GB's 100 Games: 16-11

We've now reached the games I consider permanent classics. Two are from my childhood and early teen years, but the other three are all relatively recent. Two of them I just played last year. Even though I sometimes feel concerned that I'm losing touch with video games and sometimes go long periods without playing one, games like these remind me that there's no getting off this train I'm on.

Today's update is brought to you by Saralex and Liberty Medical.

15: Ghost Trick
Genre: Visual Novel/Puzzle
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: January 11, 2011

Here's the second of the three top games I played last year. I got Ghost Trick for Christmas 2011 because I was jonesing for more Ace Attorney after playing through the five English-translated games and getting blueballed by Capcom over the sixth.

In Ghost Trick you play as Sissel, who starts the game dead and without his memory. However, as a ghost, he finds he now has the ability to change people's fates - when someone nearby dies, if his spirit goes into their body, he can travel back in time with their own spirit to four minutes before their death. Once there, he can perform "Ghost Tricks" by possessing objects and manipulating them to change the situation. Unfortunately for Sissel, though, he can't seem to do this to himself and prevent his own death, so he instead spends the game (which takes place over the course of a single night) trying to find out the answers behind who he is and what the circumstances were behind his death.

Ghost Trick is well-written, engaging, and features a unique mechanic not often seen (I recall the GameCube game Geist having a similar mechanic, but I've never played that one. You could also draw a minor comparison to Space Station Silicon Valley). But what else would you expect from the creator of the Phoenix Wright games?

14: Banjo-Tooie
Genre: 3D Platformer
System: Nintendo 64
Developer: Rareware
Publisher: Rareware
Released: November 20, 2000

This is one behemoth of a game, and that is both its' greatest asset and its' major weakness.

Banjo-Tooie is the wonderful follow-up to the also-wonderful Banjo-Kazooie. Together, the two are easily my favorite 3D platformers of all time. Better than Mario, better than Sonic, and better than the bizarre horde of N64 and PS1 copycats, from the utterly bizarre Glover to the legendarily poor Bubsy 3D.

Banjo-Tooie blends an immersive, deep world with funny characters and some of the best graphics the N64 has ever seen along with a top-notch music score and a metric buttload of gameplay. There is so much packed inside this game that it boggles the mind - and that can actually be a problem. There are so many places to go and puzzles to solve that it's easy to get lost, and it can be very difficult accessing the right area as the right playable character (Banjo and Kazooie together, Banjo alone, Kazooie alone, Mumbo, or a Humba Wumba transformation). The later levels are massive mazes that can be daunting to navigate. This is still a legendary game though, top 20 for certain.

Imagine if Rare had actually made Banjo-Threeie. Y'know, back when everything they touched was gold. A damn shame this series fell off the map like it did.

13: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Turn-based Tactical RPG
System: PlayStation
Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Sony
Released: January 28, 1998

And I thought Super Paper Mario had the "cute art, dark-as-hell story" market cornered. FFT is hands down the darkest game I've ever played. It's a deep, multiple-layered story involving war, rebellion, corruption, betrayal, murder, bigotry, class warfare, and religious commentary. Not even the game's broken English can stop this tale from being perhaps the single best non-visual novel story I've experienced in any game.

The battle system is simple to learn but features layers and layers of complexity that gives advanced players a tactical edge. There are tons of playable characters and jobs (but sadly only 16 slots for party members, which is one of my biggest nits to pick about this one), loads of equipment and skills, and the very cool ability to mix and match different job skills. You want a chemist who can punch her enemies to death, teleport, and catch swords and bullets in midair before they hit her? One Godsephine coming right up!

The difficulty is a bit high at first, especially if you don't know what you're doing, but if you can get over the initial hump there's only a few difficulty spikes along the way (you may want to grind and/or use a strategy guide), particularly the "dungeon" type levels that have you go through multiple stages at once without a chance to restock items or equipment but that do let you save. It's possible to get permanently stuck here if you're not prepared, so use two save slots!

I was on the fence about getting this game for years. A certain someone's actions in 2011 pushed me over the edge. You know the story by now, surely. Regardless, major, major props to Harpy. I spent well over 50 hours on this massive game and loved almost all of it. Final Fantasy Tactics is my personal best game of 2012... but twelve games I played earlier than that have managed to beat it.

12: Streets of Rage 2
Genre: Beat-em-up
System: Sega Genesis
Developer: Ancient
Publisher: Sega
Released: December 20, 1992

Streets of Rage 2 is a fantastic old-school beat-em-up. Four heroes set out to cleanse the streets of punks and thugs. All four characters have completely different movesets and playstyles, the soundtrack is fantastic, the graphics are expressive, and the sounds are satisfying.

This game (being an early 90s hit) was the inspiration for many of the side characters I used in last years' RP. Electra, Mr. X, Barbon, and the Storm Bikers all appear here, as well as the characters used by Cornwind Evil to introduce Raw (Raven and R. Bear).

I cannot tell you how many times I rented this game from our local video store back in the day. When they began selling off their old Genesis rentals in the early 2000s, I snapped up Streets of Rage (as well as Vectorman and Chuck Rock). I'd beaten it a dozen times over by then, but that hardly mattered. Streets of Rage 2 remains the best beat-em-up I've ever bought.

I also want to give special praise to the fantastically-handled difficulty levels. Instead of the cheap cop-out so many games use of just taking away lives and continues, Streets of Rage 2 actually significantly improves the AI on each new level. Enemies will use moves they didn't have on lower difficulties, behave differently, and of course they come in greater numbers with higher HP. You'll also see alternate colors and names that didn't show up on the easier levels, and the industrial elevator in level 7 becomes the most intense and crazy beat-em-up stage ever if you crank things up to the highest difficulty, "Mania", which is only accessible via cheat code.

11: The Ace Attorney Series
Genre: Visual Novel
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: October 11, 2005 (first game)

If you came to me in the late 90s or early 2000s and said that there would soon be a significant fanbase and critical acclaim for a series of games based around being a lawyer, I would have casually dismissed you, stopped for a second to think about how absurd the basic concepts of Mario and Sonic are, shrug, and go back to doing something Pokemon-related.

And yet here we are. In Ace Attorney you play as a guy in a suit with goofy hair who tries to find the truth behind a number of crimes, every last goddamn one of which is murder. You are assisted by a silly little girl. The exact men in suits and silly little girls involved change from game to game and sometimes case to case, but that's the gist of it.

The original Phoenix Wright trilogy is a set of sublime, gripping mystery novels with a memorable cast and intense courtroom drama. They alone justify this placement, but I included the whole series so as not to ignore the other two entries.

Apollo Justice is the series low point. The combination of an almost all-new cast, a timeskip, and several iffy storyline choices make it the weakest game in the series, but it's still pretty good.

Ace Attorney Investigations pushes the series back up, although it's not quite as awesome as the first three games. Here, you actually get to control your character directly, although gameplay is largely the same.

All five games have memorable soundtracks, some great twists and turns in the story, and keep frustration low by allowing you to save almost anywhere. If you're a fan of visual novels you've probably already played these as they are the most famous visual novels outside of Japan I can think of, but I'll recommend 'em anyway. The DS carts are hard to find nowadays, but the initial trilogy is available on WiiWare for ten bucks each, plus an extra dollar of DLC for the first games' epic bonus case.