual Call of Duty release schedule that we are all sick to death of now.

And, in spite of all that, Call of Duty 4 is still as incredible as ever. This game looked unbelievable back in 2007. The campaign was shockingly strong for a straight-forward shooter game, with memorable characters, cool set-pieces and some gut-wrenching moments. It’s the sort of game that demonstrates the effectiveness of a good, curated, linear campaign: the iconic “All Ghillied Up” is almost entirely scripted, but goddamn if it does not get your pulse pounding. You may be done with Call of Duty now, but anyone who was there for Call of Duty 4 knows that that game was (and still is) a singular experience.

15. Ape Escape (1999, PS1)

Of all the games that were bought for us as a gift that I didn’t have much interest in until I played it, Ape Escape is the best of them. My brothers and I got a PlayStation for Christmas in 2000 and Ape Escape was one of the games we got with it. We didn’t have a whole lot of interest at the time though: what, we’re trying to catch some monkeys? Eh, sounds boring. But then, being bored one day, I decided to try it out, and quickly got sucked in. Now, Ape Escape is my most-replayed game of all-time. I must have played through it at least seven times since I first bought it. Hell, one of the first things I did when I got my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro was to load Ape Escape onto it and then play through the whole thing again, which ultimately led to me writing the Ape Escape Love/Hate series.

The core 3D platforming gameplay of Ape Escape is solid, but what really makes it stand out is the innovative use of the (at the time) brand-new dual analog controller. The left stick controls movement and the right stick controls whatever gadget you currently have equipped, giving you a level of control and precision unseen in console games up to that point. The gadgets themselves are also really neat, with the stun baton to whack monkeys and enemies, the sling shooter to snipe distant targets, the sky flyer to launch yourself high into the air or extend a jump, and the RC car to access small spaces (and harass monkeys), just to name a few of them.

Also… chasing the monkeys is just a hell of a lot of fun. They have three levels of alertness, so approaching them strategically is incentivized, and each ape has its own level of aggression and speed, making each encounter feel fresh. The time-travelling structure is also inspired, shaking up the environments and gameplay after every three levels so that it never gets stale. I love this game so much and I can guarantee that there will be even more replays of it in the future.

14. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988, NES)

Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of those sequels that blows its predecessors out of the water. Super Mario Bros. was a monumental game for its day, but Super Mario Bros. 3 surpasses it in every single metric. Its graphics are some of the best on the NES, and it’s wild to see how much they have improved in only three years (or two years if you consider that the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 originally released in 1986 and had basically the same graphical fidelity as the first game). There are way more levels and you navigate through them using an overworld map. There are even more clever secrets than before. The power-ups are more varied and are super cool: leaves and tanooki tails to fly, the frog suit to swim easier, and the hammer suit to hurl hammers at enemies. The combination of ambitious innovation and flawless execution make Super Mario Bros. 3 a timeless classic and one of the few NES games that is just as enjoyable today as it was back then.

13. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016, PS4)

So, as you can see from my placement of Uncharted 2 on this list, I really loved that game. However, it’s follow-up, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, was pretty disappointing to me: sure, the set-piece moments were better than ever, and there were some fun new characters, but the story felt like it was an after-thought, which made it by far my least favourite game of the trilogy. I figured that Uncharted 2 would remain the best of the franchise and that would be the end of it, but then a fourth game was announced for PS4. I was optimistic, but I really did not expect to love Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End as much as I did. The writing is the best in the franchise, bar-none, giving us a satisfying and mature end for these characters we’ve grown to love so much over the course of the series. The set-pieces are grander than ever, which is aided immensely by the improved technology since the previous game. The game also takes a cue from the Tomb Raider reboot, introducing some hub areas where you can explore and pick your next mission to complete. The game is also just gorgeous, putting its predecessors to shame in this regard (and those games were no slouches in the graphical department either). For the most part, Uncharted 4 is more of the same, but executed at the absolute best this franchise has ever seen.

12. The Last of Us (2013, PS3)

The Last of Us is one of those games that is so good that it transcended the gaming industry and is just part of the wider culture. This sombre, contemplative, depressing, and tragic story of a man and a girl travelling across a post-apocalyptic wasteland is easily one of the best-told narratives in the medium. Its ending is legendary, one of the most iconic in modern pop culture, and one which has been heavily-debated since it released (for my part, Joel did not do the right thing, and the Left Behind DLC is meant to make this unmistakably clear to the audience).

On top of this, I think that the gameplay is also very underrated. As opposed to Uncharted‘s bombastic action, the gunplay of The Last of Us is slower, more visceral and dangerous. You’ll often spend significant chunks of gameplay using stealth, avoiding alerting enemies as much as possible until you have to engage them. The cordyceps zombies also present a significantly different threat to the human survivors you come across, giving the game a survival horror tone. The way that you scavenge for supplies to craft make-shift weapons and items was also quite innovative for the time, and would be replicated for years after release by other games. This system encourages careful exploration and is done in such a way that you never have enough supplies to do everything you may want to. The Last of Us is Naughty Dog at their peak, flexing their development muscles to create an unforgettable experience.

11. Dead Space 2 (2011, PS3)

Your mom may hate Dead Space 2, but I love it. The game comes out of the gate swinging, featuring one of the most horrific and pulse-pounding opening sequences of any video game. The original game was already great, but Dead Space 2 ups the ante by bringing in more Uncharted-style bombastic action set-pieces. Contributing to this is that Isaac Clarke is no longer a silent protagonist, which allows him to have a lot more personality. This also enables the game’s more personal story, which sees him grappling with crippling PTSD and mental illness due to the events of the first game. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about all this though is that the game does all this without compromising the survival horror tone – this game is every bit as scary as its predecessor, while also being an action thrill-ride at the same time. The franchise’s core gameplay is every bit as compelling as before, but is now more refined and has more variety of weapons and enemies to keep combat fresh and endlessly replayable. Of all the new additions, my favourite is the Stalker enemies. While most necromorphs will attack the moment they spot you, Stalkers mess with your head like a pack of wolves. They’ll surround you, peek at you to see if you’re distracted, fall back if you get too close, and then scream like a banshee as they charge in for the kill. The first time I fought these guys, I was absolutely terrified, it was such a special experience. The Tormentor is also one of the coolest and most intense boss fights I’ve ever experienced, despite basically being an interactive cutscene.

10. Pokémon HeartGold (2009, DS)

I played countless hours of Pokémon Gold and Silver back in the day, making them one of my favourite games in the franchise. I think that the fourth generation of Pokémon games were the peak of the franchise’s gameplay. Combine these two interests together and we have Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, remakes of the gen two games utilizing the engine and mechanics of the fourth generation games. These games are the ultimate Pokémon adventure, full-stop. The difficulty is legitimately challenging, even for series veterans. The Johto region feels lived-in and steeped in history. The post-game in Kanto is expanded further as well, making this meaty second chapter even more impressive. Your favourite Pokémon follows you around on the overworld. It’s just the best rendition of the classic Pokémon formula, I don’t know how else I can describe it.

9. God of War (2018, PS4)

I’ve dabbled in the God of War games, but I haven’t gotten a chance yet to play through them all. However, I decided to try out the 2018 God of War and was surprised by just how good it was. While I do think that the story of the Greek God of War games is underrated and a lot more interesting than people give it credit for, God of War‘s 2018 entry is unrivalled in its writing. Maybe it’s just the timing of the game for me: I got this right after the birth of my son, so the tale of Kratos and his son, Atreus, on a journey to spread the ashes of Atreus’ mother really resonated with me. Seeing a more matured Kratos lends him so much more depth and sympathy – you can see how he’s trying to direct Atreus to not make the same mistakes he made. And then there’s the primary antagonist, Baldur: he looks like a drunken weenie the first time you see him, but he quickly demonstrates that he is incredibly dangerous, unhinged, and a legitimate threat to Kratos.

The game is also just gorgeous. The environments are breath-taking and I love all the colourful particle effects which just make the game look magical as you go on your Norse journey. The way that the game plays out like one long, seamless take keeps you immersed in this world.

The game also just plays well. I wasn’t sure if I’d like an over-the-shoulder melee system, but it actually plays about as well as the more traditional action game camera in the previous God of War games. It plays like a nice middle-ground between a Souls-like and a more traditional character action game. Kratos’ axe is also just the coolest melee weapon ever, allowing you to throw it and then have it fly back into your hand with the press of a button (hitting any enemy it crosses paths with on the way there for bonus damage). Combat is bloody, visceral, and satisfying. I particularly like the optional Valkyrie bosses hidden around the game world, which really test your skills and are a stiff challenge.

I loved my time with God of War. I rarely bother to platinum games, but I knew pretty early in that I was going to see it through for God of War. I loved this game so much that I had to see everything it had available, including all the optional challenge areas.

8. Dark Souls (2011, PS3)

Another example of “gameplay isn’t everything”. I think that Nioh is superior to Dark Souls in terms of its combat. However, I think that Dark Souls is, without question, the better game overall due to its less-obvious qualities. Of these, the best is the looping, open-world structure. Each area is designed like a linear level, funneling you through encounters until you reach a boss or the next area. However, many of these areas will connect to other areas, giving a sense of interconnectedness and geography to the world. There are several moments where you will reach a gate or an elevator, use it, and then be shocked to see that you’re now in an area you’ve already explored. The sense of verticality is also very unique, as the world is designed as a bunch of regions stacked on top of each other: at the bottom are the ancient, forgotten dregs of this world, while the top is the isolated, gilded realms of the gods themselves. That’s right, FromSoft have mastered world design so well that it’s even thematic. The game’s story presentation is also very unique, choosing to communicate it through the environment and item descriptions rather than an overt narrative. This intentionally leaves much of the story up to interpretation.

Of course, then there’s the combat system, which still influencing the industry to this day. It is relatively slow and deliberate, forcing you to carefully consider every action you make while balancing your stamina bar and limited healing resources. The enemy designs are inspired. Creatures like the Gaping Dragon, Pinwheel, and The Four Kings are such unique concepts, but so evocative and mysterious in their design. The difficulty is tough but fair. Pretty much anyone is capable of overcoming its challenges with a little perseverance and, if that fails, level-grinding.

Dark Souls is a game which just feels like a myth brought to life. Exploring and battling through its forlorn world is haunting, like you’re trespassing in a place you were never meant to be. Its difficulty may have been long surpassed by its successors, but it is still a good challenge and as satisfying as ever to overcome.

7. Bloodborne (2015, PS4)

Bloodborne was my first Souls-like experience. Like Dead or Alive, this game came across my radar after completing the Ninja Gaiden games. I was looking for another game with challenging hack ‘n slash combat, and Bloodborne came highly recommended. With that in mind… I was not primed for the kind of experience that Bloodborne was offering. The combat was fast, but not as fast as Ninja Gaiden, and there was no way to block, so I kept getting destroyed by basic enemies. The gameplay wasn’t really “clicking” with me, but I decided to persevere. However, piece-by-piece, it started to click in place in my mind. The importance of shortcuts, parry and dodge timing, careful analysis of the area, and stamina management really started to settle in. Around two-thirds of the way in, I “got” it, but I still wasn’t blown away. However, this all changed in one moment: I bought the DLC, played through to Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower… and I was stuck. She absolutely destroyed me multiple times. I tried to summon a co-op helper, but no one was answering my bell. I distinctly remember sitting there, waiting for minutes for someone to respond, when I decided: “Fine, I guess I’m just gonna knuckle-down then and do this myself.”

I died, over and over again. I must have done so over twenty times, but I was slowly learning more and more of Lady Maria’s moveset, getting her health down lower and lower as I went. When I finally managed to overcome her, it was like a deadly ballet between the two of us, and I felt a satisfaction that I had never felt in the game up to that point. I was changed, and I resolved to try to beat every Souls-like boss thereafter without summoning, if I could reasonably do so. It was the true start of my love affair with these games.

Like Blasphemous, Bloodborne is a game which ticks all my boxes. Souls-combat, but faster and more aggressive? Gothic and eldritch horror aesthetic? Blood? Fanatics? Goddamn fuckin’ werewolves!? Bloodborne is what you get when you take a solid gameplay foundation and then commit to a particular vision and aesthetic, elevating the game well beyond the sum of its parts.

6. Civilization VI (2016, PC)

While I think I’d say that Civilization IV was the most fun I had with a single Civilization game, if I had to pick one of these games to play today, it’s Civ VI, without question. Starting with Civ V, Firaxis shook up the series’ formula in some pretty fundamental ways, moving from a grid to a hex-based map, and making cities far more specialized and customizable. While I wasn’t a big fan of Civ V, Civ VI plays like a more refined version of that game, but with several more features added. Shaping your nation and conquering the world through diplomacy, culture, religion, or good ol’ fashioned war is a lot of fun, and no two games will ever play out the same. There are also an overwhelming number of civilizations available to play, providing even more variety and incentives to play the game how you want. I also like how the game doesn’t really force you into picking one particular victory route early – it’s completely viable to wait until the modern era to really commit to a victory condition (unlike, say, Civilization: Beyond Earth, where you’re pretty much knee-capping yourself if you diversify your nation’s interests). The “just one more turn” gameplay is just as addictive as ever as you set goals for yourself and see them come to fruition over the course of the next few turns and there are lots of options to customize the game to your liking (including options for some pretty wild, alternative game modes).

5. Tetris (1989, NES)

Tetris is the definition of “simple, but addictive”. Drop shapes made up of four blocks, try to make lines with them to clear them out before they reach the top, you get more points if you clear more lines at once, and the game gets faster the more lines you clear. Good luck, and try to get the highest score possible.

There are lots of different versions of Tetris out there: they’re all great, and I really like the quality of life improvements that have been developed over the years, but the NES version was the one that first got me into the game. Whenever I start replaying Tetris, I can see the blocks falling in my mind where ever I go. I used to keep track of my scores in NES Tetris… I wanted to show off a bit, but I can’t find the text document anymore… As I recall, I used to be able to get to around level twenty-five when it starts getting too fast to react, and I’d get as many four-line-clears as possible up to that point.

4. Resident Evil 4 (2005, GC)

Resident Evil 4 is an incredible game. The ambition, innovation, and attention to detail on display is staggering. Resident Evil games had grown really stale at the time, so it came out at the perfect moment. What makes this more remarkable is that the game basically plays like a classic Resident Evil game, only with full 3D and manual aiming, but its changes make it feel like a wholly new thing. Its over-the-shoulder camera revolutionized third person videogames and resulted in numerous imitators for years thereafter. It established Leon Kennedy as an absolute badass. There are just so many things you can say about this game’s legacy, that you really can’t understate how important it was.

For my part, I owned a copy of Resident Evil 4 on PS2 back around 2008, but I hadn’t really gotten past the opening village battle. It wasn’t until 2021 when I started the Resident Evil Love/Hate series that I finally decided to commit to trying it out. While it took about an hour to get used to the controls, once I acclimated, I was stunned at just how refined this game was. The whole experience is so lovingly crafted and varied that it never gets boring, and the campy tone doesn’t diminish from the horror elements. Then there’s all the little, optional systems you can engage in: treasure-hunting to get extra currency, the gun range where you can win prizes for good shooting, and you can do tricks during the jet ski section. Hell, what other game makes inventory management fun!? There’s a reason why this game is still being re-released and remade twenty years later, it’s an essential pillar of the gaming landscape and a monument to fantastic design.

3. Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023, PC)

Back during the early-to-mid 2010s, video games liked to tell us that “your choices matter”. However, after scores of Telltale and Quantic Dream games, the Mass Effect trilogy, Fallout, etc, gamers came to realize the truth of the matter: making consequences matter in games is hard. If you give the player the ability to make a choice which could change the game world, it’s simply too much work to make that choice actually matter in the grand scheme of things. At most, you may create a short, branching path, but it will just lead back to the main path again. Have to choose to let one of two characters die? You can be sure that the one you saved with have basically no bearing on the plot, or they’ll do the exact same things the other character would have done anyway. Hell, Fallout will let you kill just about anyone, but if a character is actually important, you can shoot them as much as you want, but they’ll just fall unconscious and forget anything happened the next time you see them. Once you realize this, it really destroys the illusion and can make certain choices completely worthless when you encounter them. I remember distinctly feeling this in The Walking Dead: Season 2 when you had to choose which characters would live and die… effectively rending that character useless for the rest of the journey, since they could be dead in another player’s playthrough and it would be too much effort that half your player base will never see to give them a major role thereafter.

Baldur’s Gate 3 throws this conventional wisdom out the window. While the game’s narrative does move forward on a fairly linear track, the amount of influence you have over events is astounding. While it doesn’t offer nearly as much freedom as a proper, tabletop DND game, it comes unreasonably close to achieving that. Like, for the earliest example of this unprecedented amount of freedom: you come across a druid grove where tiefling refugees are staying. The relationship between the grove and the tieflings is extremely strained, but the tieflings can’t leave because the road to Baldur’s Gate is too dangerous due to raids by the Cult of the Absolute. As a result, they’re on the verge of committing violence to stay in the safely of the grove. Initially, you can pick a side to support, or you can choose to try to find a compromise. Or, later on, you come across the Cult of the Absolute, who are trying to kill both factions, and you can choose to side with them. The expectation is that you will find a peaceful solution, but if you want to side with the cult and massacre everyone, that is completely viable. In fact, an entire character and their unique storyline is locked behind this option. Hell, you can choose to kill everyone on all sides and the game will just continue to go along, locking off content as characters abandon your party and questlines become unachievable. Characters will even acknowledge all the unexpected little choices you make. And, if this isn’t ridiculous enough, the game is fully voice acted, meaning that the amount of work that has gone into planning for every eventuality players could make is mind-boggling. Most players will never see much of this content. Hell, there’s an entire world of animals and corpses you can talk to, but you will only ever see it if you cast “speak with animals” or “speak with dead”, respectively (and you really should, these interactions are amazing). Hell, when you do reach Baldur’s Gate, much of the populace are interactable, with dialog trees and fully voiced performances. Many of these characters are there for nothing more than flavour, and all it does is make the world more believable and lived-in. That is the scale of the work put into Baldur’s Gate 3, and the more you think about it, the more it defies comprehension.

That’s all well and good, but the game is also just really fun. Due to the level of freedom, you get to approach its turn-based combat system in whatever ways you see fit. You really come to love the characters here, customizing their abilities to suit your needs, and forming relationships with them as you advance their side-quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an unreasonably good game, the sort of experience that you simply cannot expect anyone else to one-up. It will be the sort of game that we point to even a decade from now as an unrivalled pinnacle of the industry and one that you can go back to over and over again and find new secrets each time.

2. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005, PS2)

As I said in the Metal Gear Solid entry, I became interested in those games because of my love for Splinter Cell. When I was in my early teens, I bought Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at a street fair, and it began my love affair with stealth games. I loved it and made sure to pickup a copy of the original game shortly thereafter. With those two completed, we came to the newest game at the time: Chaos Theory. I had loved the previous two games, so I was super excited to get it… but, I couldn’t. See, Chaos Theory was the first Splinter Cell game to be rated M. My parents had a “no M-rated games” policy for us kids. I was only sixteen, I couldn’t wait another year to be old enough to play them! No, I was going to have to put my own roguish skills to the test…

So, one day when we were at Wal-Mart, I headed to the electronics section to look at the games. There was Chaos Theory, locked behind the game cabinet. I asked the clerk to get it out of the cabinet and ring it up. I figured he was going to ask me to verify my age, which would dash my plans, but he didn’t bother. I snuck it home and kept the game hidden so that my parents would never know that I had bought an M-rated game. My brothers and I were very good kids, so intentionally disobeying them like this was exciting and dangerous. It’s kind of silly, but it felt like I was the one sneaking about and pulling off secret missions without getting caught.

Chaos Theory plays much like its predecessors, but with some tweaks. These include a new noise meter, an EMP device for your sidearm, improved graphics and animations, smarter enemies, and a choice of lethal and non-lethal melee attacks. The missions are also really well-designed. Most famous of these is the bank heist near the start of the game, which is just a flawless example of thrilling game design. The level mixes infiltration, exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving in such a glorious blend. The voice cast are on top form here, especially Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher. His performance in this game makes Sam Fisher downright terrifying at times. Chaos Theory was the absolute peak of Splinter Cell, before Ubisoft felt that the series needed to be shaken up. As a result, we’ve never really gotten another game quite like it, making it a game that is still worth playing to this day.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004, PS2)

Snake Eater is perfect.

I love the writing. The political philosophizing stands side-by-side with big, dumb action sequences, and juvenile humour. The journey that Naked Snake goes on in this game is genuinely moving.

I love the characters. Naked Snake is the best Metal Gear character, bar none. The Boss is just incredible, and her motherly relationship with Snake adds so much emotional weight to the plot. EVA is a great Bond girl; enticing, but one who you never really think you can trust. Ocelot is a lot of fun when he shows up, I love that they gave him a more immature personality to match his age. Volgin is such a fun villain to hate; joyously evil and sadistic.

I love the boss battles. The obvious highlight is The End. The first time I came across him, I knew his reputation. I got shot by him almost immediately without even seeing him and decided right there to chicken out on the fight. I knew about the clock-skip trick, where you can win the battle automatically by moving your system clock forward a week, which causes The End to die of old age. I did it, but I didn’t feel good about it. Some time later when I replayed the game in the Subsistence re-release, I decided to knuckle-down and do the fight for real this time. I can distinctly remember running around lost for the first part of the fight, trying to figure out where The End was hiding. However, I soon began to realize all the ways you could pin-point his location, and soon it was a game of hunter vs hunter. I think it took me an hour and a half, but I gunned him down and felt the rush of satisfaction for overcoming such a creative and unique challenge.

I love the setting. A jungle in Russia is a pretty wild setting, but it’s so evocative. The jungle is the realm of predators, so being able to hunt enemies here makes you feel so cool. The setting also takes Metal Gear from the hallways and corridors they had been in up to that point. Levels are open, with lots of room to maneuver and pick your approach. You have to hide in plain sight, which is so much more badass than hiding in a locker.

I love all the ways you can mess with guards. For example, you can blow up their food supplies to make them hungry and vulnerable to eating poisoned food that you’ve left around. You can also blow up their ammunition stores so they can’t shoot you if you’re spotted. You can also throw a pissed-off, poisonous animal at them to get it to bite them to death.

I love the new survival elements. Having to hunt for food to sustain yourself really hammers home the idea that you’re an operative deep in enemy territory. I love how the camouflage meter facilitates the more open level designs without sacrificing the stealth gameplay.

I love the ending. Snake Eater has my favourite ending of any piece of media. The first time I played this game, I was blown away by the final boss fight and cutscene. It re-contextualized the game’s events and really made me question what I had done to get to this point. It’s beautifully acted and emotional. It’s the cherry on top of a perfect sundae.

If you liked this article…

My Top 100 Games of All-Time (50-26)

December 1, 2024November 15, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

50. Demolition Racer (1999, PS1)

A childhood classic, Demolition Racer is what it sounds like: combine demolition derby destruction with a high-octane racing game. The results are, predictably, catastrophic, with cars slamming into each other at high speeds, vehicles sent flying everywhere, catching fire, and exploding. This isn’t just nostalgia talking either, I’ve gone back and replayed this game multiple times in the past few years and it is always a blast.

49. Gravity Rush 2 (2017, PS4)

Gravity Rush 2, and its predecessor, are joyous games. Their plots are uplifting, full of positivity in the face of danger. Their characters are charming and unique. Most importantly though, the central mechanic reminds you of the simple joy of play. Too many games have movement and traversal as a lengthy chore that you have to manage in order to get from point A to point B, and you spend more time bored and annoyed getting to your destination than you actually do enjoying yourself (looking at you Witcher 3…). Gravity Rush flips the script on this: being able to shift gravity at will to fall towards your chosen destination is as breath-taking at minute one as it is at hour fifteen. It matters less that combat is a bit finnicky when the moment-to-moment gameplay is this fun and the writing is this charming. Gravity Rush 2 is pure joy and the industry needs more games like this in it.

48. Twisted Metal: Black (2001, PS2)

While Twisted Metal 2 is probably the best-playing Twisted Metal game, I’ve reiterated over and over here that gameplay isn’t everything, and Twisted Metal: Black is one of the best examples of this. The game is bloody difficult, perhaps too much so at times and the game can feel downright unfair. However, where Black really stands out is in its presentation and story. Black is easily one of the darkest video games ever released. Its cast are a bunch of psychopaths let loose from an insane asylum, all doing battle with each other and tearing across the city of Midtown in order to be granted a wish of their choice. You’ve got such colourful figures as No-Face (a professional boxer who lost a fight, causing a doctor who had bet on him to remove his eyes and tongue and then stitch them shut), Mr. Grimm (a Vietnam vet and former POW who is wracked with PTSD and a craving for human flesh), Preacher (a delusional pastor who downed a goddamn baby because he thought it was possessed), Warthog (a serial killer whose wish is to remove the part of the brain that makes him feel remorse when he kills), and of course Sweet Tooth (an unrepentant, murder-obsessed serial killer who wears a clown mask). Each character has a very dark and disturbing story that plays out over the course of the game, and the game’s world is suitably gloomy and depressing. It’s so over-the-top grimdark that it’s cartoonish, but then loops right back around to being properly dark stuff due to how hard it commits to the whole thing.

47. Resident Evil 2 (2019, PS4)

Resident Evil 2 remake was a lightning rod moment for the gaming industry, kicking off the remake craze we find ourselves knee-deep in. The game is just a bloody good, tense thrill-ride. Zombies have not been this threatening in decades, taking tons of ammunition to put down for good, which incentivizes you to conserve your resources and avoid them where ever possible. The design of the RPD is also still one of the most memorable environments in gaming and it’s just as compelling here in full 3D as it was on PS1. While it does stumble a bit towards the latter-half and the story isn’t all that interesting, Resident Evil 2 is one of those games that you cannot stop thinking about once you pick it up.

46. The Movies (2005, PC)

Peter Molyneux is notorious for over-hyping his games, but the one time he actually struck pure gold has to be The Movies. As a business management sim, it’s pretty cool: you manage a movie studio, building sets, hiring star directors and actors (and keeping them happy), managing crew, and developing technology from the silent era up to the modern day. All this is decent enough for a game in its own right, but what catapults The Movies to the stratosphere is the in-game machinima tools that give you a lot of freedom to create your very own movies. I’m talking dozens and dozens of scenes (each with variants and customization options), systems to allow the characters to lip synch with any recorded audio, special effects, and a basic video editor. It’s a mind-blowing amount of freedom, to the point where I made a feature-length spy movie back in high school using The Movies.

45. Blasphemous (2019, Switch)

Sometimes a video game comes out which is just made for me. Blasphemous scratches so many of my itches: Metroidvania, Souls-inspirations, religious fanaticism, dark fantasy, blood, penitence… I picked it up in a sale a few years ago and I was glued to my Switch for a week straight, obsessed with journeying through this nightmarish civilization to prove my devotion to the faith. It isn’t doing much different than your average Metroidvania game, but it hits so many of my interests that I can’t help but adore it.

44. RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999, PC)

Like many other 90s kids, I got this game for free in a box of cereal. The game itself is the pinnacle of management sims, with a simple premise: build the amusement park of your dreams. Build attractions, setup decorations to make things more aesthetically pleasing, landscape to your liking, optimize your pathways, and design your very own rollercoasters (which, inevitably, will be too intense for the guests)! Each guest also has their own name, amount of money they’ll spend, and likes and dislikes which can help you tailor the park to maximize returns.

Of course, that’s all good if you’re playing the game as designed. You can easily turn RollerCoaster Tycoon into a psychopath simulation as well. Make vomit-inducing rides and then charge your guests to use the bathroom. Are guests mad that you charge them $5 to go for a piss? Grab ’em and throw them on punishment island, where they’ll angrily run in circles until you send the island into the ocean and drown everyone. Or, the classic option: build an unsafe rollercoaster and watch it crash and explode, killing everyone on board. You don’t have to be a dick in RollerCoaster Tycoon, but it’s a lot of fun that the game gives you the freedom to do so.

43. The Walking Dead (2012, PS3)

Telltale had been making narrative, episodic games since the mid-2000s, but they never really had any major hits, and their biggest swings (looking at you Jurassic Park) were considered fairly poor and did not make a splash. So, for a while, Quantic Dream’s games were the gold standard for narrative games, with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain being quite notable titles of their eras. However, even back then, the writing of those games was heavily criticized, but I (and many others) excused it, because we couldn’t really get these kinds of cinematic, narrative-based experiences elsewhere.

Then Telltale’s The Walking Dead came out, and Quantic Dream were obsolete overnight. The Walking Dead established a formula of narrative, choice-based games that Telltale would milk dry over the next few years, but The Walking Dead stands tall amongst them just due to the strength of the writing here. The tale of Lee and Clementine is unforgettable: an escaped convict stumbles across a little girl whose babysitter has been killed during a zombie apocalypse and takes her under his wing. The illusion of choice is very much a thing here, but it doesn’t really matter that much when the journey itself is so good. What makes it so good are not the big choices anyway, it’s the little ones – do you go all-out to protect Clementine, or do you try to preserve her innocence as best you can? No other video game has managed to make me cry like this one, and I imagine if I were to replay it now, after becoming a father, it would leave me absolutely devastated.

42. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004, PC)

I’ve been a Warhammer 40k fan for most of my life, and I can say with confidence that the original Dawn of War is still unsurpassed as far as 40k games go. An old-school RTS which innovated by putting the focus directly on getting you into combat, Dawn of War lets you engage in visceral, bloody, large-scale war with friends or AI opponents. Several factions were added in expansions, meaning that it is absolutely packed with content to try out. The game is still fully playable online to this day as well, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting together with friends recently to try to hold the line against high-level CPU teams hell-bent on annihilating us. It results in glorious carnage as your units rain gunfire and artillery down and chainswords rip through flesh. The modding community is also great, bringing in an entirely new, playable faction and removing the game’s unit cap for ultimate apocalypse mode.

41. Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires (2004, PS2)

I am not exaggerating when I say that I love Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires. I have poured countless hours into this game as I gleefully hack and slash my way through ancient China to reunite the land under my banner. Empires specifically is great, because it adds a level of grand strategy to Dynasty Warriors‘ usual formula, as each battle captures territory, makes new items available, allows you to recruit and capture officers, and gets you one step closer to conquering the nation. This change takes the rather repetitive combat of Dynasty Warriors and gives each battle a level of importance and resonance that it may otherwise lack, since each action you do is building towards a grander goal. The nature of the world map also means that no two campaigns will play out the same: you’re always going to have different enemy factions, different officers fighting with you, different territories to attack and defend at any given time, etc. I actually replayed the game on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro a few months ago, and it was like cuddling in a warm, familiar blanket again. Later games may have expanded the political gameplay, but this version of Empires will always have a special place in my heart.

40. Resident Evil 3 (2020, PS4)

My go-to answer for “most over-hated game of all-time”, I legitimately enjoy Resident Evil 3 remake more than Resident Evil 2 remake. This, once again, comes down to the non-gameplay aspects: the story in Resident Evil 3 is easily the best in the entire franchise. Jill is a fucking badass, Carlos is cool, Nikolai is a great secondary antagonist, and Nemesis is a terrifying, relentless monster. Resident Evil 3 plays like a PS3-era, cinematic action game in the vein of Dead Space 2, the sort of experience we rarely get these days when every game has to be open world and dozens of hours in length or it’s not worth gamers’ time. The runtime is fine for this sort of experience: the six-to-eight hours you spend are maximized for fun and spectacle, and I got significantly more enjoyment out of this than I did out of the bloated, two hundred hours spent toiling away in Fallout 4 (and I call bullshit on anyone who claims to have beat it in three hours unless they were specifically running through it as fast as possible). Plus it’s on sale all the time now, so price isn’t even a problem. Sure, it cuts some content from the original, but the original still exists: play ’em both, I say.

39. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (2015, PS4)

While the game has expanded in some wild directions since release, the core gameplay of Rainbow Six: Siege is one of the best multiplayer shooters I’ve ever experienced. I got in early, a few weeks after launch when the game was in a very rough state, and I was hooked due to how intense it was. As a defender, having to fortify your position while you can hear attackers breaching to get to you makes your heart beat fast and your palms sweat in anticipation of what’s to come. As an attacker, you have to watch every step you take as you try to get in as safely as possible. Each encounter is life-or-death, with instant kills coming frequently. The operators’ unique weapons and equipment fundamentally affect how this plays out and creates a mix-and-match system that makes every game unique. While I don’t really play competitive shooters much anymore and, as a result, I’ve effectively retired from Siege for good, my time with the game was easily some of the best experiences I’ve ever had in an online game.

38. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015, PS4)

With the glut of open world games we’ve gotten in the past decade, my opinions on The Phantom Pain have softened somewhat. Traversal quickly becomes a pain in the ass, as starting any mission will require you to get past multiple guard checkpoints, you always feel obligated to look for new soldiers to recruit for your base, and the side ops get extremely repetitive. That said, The Phantom Pain still stands out thanks to its fundamental gameplay systems. Stealth remains incredibly fun, all the wild and wacky gadgets at your disposal give you so many ways to mess with guards, and the guards actually learn and start to counter your tricks, forcing you to change things up regularly. In spite of its problems, it’s still a great sandbox experience and a solid send-off to the greatest saga in gaming.

37. Mass Effect 2 (2011, PS3)

While Mass Effect 3‘s ending soured the entire franchise, Mass Effect 2 at least remains one of the best action RPGs on consoles thanks to its fairly self-contained story. You’re basically tasked with putting together a team of specialists to go on a suicide mission. The first twenty or so hours are just you recruiting your team, getting to know them, preparing your ship and equipment, and (most importantly) growing emotional connections to your entire crew. We then get one of the best finales in gaming as your team plunges into the gauntlet and your decisions over the course of the game come to fruition. Depending on what you’ve done, one or more of your crew can die executing the mission, which is about as emotionally impactful as you would expect.

36. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999, PS1)

Shock! Horror! I liked both versions of Resident Evil 3! While I certainly have some issues with it compared to its predecessor, Nemesis is such a unique and ambitious game for its time period. Its scope is significantly wider than any previous Resident Evil game, allowing you to freely traverse an entire section of Raccoon City. The titular Nemesis is also downright scary here, barely operating within the limits of what you can reasonably deal with in Resident Evil‘s tank control scheme. The freedom and sense of risk/reward that this gives you is great – you can avoid fights with him if you want to, but if you choose to tough it out, you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your efforts. I remember when this game was considered the dark horse of the franchise, so seeing it get all the love after all this time is great to see.

35. Dead or Alive 2 (1999, PS2)

A couple months ago, I would have said that I liked Dead or Alive as a franchise, but I wouldn’t have had any of the games in my top fifty. Dead or Alive 2 changed that for me. The game is a massive improvement on its predecessor, adding in new characters, fun new mechanics, stage hazards and multi-level stages which wildly change how a battle looks and feels. The game is also simply packed to the brim with content, to a degree that we just do not get out of games anymore. It’s a simple enough game that anyone can pick it up, but deep enough that there’s a lot to learn and come to grips with if you really want to dedicate yourself to learning. Like I said in my recent Love/Hate series, I’m so glad that I decided to check the older games in this franchise out, because they were a real joy to get to experience.

34. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015, PS Vita)

Hotline Miami 2 is largely more of the same from its predecessor, but when that game had one of the most addictive and replayable gameplay loops of any game, that’s nothing to sniff at. Hotline Miami 2 is hypnotic: an acid trip of colour, blood, ultraviolence, synthwave, and pure focus. You will die over, and over, and over again as you try to perfect your killing spree and get through each area unscathed. This results in a ballet of bullets as you mow down enemy gangsters with dual SMGs, throw your empty gun to stun a guy, then slash their jugular open with a blade you picked up, then throw that blade into another guy’s head, grab another weapon to keep going, etc. All this coming as you die, hone your approach, die again, and so on until you have it down perfectly.

33. This War of Mine (2014, PC)

This War of Mine threads the extremely delicate line between entertainment and art with a serious message and, in my opinion, the results are poignant. Meant to act as a commentary on international conflicts and of the military shooters of the day, you play as a small group of survivors caught in an active warzone trying to survive to see peace return once more. You have to balance your survivors’ sleep, hunger, and morale, and developing your safehouse to be able to produce heating, supplies, and to be able to defend against looters. Then, at night time, it’s safe enough to sneak out and try to scavenge for supplies… but be careful, because you’re not the only one trying to survive…

Then there’s the heavy choices. Supplies are going to start drying up real quickly. Do you risk confronting other scavengers who may be hostile? Do you enter an area with ongoing exchanges of gunfire to risk getting to supplies that haven’t been picked over yet? Do you try to break into a gang’s well-stocked safehouse to steal their supplies? Or do you break into a defenseless old couple’s home and steal their supplies to keep yourself alive? If neighbours ask for help, will you give up some of your rations and medicine to help them? And, if you have children in your safehouse, how do you keep them safe and innocent in the face of all this? This War of Mine leaves these choices up to you, and only makes them harder as disease and winter set in, making you really test the limits of your morals. It’s a one-of-a-kind survival experience, and I implore you to check it out.

32. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (2001, PS2)

Shattered Skies is a special game for me. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a pilot instructor. One of my earliest memories was flying with my grandfather in his two seater airplane and looking down at the world below us. Probably due to this connection, my aunt bought me a copy of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies as a gift. I wasn’t particularly interested at the time, but eventually decided to give it a try, and quickly became mesmerized.

On the gameplay front, Shattered Skies is an arcadey military air combat game where you’ll be dogfighting, shooting and bombing ground targets, and sometimes flying dangerously low to avoid radar and airburst artillery. The gameplay is actually way more varied than you’d expect for this kind of game and makes for a game that never gets old. You also get access to dozens of airplanes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and customization options, which let you tailor them to each mission you find yourself in.

What really makes Shattered Skies so good though is its shockingly mature story – and I don’t mean that in the “rated M for mature” sense, I mean that this is some legitimately great stuff. The story is told from three perspectives: 1) the big picture, war room briefing perspective, which tells you about the progress of the war between ISAF and Erusea; 2) the in-game story of Mobius 1, who you control and turn into a legendary fighter ace over the course of the game; 3) the story of a grown man recounting his experience as a boy growing up in occupied San Salvacion. This third story is where the real emotional punch of Shattered Skies comes in, as we see his family killed as collateral damage in the war after the Erusean Yellow Squadron shoots down a plane, which crashes into their house. Despite hating the occupiers, he grows to have a strained relationship with some of the fighter aces in Yellow Squadron who are based in the city. While Yellow Squadron clearly have empathy for the boy and want to be seen as more than just occupiers, you get the sense that they are legitimately saddened when he has to stand up to them in order to protect a friend in the resistance. This more personal perspective of your enemies makes it a bittersweet moment when we have to face Yellow Squadron in battle as Mobius 1 and shoot them down one-by-one. It’s a shockingly clever and tragic way to lend emotional stakes to what would otherwise be standard air combat gameplay. This whole story makes Shattered Skies so much more than the sum of its parts, and is easily one of the best-written stories in video games.

31. Resident Evil 2 (1998, PS1)

I knew that Resident Evil 2 was celebrated back in the day, but I didn’t really realize just how good it was until I finally played it earlier this year. Given its placement here on the list, I also clearly liked it quite a bit more than its more polished and popular remake. I just love the way that Resident Evil 2 feels and plays: nearly everything good about the remake is intact here, and in some ways (such as the story and branching playthroughs) it’s even better. It’s incredibly impressive for a PS1 game and by far the most fun entry in the “classic” era of Resident Evil.

30. Resident Evil (2002, GC)

While Resident Evil 2 is the best of the classic era, the remake of the original Resident Evil is arguably the best distillation of the Resident Evil formula we’ve ever gotten, largely thanks to the changes and improvements it brought after six years of iteration. The original Resident Evil was a very rough and unrefined game: full of cool ideas, but lacking in the execution. REmake realizes that potential and then some, with graphics that still look fantastic today that help bring the oppressive atmosphere of the Spencer Mansion to life. The remake also makes several changes to the original game which keep things surprising to veterans and improve the overall layout of the mansion in the process. The Crimson Heads are the most notorious example of this, providing a nasty surprise to new players who are too liberal with their firearms usage, and adding a whole other layer of strategy as you have to figure out which bodies to burn before they reanimate as even more dangerous enemies.

29. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010, PS3)

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it may seem kind of weird to rank a Battlefield game so highly, because a Battlefield game is just another Battlefield, right? Bad Company 2 was special. Like Battlefield 3, this game was really designed for rush, and charging in with your teammates to take the MCOM stations was as intense as it was fun. Bad Company 2 also featured a level of destruction that no Battlefield game since has dared attempt to replicate: nearly every building can be blown apart or leveled entirely. While some argue that this makes the map kind of boring once all the buildings are gone, I call those people cowards: flushing defenders out of Arica Harbour with a series of tank shell strikes was a literal blast. The game also had some fantastic maps which, when they’ve shown up in subsequent Battlefield titles, have given me a rush of nostalgia that I’ve rarely felt for anything else. It’s a shame that the game was shut down for good last year, but the memories live on forever.

28. Dead Space (2008, PS3)

Dead Space is the best franchise to arise from the glut of Resident Evil 4 clones, and it’s not even close. A mixture of Event Horizon, The Thing, and Alien, this first game brings terror to the corridors of the Ishimura as you try to stay alive against hordes of necromorphs and find out what happened to your girlfriend, who was stationed on the ship. The core gameplay gimmick is inspired for a horror game of this nature: simply shooting a necromorph is insufficient to kill it, you need to blast their limbs off to immobilize them. Combined with limited resource survival gameplay, stasis blasts to slow enemies, kinesis to throw objects at your foes, and a good ol’ fashioned curb stomp when all else fails, the core gameplay of Dead Space is rock solid.

27. Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012, 3DS)

Fire Emblem: Awakening came out at a difficult time for the long-running franchise. Sales for the last couple entries had been underwhelming, so Intelligent Systems had one last chance to right the ship before the series went on ice for good. With this in mind, the developers threw the kitchen sink at Awakening, trying to make the biggest, best Fire Emblem of all-time, if only to give it a proper swan song. Luckily, their efforts paid off and Awakening gave the franchise a second life. While it largely plays like any other Fire Emblem game (turn-based tactics gameplay, RPG elements, perma-death, etc), Awakening‘s big new feature was an expansion of the relationship system to allow two of your soldiers to have children, who will inherit traits from both of them. This allows for some really fun and unique combinations, which work just as much for roleplayers as they do for min-maxers. While some fans have bemoaned this addition, claiming it turned Fire Emblem into a waifu simulator, I think that that opinion is fucking dumb. Awakening is a great game and, in my opinion, the most fun Fire Emblem I’ve played thus far.

26. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009, PS3)

I really enjoyed the original Uncharted when it came out, a lot more than most people who played it in fact. I loved the characters, the gameplay, and the story, so I was excited to see how Naughty Dog would up their game for the follow-up. What I was not expecting was for Uncharted 2 to absolutely blow everyone’s expectations out of the water and be widely considered the game of the year for 2009.

Uncharted 2 plays like its predecessor, but with some key refinements. The game is overall just bigger: more grand spectacle, bigger set-piece moments, more characters, more complex story. As much as I liked Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher in the first game, they really come into their own here, and I love that Naughty Dog didn’t take the easy route of having their pulp hero have a new love interest in every game.

And that’s it for part two. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then the final part will be up tomorrow!

If you liked this article…

My Top 100 Games of All-Time (100-51)

November 30, 2024November 15, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been seeing people on social media posting Topsters lists of their favourite video games, which has gotten me thinking about the topic. It got to the point where I put together my own quick-and-dirty list on Bluesky, but that didn’t really leave me all that satisfied. You see, for about twenty years now I’ve been using IMDb to track and rate every movie I’ve seen in that time. It’s actually been pretty useful for me, and I can easily look back and get a rough idea of what movies I’ve seen and what my thoughts were on them. This put me on a journey to try to do the same for every video game I’ve ever owned and/or played, which led me to a site called Backloggd. Having spent a couple weeks recounting every game I can remember playing, I’ve now got a big list of nearly four hundred games I’ve played (four hundred!? GOOD GOD). That’s a big enough library that I can legitimately put together a top one hundred games of all time list… so why not do just that?

A few notes before we start: first, I’m not going to include compilations here (so no Master Chief Collection, Tetris & Dr. Mario, Super Mario All-Stars, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, etc). The upper-echelons of the list would probably be dominated by compilations, and that just doesn’t feel fair to the legacies of the individual games. Secondly, I’m not going to make this “one game per franchise” like I would if this were, say, a top twenty-five. If your franchise is good enough to get multiple entries, then you’ll get that representation (although a sequel that basically invalidates its predecessor’s existence will likely push prior entries off the list entirely). Thirdly, this is wildly subjective and, by its nature, only based on the games that I’ve actually played. As a result, I guarantee you that I have not played some all-time classic that you love. Please tell me how much you hate me for not including it down in the comments below.

Got it? Let’s get onto the list then…

100. Echochrome (2008, PSP)

A fun, quirky, minimalist little puzzle game on PSP where you have to rotate a 3D maze in order to change perspectives and allow a mannequin to reach the exit. Can be a bit finnicky with its controls, but it’s such a unique and striking premise that I can’t help but love it.

99. Theme Hospital (1997, PC)

This business simulation game was a blast back in the day, but what really made it stand out from the crowd was the various wacky ailments your hospital would have to treat.

98. Peter Jackon’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (2005, PS2)

In the annals of licensed video games, King Kong was easily one of the best. 90% of the time it’s a tense, immersive first person shooter where you struggle to survive against the monsters of Skull Island. For a glorious 10% of the time, you turn the tables and become Kong, beating the ever-living crap out of every monster that had been harassing you up to that point. The game was also just legitimately revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of immersion, with no HUD to speak of and direct involvement from Peter Jackson himself.

97. Guacamelee! (2013, PS Vita)

A joyous, lucha libre-themed Metroidvania. I remember trying a demo of the game when I was on a vacation in Atlanta and immediately deciding that I was going to buy this game when I got back.

96. Pokémon Diamond (2006, DS)

The fourth generation of Pokemon is probably my favourite of them all (and I say this as someone who stopped at gen two and came back for gen six, so this isn’t nostalgia speaking). The physical/special split was revolutionary for the gameplay and the difficulty was legitimately challenging. Granted, Diamond makes the list largely because I have not gotten around to playing Pokemon Platinum yet. When that happens, I expect Diamond to drop off and Platinum to move higher up, as it’s generally considered vastly superior to the other two Sinnoh games.

95. Vigilante 8: Second Offense (1999, PS1)

Car combat is one of those genres which are dominated by one big franchise (Twisted Metal), and the rest are a bunch of forgettable rip-offs. Vigilante 8: Second Offense is the closest anyone ever came to stealing the crown, with its significantly better graphics and interesting innovations. Who cares about any of that though: on the Arizona stage, you can cause a meteor to strike the arena, which will send any nearby cars flying and then a giant ant comes out which attacks everyone on sight. Entire evenings were spent in our household on this one level as we blasted each other and this giant, fuck-off ant over and over again.

94. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, PS2)

Another Peter Jackson licensed game makes my top one hundred! The Return of the King game is a fairly simple hack ‘n slash by modern standards, but it sure is fun and miles better than it had any right being.

93. Assassin’s Creed 2 (2009, PS3)

At the time of its release, Assassin’s Creed 2 was a revolutionary experience, perfecting the half-baked formula of its predecessor, and featuring an interesting narrative with a protagonist who was surprisingly endearing. At the time, I would have easily put Assassin’s Creed 2 much higher on this list. However, only one game later, I was halfway through Brotherhood, when I suddenly found myself completely done with this series’ structure of “travel halfway across the city to your mission, then travel halfway across the city to complete the objective”. I still think Assassin’s Creed 2 is good enough to warrant a spot in the list, but oh how the mighty have fallen.

92. Freedom Fighters (2003, PS2)

Freedom Fighters is a legitimately revolutionary game for its time. It starts out as a pretty terrible third person shooter due to its wildly inaccurate weapons. However, it soon evolves into something special, as you start being able to command an ever-growing number of squadmates, until you’re eventually commanding a dozen guys into massive battles against tanks and helicopters as you attempt to liberate an occupied USA.

91. The Sims 3 (2009, PC)

I wasted way too many hours in university playing The Sims 3 that I should have been spending on homework and socializing. Oh well, it’s not like I wasn’t enjoying myself.

90. Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015, PS4)

I reviewed the first Tomb Raider reboot game back when it came out and, as much as I enjoyed it, it clearly was a bit rough around the edges. Rise of the Tomb Raider largely smoothed off the rough edges and made for a much more refined and enjoyable experience overall.

89. Bioshock Infinite (2013, PS3)

Another one of those games that probably would have ranked a lot higher at one point, Bioshock Infinite still impresses due to its amazingly-realized world and mind-bending story. Hell, the game spends a lot of time just being a walking simulator and, honestly, that’s when it’s at its best. The shooting gameplay’s pretty rough, which does lower its overall quality somewhat, but Booker and Elizabeth’s adventure remains as unforgettable as ever.

88. James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004, PS2)

Everyone’s got a favourite James Bond video game, but for my money, Everything or Nothing is the GOAT. An early third-person cover shooter, this game was hard as nails back in the day. Its plot was pretty over-the-top, but considering it was coming out after Die Another Day, I guess that was just par for the course for Pierce Brosnan’s Bond. Honestly, the craziest thing about it was probably that Shannon Elizabeth was a Bond girl, but then again, so was Denise Richards during the Brosnan era, so what do I know?

87. Future Cop: LAPD (1998, PS1)

Future Cop‘s single-player gameplay is fun enough – blast away violent criminals, gangs, and cultists from the comfort of your transforming mech. However, what really pushes it over the top is its multiplayer mode, Precinct Assault, which is basically a proto-MOBA: get points for killing enemies and capturing neutral territory, use these points to buy bases, defensive units, and offensive units, which will attempt to enter your opponent’s home base. First side to get an offensive unit inside the enemy’s home base wins. It makes for an endlessly addicting, back-and-forth struggle to come out on top.

86. EarthBound (1994, SNES)

This cult classic is largely memorable for its quirky humour and writing, which does away with the JRPG conventions of the time, instead featuring a bunch of psychic children fighting gangs of weirdos in the 1990s.

85. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999, PC)

Man, you had to be there back in 1999, chopping down trees, mining stone and iron, and then marching out your massive armies to go obliterate your opponents’ base while the horns of war sound.

84. Total War: Warhammer III (2022, PC)

…and then we have the ultimate evolution of the epic RTS, Total War: Warhammer III. Total War has been producing jaw-dropping battles for decades, but the Warhammer games unshackled that formula from the limits of history and into glorious dark fantasy. Warhammer III gets the placement here by default since it allows you to bring in all previous factions and DLCs into one enormous world map to conquer. It’s a staggering amount of content on offer and makes for an overwhelmingly massive sandbox to play in.

83. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018, Switch)

And speaking of overwhelmingly massive, Smash Ultimate is probably never going to be surpassed in the fighting genre in terms of sheer roster size and content on offer. The core gameplay is as simple and fun as ever, making for a great pick-up and play experience with your friends and enemies.

82. XCOM 2 (2016, PC)

Confession: I kind of hated XCOM 2 on launch. I had loved XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but the guerilla ops of vanilla XCOM 2 just didn’t jive with me and the RNG felt way off. However, after War of the Chosen released, I decided to give it another look, and it sank its hooks into me deep, to the point where I can’t really see myself going back to the original game anymore. The modding scene is also pretty incredible, allowing you to deck out your soldiers as Space Marines, Solid Snake, and even Helena Douglas and Hitomi from Dead or Alive.

81. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001, PS2)

I have my issues with Metal Gear Solid 2, but in the eight years since I wrote about it, the game has only managed to become even more relevant. Even if it’s not a game I’d particularly want to go back and play at a moment’s notice, I find myself thinking about it all the time, which is a level of longevity you really can’t say about a lot of media two decades from release.

80. Bully (2006, PS2)

Billed as “Grand Theft Auto in a school” at a time when anti-bullying campaigns and the Grant Theft Auto moral panic were at their height, Bully is nowhere near as controversial as it may sound. In fact, you’re the one bringing down the bullies (although you can wedgie the nerds if you want to be a dick).

79. Death Road to Canada (2016, Switch)

A hilarious and addictive zombie survival roguelike, Death Road to Canada is the definition of a “just one more run” game.

78. Journey (2012, PS3)

One of the early, undeniable examples of “games as art”, Journey is a short, thoughtful, gorgeous experience.

77. Super Mario Bros. (1985, NES)

The quintessential 2D platformer, Super Mario Bros. is still a great game even today. Hell, its plethora of secrets are so well-ingrained in the collective conscious, that it’s easy to forget how truly mind-blowing all the hidden blocks and warp pipes really are for a forty year old game.

76. Dead or Alive 3 (2001, XB)

Oh hai, Ayane! Dead or Alive 3 is a gorgeous, spectacular, and downright fun fighting game, which really stands out due to its awesome stage designs.

75. Minecraft (2011, PC)

You don’t need me to explain what Minecraft is, right? I actually only started playing it this year as a bonding activity with my son. As cool as it is to see our world get built piece-by-piece, it’s even more exciting getting to see him learn and get to grips with how to play games in the process.

74. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009, PS3)

Very few games reach the level of blockbuster hype that Modern Warfare 2 achieved, and it lived up to that hype and then some. The campaign is explosive and exciting. The notorious “No Russian” mission is still referenced today, fifteen years later. The multiplayer was also a massive evolution, bringing in dual-wielding and even faster gameplay than its predecessor.

73. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998, N64)

Whenever we’d visit my cousins, the first thing we’d do is fire up their N64 and play a few levels of Rogue Squadron. Flying around in various Star Wars vehicles and dogfighting Tie Fighters is a joy, and it’s still just as fun today.

72. Lollipop Chainsaw (2012, PS3)

A perfect example of how gameplay isn’t everything, Lollipop Chainsaw demonstrates the power of leaning into style. The combat is kind of janky and overly-simplistic, and the enemies are downright rude, but when you’re bopping to pop hits while chopping zombies to bits and the entire screen is turning rainbow, it’s hard to not have a great time.

71. Among Us (2018, PC)

It can be easy to forget due to all the memes and merch which have flooded the public conscious, but at its core, Among Us is a fun social deduction game. Seeing how your friends react under pressure is fascinating, and trying to off them as an imposter gets you sweating like no other game can when your friends are trying to figure out who did it.

70. Life Is Strange (2015, PS4)

At a time when the market was saturated with Telltale narrative games, Life Is Strange stood out with its unique time travel powers and bold writing choices.

69. Pokémon Black Version 2 (2012, DS)

I maintain that the fifth generation of Pokémon was a fairly messy one, but they got the balance between fresh experiences and wild ambition far better for Black 2 and White 2. It largely continues the gameplay improvements from gen four, but adds a ridiculous amount of content, while providing a completely remixed map from Black and White and brand new story.

68. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990, MSX2)

I will never stop banging the drum that Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an underrated masterpiece. Many of the things Metal Gear Solid was hailed for were present here in their infancy eight years earlier.

67. Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005, PS2)

Star Wars: Battlefront II was a wild game, especially considering it came out only a year after its predecessor. It adds more maps. It has a progression system to upgrade your weapons. It makes heroes playable, and adds significantly more. It completely overhauls the flight system from the previous game, adding full-on space battles where you can dogfight, blow up critical ship systems, or board the enemy ship and cripple it from the inside. It was just a massive game with a scope and scale beyond many modern games that I sank countless hours into back in the day.

66. Pokémon Crystal (2001, GBC)

Back when I was a kid, gen two was the pinnacle of Pokémon, a massive improvement upon its predecessors and a shockingly expansive game for a tiny little Game Boy cartridge. Of the gen two games, Crystal was easily the definitive version, hence its placement on the list.

65. Left 4 Dead 2 (2009, PC)

Left 4 Dead 2 was controversial prior to launch, due to releasing only a year after its predecessor. However, as soon as it arrived, all complaints were washed away in a sea of undead. Left 4 Dead 2 is a fun co-op action experience, made all the better due to its AI director who makes every playthrough unique and tense.

64. Halo 3 (2007, XB360)

Halo 3 is a damn good time, with the best gunplay of the original trilogy. If not for some personal gripes about the story, I’d probably rank this significantly higher.

63. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (2002, GBA)

The last Fire Emblem game to not get an international release, The Binding Blade has some fan translations which are easily accessible and which help make the game playable for English-speakers. Its sequel would be fairly dumbed-down for the western audience who weren’t used to the series’ gameplay, but for those itching for a larger, more challenging experience, The Binding Blade is just what you asked for.

62. Civilization IV (2005, PC)

The last Civilization to retain the series’ “classic” structure, Civilization IV is possibly my favourite single entry in the franchise. However, its successors have taken the overall experience so far that I am not sure if I could ever actually go back to this game. This made it a bit hard to rank for me as a result, but I think that its more classic Civ gameplay gives it a somewhat unique place and its legacy deserves some recognition.

61. Battlefield 3 (2011, PS3)

While there’s a palpable sense that Battlefield 3 was taking a bit too much influence from Call of Duty, this game was an incredible experience back in the day. This was also the last time that DICE prioritized my favourite game mode, rush, and some of the rush maps here were incredible.

60. Dead Space: Extraction (2009, Wii)

Extraction is leagues better than it has any right to be. A rail shooter spin-off for the Wii of all things, Extraction tells an entertaining and surprisingly well-paced story about the fall of Aegis VII and the Ishimura.

59. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey (2019, PS4)

Whenever I bring up memorable video games, I always go back to Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. To some degree, this game is kind of crappy… there’s basically no explanation of its mechanics, extremely repetitive gameplay, and very simple combat. You will struggle to make it more than a few hundred meters from your home without your ape having a panic attack (oh hey, just like real life!). You will be killed by predators out of nowhere and you will miss multiple jumps and fall to your death. These deaths are permanent, mean one less ape in your colony, which is already teetering on the edge of extinction.

However, you will eventually begin to get to grips with the mechanics. You’ll learn how to move around so as to avoid danger. You’ll learn how to make tools to make things easier for yourself and to fight back against the predators. You’ll start trekking out further and further from your home. You’ll learn to communicate with your troupe and start forming armed, roving gangs for safety. Soon, this massive jungle you’ve been exploring won’t seem so massive.

What really cemented the game for me was when I decided to climb the father tree, the largest tree in the jungle. I was carefully making my way up this massive trunk, climbing into the clouds, giving myself literal vertigo due to the sheer height. I reached the top and the entire world stretched out before me. There were so many more places left to explore, and I’d barely scratched the surface of it all…

…oh, and then I had to figure out how to climb back down. Truly an unforgettable game, far more than the sum of its parts, even if it takes a lot of patience to find the gold within.

58. Battlefield 4 (2013, PS4)

While the first six months were unacceptably bad, Battlefield 4 is now arguably the best Battlefield game on the market. Packed with tons of weapons and maps to engage in large-scale war on, I poured hundreds of hours into this game at the peak of my obsession with online shooters.

57. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (1991, SNES)

Turtles in Time is a great beat ’em up, but it’s one of those games that cements its legacy with one simple mechanic: you can grab enemy Foot soldiers and throw them at the camera. This would be cool enough as-is, but the cherry on top is that this is how you have to damage multiple bosses. Fuck yeah.

56. Fallout 3 (2008, PS3)

Fallout 3 came out at the perfect time, back when the open world game was still special, and when the Fallout universe hadn’t been explored in a decade. It made for a really evocative and unique experience that can’t really be recaptured now that everyone knows what Fallout looks and sounds like.

55. Twisted Metal 2 (1996, PS1)

In terms of pure gameplay, Twisted Metal 2 may just be the pinnacle of the series, with some iconic maps, lots of fun characters to play, and entertaining weapons to blast your friends to smithereens.

54. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017, PS4)

I really love RE7. I love how it mixes the long-forgotten, classic Resident Evil gameplay with modern horror conventions to create a truly fresh, terrifying experience. This is easily the scariest Resident Evil has ever been.

53. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004, PS2)

Pandora Tomorrow was my first Splinter Cell game and it immediately cemented my love for this franchise and stealth games in general. Shooting out lights, hiding in shadows, using gadgets, and generally just fucking around with your enemies is as fun as ever.

52. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (2002, PS2)

Oh hey, remember how I said we’d get multiple games from the same franchises on this list? Well, I had a really hard time picking between Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow, but I had to give the original game the slight edge, due to preferring its story campaign just a tad more (sadly, I never got to play the multiplayer in Pandora Tomorrow, so I can’t comment on that).

51. Hitman 2 (2018, PS4)

IO Interactive’s modern Hitman trilogy is a stunning accomplishment. Create a vibrant, expansive, multi-level open sandbox, throw at least two targets into it, then set you loose to figure out how to kill them in a manner that suits you best. The sheer level of freedom is jaw-dropping and the ways that the world will react to your actions is remarkable to see. I’ve only played the first two of these games, but Hitman 2 gets the edge for me due to its more creative scenarios.

And that’s it for part one. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then part two will be up tomorrow!

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Dead or Alive: Final Thoughts (BONUS)

November 23, 2024November 23, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Whoo, that was quite the journey I just went through. Dead or Alive is such a weird fixation for me. I got into it through its shared universe with Ninja Gaiden and really got into it after falling in love with the shockingly fun movie adaptation. After that, it started turning into a meme on this blog and now I’ve gone and played every game in the franchise and bought copies of most of them. Oh yeah, that happened over the course of writing this Love/Hate series: I had a couple Dead or Alive games already, but I had so much fun that I went and purchased a whole Xbox One and all the mainline Dead or Alive games just to make them mine forever.

So yeah. I was fond of Dead or Alive when I started this journey. Now, I legitimately and proudly love this series. I still am not very good at fighting games, but I feel satisfied that I now understand how these games play. Hell, I’ll even say there’s a Dead or Alive in my all-time favourite games now. I’m so glad that I got to experience these games for myself, because it’s been an absolute blast. Of course, there’s only so much I can cover in a Love/Hate series, and I’ve got a lot of thoughts that fall outside of the purview of that format that I need to talk about.

Favourite DOA Ladies

I mean, this is a discussion about Dead or Alive, I obviously have to give my ranking of the ladies!

S-tier: Hitomi, Momiji.
- Hitomi’s pretty obvious: she’s my main and I love her look and feisty, playful personality.
- Momiji is gorgeous and from Ninja Gaiden, so she’s got a pretty big leg up on the competition.
A-tier: Ayane, Helena, Kasumi.
- I LOVE Ayane, so the fact that she’s in A-tier should show just how much I love the S-tiers. Ayane’s just the best-written character in Dead or Alive, full-stop. The way that her tragic backstory resonates through her actions, character, and sense of duty is clear, but not shoved in your face constantly. Seeing that sense of duty force her to put down her own adopted father was tragic. Seeing her take down DOATEC with Ryu and Hayate was badass. She’s just the coolest.
- Helena’s over-the-top French accent is cute, she’s easy on the eyes, and she has a pretty cool fighting style, but the most interesting part about her is her place in the story. Seeing how she plotted against Victor Donovan’s faction over the course of three games was cool to piece together. This is especially true for DOA4, where finding out Helena’s role in the story was the big reward for beating all the other campaigns.
- Kasumi is not a particularly well-developed character across the course of this series, but I really have to appreciate how well she has held up as the face of this franchise. Her unwavering resolve and skill are admirable after all the shit she’s been through.
B-tier: Tina, Mila, Christie, Lisa, Misaki
- Tina’s the series’ most overt sex symbol, and I really appreciate that they just committed to it. She also seems like just the sweetest person in these games, telling her father that she’s glad that he still has dreams and ambitions, and encouraging Mila to pursue her own goals. Meanwhile, Tina’s just being the world’s best self-marketer, launching careers for herself in Hollywood, music, and modeling. And, again: communist.
- Mila is just so down to earth. She works in a diner, trains at a run-down gym, and dreams of being the best if she works hard enough.
- Christie is the series’ other overt sex symbol. She is a cold-hearted bitch who would kill you in a moment’s notice. Did I ever mention that I love bad women…?
- Lisa was a big surprise for me during this Love/Hate series. Before I started this, I found Lisa very dull. However, having played all the games, she’s actually really interesting. Her fighting style is really fun, her role in the story actually develops and gets intriguing, and she’s got some of the most over-the-top fanservice outfits in multiple games. It’s also just cool that one of the more important characters in this profoundly Japanese series is a black woman.
- Misaki’s just really cute. Not much else I can say.
C-tier: Nyotengu, Leifang, Honoka, Marie Rose
- Nyotengu is pretty alluring (again, I like bad women), but not enough to make it into a higher tier.
- Leifang I’ve always found kind of bland and forgettable.
- Honoka is so egregiously over-the-top that I kind of have to begrudgingly hand it to Team Ninja.
- Marie Rose’s overall design is very cute, I just wish that they weren’t clearly trying to evoke Lolita fetishists with it.
D-tier: Kokoro, Rachel, Rio, NiCO
- Before I started writing this Love/Hate series, I probably would have put Kokoro above Leifang in C-tier, as she was similarly bland to me. However, actually playing as her in these games has really made me dislike her. I just cannot get to grips with her fighting style, and got stuck on her campaign in Dead or Alive 4 for nearly forty minutes as a result. And then she’d show up in another fighter’s campaign and kick my ass over and over. Oh, and having basically no development or importance to these games’ narratives since her introduction makes her feel pointless. She’s just the blandest and most forgettable of the cast, only here because they wanted a geisha character, but forgot to make her do anything else.
- Rachel is just embarrassing. Why is this giant titty demon hunter woman fighting in bondage gear? It was dumb in Ninja Gaiden, and it’s still dumb here. Such an unsubtle attempt to be sexy that it loops back to being uninteresting.
- Rio’s so inessential and forgettable that I barely even consider her worth thinking about. It doesn’t help either that she doesn’t even look like she matches the art style of the other characters, which makes her feel entirely out of place.
- NiCO is an even-more egregious attempt to appeal to Lolita fetishists than Marie Rose. She looks like a literal child. Her overly-serious and sassy characterization make it seem like you’re getting lectured by a kid. Like, move over little girl, an adult’s coming through.

Favourite DOA Characters

Next we’ll look at all the Dead or Alive characters and rank them from most-to-least favourite. I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory:

Dead or Alive Games Ranked

Over the course of this Love/Hate series, I’ve definitely enjoyed some experiences more than others. Here’s how I would rank the series from best to worst:

S-tier: Dead or Alive 2
- Dead or Alive 2 was a blast even now. It would have been mind-blowing back in 1999. And the fact that Team Ninja immediately honed in on the triangle system: a way to make their fighting system unique and strategic. This has gone largely unchanged over the course of a quarter century, which is pretty wild to think. The Hardcore version in particular is jam-packed with content. This game has legitimately made a spot in my top twenty five video games of all-time list.
A-tier: Dead or Alive 3
- I did really quite like Dead or Alive 3. Its stages are so well-designed, that it’s a crime that none of its successors have even come close to matching it. Oh, and Hitomi was introduced here.
B-tier: Dead or Alive 5, Dead or Alive Dimensions
- I really like how Dead or Alive 5 modernized this series’ art style, gameplay, and presentation. I hate its DLC practices and how they infested the series from that point onwards.
- Dimensions was just fun and really remarkable for how well it played on a 3DS! Made it very easy to just laze around and get in a quick match.
C-tier: Dead or Alive 4, Dead or Alive 6
- Dead or Alive 4 is just… underwhelming to me. The story is really interesting. The gameplay just doesn’t feel as good as the previous two games, and the difficulty is borderline unfair at times.
- Dead or Alive 6 is fine. It’s the newest and flashiest game in the franchise currently, so that gives it a bit of an edge. However, its even more egregious DLC practices, its awful story, and its changes to the core gameplay make it fairly disappointing.
D-tier: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Dead or Alive, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2
- Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball doesn’t have a whole lot to do, but that’s kind of why it works better than its follow-ups. The whole thing feels a lot more relaxing – the game isn’t prodding you to accomplish some particular activity, or disincentivizing you from indulging in the more voyeuristic aspects of the game. You get to choose when you want to have a break in the core gameplay, and that’s pretty cool. Also, it really has to be said that this game’s sexy content is legitimately kind of wholesome. It feels a lot less leery or straight-up problematic like the later sequels would become.
- The original Dead or Alive is okay at best. It’s so archaic and indistinct that there isn’t a whole lot of appeal. Add in that the enemy AI cheats like mad, making winning an exercise in frustration, and this is definitely one of the hardest Dead or Alive games to go back to.
- Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is here almost entirely for being available on handheld. This makes the game so much easier to stay relaxed and invested in. That said, the game is still pretty poor and content-bereft…
- Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (and, by extension, Paradise) just gets the short end of the stick due to its grindy, tedious changes to the first Xtreme game’s formula. Could have potentially moved up for its more expansive activity roster (which has yet to be matched), but not being available on handhelds really makes this a tough sell.
F-tier: Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation
- Fuck this “game”.

How Would I Direct Dead or Alive 7?

Now this is a fun question! First-off, I’m going to be somewhat realistic here: a mainline Dead or Alive game is not a priority to Tecmo-Koei. They are not going to give a Dead or Alive game a high-tier AAA budget. An expansive, Street Fighter 6 story campaign is probably not on the cards. Nor are its graphics likely to be top of the industry again. And there’s no way that they’re going to allow you to scrap DLCs entirely. So, with a relatively realistic set of limitations in mind, here’s what I’d like to see in a new Dead or Alive game:

How would it play?

I think I would be happiest if Dead or Alive 7 played a bit more like Dead or Alive 3, or maybe 5 too. Gameplay-wise, DOA3 was probably the most fun I had, largely because it played pretty much identically to 2 and had the best, most unique stages. That said, Dead or Alive 3 might feel a bit slow compared to a modern fighter, so Dead or Alive 5 might be a little more to their taste. I think that the recent games’ attempts at making the fighting system accessible have been a good move, and are worth looking into further.

In addition, since Street Fighter 6‘s massive success, there’s the question of entire control shake-ups. It would be pretty cool if Dead or Alive 7 took this same approach, allowing an option to control your fighter more like an action game than a fighting game. I’m not certain how well this would work though – the balance of DOA‘s signature 4-point holds could get knocked out of whack if you could more easily predict what standard combo string would be coming next.

What about the break gauge?

I struggle with this one. I’m a bit meh on the break gauge in Dead or Alive 6, but does that mean it should be scrapped entirely, or can it be improved instead? After some deliberation, I think I’d say that scrapping it is for the best. It does add a bit more strategy in a match, but it can just take over the game, as it invalidates the triangle system entirely when used. More realistically, it just functions as a way to both introduce and balance the break holds system. I appreciate the attempt to innovate, but I just do not think it worked this time.

How much fanservice are we talkin’ here?

Having played through almost every game in this franchise, I think I can say with confidence that Team Ninja might have been onto something with Dead or Alive 6 when they decided to start toning down the sexy costumes.

Don’t crucify me yet!

I don’t want to see a Dead or Alive game remove all the suggestive content: it’s part of the series’ DNA at this point. However, looking back, mainline Dead or Alive games overtly embracing sexual content in-game wasn’t even a thing until after the Xtreme games came out. Since then, it’s generally been used as a way to sell cosmetics. I think that Dead or Alive 3 struck a good balance, but I wouldn’t be opposed to pushing even further than that either. That said, let Xtreme be where you push the envelope. You could legitimately make mainline Dead or Alive more appealing to non-fans and convince more people to check things out – you just have to be careful not to alienate the core fans in the process by playing it up in the marketing.

DLC plans?

While I obviously would like this game to just have everything being unlockable in-game, I’m gonna have to include some sort of DLC. Obviously, we scrap the scummy shit from DOA6 and VV. If we have to have DLC, then the costume DLC from DOA5 was at least fair: see costume you like, buy costume you like. Its only problem was the ridiculous price they demanded. After Core Fighters released, this also made the DLC stores an unnavigable nightmare.

Simply put, I would lower the price of the cosmetics drastically. Maybe even give a way to buy DLC costumes in game – at least that way you’re getting people invested and I find it actually kind of encourages spending some money for a costume you like. As far as DLC goes, I’d probably add a few characters, preferably guest characters rather than original characters. It always feels bad when you get a new character in DLC, then know very little about their personality or story until the next game comes along and shatters your interpretations. Guest characters would at least prevent this from happening. I’m also fine with the sort of costume bundles they released, so if people kept buying them, I’d keep offering them. That’s about the extent of the monetization for me.

If they forced me to do Core Fighters as well, then I’d be a hell of a lot less stingy. Bundle characters, stages, etc together a bit more and, obviously, more reasonably-priced.

What’s the story?

Dead or Alive 6 ended with a pretty heavy implication that Helena’s mother, Maria, had been resurrected. Because of this, I only have two reasonable choices: ignore it entirely, or make the next game’s narrative revolve around this plot point. I think it’s a really fitting development for the series. One of the big, unresolved plot points in the overarching Dead or Alive narrative is that Kokoro’s mother, Miyako, has some sort of relationship with MIST. However, we do not know the nature of this relationship, so there has been a lot of suspicion directed her way by Helena. Miyako is head of DOATEC Japan, so being associated with the villains of the series could have some pretty major implications.

So, all that said, what does Miyako have to do with Maria? Well, this is relevant to me, because it gives us an the emotional core you build the entire narrative around. We’ve got a story of two mothers and two daughters, who you can compare and contrast for stronger thematic and emotional resonance. You could probably work in other parent-child relationships into this narrative to make this even stronger (Hitomi and her father, Eliot and Gen Fu, Ayane and Honoka grappling with the knowledge of who their father was, etc), but I want Helena and Kokoro to be the main focus.

In regards to this A-plot, I would indeed have Maria be the unseen observer at the end of Dead or Alive 6. However, I want this to be a tragedy: Maria’s resurrection is everything that Helena has wished for, so it needs to be bittersweet when she gets it. Maria’s back, but she’s quickly losing herself. NiCO experimented significantly on Raidou, so it seems reasonable that she would do the same to Maria. I would imagine her having a procedure to make her like Alpha-152 (Kasumi’s super-powered clone from Dead or Alive 4). Over the course of the game, she is losing control, on the verge of losing herself forever and becoming an unknowable, angry energy entity. Shortly after the end of Dead or Alive 6, she is discovered by Miyako, who reaches out to Maria and tells her that she has the means to cure her affliction. Maria doesn’t particularly trust Miyako, but is desperate enough to accept her help…

I’m not going to get into all the plot details, but we’re going to make this take place about six months after Dead or Alive 6. Like Dead or Alive 5, the first half of the narrative will revolve around the tournament. I considered weaving the tournament and conspiracy plots together more directly, but I ultimately decided against it. I actually kind of like that the tournament gets to be its own thing in these narratives. It lets the tournament be one narrative arc with its own heroes and champions, while the conspiracy plot can have its own separate important characters. This ultimately means that you can have more central characters doing things without having to spread them all thin across a narrative trying to find something for them to do. I like how they handled this in DOA5 and 6, where you get a fair amount of build-up from the characters to show their motivations going into the tournament. In particular, I have some ideas to develop certain characters:

Tina’s thing in these games is that she always has a new venture she wants to launch using her appearance in the tournament to drum up interest. In Dead or Alive 6, it was a dream to become governor, until she found out that she’s too young to run. However… I want her to pursue this. Tina doesn’t seem like the sort to just give up. I want her to knuckle-down and say “No, I actually want this dream to come true” and start putting in the groundwork to win an election in five years. Her goal in the tournament will be to make people aware of the initiatives she’s taking to help people in her state.
Leon’s been absent from the narrative since DOA3, but I’d like to have him come back. Considering that his entire backstory and motivation revolve around his dead partner’s belief that Leon was the world’s strongest man, it kind of feels shitty if he’s not even participating anymore. I’d like him to be back, but it’s straight-up acknowledged that he has been training like a madman for the last couple years and is now a dark-horse favourite to win the whole thing.

The tournament itself is played out by the bracket so that we can get a clear picture of who participated and won or lost each fight. Participants and brackets in this tournament are:

And here’s how the tournament will play out:

Yup, an Eliot win! The kid’s been training for years and his entire storyline so far has been him uncertain if he’s good enough to complete. Let’s change that! Jann Lee’s on a two-tournament winning streak, and Diego’s the one guy who gave him a challenge last time. They’re clearly the two favourites, so I want them to both lose unexpectedly in the early rounds. This will open up the field for a character like Eliot to make it to the finals. By a similar token, Mila reaches the climax of her current arc by making it to the finals of the tournament against Eliot. Two games earlier, she was giddy and excited to be getting brought into the Dead or Alive community. Now, she’s the second-best amongst them all. Leon also does quite respectably for his big return.

Kokoro’s exit in the 3rd round would mark the continuation of the conspiracy plot, where her and Helena get mixed up with Miyako and Maria. Helena would be overwhelmed by this revelation, but quickly find that her mother’s mind is rapidly leaving her as MIST’s experiments take hold. The ninjas would also become involved at this point to try to thwart MIST’s newest activities. Basically, the story would have Helena have to defeat Maria and put her to rest, while Kokoro discovers that her mother is not a good person, but ultimately saves her life.

Who are the new characters?

So… I know I previously said “Hot DOA MILF, when?”, and Miyako and Maria are seemingly perfect for that… but I don’t really want to make them new staples on the roster. Miyako doesn’t strike me as a fighter if she hasn’t been involved in the past six tournaments already. Plus she doesn’t really approve of Kokoro’s involvement, so it just doesn’t fit the character for me. Maria also doesn’t really make sense as a fighter, but she’ll be the final boss when she turns into a being of pure energy like Alpha-152… so not really “hot DOA MILF” at that point, but she’d be unlockable. Dead or Alive games will typically include two new characters, one male and one female… I don’t really want this article to turn into “look at my OCs!” though, so we’re not going to get too far into the weeds.

Aaaand that about does it for my thoughts on Dead or Alive (for now). That said… I’m approaching 400 blog posts on IC2S… god fucking dammit, I’m going to be buying Venus Vacation Prism for a big, 400th blog post spectacular review, aren’t I…? It just went up for pre-order at the time of writing… God dammit. I legitimately have no interest in the game and hadn’t planned on playing it… but I feel like I have to for the memes once more?

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation

November 21, 2024November 1, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! For this final entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation. Remember how I said that there was a free to play version of Xtreme 3 on PC which evolved into something else? This is that “something else”. You can still see some of the bones of DOAX3 here (some assets, cutscenes, etc are pulled wholesale from it), but the game plays entirely differently and there has been significantly more content added. Being somewhat active in the DOA fan community, I’ve been aware of this game for a long time, but never had any desire to check it for a variety of reasons out until starting this Love/Hate series. What sorts of changes can we expect from a free-to-play version of Xtreme…? Read on to find out…

Despite being a free-to-play PC exclusive which has only released in Asian territories, there are (somehow) still two releases of Venus Vacation. The main version of the game is available through DMM Game Player, and there’s also a version available on Steam in Asian territories. Despite being the same game, each version has pretty substantial differences in content, with it being said that the Steam version is generally a year behind the DMM version. Confusingly, the game might also be in different languages, depending on where you ~~set your VPN~~ downloaded the game. There might be a version with English translated menus, but I played using a Steam version which was like 99% Japanese, so I was relying on fan guides and general fucking around to figure out what to do. For what it is though, I think I can give a fair opinion about my impressions after spending several hours on the game.

Love

Graphics – Might as well say it one last time: once again, the graphics for a Dead or Alive game are great. Moreso than any other game in the franchise, Venus Vacation‘s entire appeal revolves around its visuals, so it’s good to see that they nailed this aspect of the experience, since you’re going to be doing a lot of ogling.
Chibi Avatars!!!!! – One of the first things you see when you start this game is a big booba chibi Honoka bouncing on a volleyball. At first my reaction was “oh Team Ninja, never change”, but it was pretty cute. However, when you get into the game properly, all the girls have a few different chibi arts, and they are adorable. I’m not exaggerating when I say that these were far and away my favourite part of the entire game, to the point where I want to get stickers printed for all the mainline Dead or Alive girls.

Mixed

Gravure Videos – I’ve always complained that gravure videos are at odds with the design of the Xtreme games. They give you a very limited number of activities that you can complete in a single vacation and only some of these activities give you any incentive (ie, Zack dollars) to complete them. Gravure videos are the worst of all worlds by being barely interactive, short, and providing no incentive other than just letting you ogle the girls for a few seconds. Venus Vacation provides probably the best execution of the idea that I’ve seen thus far though, by making gravure videos unlockable rewards that you get for completing volleyball matches. Turning these into bonus rewards is such an obvious move that I have no idea why they didn’t do this earlier (actually, I do know why: because there’s already barely any content in the other Xtreme games). That said, this goes into mixed simply because it takes FOREVER to unlock them. After five hours of play, I had just unlocked my second gravure video, which is kind of nuts. The only reason I can see for this ridiculous grind is that you would unlock all the videos for all the girls in a week or two if you earned them at a reasonable rate, but that’s not really an excuse, is it? That’s just fucking the customer so you can keep making them run on the content treadmill forever.

Hate

Region-locked – Okay, at this point, there’s zero reason for Tecmo-Koei to be pulling this bullshit. Why is this only available in Asian markets? This is a free-to-play, digital download only, gatcha game. There’s no physical release that they need to pay up-front for production and distribution world-wide. As far as I can see, they would only need to pay localization costs for whatever regions they release the game in (and this is Tecmo-Koei, so that would just be for the menus, they have never given a shit about localizing the voice acting). And don’t give me shit about the “woke mob” freaking out and censoring the game: no one fucking cares about your titty appreciation game and we all know that this is true, because full-on porn games dominate Steam’s new releases. Venus Vacation isn’t even all that objectionable in terms of content (other than the fact that you can still poke the girls, and they respond negatively, but can’t do anything to stop you and get over it in a matter of seconds). I have a lot of negative thoughts about this game, but I think that there’s no reason why this game can’t be available worldwide. This is 100% on Tecmo-Koei being a bunch of morons.
- Now, this is just me speculating, but the only justifiable reason I can see for Venus Vacation to be region-locked at this point is possibly a strategic move on Tecmo-Koei’s part. As we’ve seen, the Xtreme games affected Dead or Alive‘s perception in the west. They did not sell very well here, and they had the knock-on effect of making the mainline fighting games sell worse too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tecmo-Koei are trying to manage that perception in case they decide to release another mainline game in the future. Meanwhile, the hardcore gooner audience will import or use a VPN to access the games which had primarily appealed to an eastern audience anyway. Tecmo-Koei still makes their money one way or another and only end up needing to focus on a smaller market in the process.
Basically No Gameplay – Here’s the biggest difference between Venus Vacation and any other Xtreme game… there’s basically no gameplay. Even Xtreme Beach Volleyball at least had people saying “cum for the boobs, stay for the volleyball”, but you can’t even say that here. Volleyball matches are played out automatically, so you just sit there watching the girls play. You’re basically trapped in DOAX3‘s owner mode the entire time, clicking through menus and watching everyone else getting to have fun. The only real influence you have over the match is getting your girls’ stats up, which is done by dressing them up in swimsuits with a higher rating. It’s the “gear level” bullshit you’ve seen in a thousand live service games, and it’s the entire game here. It makes every match basically pre-determined: you either have higher stats and win, or you have lower stats and lose. Which brings us to…
The Absolute Worst Games Industry Bullshit – To the surprise of no one, Venus Vacation is a full-on gatcha game, and the entire experience has been warped around that. You play volleyball matches to get crystals, which you then spend to spin the wheel and see if you get a better swimsuit to dress your chosen girl in, so that she can win more games of volleyball. Rinse and repeat. This props up several predatory systems:
- An energy bar which limits how many matches you can play without waiting for it to recharge (or paying to fill it back up instantly, of course). Energy is ridiculously stingy here: you initially get showered in it, but it very quickly slows to a crawl and lets you play a max of three-to-four matches in a single session before having to wait several hours to recharge.
- Crystals, which you use to roll for swimsuits. You get showered with them early, but the number you get dry up fast as you go (or, y’know, you can buy more…).
- Daily and weekly challenges and login bonuses to keep you on the grind treadmill and to encourage turning the game into a habitual activity.
- Blatantly overpowered swimsuits with awful drop rates in the low single-digit percentile. Power creep which has rendered older suits worthless, meaning that you have to bee-line the newest events and get their SSR suits in order to stay competitive.
- This is just the stuff I came across in my time playing, I’m sure there’s even more bullshit in play that I just never got a chance to interact with (and I know I got the “use your credit card to buy this digital currency!” pop-up more times than I can list). As a result of all this, you might notice that…
It’s Not About Having Fun, It’s About Compulsion – Like so many shitty fucking games of the last decade and a half, Venus Vacation isn’t a game about having fun, it’s a game that tries to get you addicted to its systems to get you paying money. Let me illustrate how ridiculous this gets here: you can fast-forward through the volleyball matches. Yes, the entire point of the previous games is just an obstacle to completing the grind for more gatcha spins, so you can (and will) skip as much as you can to avoid wasting more time. As bad as that is, then there’s the swimsuits. You’re gonna spin the wheel over and over again, getting swimsuits which are aesthetically pleasing, but completely worthless because they are not an SSR pull. If you play the game long enough, you just save up as many crystals as you can, because everything you can do is worthless outside of special events which drop the new SSR suits. You can’t even enjoy dressing your girls up in whatever suits you like most, because the gear-grind means that they’ve syphoned the fun out of goddamn dress-up. The worst part? I can feel the fucking hooks in me while playing. I wasn’t playing because I was enjoying myself. I was actively bored and getting more and more pissed off at the predatory systems in the game. And yet, I kept playing and skipping through everything, because I had a bunch of energy and didn’t want to waste it, because then I’d get less spins and have less chances to get a good suit. Again, none of this was designed to make you enjoy the game, it has been refined and engineered to make you keep playing. I fucking loathe this kind of design, so Venus Vacation would already be on my shit-list, but it gets an extra twist of the knife in, because…
This Isn’t Even Dead or Alive Anymore – There’s a lot of discontent in the Dead or Alive fan community towards Venus Vacation, because the mainline series has been basically abandoned in favour of this game:
- For one thing, after all the content which has been added, Venus Vacation doesn’t even feel like it’s a Dead or Alive game anymore. All the attention from Team Ninja has gone into original characters, to the point where there are eleven girls from the mainline games, versus twenty original characters. This gets worse when you consider that there are multiple, major characters from the mainline games still missing from the roster here (most notably, Lisa and Christie, although it’s also pretty bad that Mila is missing too… NiCO and Rachel, I care less about). That said… most of the new characters just do not interest me in the slightest. Their designs can largely be boiled down to anime tropes and/or fetish bait and, without a story campaign to really explore their character, we don’t get a whole lot of personality to explore.
- Making matters worse is the pure numbers here. Xtreme games have always been pretty cheap, utilizing the same, OG Xbox-era design with little in the way of improvement or ambition. Compare that to Dead or Alive 5 and 6, which clearly cost a lot of money to make and were actually aiming for a global market, meaning they had much higher distribution costs. From a purely-financial standpoint, can you blame Team Ninja for prioritizing this game over a much riskier mainline entry? No, but from the perspective of a fan of the franchise, it’s frankly disgusting that we’re probably not getting a new, mainline Dead or Alive game any time soon, all because this predatory game prints money at a fraction of the cost. Hell, I have my problems with the Xtreme games in general, but at least they succeeded at being very relaxing, chill experiences with enough gameplay to keep you entertained in short burst. Venus Vacation strips that all out in the name of squeezing money from you.

Frankly, I despise Venus Vacation. That’s mostly due to it representing the absolute worst of the modern gaming industry, but the fact that it has fucked the mainline Dead or Alive games just makes it all the more insulting (and just illustrates further how shit the games industry is in general). And, to illustrate this further, we recently got the announcement of Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme, a new game which is going to be a dating sim (oh yay, my favourite part about Xtreme)… and, as of the time of this writing, it’s looking very likely that none of the mainline girls are going to be in the game at all (edit: as expected, Honoka was the only character from the fighting games that made the cast, but she’s arguably more of an Xtreme character anyway). It’s also quite telling that “Venus Vacation” is getting top billing here – this is basically its own little franchise now. As a fan of Dead or Alive, I hate that this is where we’re at now. Through the course of this Love/Hate series, I genuinely came to love this world, its characters, and their relationships. It’s fucking trash, but it’s my trash, goddammit. Seeing it shunted away due to financial considerations is heart-breaking.

Man… I was not expecting this to make me so depressed. Fuck… can you cheer me up, Chibi Hitomi?

I knew I could count on you… *sniffle* Thanks…

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive 6

November 19, 2024November 1, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry we’ll be looking at the most recent mainline game in the franchise, Dead or Alive 6. This game has had a bit of a contentious history, largely due to its pre-release controversies. During the previews of the game, the fanbase damn near rioted, because they believed that Team Ninja were toning down the suggestive content (less skimpy outfits, no boob physics when it was first previewed, etc). Meanwhile, Team Ninja’s attempts to placate the core fans ended up pissing off the esports crowd they were trying to pander to in the first place with the infamous “core values” scandal. We’re now five years from release, how does this game, the current standard-bearer for Dead or Alive as a fighting franchise, hold up in 2024? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive 6 has a pretty straightforward release history by this franchise’s standards. There was just one release, that being on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. For this analysis I purchased the PC version… mostly because it was absolute hell trying to find a physical copy of the game in 2024 for a reasonable price. The closest Game Stop with a used copy was two hours away. Getting it on ebay would cost me $40+. No game stores or flea markets in a one hour radius had a copy. No one on Facebook marketplace within five hours had a copy for sale. It’s nuts that a game that came out relatively recently is that scarce. For the record, this also applies to Dead or Alive 5: Last Round. I was trying to find a copy to replace the one I sold, and it is simply impossible to find. Tecmo-Koei must have made some really small production runs of the game, or they destroyed a lot of unsold copies or something, because I had a way easier time finding copies of the first four games that came out twenty years ago than I did for games that came out less than ten.

Love

New Costumes – Presumably, because Dead or Alive 6 was courting the esports scene, they chose to tone down the sexuality of most of the female characters’ default costumes. Fret not – most of the “classic” outfits are still in the game, and there’s still plenty of sexy costumes here (Tina’s default costume is proof enough of that… and if that’s not enough for you, you can unlock Christie’s bondage gear outfit too). That said: I actually really like most of the new default costumes they’ve introduced. In particular: the new ninja bodysuits for Kasumi and Ayane, and Helena’s dress? These are fucking hot without having to take the path of least resistance by showing a bunch of cleavage. I also quite like Kokoro and Leifang’s new costumes.
Tina is a Lefty – After using Dead or Alive as a springboard to a career as a model, movie star, and rock star, Tina sets her sights on becoming governor (it is left unclear which state she would be governor of). While training with Zack, she tells him, completely unprompted: “When I become the Governor, I wanna give the young ones more hope in the future! Welfare is also important. We have to make the lives of the children better!” C-comrade Armstrong!? Tina is actually based as fuck!? I think my heart just skipped a beat. Legitimately: I already liked Tina before this game, but that one moment made her so much more attractive to me.

Mixed

The Graphics – I wasn’t really expecting this, but the more I played of DOA6, the more I came to feel that this game’s graphics are a bit of a mixed bag. Dead or Alive has had the best graphics of any fighter for most of its history, but by the time DOA6 released, the AAA fighting competition had really stepped up their game. Mortal Kombat X and 11, Soulcalibur VI, Tekken 7… the competition of “best looking fighter” hasn’t been stiffer for Dead or Alive, and I don’t think Team Ninja have really managed to keep up with them. On the one hand, the character models do look quite nice and I appreciate the more saturated colours compared to DOA5. However, the characters have this soft, almost plasticky look to them which I find off-putting. In addition, while the character models look pretty good, the environments, NPCs, etc are noticeably worse, especially in the story cutscenes. I’m talking models and textures that are reminiscent of PS3-era games in some cases; it reminds me of Resident Evil 6‘s mish-mash of art styles and effort.
Break Gauge – I haven’t really mentioned any gameplay changes since Dead or Alive 2, because there either were none, or they were very minor (ie, DOA5‘s power blows). DOA6 is the first time since DOA2 that we’ve had a fundamental shakeup to the core gameplay, with the addition of the break gauge. This is a bar which fills up as you fight and allows you to spend charges to perform special moves: break blows (a single, super powerful strike that uses the entire bar), side attacks (a side-step that chains into a quick attack), break holds (a single-button press hold that will counter any kind of strike for half of your bar), and fatal rush (a series of attacks that can only be stopped with a break hold and ends with a break blow). I’m pretty mixed on their inclusion here. Fatal strikes and break blows are pretty flashy and easy to execute, which can make them feel like a noob crutch. I’d argue that break holds are fundamentally broken though – the ability to break any combo without having to make a proper call is game-changing and breaks some of the fundamental balance of the triangle system. It’s one of those systems that really makes-or-breaks the experience for you, and I’m not convinced that it really adds anything of substance to the franchise’s core gameplay.
- Oh and I think I should note something: back in 2018 when the game was being previewed, I had mused that the more visceral violence from break blows could potentially clash with the sexy aspects of these games and make the game feel kind of uncomfortable. I’m happy to confirm that they seem to have struck a good balance, because I was never really bothered by it. Break blows look like they fucking hurt, but it comes across as cartoonish, over-the-top slapstick, and is clearly separated from any sexualized elements of the game.

Hate

Story – Hoo boy, we’ve really run the gamut of story modes through this franchise, but I was not expecting Dead or Alive 6 to have the absolute worst narrative campaign of them all. DOA6 does a lot of what I liked about DOA5‘s story: we get a whole bunch of scenes of the characters interacting and palling around outside of the confines of the tournament, while also seeking out new blood to test themselves against. However, the execution here is fucked beyond belief, to the point where I prefer Dead or Alive 2’s primitive approach to storytelling to what we got here:
- First of all, the narrative itself is awful. Most of the A-plot revolves around Marie Rose hanging out with Honoka, who we come to discover is a bastard daughter of Raidou, the villain of the first game (and also the biological father of Ayane). MIST (a new organization which has formed from the remnants of the evil faction within DOATEC) end up capturing Honoka and Ayane in order to resurrect Raidou, which leads to a big showdown between the ninjas and their evil uncle/father once more. This story just kinda sucks. It meanders way too much, and then is way too rushed at the end (seriously, Raidou comes back, gets into one unceremonious fight, and then is dead again). The tournament itself is also an absolute joke once again, having a grand total of five fights for its entirety, and then moving on to more important stuff. To put that into context, we’ve got more sequences of Nyotengu fucking around with the fighters than we do actual tournament storylines here.
- Then there’s all the side stories, which are a bunch of cartoonish nonsense. Sure, Dead or Alive hasn’t really taken itself all that seriously, but it feels like a bit too much here. A lot of this is laid on the shoulders of Nyotengu, whose popularity has caused her to be shoved into so many characters’ plots for no real reason. She’s just going around trolling everyone with no narrative payoff to speak of for it. I guess all the tengu flying around and krakens just showing up fill out some of the more bizarre aspects of the DOA universe, but it comes across less as worldbuilding and more like they just wanted to shove the new/popular character in your face as much as possible.
- Then we’ve got the terrible voice acting. This would normally be its own separate bullet-point, but in this case, the voice acting is actively detrimental to the narrative presentation here. Admittedly, there are a few solid story beats: Helena breaking her aloof façade as she begs Kokoro to stay out of danger because she’s the only family she has left. Jann Lee becoming bored now that he’s the world’s strongest fighter and desperately seeking someone who can challenge him. Ayane, Hayate, and Kasumi reunited in order to face off against Raidou once again. Unfortunately, the wretched voice acting takes 99% of the writing and makes it utterly laughable. I don’t get why this is so bad. DOA5‘s voice acting was fine and most of that cast have returned here, so I don’t blame them. Maybe it’s on the vocal direction? It’s pretty clear that Tecmo-Koei have cheaped out on the localization (the lip sync is also no where near matching what is being said), so I wouldn’t be surprised if their penny-pinching compromised this game’s voice acting too.
- I think it also needs to be emphasized that DOA6 is actually making a serious effort to be good. They’ve even tried working themes into this story. Everything revolves around family here: NiCO wants to bring back her dead father. Kokoro is mad because Helena didn’t tell her that they had the same father. Ayane finds out that Raidou is her father. It’s played so dramatically, that it’s all the more worse that the execution is so laughable.
- Oh, and to top it all off, DOA6 has perhaps the most baffling chapter select screen I’ve ever seen. DOA5 had an elegant solution: each character was lined up from left to right, then each character had a few chapters which you would pick from a vertical list. You then complete those chapters before moving onto the next character. Chapters were also numbered and you could see all the chapters at once, so you would easily be able to tell what you were supposed to play next. DOA6 has a similar idea, but throws all structure out the window. Chapters unlock non-chronologically, so you end up having to jump back and forth through the timeline to see if you’ve missed any chapters that just unlocked. Just advancing the story is like playing hide-and-go-seek, which is a lot harder than it sounds due to the weirdly-zoomed in camera. All that work, just so you can experience DOA6‘s garbage narrative, the joy!
Honoka and Marie Rose – HOO BOY. I know that there was some discontent in the Dead or Alive fandom about Marie Rose and Honoka being turned into the new mascots of the franchise after their introduction in DOA5. I never really minded this too much: sure, they’re clearly fetish-bait and didn’t have much personality to latch onto, but they have cute, appealing character designs, so I accept them. However, now that I have actually played a story about them, I lost a lot of love for these two characters. Firstly, due to their popularity, they’re pushed to the forefront of the narrative, side-lining a lot of the more “major” legacy cast members. Secondly, they don’t really have much personality to speak of: Marie Rose is uptight and dutiful, while Honoka is an airhead who likes to fight people in order to learn their fighting styles. Seriously, that’s about it, the only development they get is that they become friends over the course of the game (not that we’re shown them actually enjoying each others’ company, they just are friends because they have to be). Thirdly, their narrative sections are cringeworthy. They basically amount to watching the two of them dick about at the tournament, getting into fights as they go, until MIST thankfully shunt them out of the narrative for good. Fourthly, their voice acting is atrocious, like nails on chalkboard (note: I do not blame the VAs for this). Every scene they’re in is them speaking in the most sickly-sweet, cutesy way possible, while even the background music changes to make the scene feel like something from a high school comedy anime. I truly wanted to die any time I had to play a new Honoka/Marie Rose chapter.
NiCO – Ugh. I hate everything about this character’s design. Not only is she way too “anime” for me, but she’s egregiously pushing the same Lolita design as Marie Rose, despite being “officially” eighteen. And this is actually a problem, because NiCO is (arguably) the main villain of the game. She’s a head researcher for MIST who is trying to resurrect Raidou in order to figure out how to revive her own father. I even think that her voice actress puts in the best performance of the entire cast, and her fighting style is pretty cool too. None of it matters, because she’s this bright-blue coloured hair child that I’m supposed to take seriously? Why is the fate of the world being decided by three school girls in a world where goddamn Ryu Hayabusa exists (not to mention all the other capable heroes in these games)? But… keep everything the same and then age her up ten years…? We’d have a Dead or Alive character for the fucking ages, my friend! Late twenties, serious, evil, blue-haired, anime science woman who wants to kick my ass?

No Tag Mode – For some reason, Team Ninja were not able to get a tag mode running in this game’s engine in time for launch, so they scrapped it. Unfortunately, no tag mode has been patched in since, meaning that my favourite way to play Dead or Alive is not even an option here. That sucks, straight-up. Not much more I can say than that.
Unrewarding Unlocks – Up to this point, Dead or Alive games will unlock costumes whenever you complete a character’s campaign and the various game modes. It’s always been a solid and rewarding way to incentivize the player to try out all the game modes. DOA6 seemingly modernizes this by giving you fighter coins which you can spend to unlock whatever costume you want. How progressive! However, it turns out that they really “modernized” it: coins drop slowly and incentivize you to play online to get more (where players will be showing off their purchased cosmetics). Costumes also unlock randomly, so you can’t even work towards one that you like best, which goes against the entire point of giving us the freedom to purchase costumes in the first place. With this system, you’re basically taking a lot longer to get the same things that you could get in prior Dead or Alive games, all in an effort to frustrate you towards paid cosmetics.
More Games Industry Bullshit – Anyone could have told you that DOA6 would carry on the monetization practices of DOA5, but I don’t think many would have expected them to get so much more egregious with it:
- First of all, it has to be said: there’s a lot of DLC available for this game. I can’t even get Steam to display all the DLCs with a total price, because there’s just too many of them for Steam to handle listing everything in one place. That’s just crazy, and navigating the DLC shop is a nightmare. This also makes this game’s Core Fighters version even more annoying, since I can’t tell what is bundled and what isn’t.
- DOA6 also had one of the most egregious microtransaction scandals in history with its hair colour customization system. The game would charge fighter coins or real-world currency every time you changed a character’s hair colour, including changing it back to default. You weren’t even buying a new hair colour to have available (which would be bad enough), but you were being forced to pay for a basic customization option. In response to the backlash, this was changed (although they’ll still totally charge you for hair colour), but it still goes to show how egregiously this game was designed to fleece the player.
- This game also shoves its monetization in your face. DLC characters will show up in character selection with nothing to show that they are not owned. If you try to pick one of them, the game will then tell you that you do not own a license for that character, intending to disappoint you and push you to buy them. Then, in the story mode, DLC characters’ chapters show up, but if you select them it will prompt you to buy the license. However, what makes this bad are that they will forever show up as “unread” chapters, with no way to unmark them without buying. This makes navigating the story menu even more confusing and frustrating, since they will show up if you try to navigate to “next chapter”. Some real scummy shit.

It probably looks like I hated Dead or Alive 6, but I honestly didn’t. Most of its best parts are just carried over from all the previous Dead or Alive games. There’s just not much new that’s worthy of note, and that which is here leaves me with mixed feelings. It would be fine taken on its own, but compared to nearly any previous Dead or Alive game, it’s a clear step down in quality.

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive Xtreme 3

November 17, 2024November 17, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. For my 200th Blog Post celebration, I reviewed this game for the memes. I was pretty low on it at the time… and yet, this has been the one cartridge in my PS Vita for several years now. Have my thoughts changed then…? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 has got to have the most confusing set of re-releases in the entire franchise (which is saying something). For one thing, there’s no game just called “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3“. The initial two games were subtitled Fortune (on PS4) and Venus (on PS Vita). An free-to-play PC version would be released shortly thereafter, but that ended up evolving into a completely different game, so I’ll cover it later. However, some content from the PC version ended up being incorporated into a re-released version called Scarlet, which would release on PS4 and Switch. However, even this re-release wasn’t identical, because the PS4 version had some censorship (to the point where things which were in Fortune ended up being removed in the re-release), whereas the Switch version is fully unchanged. As a result, the Switch version is easily the definitive version in terms of content, and also for being handheld (as previously stated, Xtreme games play best on portable systems). For my part, I bought Venus for my 200th blog post special, and I still own it to this day. While not as “definitive” as Scarlet, it’s still a very worthy way to check this game out if you’re interested (and, honestly, there’s very little changed between the two versions). That said, I did try out the Switch version of Scarlet as well for reference for this Love/Hate series.

Love

Graphics – Good graphics are par for the course for Dead or Alive, but it’s especially worth noting in an Xtreme game where you’re meant to be lustfully staring at the character models for a hefty chunk of the runtime. The new art style from DOA5 really works in this regard, leaving a lot less to the imagination compared to its more stylized predecessors. The PS Vita and Switch ports are especially impressive in this regard, holding up flawlessly compared to their console counterparts.
The Ultimate Handheld Experience – This only really applies to the PS Vita and Switch versions of the game, but the more laid-back handheld experience really does make this the best way to play any Xtreme game. The technology has advanced far enough that the compromises of Paradise are no longer a mitigating factor; this is a fully-featured version of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. Being able to play in short bursts also really helps keep the game relaxing and cuts down on any tedium from the limited number of activities available. While I have my issues with the game, by virtue of being on a handheld, this makes DOAX3 probably the best way to experience an Xtreme game that we’ve ever gotten.

Mixed

Missions – One of the new features of DOAX3 is a mission structure. These are basically what you’d expect from a game released in the last ten years: a little pop-up that says “perform X task to get a reward”. These can be an easy way to get a small amount of Zack dollars and gives you something to work towards. I didn’t really give them much notice at the time, but we’ve been so inundated with daily/weekly challenges in games that I kind of hate it now. The tasks are so arbitrary, some are way more trouble than they’re worth, and they ultimately don’t make the game more fun: you’re just doing some chore because the game told you to in order to get a tiny dopamine hit, instead of enjoying your vacation by doing what you want to. Look… the issue with previous Xtreme games wasn’t that there was no direction, it was that the content on offer was way too thin and shallow. Constantly prodding me to do things isn’t content, it’s just preying on people addicted to checking off boxes.

Hate

Owner Mode – The big, marquee new feature of DOAX3 is owner mode. This mode allows you to… oh goddammit. It’s a full-fledged, goddamn dating sim mode. Given how much I hated the dating sim elements in the previous Xtreme games, you can imagine my feelings about owner mode. It plays out as a second layer for the main game, with your own inventory and money, and you can even switch between girl mode and owner mode on the fly. The main difference is that owner mode doesn’t allow you to play as any particular girl, so you can only really sit and watch everyone else vacationing, while managing their happiness with gifts and trying to get the girls to try on skimpier swimsuits. There’s not a whole lot to it to be honest, and it’s about as dull and tedious as the dating sim elements from the previous games. About the only thing it adds to the formula is that the girls are now doting on you, the player, instead of having fun interacting with the other girls the whole time, but that opens up some issues…
Envelope Pushing – Look, by this point in the franchise, Dead or Alive is no stranger to racy content. Frankly, as much as I may roll my eyes at some of this stuff, none of it has been truly objectionable up to this point (other than the sexualization of minors in the first few entries, because Japan). DOAX3 has about as much sexuality as you’d expect, but it pushes the boundaries of taste moreso than any other game in the franchise thus far, to the point where even I have to admit that it gets downright creepy:
- Sure, all the girls are officially over eighteen now, hooray. However, this is also the proper debut of Marie Rose, who initially appears to buck DOA design trends by having a very slight figure. However, this seems less of a character diversity decision, and more that she’s clearly been designed to appeal to lolita fetishists. There’s also her foil, Honoka, who is also designed to look like a schoolgirl, while also having the biggest knockers in the entire franchise, and the contrast between the two characters is clearly intentional.
- In their efforts to play up the dev’s lascivious fantasies, the game can turn into a sexual harassment/assault simulator. If you give a girl a new swimsuit, she can choose to try it on in front of you if you agree to close your eyes. The game then gives you the option to peek, which causes the girl to freak out and cover herself up (there’s no nudity regardless, but it’s clearly about the voyeurism and humiliation fantasy). There’s no real incentive to do it… but, then again, there’s no in-game incentive not to do it (other than affecting their happiness), and the devs have clearly put it in there to be used. Same goes for the VR mode. Now, I do not have a PS VR, so I can’t verify this myself, but the VR mode allows you to poke and prod the girls and cause them to get audibly uncomfortable. However, no matter how far you go and how much they say “No!”, they’ll get over it and be back to doting on you soon enough. Team Ninja, I implore you: consent is fucking hot. There’s nothing hotter than an experienced woman who wants to ride your dick to oblivion because she’s obsessed with you. This game portrays its girls as a bunch of naïve, innocent angels who don’t realize how hot they are, and then allows you to take advantage of them. It makes everything feel way creepier than it needs to, all because it might appeal more to some degenerates.
More Games Industry Bullshit – To the surprise of no one, DOAX3 continues the games industry bullshit that really started in DOA5, only this time it’s more predatory. Sure, there’s less DLC overall here, but the way that DOAX3 goes about it is more objectionable. Swimsuits can be bought with real-money premium tickets. There’s a swimsuit shop with random suits which rotates items daily, so you’re pressured into buying what you want now, because you don’t know when it will be back. Oh, and missions often will require you to buy a particular swimsuit from the owner shop, which further pushes you to make a purchase now, because the suit may not be there if you wait to grind some in-game currency first. Several swimsuits are also premium-only and it can cost $10 Canadian or more to purchase a single one, which is egregious, even compared to DOA5.
Missing Characters – For the first time in an Xtreme game, there are female characters from the main cast missing from this game. These aren’t minor characters missing either: we’re talking Leifang, Tina, Christie, Lisa, and Mila. This is especially baffling for Tina and Christie, who are the most sexually-liberal characters in the franchise, and for Lisa, who was literally introduced in the original DOAXBV. Given that Marie Rose and Honoka take center stage in this game’s marketing, you can’t help but feel like more “important” DOA characters got bumped off the cast for either being too “old” (early-to-mid 20s for Tina and Christie? Not in my masturbation-fantasy, thank you very much!), or because racism (…c’mon, we all know that’s a big factor in why Lisa, the only black woman in the franchise, isn’t here. Even if you wanna say “well the game was released in Asia only and they don’t have black people there!”… that’s still racism, my dude, sorry to break it to you).
Culture War Bullshit – To the outrage of fans, DOAX3 was never released outside of Asian territories. An official explanation wasn’t really elaborated on, but there are a few prominent theories:
- Amongst dumbasses, the narrative is that SJWs (which is what they called “woke” at the time) whined too much and caused Tecmo-Koei to prevent the game from being released worldwide. While there were some game journalists reporting on the game at the time, generally people just didn’t give a shit about Dead or Alive anymore by the time this game released. That, and the game was announced to be an Asia-only release before any theoretical outrage could happen anyway.
- According to Team Ninja themselves, the reasoning seems to boil down to “western retailers would not stock the game“. That was a pretty claim dubious at the time (you’re telling me that they couldn’t do a digital-only release at least to get some more money…?), but I can kind of understand it. I can see a big retailer like Walmart refusing to carry the game… but that’s because Team Ninja have spent so much effort marketing the Xtreme games as porn that of course Walmart doesn’t want to deal with Karen getting mad that Little Timmy was exposed to big booba from the box art he saw at the store.
- The truth of the matter, as far as I’m concerned? Dead or Alive Xtreme games have never sold particularly well in the west. Manufacturing and distributing all the discs required for an international release is not going to have the kind of return on investment that Tecmo-Koei need to justify an international release. It’s ultimately more sensible for them to release it in Asia, drum up some controversy, and then have interested gamers import it. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we found out that Tecmo-Koei had some sort of deal with PlayAsia to split on the added import fees.
No Innovation – When it comes down to it, this is still the exact same game we got on the original Xbox thirteen years earlier, just with a couple more features awkwardly bolted on. We’re still going on a fourteen day vacation with a morning/afternoon/evening/night activity cycle and doing the same activities that we did in the last game (less, actually, since marine race and water slide are still missing). The menus are basically identical. Art assets and animations have been reused wholesale. I complained about it at the time, but it still holds true: DOAX3 is the sort of game that would actually benefit from being open world and letting you actually explore a little bit instead of being on a strictly scheduled timeframe. But, of course, that would cost money to implement, and there’s no way Tecmo-Koei were going to greenlight that. So, instead, we basically just get more of the same, but in a prettier package.

For the most part, my original review of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 holds true today. However, when I wrote that review, I underestimated just how compelling the “relaxing” part of the game was. It was so easy to destress by firing the game up for a twenty-or-thirty minute fantasy vacation. As a result, a lot of the game’s most serious faults are mitigated, while its qualities are enhanced. That said, the game is still definitely very niche and not particularly good, but I don’t want that to come across like I think the game is irredeemable garbage. It’s fine to find some enjoyment in something that is imperfect.

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive 5

November 15, 2024October 22, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ 2 Comments

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive 5. This was my first DOA game: having played all the Ninja Gaiden games on PS Vita, I decided to check out this game’s Vita port since Ryu Hayabusa was also in it. And thus, this whole journey and obsession with this franchise began… I recall enjoying it at the time, but it has been probably around eight years since I last played it.

First off, a bit of history is worth mentioning before we get into the Love/Hate properly. Dead or Alive 5 represents something of an identity crisis for Team Ninja. Long-time studio leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, left Team Ninja and the series’ Xbox exclusivity ended with the franchise in a shaky position. Dead or Alive needed to figure out its place in the gaming market and evolve if it was going to stay viable. Could they pull together and accomplish this? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive 5 has a lot of different releases: the game originally released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and then they released Dead or Alive 5+ on PS Vita. Then there was an Ultimate version which was released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and finally Last Round, which released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC (although the PC port was actually based on the last-gen versions, so it doesn’t look quite as good). I had Last Round on PS4, although I apparently sold my copy at some point years ago. As a result, for this replay I used the PS Vita version, but between the PS4 version and the PC port (which I have tried out), I can say that they all play pretty similarly, with each re-release primarily adding more content.

Love

Story Mode – I’ve been pretty harsh on Dead or Alive games’ stories throughout this Love/Hate series, but that’s largely down to them being really dumb, or poorly told (or both). Dead or Alive 5 tries to modernize the series to match the sort of cinematic, western-led experiences we were getting in the late PS3/Xbox 360-era. The result is a story mode which dispenses with the “pick a fighter, play through a few matches with the occasional cutscene in-between, fight a boss, get a unique, character-specific ending when you’re done” structure and instead follows a more expansive, linear narrative that covers the entire cast by the end. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the old structure well enough, and Dead or Alive 5‘s narrative is still dumb, but I really like how this game presents its story and world. For the first time in the series’ history, we get to see how all these characters live, interact with each other, and the world that they inhabit. We get to see them interacting casually, like there’s this tight-knit community of Dead or Alive tournament fighters who stay in touch with each other and seek out new contenders to bring into the fold. The linear structure also helps the tournament to not feel completely superfluous: more than half of the narrative is dominated by the tournament, so we have some actual stakes and escalation and we excitedly wait and see who the winners and losers are. Then the last third of the narrative concerns the on-going DOATEC conspiracy narrative, providing a fitting conclusion for the game. I can see some people getting pissed off that they undid the climactic events of Dead or Alive 4 here, but I didn’t mind too much. I thoroughly enjoyed Dead or Alive 5‘s story campaign, it was nice to see a more cinematic take on these characters and this world and it helped me appreciate them all the more for it.
The Characters (New and Old!) – Springing off of the last point, the more fleshed out story mode means that we also get more layers to all of the characters than we have been able to get up to this point.
- Starting with the existing characters, I want to give a special shout-out to Eliot. I didn’t really care about him in Dead or Alive 4, but here I found him very endearing. As one of the younger cast members, he is insecure about his abilities, eager to learn from others (including a fun pairing with Brad Wong), and constantly training to become the best. There’s also a rather cute scene where he is crushing hard on Christie (poor boy, she would annihilate you), but is too inexperienced to know what to do about it. It’s refreshing, because we rarely see anyone (other than Zack) acknowledge how hot the characters of these games are, so it gives him some humanizing in the process. Bayman also gets some much-needed characterization. He was always such a boring, generic strong-guy mercenary character in the previous games, but here we get to see him as a consummate professional, a soldier, and a leader who tries to keep his comrades safe. It’s not a massive leap, but it’s enough to at least make him more interesting.
- Of the new characters, by far the best is Mila. She’s just great all-round: she’s an employee at a diner whose hobby is MMA, which causes her to catch the eye of the Dead or Alive fighter community. She’s a big fangirl for Bass Armstrong, and it’s very cute getting to see her freaking out about getting close to these characters she’s idolized for years now. She also just has a cool, down-to-earth design, and plays well to boot.
- I also have to shout-out some pretty major guest and DLC characters for this game. We’ve got four characters from Virtua Fighter (Akira Yuki, Sarah Bryant, Jacky Bryant, and Pai Chan), some of whom actually make cameos in the story mode. DLC/re-releases would eventually bring in Ninja Gaiden characters Rachel and Momiji (who is a god-tier DOA waifu), as well as King of Fighters‘ Mai Shiranui, and even Naotora Ii from Samurai Warriors. Some other major characters were added via DLC, but I’m going to hold off on mentioning them further until the next couple games where they got their proper introductions…
New Art Style – The anime-like aesthetic from the first four games served them well and has helped those games still look pretty impressive today, but it was reaching its limits by the time of DOA4. A full visual overhaul was implemented for DOA5, adopting a more detailed and realistic art style, although it does maintain some more subtle stylization. All-in-all, I quite like the change, although the colours are a bit washed out (this was pretty typical of games of the era, and would get a lot more saturation in subsequent entries). It’s not going to have quite the same staying power as the earlier games’ style, but it was easily the best-looking 3D fighter of its era and still holds up today.

Mixed

More Overt Sexual Content – In the wake of Dead or Alive 4 and Xtreme 2, I think that Team Ninja had a sit-down where they were trying to figure out the future for the franchise. Xtreme 2 sold very poorly in the west, and there was clearly a sense that they needed to appeal more to western gamers with the new art style, full English voice acting, cinematic production values, etc. Hell, they literally made the tagline for this game “I’m a fighter”, as if to remind you that this game isn’t just about hot women in skimpy outfits. In spite of this, Team Ninja continued pushing the Xtreme aspects further into the mainline games:
- The main example of this is that every fight ends with you being able to control the camera as you focus in on whatever parts of your fighter you want, for as long as you want, whether they’re in a victorious win condition, or an exhausted and vulnerable crumple on the ground… which, I shouldn’t need to clarify, is clearly intended to invoke some rather lascivious fantasies…
- Whatever the original intent for DOA5 was, they would lean harder into the suggestive aspects as the game went on: not only did we get hundreds of swimsuits and various other lewd costumes, but they also introduced full-on gravure videos straight out of the Xtreme games.
- One indication of how focused this game is on pushing sex over its predecessors is what I call “breast inflation”. For four games, Tina had the biggest rack, and it kind of legitimately made sense for her character: she’s the ideal, hot, wild, freedom-loving American girl and, as a professional wrestler, it actually made sense for her to have some of the more revealing outfits in the series. However, come DOA5, we got not one, but two characters with bigger boobs than her. One was Rachel from Ninja Gaiden, which you could argue was just Team Ninja following that character’s established look. However, brand new DLC character Honoka doesn’t really have an excuse: she’s a school girl with boobs so big that you could suffocate between them. She’s clearly intended to be fetish bait, something that Team Ninja would continue indulging going forward…
- One big positive I’ll say for this game’s sexual content though: at least everyone in the cast is of-age now!
- By the way, that’s not to say that any of this sexual/suggestive content is bad, per se. However, this was my first DOA game: I had no idea that, only a couple games earlier, the sexy stuff was all in the marketing and the games themselves were focused on the fighting. The Xtreme-ification of the mainline entries only accelerated the notion that these games were made for “gamer weirdos”, furthered the punch-line that this series was not to be taken seriously, and made it so that these elements could not be separated or toned down without provoking backlash. If Xtreme had never happened and the games didn’t push the envelope each time, I doubt that the series would have declined as badly as it did. It’s unfortunate that that’s the case, but that’s just the reality of marketing a game to the sexually-conservative western audience.

Hate

DLC Overload – Dead or Alive 5‘s DLC model really set the tone for the kind of bullshit which has infected the fighting game genre in the past couple generations. I get that it’s all cosmetic stuff, but it’s still scummy for several reasons:
- First of all, the price of these sets is simply ludicrous. This game had seven season passes during its lifetime, each of which cost more than the entire game itself. For costumes! Just looking at Steam, where I know for a fact that some items have been removed, all DLC for this game currently totals up to a whopping $1,184.68 (Canadian)!!! That is, frankly, a ridiculous price to charge to get the “full” Dead or Alive 5 experience. Like… what experience can they possibly offer which is worth the price of fourteen full-priced AAA games!?
- Secondly, it’s not exactly subtle that Team Ninja are monetizing the gooners in the audience. Most of the DLC packs are for swimsuits and other skimpy outfits, and there are also some DLCs for “private paradise” scenes (literally just the characters frolicking in the sand for like thirty seconds). It’s not an exaggeration to say that the horniness of the audience is being exploited here for a dirty buck (especially when the in-game unlockable outfits are far tamer in comparison to the stuff you have to pay for).
- Thirdly, I feel like I really have to reiterate just how much DLC there is for this game, to the point where it’s straight-up confusing to navigate. The DOA wiki tells me that, just for Last Round, there were at least 952 costumes for sale across 43 costume bundle packs, some of which were included in the seven season passes, and some of which were not. I get that this was their way of monetizing the game and continuing to justify supporting the series, but it sets an awful precedent for the franchise: you’re producing a cosmetic cash shop with a fighting game stapled onto it, and every subsequent release needs to escalate this until the entire edifice implodes in on itself and the fighting game part becomes unviable to continue. Given how the series has advanced since DOA5, my fears at the time were well-founded…
Core Fighters Is a Scam – Oh and exacerbating all the DLC issues is the Core Fighters release of the game. In theory, it sounds like a good idea: release a free-to-play version of the game where you can just pay to get the parts you want. Of course, like every other “only pay for what you want!” service, it ends up being a massive scam where you pay significantly more for everything in the end. Everything that could be monetized here is, including freaking stage music. Tecmo-Koei seem to have been pleased with the results though, because Core Fighters is the only way to get Dead or Alive 5: Last Round digitally now (you have to buy a bundle to get all the “base game” content, but it doesn’t make navigating everything less of a headache, and the fact that it’s an extra step to pull it off clearly shows that they don’t intend for you to take this route).
Rig – Unfortunately, the other new character introduced in Dead or Alive 5 is Rig, who is one of the dullest characters imaginable. He very clearly is intended to “appeal to western audiences”, which is probably why his face looks identical to Jake Mueller from Resident Evil 6. He’s got a mysterious past, his own unique fighting style he developed, and he is literally named after the oil rig he works at and has spent his entire life on. Oh, and for some reason, he ends up being the big bad of the game with zero warning. Wow, so much information for me to latch onto. Is it any wonder that the female characters are the most popular in these games when the male characters get this much to work with?

Dead or Alive 5 is a pretty good time. I love the change in production values and how it makes this world and characters so much more believable. However, the ways in which it transformed the series into a DLC-factory sucked at the time of release, and have proven to be even worse than we imagined in hindsight. It’s unfortunate that that leaves a stain on this game’s legacy, because it’s otherwise a pretty great reimagining of the series’ formula.

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive – Dimensions

November 13, 2024October 22, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be taking another detour, this time to the 3DS with Dead or Alive: Dimensions. This is a weird little spin-off for a number of reasons: at the time, Team Ninja had worked with Nintendo on Metroid: Other M and they ultimately decided to team up for an early 3DS Dead or Alive project. Given Nintendo and their handhelds’ child-friendly reputation, contrasted with DOA‘s smutty reputation by this point, it was a bizarre team-up. And, on top of that, Dimensions would be a pretty ambitious title, retelling the events of all four mainline games that had been released at the time and featuring the largest character roster in franchise history. All-in-all, it made for a pretty interesting project, one which seemed particularly unexpected for Nintendo’s newest handheld system. Could Team Ninja pull off this weird combination and produce something worthwhile? Read on to find out…

Once again, Dimensions has only had one release, that being on the 3DS. And, unlike a lot of the games in this series, I actually have a physical copy of the game, which I picked up at an EB Games for like $15 years ago (legitimately can’t remember exactly when, but likely 6-10 years ago). Despite that, I somehow never actually got around to playing this game, so it’s been sitting around on a shelf this whole time. This Love/Hate series has presented a great excuse to dust off my 3DS and finally get a chance to try it out. Just one more reason why I took this dive into the franchise’s history!

Love

Full DOA Experience on 3DS – The main reason I never played Dimensions until now was because I figured there was no way that Team Ninja could accurately bring a Dead or Alive game to an underpowered Nintendo handheld and actually make it play well. Credit where credit’s due, they really proved me wrong on both fronts. The 3DS circle pad works surprisingly well, I didn’t find myself wishing for a controller in my hand even once. It’s got all the game modes you’d expect. Hell, even the graphics are solid – at this point in the series’ history, this would have been the best-looking Dead or Alive game, hands-down. Even today, this is a surprisingly good-looking game.
Tag Challenge – Dimensions‘ take on tag team mode is tag challenge, which is basically a series of challenge matches that escalate in difficulty as you go. I’ll always play a few tag team matches in any DOA game I try, because I find it the funnest way to play the game. Tag challenge really drew me in though, far more than any other tag mode has. Turning each match into a challenge lends so much more weight to the experience. Tag challenge sounds pretty unfair: you’ll be having a 2v1 against an AI opponent and can get knocked out as many of five times in a match before failing. However, the difficulty ramps quickly, and your opponents are going to have more health and do more damage than you, so you have to manage your tags strategically. If there’s one thing I’m a bit mixed on though, it’s the AI partner. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone who can switch in to give you a breather. However, as you reach the highest difficulty challenges, the enemy AI far outpaces them, to the point where your partner’s HP drops precipitously while landing no hits in return. At that point, I’d probably rather be controlling them myself, because they become a major liability.

Mixed

Chronicle Mode – Easily the most enticing feature of Dimensions for longtime fans, chronicle mode retells and recontextualizes the stories of the four mainline Dead or Alive games into one epic narrative. This is particularly cool, because the stories of those games were told so poorly, so getting to see them fleshed out could be a love-letter to the fans. However, I will give the first couple Dead or Alive games’ stories credit for one thing: they left a lot of gaps, so you got to use your imagination to piece them together and make them make sense. Dimensions fleshes out the narrative of Dead or Alive quite a bit, but in doing so, it really highlights just how dumb the stories of these games are. This is made worse because, for all the extra plot and context they’ve added in, this story is still not very well-told and it can feel like a jumbled mess with several gaps in narrative and logic. It also doesn’t help that the Dead or Alive tournament itself is extremely unimportant to the plot. The narrative advances with each tournament, but the actual main plot involves DOATEC conducting experiments on the ninja characters and so only a handful of characters have any real importance, while the rest are relegated to the relatively worthless tournament plot. I think it’s fun to play through this game to see a “grander” retelling of the series’ narrative, but I legitimately think that playing through each game in the franchise is a far more satisfying way to experience their stories.
- Even with all this said, I probably would be on-board with chronicle mode as an abridged version of the series’ plot. However, there are two big retcons here which really move this into “mixed” territory for me. First of all is that Team Ninja have really pushed Ryu Hayabusa to the forefront. This would have released at the height of Ninja Gaiden‘s popularity, so I can understand why this was done. However, having him step in and boss around the other characters and steal their glory makes this come across as Ryu fanfiction rather than something earned. This leads me to my second major complaint, that they absolutely fucked the narrative of Dead or Alive 3. It goes from “Ayane defies her clan and family in order to give her adopted father an honourable death, making her grow into an adult in the process” to “the Ryu Hayabusa and Hayate show, ft. Ayane”. It’s executed so much worse and is legitimately insulting if you’ve ever played through DOA3.
Touchpad Features – The 3DS’s second screen is implemented… interestingly in Dimensions. It houses the move list, showing you what inputs you need to do in order to pull off a combo, and occasionally will display quick, context-sensitive actions. What makes this interesting is that you can tap on a combo and then your character will perform that combo automatically. It’s a pretty cool feature for showing what moves are available to you and can help you pull off an awesome move you would have struggled to land in the heat of the moment. However, this feature is pretty limited, because you have dozens of moves available, but only a tiny handful are shown on screen at one time, meaning that it’s only really useful for keeping one favourite combo on speed-dial. It would be cool if you could play a tap-moves-only playthrough, but that’s just not feasible here.

Hate

3D – The implementation of 3D in this game suuuuuucks. Honestly, this is probably more of a 3DS issue than it is a Dimensions issue, but they did choose to lean into it, so I feel it’s fair to criticize. I had to turn off the 3D almost immediately, because looking at it gives me a headache. It’s also kind of dumb that any photos you take in showcase mode only appear in 3D if you had the 3DS slider on on the console at the time… holy crap, why? I legitimately don’t understand how the game can display an image in 3D and then only be able to display that same image in 2D because of some settings toggle when you took the photo.

Dead or Alive: Dimensions is fun. I really was not expecting the game to play as well as it did, and was thoroughly pleased throughout my playthrough. Gripes about retcons aside, chronicle mode is also pretty cool and worth playing through at least once to get a more straight-forward overview of the series’ narrative. I’m glad that I finally took the plunge and got to check this game out, it’s well worth a look if you have a 3DS.

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Love/Hate: Dead or Alive Paradise

November 11, 2024October 22, 2024 ~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’re covering Dead or Alive Paradise. So, confession time: I was originally planning on covering Xtreme 2 next, and would just off-handedly mention Paradise there since it’s basically a trimmed-down port of Xtreme 2. However… I sold my Xbox 360 years ago and it turns out that the current Xbox 360 emulation scene is pretty poor, so I can’t get Xtreme 2 running on my computer. During the writing of these articles, I did end up buying an Xbox One on the cheap just to play Dead or Alive 4 and a handful other Xbox exclusives, but Xtreme 2 is not backwards compatible, so I straight-up cannot play the game at all. As a result, that leaves us with Paradise to fill in this entry. Paradise is a PSP Xtreme game and is notable for being the first time Dead or Alive made the leap to a handheld console. How would this change affect the gameplay? Read on to find out…

Love

The Handheld Experience – The DOA Xtreme games have always struck me as being ill-suited for full console releases. Aside from having to explain to your friends and family what you’re doing when they catch you playing one of these games on your living room TV, the limited and repetitive content do not incentivize long play times, which is going to make it harder to justify getting the game started, loaded, and running when you’re probably turning it off again in about half an hour. In this regard, experimenting with Paradise on a handheld was kind of a genius idea. Play whenever and where ever you want, when it starts getting boring put it into sleep mode, come back when you’re in the mood. For a breezy game like this, it’s pretty much the perfect way to play.
Photo Mode – The biggest new addition to Dead or Alive Paradise is the ability to take photos of the girls while playing. This definitely heightens the voyeuristic aspect of the previous game and, honestly, is a pretty cool feature. We all love photo modes in modern games and this is the sort of game that seems purpose-built for it.

Mixed

Rio – The only other new thing Paradise brings to the fold is Rio, a blackjack dealer who you can unlock as a bonus girl. Unfortunately, everything about her is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s nice that we get another girl added to the roster. On the other hand, her design just doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the cast and she stands out like a sore thumb as a result. On the one hand, it’s good that they have actually given her an animated model in the casino you can ogle when you choose to play against her. On the other hand, she’s the only in-game model in the casino and it just hammers home how fucking half-assed these games are. Would it fucking kill them to let us be able to see the girls we’re playing against instead of a static profile bubble showing their heads (aka, the lowest-effort solution possible)?

Hate

PSP Hardware Ill-Suited For This Game – So… as good an idea as a handheld DOAX game is, the PSP was not the right system for the job. PSP games are basically running on hardware somewhere between the PS1 and PS2, so you can imagine that it really struggles to provide the kind of graphical fidelity that a game like this requires to be in any way arousing.
Limited Content – Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 introduced several new mini-games to its vacation simulation, but even then, it struggled to hold any interest on a second go-around and suffered much worse reviews as a result. With that in mind, it is pretty disappointing to see Paradise actually remove three game modes (pool slide, marine race, and tug of war), presumably because the PSP just couldn’t handle them. While there are many more swimsuits to purchase and unlock compared to the original game, the lack of additional mini-games really hurts Paradise and makes it feel about as content-bereft as the original DOAXBV. This goes doubly so, because…
The Grind – In DOAXBV, you could choose to grind if you wanted every girl to have every swimsuit available. It would take a while, but it was entirely optional and you could just as easily just play as your favourite girl(s) and buy whatever swimsuits suited your fancy. Not so in Paradise. More swimsuits means more to buy and some of the new additions are expensive. There are also more girls in this game, so that means more girls with exclusive suits that you need to manage to try to get anything specific. Oh, but the worst part of all this? Two of the mini-games are locked behind watching gravure videos of the girls relaxing. That might not sound too bad, but you’re underestimating Team Ninja’s willingness to make you grind for basic features: you have to watch fifty and one hundred unique gravure clips in order to unlock these two modes. To put that in perspective, if you spent an entire vacation watching nothing but gravure clips, you’d only have fourty-two watched at the end of it (and, since these clips need to be unique, you’re going to have to cycle through several girls over several vacations to achieve this). It seems pretty clear to me that you’re intended to casually play through as all the girls once, playing volleyball and trading swimsuits between them and then unlocking each game mode to give you a bit more to do on subsequent runs. This already sounds repetitive as all hell, but then we have to take into account that these two mini-games kind of suck. Worst of all is beach flags, a fucking awful button masher game that lasts like ten seconds each time (just like your mom). Then there’s butt battle, which is at least kind of funny in a juvenile way, but it’s also basically designed to be the dullest fighting game ever made. Oh, and then there’s the apex of this game’s salacious content, the pole dancing sequences. In order to unlock these, you need to have viewed every single gravure video for each girl, unlock a special slot machine, and then get lucky enough to get the jackpot on it, at which point you’ll get a special ticket to watch the pole dance. The sheer grind this game asks of you to get one moderately sexy sequence that you could watch on goddamn Youtube for a fraction of the effort is just mind-boggling. Why do developers of “sexy” games like this always put several barriers of bullshit between you and all the content they’re trying to arouse you with?
Dating Sim Elements Are Even More Tedious – So I already hated the dating sim elements of the original DOAXBV, but they added another layer of bullshit to the system between then and Paradise. Now you need to memorize what colour of wrapping paper a girl likes in order for her to accept anything. What realistic and deep gameplay systems this game has! It retroactively makes me appreciate that, for all its problems, the original game didn’t fuck around with menial bullshit like this.
The Boob Physics – OH MY GOD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE BREAST PHYSICS IN THIS GAME!? I’m not exaggerating here when I say that the breast physics in Paradise are on-par with the psychotic slinkies we saw in the original Dead or Alive. They bounce all over the place like fucking springs on meth. I like it when my video game boobs remind me of real boobs, not a plate of gelatin in an earthquake. This is not sexy, it’s fucking stupid. It’s legitimately bad enough here that I find myself asking if this is the result of some setting I screwed up without realizing it? Is it a fault with the emulation…..? It legitimately feels wrong. Like, I maxed out the boob physics in the other games just to see how ridiculous they could get, but nothing has looked this bad on the boob-front since the PS1 era.

Dead or Alive Paradise (and Xtreme 2 by extension) are a lesson in how more isn’t always better. Xtreme Beach Volleyball was content-bereft, sure, but it also gave that game a certain amount of focus that made it easy to just relax. Paradise is so thin on stuff to do and requires so much grinding to get to any of its content that it just makes the whole thing feel like a chore. Add in that it’s on hardware which is ill-suited to the experience, and Paradise is the first game in the franchise that I’ve looked at so far which is just straight-up not worth bothering with.