Gaming My Way

11 Nov

100 Games I’ve Played, Part 9

Inspired by James Newton’s Sega Top 50, I decided I’d like to try my own project. This is going to be one hundred different games I’ve played, beginning to end. There are a couple exceptions for games in a persistent world format, but they’re a minority. Of course, one hundred games are easy, but to keep things interesting, I’m only pulling one game per series. To be clear though, that doesn’t mean games with the same characters can’t show up together on the list, just not games from the same series. For instance, I could (and may) include both Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Kart, but I would not include both Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 64.

Now is the perfect time for this project, as I’m now leading up to my 100th post on Gaming My Way. Some of these games will be excellent, others will be awful, but all have been played through. Today, I’m moving on to the next 10, in no particular order, and I’ll do 10 more each post until I reach 100. Perhaps you’ll find some gems in here to try out, as well as a few to ridicule and warn others against playing.

81) X-Men Legends (Gamecube)

This game was a surprisingly fun action rpg. Emphasis on action. Sure, you leveled up and bought new powers, and they were fun powers, by the way. But you still ran through, chugging potions and laying the hurt on all sorts of enemies. To be fair, a lot of powers severely overlapped between characters, though there was a small bit of diversity depending on who you chose to play as most often. You could play by yourself or do co-op with up to four players, and you could switch to any cpu controlled characters at anytime while playing. In addition, players can jump in and out of the game at any time, taking over an AI character when joining, and letting the AI go back to work when leaving. This is a great feature for people who like to game together, but sometimes just want to go take care of other things. Lest I forget, the game really does a great job immersing the player in the X-Men world through adding in backstory for those unfamiliar, and little touches you’d need to be a fan to notice.

82) Baiten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (Gamecube)

Card RPGs are usually the first games I remove from my wish list. But I kept hearing good things about this one, so I had to give it a try. Remarkably, it actually was pretty fun, though I do feel that the nature of building decks and the randomness of decks in combat detracted from this game a bit. Sometimes, you really want to attack but only have healing and defense cards, other times you really need to heal, but only have attack cards. It just feels clunky to me. However, the strategy of deck building is fun, and the story is worth it. A nice touch in said story, by the way, is that the player is actually used as a character, a spirit guide for the game’s main character. It’s not a big thing, and is even a little cheesy, but I liked it.

83) Runes of Magic (PC)

I played this game far longer than I should have. It’s very much a WoW clone, and I’m not a fan of WoW at all. This game had one feature that helped it hold my interest a lot longer. This is the ability to have two classes on a single character, and have some abilities from one class apply when you were playing as the other class. It’s like have two different characters with the ability to share some powers. This helped keep things varied for a bit longer, and allowed me to get sucked in a lot further than I normally would. Other than that though, it’s really close to the same game as WoW.

84) Yoshi (NES)

Everyone wanted in on the Tetris style puzzle game bandwagon back in the day, and this was Nintendo’s shot at it. Basically, blocks of  “enemies” would fall, and you eliminated them by matching them up with the enemies already on the ground. You did this by switching each column on the ground around so the blocks would fall on the appropriate column, as the falling blocks themselves couldn’t be moved. It’s an interesting take on the genre, but Tetris was still better.

85) Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4 (PS2)

Do you like Naruto? Do you like quirky, non-traditional fighting games? If you answered yes to either, you might like this game. There is a giant cast of characters pulled from the anime, as has become common with games licensed from anime. You really won’t run out of new characters to try out. As far as the gameplay itself, the controls are mapped pretty simply, though there’s a lot you can do at any given point in a fight. Every ninja  has their own specific set of moves, then there are the items you pick up on the battlefield. Jumping provides a good amount of maneuverability as well, something missing from a lot of modern fighting games. The super moves are still done through irritating cutscenes that break up the action, but it’s still a minor complaint like it always has been, so I can live with that. If you like the anime, or a quirky fighting game, this one may be for you.

86) Bloody Roar 2 (Playstation)

Pick a fighter. Lay on the beatdown in standard 3d fighter style. Then transform into a giant half-human half-animal monstrosity and completely wreck your opponent. While every fighter has a full complement of special moves in their human forms, transforming into your beast form grants you the rest of your special moves, enhanced power, regenerating health, and the ability to use your super move at the cost of losing your beast form. Of course, something that cool has to be limited, and it is by your beast gauge. This gauge fills up in human form whenever you take damage or land a hit on your opponent, and in beast form it depletes whenever you take damage. Every character also has their own story in story mode if you care to play through it. I enjoyed most of them, but they certainly aren’t essential to the game.

87) Ultimate Spiderman (Gamecube)

It’s Spiderman. You know what you do. Swing from buildings, beat up comic book villains. Enjoy cell shaded graphics that help give the game it’s comic book feel. Oh, and also do some challenges you find in town via challenge tokens that are usually some sort of race, though you might not guess that part. Those challenges can actually be a little irritating, but the rest of the game is amazing, and I’m willing to forgive some bonus material not being up to snuff. The controls are very good though, so there’s no need to worry about them getting in the way of the game.

88) Sword of the Berserk: Gut’s Rage (Dreamcast)

This game is actually set in the world of the anime Berserk. I’ve never seen it, but that didn’t impact my ability to play the game at all. The story is pretty self-contained, but if you’re interested in what happened before the game provides summaries for you that can be unlocked as you play. Really, the backstory is just bonus though, as it gives a more complete understanding of what’s going on, but isn’t essential to the story. Of course, I would be remiss in not mentioning this is really an action game, and a very good one at that. You have your giant sword all the time, a large supply of crossbow bolts, some smoke bombs, and a giant hand cannon that will pretty much wipe out anything if you have any rounds for it. Just point, shoot, and watch the baddies go down. The controls are great, it’s hard to get lost, and it’s basically what you need in an action game.

89) Guilty Gear (Playstation)

An excellent 2d fighter. Every character is different, most are fun to play, and somehow it all seems to fit together. It’s pretty traditional, as there are multiple attack buttons and special moves are done through the quarter circles, half circles, etc., followed by an attack. What’s different is that the game rewards you for being aggressive. Blocking too much makes blocking less effective, and attacking builds your super meter far more than defending. There are also one hit kill attacks, which I’m not a fan of, but they do add a bit of uncertainty to a match and keep everyone on their toes. From the strange character designs, to the built in offense is better system, this game is a strange departure from other fighting games, but definitely worth a look and a lot of fun.

90) Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (SNES)

Mortal Kombat was the game of choice back in the 90’s when you were looking for gore. While still quite violent even now, back in the 16-bit era this was the game that scared parents because of excessive violence. And it’s reputation is well deserved, as part of the game’s appeal was the blood and violence. However, there was a decent fighting game in the mix as well. A large roster of characters all with unique special moves, and with a variation of moves not seen in many fighting games helped to keep this one fun for a long time. These days, I don’t feel it holds up to better fighters, but it was fun for it’s time, and there might be some fun to be had for those who’ve never played it before for some reason.

Links to all parts of this series:
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 1
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 2
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 3
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 4
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 5
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 6
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 7
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 8
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 9
100 Games I’ve Played, Part 10


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