5 games in 2005: warmup

Now that February's here, I'm hoping to roll out my list of the best games of last year. That should be coming up this week, but before it gets started I wanted to give some shout-outs to all the old games that I was finally able to clear out of my backlog last year.

Advance Wars 2 - This is really well-balanced strategy game with a great art style and a lot of personality, but about halfway through it I realized I don't care for strategy games with a large emphasis on managing an economy. I think I'll stick to tactical RPGs.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor - Challenging action-platformer from Treasure with a lot of replay value. It brought back fond memories of trying to crush my NES controllers with my bare hands. Probably in every GBA bargain bin at the moment, so don't miss out. (more thoughts here)

Contra: Shattered Soldier - Ludicrously hard, but also disappointingly boring for a Contra game. I blame it on the lack of weapon pick-ups (and the SPREADER), and probably the phoned-in level design. Also, why doesn't the ratings box on the back mention how disgusting this game is? The first stage boss is a skinless head that vomits at you. A later level features a midboss that eats the raw product of a meat grinder and then... wait for it... vomits at you. WTF?

Deus Ex - This didn't live up to the high standards set by PALIDOR, but I think those may have been biased because he got engaged to Michael Brown Walton Simons recently. It was still an extremely good game, though. The combat could have used a little work, but the stealth action, story and voice acting were all excellent. And I'm sure the graphics looked great back in 2000 or whenever.

Dragon Warrior VII - Read my post-game thoughts here. Some thoughts about the sequel will show up this week.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Morgan and I finally got around to finishing this early last year. I don't know why we shelved it for so long. It may have been how the plot was spread pretty thin over a bunch of repetetive dungeons, and the action interface was pretty clunky. (Instead of just having one button for "defend," you had to cycle through a list of available actions in real time and then activate a defensive stance with the A button.) It's a shame this didn't work out, because it had the potential to be a Secret of Mana-caliber action RPG, with more integrated teamwork elements. I suspect it gets exponentially better with three or four players, but we never got the chance to try that out. On the plus side: the graphics and soundtrack were beautiful and there were a lot of adorable characters. Hopefully the DS version will pull off this style of gameplay a little smoother.

Front Mission 4 - My favorite console game on this list. While the previous series entry bored me, Front Mission 4 has a fantastic storyline and, largely thanks to the link system and squads with a diverse range of abilities, a tactical battle system that actually requires tactics. The large map sizes offered another incentive for careful strategizing; if you don't plan out each turn impeccably, there's a good chance you won't have many units still in fighting condition (or still standing) by the time you reach the final waves of opponents. Also, few games last year offered a sensation equal to the one you get from watching your squad of mechs surround an enemy, unload on it with machinegun fire, and then having your melee fighter dodge past its counterattack and floor it with a set of brass knuckles the size of a pickup truck.

Half-Life 1 & 2 - I had heard all the hype about Half-Life "redefining the genre" and all that and I didn't really believe it, but wow. The entire game had a very Zelda-like quality in how each area was put together, and how one puzzle or obstacle would lead seamlessly into the next. The game eerily seemed to know exactly when to cough up another medkit or ammo magazine, too. Half-Life 2's much-lauded gravity gun was an inspired addition to the formula and a great way to make use of the new physics engine. It seemed a bit gimmicky at first, but it seemed like such second nature by the end of the game that it's hard for me to imagine going back to HL1 and not having it. I'm very much looking forward to Aftermath, and the inevitable HL3.

Silent Hill 4 - The Room put a bunch of new twists on the series' formula which had been mostly the same for the last three games. There was a bigger emphasis on action, which turned out to be sort of paradoxical since Silent Hill has never been about action, first of all, and also they actually removed all of the firearms except the handgun and replaced them with a huge set of nearly-identical melee weapons. It wasn't the greatest thing to do gameplay-wise, especially when you have Resident Evil earning tons of praise for its latest iteration, which ditches most of the old survival-horror conventions in exchange for almost constant gunplay. It turned out to be a great move in keeping SH4 in the horror genre, though, as removing the long-distance solutions really brought the fight-or-flight decision to the foreground. Second, there was the whole half-of-the-game-is-an-escort-mission thing, which RE4 sort of copied, although probably not intentionally. Nevertheless, this is still a horrible idea. Nobody enjoys escort missions. (Just ask James Bond.) Last but not least, there was the apartment room/nexus, which they pulled off pretty well. Next time, though, I want to see the entire game take place in a closet. Or maybe a phonebooth.

OK, that's it. It turns out there were lots of old, good games that were still available in 2005! Check back this week to hear about some of the new ones.

Comments (2)

February 6, 2006, 12:13 AM

Piccolo »

I am looking forward to hearing your DQ8 thoughts as I am about 30 hours into the game and loving every god damned minute of it.

February 7, 2006, 1:32 AM

prepare for scandal lol

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