The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

[Capt. Factorial]

For my 12th pick, I'm going to take a game from another very early gaming system that got me through my childhood. At my Mom's house, we had the Atari 2600, but at my Dad's house, we had the Intellivision.

Astrosmash (1981) - Intellivision

Now, I'm going to admit that for the most part, Intellivision games didn't age all that well, but Astrosmash was an arcade-style upwards-shooter that had some pretty good game mechanics (and terrible "music", it was just a metronomic click that got faster as you went up in levels!) You've got a ground-based laser cannon, or whatever that thing is, and you've got to deal with incoming rocks (the big ones usually split in two when you hit them), spinning bombs (don't let these hit the ground even if you're not around!), homing bombs (if these get to ground level they'll find your cannon unless you manage to teleport away in time) and on high enough levels, UFOs. And I think that's it - but as the game levels up things get faster, objects start to come on the diagonal instead of straight down, and the proportion of more dangerous types of object increases.

The screen changes color at each level-up, the final of which (that I could reach) was at 100,000 points. We managed to get games into the 500K range, and there's not another level-up there...and we never made it to a million. It just gets too tough - and the kicker is that while you're allowed to let rocks hit the ground without dying, each one that reaches the ground reduces your score. So when you're spending all your time making sure you stop the stuff that's definitely going to kill you otherwise, you're watching your score go down, and down...

I wonder if anybody ever made a million. The game I posted above I think only breaks 100K, but there was another video where the player almost broke 800K (and it was hours long!) Man, the patience I had as a kid!

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I have personally only played the first three Zelda games, and that's the only one I didn't like.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

For my 12th pick, I'm going to take a game from another very early gaming system that got me through my childhood. At my Mom's house, we had the Atari 2600, but at my Dad's house, we had the Intellivision.

Are you... me?

 

[Tetsujin]

Dr. Mario (NES)


Well, someone already took Tetris so I had to take this as my “take up several hours a day aimlessly watching little blocks fall” option. A Mario game in name only, this NES/Game Boy double release must have come as a shock to your average consumer in an era before the internet as unlike pretty much any other Mario game in existence at the time this game featured no platforming and arguably no Mario.

What it did have though was color-coded blocks and an earworm song.

So the thing about this game is that it arguably has led to more of those dumb phone games than Tetris ever did. You know the sort of game I’m talking about (the sort of game likely to be an unskippable advertisement on YouTube and steals all your data the second it gets on your phone). Is it simple? Yes. Is it more fun in 2025 than it probably should be? Yes. And that’s important if I’m going to be stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life.

 

[whitechocolate]

My favorite Zelda game still hasn't been picked. I might be tempted if it's still there in the last round.

 

[Spike]

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (2007)

• Developer: Traveller's Tales
• Publisher: LucasArts
• Producer: Shawn Storc
• Lead Designer: Jon Burton
• Programmers: Paul Flanagan, Nick Elms, others at Traveller's Tales
• Composer: John Williams (original Star Wars score; adapted for the game)
• Platform: Nintendo Wii

The Venn Diagram of people who like LEGOs and Star Wars is almost an overlapping circle. I am one of those people. It's easy to get into, full of secrets, and it brings me a chuckle. I still go back to this game from time to time.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

My mans is leading the league in "write-up to follow" that never gets followed...

 

[Padrino]

With the 136th pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (2020)

Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
Game Director: Tetsuya Takahashi
Musical Score: Manami Kiyota, ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, Yoko Shimomura, & Yasunori Mitsuda
Genre(s): Action RPG; JRPG
Platform: Nintendo Switch

And now for something a bit esoteric, another "cult classic", I suppose you could say. Xenoblade Chronicles was originally released for the Nintendo Wii in 2010. As immensely popular as that particular console was, I missed out on this entire era of video gaming. A series of recommendations would guide me to Xenoblade after a "definitive edition" was re-released for the Nintendo Switch in 2020 (as a gamer who's often late to the party, I really appreciate this particular trend). Given the conditions begat by COVID, a sprawling JRPG that's set atop the dormant bodies of two warring god-nations was absolutely excellent material for weathering the pandemic.

Monolith Soft is one of those Japanese developers that just oozes with imagination and creativity, while possessing a knack for threading their unique vision with heady philosophical notions and enigmatic Gnostic concepts. Xenoblade Chronicles' executive director and lead writer, Tetsuya Takahashi, is among the most talented in the business, having worked on several landmark picks in this draft, including @SLAB's selection Final Fantasy VI, @hrdboild's selections Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears, and @Löwenherz's selection Chrono Trigger. I've only played the lattermost of these games, but it's obvious that they were all worthy picks, and I'm happy to add to this draft's collection of masterpiece JRPGs.

That said, this one plays a bit differently than other JRPGs of its era. Xenoblade features a real-time battle system, but when your party engages with an enemy, each party member "auto-attacks" with their weapon of choice. The player controls the main character Shulk, and you manually engage various "Arts" amidst the auto-attacks. As you do battle, various synergies between party members arise. In a lot of ways, it's a rhythm game. You have to track all of the UI chaos on screen and what your party members are saying during battle, and once you start to make sense of the madness, combat begins to click into place, and you realize it's a bit of a dance. You're moving in step with your party members, and as you get more proficient at the dance and chain attacks successfully, you can become a party of death dealers without too much effort. It's a rather novel system and makes for engaging gameplay.

Elsewhere, there's an "offline MMO" structure to many of the missions. There are hundreds of sidequests that can be picked up from NPCs throughout the course of the game. If you're the completionist type, these minor checklist missions may very well drive you insane, as will the game's massive "Collectopaedia" of items. But the game doesn't seem to want to encourage completionism, as you'll end up very over-leveled for later zones if you commit to crossing off every sidequest Xenoblade has to offer. Instead, they're morsels that force the player to wander a bit and take in the majesty of a land sprouted from the bodies of the two titans who comprise the game's gloriously unique setting. It's that setting, the story crafted around it, and the philosophical notions contained within it that make Xenoblade Chronicles a deeply compelling game.

The world of Xenoblade was but an endless ocean until Bionis and Mechonis came into being. They entered this world in animosity, and battled each other to a stalemate that left them frozen in time. As ages passed, life forms began to spring from the bodies of these gargantuan gods whose names were not exactly subtly-coded. Bionis is home to biological life, including the humanoid Homs, a naturally mortal species to which most of your party belongs. Mechonis is, conversely, home to mechanical life, including the humanoid Machina, whose lifespans stretch for millennia. Much like Bionis and Mechonis themselves, the Homs and Machina are locked in a perpetual state of war. To detail the story of this conflict would require much more than these few paragraphs, but Xenoblade Chronicles uses its story well to develop themes of existentialism, predestination, personal autonomy, and whether or not meaning can be found in a world without gods. It's a wonderfully rich gaming experience, and I highly recommend it to some of my fellow drafters who may have yet to play it, but seem primed for the experience it offers.

 

[whitechocolate]

Star Fox 64 - N64, 1997




​

Nintendo doesn't mess around with its major launches, and Star Fox 64 has the quality one would expect from Nintendo's best effort. The music, gameplay, art, and sound effects - they're all timeless Nintendo. The dialogue is great, and the sound effects for locking on and launching a homing weapon are perfect. Star Fox 64 also has this wonderful arcade vibe to it that pushes players to go for higher and higher scores. Each level has challenges and many bonus scoring opportunities. Star Fox 64 was the first game that I really sat down and tried to master. My goal was to achieve the highest score possible in the game. I was surely naive to think I could even figure out how to route the highest score, I still had fun trying to find the best scoring strategies and pulling them off. Playing casually is a ton of fun. Playing for score adds a lot of replay value and sense of satisfaction on top of great fun.

 

[Löwenherz]

T-U-R-T-L-E Power
T-U-R-T-L-E Power
T-U-R-T-L-E Power

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Switch) - 2022



Simply put, this game sparks joy.

It is a restoration, amalgamation, and celebration of the three TMNT 90s* beat ‘em ups released during the height of Turtle Mania, while adding just enough creative updated modern mechanics and RPG elements to keep it interesting.

Characters have a wide variety of moves and attacks so every problem has several customized solutions. Each character plays slightly differently with just enough variation to make their play-styles engaging. There are plenty of enemy and obstacle types with unique strategies and clever pairings to balance adrenaline-infused fun with fair challenges.

It is the best of its genre in decades, and quite honestly maybe ever, and so meticulously crafted there is not a single sour note in its multiple hour runtime.






That alone is worth the price of admission, but what really raises this into the stratosphere is the dedication and fidelity to the art style, energy, music, sound, and even voice actors of the original cartoon. I seriously think every original actor reprises his or her role here (or at least brought in someone who could mimic the orginal) with the glaring exception of James Avery, AKA Uncle Phil, AKA The Shredder who passed away a decade prior and was so irreplaceable the creators didn’t even try to find a sound-alike.

Every seam is bursting with nostalgic nods to the peculiar concoction of elements that filled my elementary school brain with dopamine. And not just the obvious ones; There are some outrageously deep cuts here too. For example:

- Tempestra, the boss of Episode 6 (Levels or stages are called “episodes” in this) appeared in all of 2 episodes of the original show several years apart.



- DLC player-character Karai, in addition to being the most important and ironically famous character many Turtles fans of the era have never heard of, also uses a moveset inspired by her appearance in the Turtle’s fairly obscure SNES fighting game.



- Toward the latter part of Shredder’s Revenge, the Turtles find the Technodrome on the planet Balaraphon in Dimension X - where it was left irreparably destroyed at the end of season 8.

Spoiler: By the way

Did you know there was an 8th season of the original TMNT cartoon? In fact, there were 10 seasons running all the way until a couple months shy of 1997. I started watching when I was in Kindergarten. It does something dirty to my mind realizing the original cartoon was still on the air and limping along when I was a freshman in high school.

Honestly, while beat ‘em ups had their golden era, they are often notoriously shallow, either being entirely too easy allowing overpowered super heroes to mow down waves of helpless goons, or overload the screen with enemy spam to keep conning kids out of their quarters. Probably why this is, by my count, only the third of the genre to be picked in this draft, including one of the predecessors and inspirations for Shredder’s Revenge - TMNT: The Arcade Game (that one earned Konami a treasure trove of my quarters a few decades ago). This one has a good balance of challenging enemy groups with a satisfying fun factor, and while there are 16 Episodes in Shredder’s Revenge, more than double the average number of games of its type, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours on a normal setting to complete a single full play-through.

But I came back to it for several days and even weeks after finishing my first run, partially because there are enough added features to extend its lifespan, including collectibles, achievement challenges, unique character level-ups, and a rather interesting survival mode.

But the biggest reason I kept playing is because it quite simply made me happy. There is so much love and care to every visual and audio aspect, it might as well be a DeLorean transporting me back to watching the Turtles on Saturday Morning with a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Oh, and it rectified the greatest misstep of my favorite Turtles beat ‘em up on the NES: it has Triceratons!



Like, a ton of them too. Not just a boss, but a whole level dedicated to them, plus appearing as common enemies in Dimension X later. I cannot tell you how gratifying it was to finally take on Triceratons in a classic Turtles beat ‘em up. Episode 11, which introduces Triceratons as the main enemy and boss, ended up being my favorite and go-to when leveling up new characters.

Really my first line of this massive write-up ends up being the best summation of why I’m picking Shredder’s Revenge: It sparks joy in me. Maybe others who didn’t have the same connection to the Turtles would not have the same visceral response, and that’s OK. It’s still an incredibly fun and functional beat em up worth checking out.

But for those of us who were there, this is a culmination of every Turtle-maniac’s dream game.

Go Green Machine!

Spoiler: HEAVY SPOILERS! Obsessive Turtle-Maniacs Only

Here is someone using April to absolutely wreck the toughest level in the game while also rocking to that smooth techno beat perfect for the Technodrome.

There are hundreds of references, down to Tiffany, the turtle-hating one-time girlfriend of April’s boss who appeared in two episodes and as a disembodied voice in a third, showing up in a fleeing crowd at the start of Jaw-Breaking News.

Purely because this game fills me with so much joy, here are the major Turtles game and show references in Shredder’s Revenge of the overall levels themselves I picked up on, and a few super cool references for fun.


Episode 1: Jaw-Breaking News!

References: TMNT Arcade Game Scene 1 Ch 6 Building “Fire. We Gotta Get April Out!” As well as being a general reference to one of the most iconic locations of the show.

Also feels very Simpson’s Arcade referential to that game’s Level 7 that takes place at a Ch 6 TV station as well. That game was made by Konami too, so maybe not coincidental.


Episode 2: Big Apple 3pm

References: All 3 TMNT beat ‘em ups have a Midtown Manhattan street level.
- Arcade Game: Scene 2 “C’mon, After That Shredder Creep!”
- Manhattan Project: Level 4 “Welcome to the Jungle”
- Turtles in Time: Level 2 “Alleycat Blues”

Big Apple 3pm title is a reference to Turtles in Time Level 1: Big Apple 3am


Episode 3: Mutants Over Broadway

References: Combination of Arcade Game Scene 5 “Let’s Get to That Secret Factory” skateboard on the highway level and Manhattan Project’s Level 3 “Brooklyn Bridge is Falling Down” with Bebop’s Truck.


Episode 4: Rumble in the Zoo

References: Partially the back half of Manhattan Project Level 4 “Welcome to the Jungle” but mostly Episode 2 “Enter the Shredder” of the cartoon taking place at the zoo where the rhino and warthog that mutate Bebop and Rocksteady are taken.

Groundchuck and Dirtbag, in addition to appearing in Manhattan Project, were from the season 5 finale “Planet of the Turtleoids”- also the last episode I watched as a kid probably because it played very much as a series finale.


Episode 5: King of the Spill

References: Literally every TMNT game has a sewer level because of course they do. But adds in the last section of Manhattan Project Level 4 “Welcome to the Jungle” with the subway train.

Also, the broken down machine that appears in the background in the fight against Rat King is from Level 3 Sewer Surfin’ in Turtles in Time referencing the Rat King’s boss fight.


Episode 6: Mall Meltdown

References: This one isn’t necessarily linked to a previous game level, but in addition to being a reference to Tempestra’s episode in the series, it also has a very 90s mall rat culture vibe.

Tokka and Rahzar are from the second movie and also appear in both Manhattan Project and Turtles in Time.

The pseudo-mini bosses that first appear here are Foot Clan Knucklehead Spider Grabber Claws, which were a ridiculous toy Playmates put out that never appeared in any other media, not even the cartoon created specifically to sell such toys. Super rad to see them here.


Episode 7: Rooftop Reptiles

References: Something of a fusion between two Manhattan Project Levels: Vertigo Point Tower (Level 7) on rooftops at night and the daytime construction-themed Brooklyn Bridge is Falling Down (Level 3).

Bebop and Rocksteady fight as a team in both The Arcade Game and the SNES version of Turtles in Time. In fact, I’d considered it such a trope, I’m rather surprised at how infrequent it was in the classic games.


Episode 8: Panic in the Sky

References: Every Turtle’s game has some kind of skateboard/surfing level. I think specifically this one is a nod to Manhattan Project Level 2 “The Typhoon Tidal Pool” and Turtles in Time Level 7 (Level 8 on the SNES) “Neon Night Riders.”

While Wingnut (and Screwloose) only appeared in a single episode of the cartoon, he was inexplicably a fighter in the SNES version of TMNT Tournament Fighters and rather prominent in the Archie comics as a Turtles ally.


Episode 9: Crisis at Coney Island

References: Manhattan Project Level 1 “Fort Slauderdale Beach”.

Leatherhead’s fight is something of a fusion of his tactics in Manhattan Project and Turtles in Time.


Episode 10: A Few Screw’s Loose

References: Fully echoes Turtles in Time Level 2 Alleycat Blues in which Metalhead is also the boss.

The location, Silicone Alley, in addition to being a real place in New York and a play on Silicone Valley, references both Metalhead (Silicone) and his Turtles in Time level (Alleycat Blues).

The title, while clearly referencing Metalhead, is also possibly a reference to Screwloose who does not appear in the game (probably because he’s a gross and weird, even by TMNT standards, fly thing) but is Wingnut’s partner.


Episode 11: Dinosaur Stampede

References: No connection to an actual level, but Manhattan Project rather infamously had a Triceraton on the cover, but not in the game itself. This level fully corrects that oversight. Triceratons actually predate the Turtles themselves and in addition to being central to the plots of some of the most important early comic book storylines, were in the original logo for Mirage comics. Plus, they’re super cool.


Episode 12: It Won’t Fly

References: Arcade Game Scene 5 “C’mon Let’s Bust This Joint” as well as the sewer section of Scene 2 “C’mon, After that Shredder Creep!” In which Baxter is the boss in human form so the level itself is filled with mousers. This level also has a lot of reference to classic Technodrome levels with its series of traps and Foot Soldiers / mousers being assembled in real time.

Baxter’s fight is a fusion of his attacks in Scene 2 of the Arcade Game as a human, the Level 1 “Big Apple 3am” boss fight in Turtles in Time, and the NES version of the Arcade Game’s parking lot level as a Fly.


Episode 13: Technodrome Redux

References: Every Turtles game has a Technodrome level (with the slight exception of the Arcade version of Turtles in Time, which saves the Technodrome for the final single-room boss fight with Super Shredder), but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it destroyed and in ruins, which is a reference to the 8th season finale of the original show.

Mini-boss General Traag is all over the cartoon and is a traditional mini-boss in almost every TMNT Technodrome level (Maybe he’s in the NES TMNT Technodrome. Hard to really tell what some of those sprites are supposed to be).

Chrome Dome, like Groundchuck and Dirtbag, is from the Season 5 finale “Planet of the Turtleoids” (and appeared in the Season 7 episode “Night of Rogues” along with Tempestra for some reason that defies logic). His fight is almost taken wholesale from the SNES Turtles in Time Shredder fight that shoehorned in Mode 7 graphics as the SNES was want to do.


Episode 14: The Lost Archenemies

References: Almost a shot-for-shot remake of Turtles in Time Level 4 (Level 5 on the SNES) Prehistoric Turtlesaurus complete with Slash as the boss.

The only notable alteration is the inclusion of the xenomorph-like Pizza Monsters, which appeared in one episode of the show and inexplicably in Level 3 Sewer Surfin’ of Turtles in Time.

Slash’s boss fight is rather similar to his fight in Turtles in Time with an added attack from his appearance as a mini-boss in Manhattan Project.


Episode 15: Outworld Strangeoids

References: Manhattan Project Level 8 “Krang’s Spaceship” and Turtles in Time Level 8 (Level 9 on the SNES) “Star Base: Where No Turtle has Gone Before.” The games started adding Krang’s Spaceship as essentially a second Technodrome, even though, to my knowledge, nothing in any other media suggested Krang had any kind of spaceship.

Fight with Krang is straight from his boss fight in Manhattan Project while the fight with Shredder is a remix of his Arcade Game and Manhattan Project fight.


Episode 16: Wrath of the Lady

References: Turtles in Time where Shredder’s evil scheme is to steal the Statue of Liberty, except in that game, there didn’t seem to be much of a step two with the plan (just like there wasn’t a step two in “Make the island of Manhattan float” from Manhattan Project). Here though, it’s to make a giant colossus body for Krang, similar to the season 1 finale “Shredder and Splintered.” Also possibly a Ghostbusters-in-reverse reference.

Game wraps up with a fight with Super Shredder, - the mutated mega-form of Shredder as played by wrestler Kevin Nash in the second movie, ultimately killed by falling wood while the Turtles did literally nothing. Yet ever after became the “ultimate boss” for games moving forward giving Shredder added speed, strength, and apparently mystical powers. Both Manhattan Project and Turtles in Time end with a fight with Super Shredder, but this scene more closely resembles Turtles in Time with the head of the Statue of Liberty in the background, and again the season 1 finale “Shredder and Splintered” taking place in Time Square (which really should have been where Turtles in Time ended).

Additionally, when Super Shredder “glitches out” he mimics the images of the imperfect Mutant Shredder Clones from the Return to New York storyline of the comics.

 

[Löwenherz]

With the 136th pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (2020)

Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
Game Director: Tetsuya Takahashi
Musical Score: Manami Kiyota, ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, Yoko Shimomura, & Yasunori Mitsuda
Genre(s): Action RPG; JRPG
Platform: Nintendo Switch

And now for something a bit esoteric, another "cult classic", I suppose you could say. Xenoblade Chronicles was originally released for the Nintendo Wii in 2010. As immensely popular as that particular console was, I missed out on this entire era of video gaming. A series of recommendations would guide me to Xenoblade after a "definitive edition" was re-released for the Nintendo Switch in 2020 (as a gamer who's often late to the party, I really appreciate this particular trend). Given the conditions begat by COVID, a sprawling JRPG that's set atop the dormant bodies of two warring god-nations was absolutely excellent material for weathering the pandemic.

Monolith Soft is one of those Japanese developers that just oozes with imagination and creativity, while possessing a knack for threading their unique vision with heady philosophical notions and enigmatic Gnostic concepts. Xenoblade Chronicles' executive director and lead writer, Tetsuya Takahashi, is among the most talented in the business, having worked on several landmark picks in this draft, including @SLAB's selection Final Fantasy VI, @hrdboild's selections Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears, and @Löwenherz's selection Chrono Trigger. I've only played the lattermost of these games, but it's obvious that they were all worthy picks, and I'm happy to add to this draft's collection of masterpiece JRPGs.

That said, this one plays a bit differently than other JRPGs of its era. Xenoblade features a real-time battle system, but when your party engages with an enemy, each party member "auto-attacks" with their weapon of choice. The player controls the main character Shulk, and you manually engage various "Arts" amidst the auto-attacks. As you do battle, various synergies between party members arise. In a lot of ways, it's a rhythm game. You have to track all of the UI chaos on screen and what your party members are saying during battle, and once you start to make sense of the madness, combat begins to click into place, and you realize it's a bit of a dance. You're moving in step with your party members, and as you get more proficient at the dance and chain attacks successfully, you can become a party of death dealers without too much effort. It's a rather novel system and makes for engaging gameplay.

Elsewhere, there's an "offline MMO" structure to many of the missions. There are hundreds of sidequests that can be picked up from NPCs throughout the course of the game. If you're the completionist type, these minor checklist missions may very well drive you insane, as will the game's massive "Collectopaedia" of items. But the game doesn't seem to want to encourage completionism, as you'll end up very over-leveled for later zones if you commit to crossing off every sidequest Xenoblade has to offer. Instead, they're morsels that force the player to wander a bit and take in the majesty of a land sprouted from the bodies of the two titans who comprise the game's gloriously unique setting. It's that setting, the story crafted around it, and the philosophical notions contained within it that make Xenoblade Chronicles a deeply compelling game.

The world of Xenoblade was but an endless ocean until Bionis and Mechonis came into being. They entered this world in animosity, and battled each other to a stalemate that left them frozen in time. As ages passed, life forms began to spring from the bodies of these gargantuan gods whose names were not exactly subtly-coded. Bionis is home to biological life, including the humanoid Homs, a naturally mortal species to which most of your party belongs. Mechonis is, conversely, home to mechanical life, including the humanoid Machina, whose lifespans stretch for millennia. Much like Bionis and Mechonis themselves, the Homs and Machina are locked in a perpetual state of war. To detail the story of this conflict would require much more than these few paragraphs, but Xenoblade Chronicles uses its story well to develop themes of existentialism, predestination, personal autonomy, and whether or not meaning can be found in a world without gods. It's a wonderfully rich gaming experience, and I highly recommend it to some of my fellow drafters who may have yet to play it, but seem primed for the experience it offers.

I own Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii. Played approximately 20 minutes, declared it one of the best games ever, then my mind collapsed in on itself due to the pure enormity of it all. Haven’t touched it since, and didn’t have time to really get a handle on the combat.

Been festering on my “to get back to” games list for a while.

 

[Warhawk]

Half-Life 2 (20th Anniversary Edition)
Developer: Valve
Year: 2004
Platform: PC (Steam)

It's not like I wanted to take two games from the Orange Box, but I wanted another excellent FPS and when you can pick possibly the best one ever made in Round 12 (and complete the Half-Life story to boot) I can't pass it up!

As revolutionary as the original Half-Life was, Half-Life 2 took the success that it was and pumped it full of steroids to make it even better. And, with the 20th Anniversary Edition on Steam, not only do you get the original game you get the two follow-up expansions (Episode 1 and Episode 2) included with it!

In addition to the beautiful graphical improvements made with their proprietary Source engine, they also integrated the Havoc physics engine to simulate real-world physics within the game. That led to the inclusion of one of the most fun aspects of the game - the new gravity gun - which allowed players to pull, hold (like a shield), or repel objects (throw enemy grenades back at them, manipulate saw blades as weapons, etc., and, eventually, bodies). In fact, one of the game demos by the developers was Zombie Basketball - shooting baskets with zombies (and the appropriate ragdoll physics, of course). Similar to Portal, the game also required some physics-based problems to be solved during gameplay. You could even use a pheromone item to get an army of enemy antlions to assist you (which is flat out cool)! On top of that, they added a couple of vehicles to the game (airboat, dune buggy) for some fast-paced adventure. Heck, they even had Louis Gossett Jr., Robert Guillaume, and Robert Culp as voice actors for the game.

Now, look, fancy features don't mean much if the game isn't awesome. It was creepy, the enemies were bigger and badder than ever before, and the setpieces fantastic. And yes, you get to battle the giant striders. From wiki:

Critics praised the graphics, physics, story and gameplay. MaximumPC awarded Half-Life 2 11 on their rating scale which normally peaks at 10, calling it "the best game ever made".

It earned 39 game of the year awards. If you go to wiki, there's more won awards there than you can shake a stick at, including best game (year and decade), best FPS, graphics, outstanding innovation, outstanding character performance (voice acting), animation, art direction, gameplay engineering, visual engineering, and online multiplayer (as it also had multiplayer built in as well).

Now, the eye candy:

 

[hrdboild]

View attachment 14138

Half-Life 2 (20th Anniversary Edition)
Developer: Valve
Year: 2004
Platform: PC (Steam)

It's not like I wanted to take two games from the Orange Box, but I wanted another excellent FPS and when you can pick possibly the best one ever made in Round 12 (and complete the Half-Life story to boot) I can't pass it up!

As revolutionary as the original Half-Life was, Half-Life 2 took the success that it was and pumped it full of steroids to make it even better. And, with the 20th Anniversary Edition on Steam, not only do you get the original game you get the two follow-up expansions (Episode 1 and Episode 2) included with it!

In addition to the beautiful graphical improvements made with their proprietary Source engine, they also integrated the Havoc physics engine to simulate real-world physics within the game. That led to the inclusion of one of the most fun aspects of the game - the new gravity gun - which allowed players to pull, hold (like a shield), or repel objects (throw enemy grenades back at them, manipulate saw blades as weapons, etc., and, eventually, bodies). In fact, one of the game demos by the developers was Zombie Basketball - shooting baskets with zombies (and the appropriate ragdoll physics, of course). Similar to Portal, the game also required some physics-based problems to be solved during gameplay. You could even use a pheromone item to get an army of enemy antlions to assist you (which is flat out cool)! On top of that, they added a couple of vehicles to the game (airboat, dune buggy) for some fast-paced adventure. Heck, they even had Louis Gossett Jr., Robert Guillaume, and Robert Culp as voice actors for the game.

Now, look, fancy features don't mean much if the game isn't awesome. It was creepy, the enemies were bigger and badder than ever before, and the setpieces fantastic. And yes, you get to battle the giant striders. From wiki:



It earned 39 game of the year awards. If you go to wiki, there's more won awards there than you can shake a stick at, including best game (year and decade), best FPS, graphics, outstanding innovation, outstanding character performance (voice acting), animation, art direction, gameplay engineering, visual engineering, and online multiplayer (as it also had multiplayer built in as well).

Now, the eye candy:

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Nice value pick here. I was considering taking it just because it's still available. The first Half-Life was a hugely significant game for me when it came out. It represented a new way to think about designing a single-player FPS game. And Half-Life 2 was equally revolutionary with the physics based puzzles, the vehicles, the squad combat level. And how pretty much every level was an entirely different game. When I think about FPS games on PC it's really down to the two Half-Life games and the original Deus Ex for me since I'm far more of a single-player campaign type of gamer. I drafted the one I most want to re-play but I'll always love the Half-Life games too for all their memorable set-pieces.

 

[SLAB]

Pick 12: Pokemon GO (Mobile)

I couldn’t go a whole video game list without including pokemon. And I’m going to skip the mainline games, and go with the only mobile game I’m pretty heavily into.

This game has so much more depth than the game everyone was playing so many years ago. Yes, you still throw balls at pokemon. But you can Raid for strong pokemon, connect with friends, raise and strengthen your team. That, and it’s always getting updates. New pokemon, pokemon rotations switching out pretty often, it’s seldom the exact same for very long! It’s all the joys of raising Pokémon right in your pocket. Plus, it will get me up and walking around my island.

So I got a Real Skill on my island in Rocksmith and fitness here with all the walking I’ll be doing! My games serve multiple purposes!

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

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Pick 12: Pokemon GO (Mobile)

I couldn’t go a whole video game list without including pokemon. And I’m going to skip the mainline games, and go with the only mobile game I’m pretty heavily into.

This game has so much more depth than the game everyone was playing so many years ago. Yes, you still throw balls at pokemon. But you can Raid for strong pokemon, connect with friends, raise and strengthen your team. That, and it’s always getting updates. New pokemon, pokemon rotations switching out pretty often, it’s seldom the exact same for very long! It’s all the joys of raising Pokémon right in your pocket. Plus, it will get me up and walking around my island.

So I got a Real Skill on my island in Rocksmith and fitness here with all the walking I’ll be doing! My games serve multiple purposes!

This was such a phenomenon when it came out. For one week, on every lunch break, everybody on the street in SOMA was clearly catching Pokemon.

 

[Warhawk]

Nice value pick here. I was considering taking it just because it's still available. The first Half-Life was a hugely significant game for me when it came out. It represented a new way to think about designing a single-player FPS game. And Half-Life 2 was equally revolutionary with the physics based puzzles, the vehicles, the squad combat level. And how pretty much every level was an entirely different game. When I think about FPS games on PC it's really down to the two Half-Life games and the original Deus Ex for me since I'm far more of a single-player campaign type of gamer. I drafted the one I most want to re-play but I'll always love the Half-Life games too for all their memorable set-pieces.

I've never played Deus Ex. May have to give it a go now...

Edit: On Steam it is $0.97 right now. Can't lose at that price! Just purchased, I'll give it a go sometime.

 

[hrdboild]

I've never played Deus Ex. May have to give it a go now...

Edit: On Steam it is $0.97 right now. Can't lose at that price! Just purchased, I'll give it a go sometime.

Nice! I hope you enjoy it. That's a ton of game for 97 cents. There's a bunch of video essays on Youtube which break down all the ways that Deus Ex was a revolutionary game and many of those videos are well done but I think it's best to go into playing it for the first time knowing as little as possible.

 

[Sluggah]

Title: Infamous
Format: PS3
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Sucker Punch

Open world action-adventure game where you play as a bike messenger! Fortunately, or unfortunately depending, you’re a bike messenger that was caught in the center of a huge explosion that leveled city blocks, but somehow gave you budding superpowers.

How you use those powers? Up to you. Level up, grow said powers, and make some choices on your way to becoming either a hero or villain. Fun missions, great sense of actually being powerful as you cause utter destruction & mayhem or dole out swift justice.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Star Fox 64 - N64, 1997

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Nintendo doesn't mess around with its major launches, and Star Fox 64 has the quality one would expect from Nintendo's best effort. The music, gameplay, art, and sound effects - they're all timeless Nintendo. The dialogue is great, and the sound effects for locking on and launching a homing weapon are perfect. Star Fox 64 also has this wonderful arcade vibe to it that pushes players to go for higher and higher scores. Each level has challenges and many bonus scoring opportunities. Star Fox 64 was the first game that I really sat down and tried to master. My goal was to achieve the highest score possible in the game. I was surely naive to think I could even figure out how to route the highest score, I still had fun trying to find the best scoring strategies and pulling them off. Playing casually is a ton of fun. Playing for score adds a lot of replay value and sense of satisfaction on top of great fun.

A multiplayer classic as well. I spent almost as much time with this as I did Goldeneye

 

[whitechocolate]

It is the best of its genre in decades, and quite honestly maybe ever,

I thought I drafted Fight'N Rage.

 

[Löwenherz]

I thought I drafted Fight'N Rage.

Sure, but does it have Triceratons?