Gaming

Gaming has always been one of my most faveourite pastimes. Probably one of my earliest memories is sitting aside my dad in the office (which used to be in the top room of the house), while he worked, I used to play games on another computer one of the first games I played being Robocod. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pond_2 ) (I also used to remember asking my Dad to help me on the scary levels like bosses, but come on, I was only 2 or 3)

Over the years the platform over which the gaming occurs has changed, (From PC, to Dreamcast to XBOX) but I noticed a few years ago that the type of games I tend to play stick to a handful of genres. I've played everything under the sun, mind - beat 'em ups, FPS, RTS, platformers, RPG... the lot. But I've always tended to sway towards games in the RPG, or Platformer genre, to me, these games are the most 'fun'. There are however a handful of games that have stuck in my mind as being firm faveourites, and if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend them to you. Here are my top ten:

10) Soul Calibur
An old classic in the arcades, the Sega Dreamcast port is hailed as the "greatest fighting game ever made", and by some the greatest game across all genres, so not including this game in my top 10 would be somewhat of a crime. Unlike most fighting games it appeals to both novice and the expert, the controls being simple but having hidden subtleties (the parry function always makes you look pro). There are a whole host of characters (some unlockable giving replayability to the game), each well thought out and well designed, but you're bound to develop some firm faveourites (Voldo ftw!), and well, I just had a laugh playing it really.

9) Phantasy Star Online
The first RPG in my list, and something I really wish I'd actually played online. The story goes that on the planet Coral, endless warring caused a group of people to band together and create the 'Pioneer project'; the search for a new home. Drifting through space, they finally discovered the planet Ragol, which appears at first to be an Eden, but turns out to be Hell. You play as a 'hunter' who's job it is to explore the new planet to determine if it is suitable for habitiation. The game as a whole is your typical RPG, with classes and skills to learn, levels to traverse, in this respect it is your run of the mill type game. But it was the graphics, storyline and overall concept that really grabbed me and made it memorable. Even if you only play it in the offline mode like me, it's worth a look.

8) Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Thinking it was kind of cool, after playing the demo, this Action-Adventure did not fail to impress me. In a nutshell, you play as 'fallen' vampire Raziel on a quest to seek revenge on his creator, by fallen, I mean you're no longer a vampire, but a creature who feasts off the souls of his victims. In a nutshell means that until I began playing it and noticing I hadn't a clue who half the characters were, I realised that there had been games previously that contained all the backstory to this title. (This was even more of a problem in Legacy of Kain: Defiance) Nevertheless, despite this and the shoddy graphics, the puzzles in this game actually caused you to think, and I like a game that keeps me going for a good amount of time. Plus there was a lot to explore, and areas that you'd only come across by messing around in the game world, something that was, for me, a huge reward, as I'm the sort of person who enjoys just existing in the world the people create for me.

7) Sonic Adventure
Yeah, you really have to have at least one Sonic title here - this was the first Sonic game in 3d I might add, also being a title in which Sonic (as Finn likes to put it) wasn't all 'yo dudes!'. It was probably the last too. The main story arc was playable through the eyes of six different characters, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E-102 Gamma and Big the Cat, so you ended up seeing different story points, which all concluded at the end - I thought this was a huge incentive to play each character. There were two modes of gameplay interspersed throughout the game, Action stages (which are your basic sonicesque levels) and Adventure fields (which you explored for plot advancement, containing character power ups and puzzle solving elements). It was a game I had a lot of fun playing, although it didn't last terribly long in my hands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Adventure

6) Stranger's Wrath
The last title produced by Oddworld Inhabitants, for me this was too little of a good thing. I was really dissapointed when I completed this, because it was so short, but the actual game itself was superb. While previous Oddworld titles had you playing the underdog, this time you were playing as the top of the pile guy, which made for an interesting and fun change. Also, the developers seemed to have finally gotten the hang of a 3d world after the mistakes they made in Munch's Oddysee, this world was stunning in comparison - you really got the feel of the changing landscapes. Whereas in Munch it tended to be a little samey, in Stranger's Wrath we had first the desolate, dusty wilderness reminiscent of the wild west, changing to towering pine forests and finally a frigid snowy wasteland. This was the first title after Abe's Oddysee that I felt truly captured the spirit of Oddworld, I got shivers down my spine just looking at the place, never mind playing in it. Plus, as usual the humor, the fast paced action and the general solid gameplay returned, this time with FPS elements aswell as the usual problem solving action and adventure elements. What I also liked was the 'save the planet' message in the game, as there has been in every title so far, the end was very haunting. Definately a game worthy of being in my top ten.

5) Guild Wars
What? Guild Wars only comes 5th? I'm afraid so, there are four more games I have to place above it, but it was tough to decide if I was going to place this on position 4 or not. The second RPG on my list, this one is an MMORPG, and of which I actually played (and still play) online. I've had a lot of fun playing it, and it's probably the one I've played most solidly over the longest period of time. It seems I just can't get enough, and with the addition of the expansion packs every half a year, it just keeps on dragging me back for more. It's also great to have a game I can play with more than one friend - I love being in a team with people from college, and playing with Finn is just the best.

4) Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future
My god this was a beautiful game. The first game I had played infact, that the developers had actually managed to make water look like water. The underwater world itself was lush and alive, and I liked the gameplay - as a dolphin, you had to resurface from time to time to breathe, and you replenished your life by actually hunting shoals of fish, different fish being more beneficial. You could also learn to communicate with the different 'friendly' species in the game as you went through each level, Turtles, Manta Rays etc... making them follow you and perform various functions. And while you may think this game sounds like a walk in the park, it was tough - I actually had to complete it with a walkthrough at one point after being stuck on it for several months, which is something I've never had to do previously or since. The storyline was also a strong point in this game, written by author David Brin, it will appeal immensely (and somewhat unusually) to sci-fi fans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_the_Dolphin:_Defender_of_the_Future) There really isn't anything else I can say about this game, everything was brilliant about it, it is however, a game you will play just once. After completion it's not something you can likely face again, it is a marathon to complete.

3) Xmen: Legends
The highest selling Xmen title of all time, Xmen legends is another RPG to add to the repetoire. I picked this up for about £10 thinking 'oh well, if it's not very good it doesn't really matter'. But it was the most fun I'd had from a game for such a long time. It's just great to be able to pick your four faveourite xmen and play as a team with them, and the added bonus of them having unique powers (not just standard everyone has a version of the same) just makes it all the more fun; you have to have a flying character, a character that can weld stuff, build bridges, attack close up, attack at range... plus they even had gambit chucking cards around which was great. My only two annoyances with this game was a little awkward multiplayer, the camera was a little dodgy, and the whole story revolved around a character we didn't even care about... magma... come on. But the graphics were great - I love cell shading. It just added to the cartoony feel of it all. It's so high up the list because it far exceeded my expectations, and it came to me at a time I was desperate for something I could just have fun with.

2) Shenmue
Possibly the most innovative game ever created, Shenmue cannot be classed in any of the game genre brackets that exist currently - the company had to create an entirely new one especially for it, FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment). This was down to the fact that you could do whatever you wanted, go wherever you wanted to and experience real weather patterns (as they were in Japan in 1986/7 or select randomly generated ones) and day/night. Infact, at the time Shenmue was as close to real life as you could get, the company spending around seventy million dollars producing it - the highest cost of creating a game ever at the time. Every time you play this game, it is different - you will never experience the same thing twice (save for the main storyline). You may meet entirely different people depending on where you are on which day, and you remember who people are ('Hey, there's the woman who works at the arcade, going to the supermarket'). And you can interact with virtually everything you see - feeding kittens food you snitched from your fridge at home, playing games at the arcade, catching a bus to go to your job... playing pool in the bar. All the while uncovering clues as to who the mysterious man was who murdered your father, and why he did it. The game spans over a period of about five months, from December 1986 - April 1987 - if you don't complete the game in that time your father's killer returns to finish the job... but you really do have a very long time to complete it in. Especially since you play in real time (1 day = 24 mins approx). A game that really is something very special, it was a shame to play the sequel and find it so boring - and I'm worried that the rest of the story (spanning 16 chapters) is going to go downhill.

1) Abe's Oddysee
There are others futher down the list that are probably more deserving of this number one slot - for one they will have better graphics, more groundbreaking engines or something... this is a simple sidescrolling platformer. This game however, is something really special to me. I don't doubt that this probably has the best story of any game, or at least carries a very important message along with it. It's certainly the story that keeps me coming back to play it over and over again - a slave who escapes from capture to return and free his kind, I just love the happy ending it has and the fact that it draws parallels to our own planet just chills me. Every game in the series has some sort of message about how screwed up our planet is - this one was about slavery (as was Abe's Exoddus), Munch's Oddysee showed us how terrible animal testing, and extinction of whole species truly was, and Stranger's Wrath picked up on how huge multinational cooperations destroyed wilderness and chewed up nature's resources for their own personal gain... so on the surface while these games contain a lot of humor and fun, they do have a message along with them, and I think that's why they appeal to me so much. The other titles never really recaptured the essence of Oddworld that was first delivered to me in this title though, and I think this is why I like this one the most. The other games on the list were all special, but I think this is the one that really comes out top.