Bam's Top 100 Videogames of All Time! 🕹

[riverwise]

I’m going in

[hexagram]

Actually I’m really looking forward to Bam’s Monado, I know my man’s got something for Xenoblade Chronicles

[zeal]

See you next month

[colinfilth]

Some of us get paid for playing this, suckers!

[Bamnan]

81. Black Mesa (2020)

Crowbar Collective’s fan project remake of the original Half-Life in Half-Life 2’s Source Engine has Valve’s official blessing, and mine too! Seamlessly integrating the light physics puzzles Half-Life 2 was originally known for and backdating them into Gordon Freeman’s first adventure was a great touch that made the titular research complex feel more interactive.

The original Half-Life was ground-breaking for introducing cinematic elements, storytelling and pacing to the first person shooter which up until that point was just about blasting hundreds of enemies in largely abstract environments whilst finding your way to the exit. You could argue that the birth of modern video-games was there.

With the exception of a few pacing issues (the xen sections are extra long and have a heavy focus on platforming) it’s a great premise and execution for a shooter campaign too. Make your way progressively deeper into the complex and then eventually up to the surface and into an alien world. Classic stuff! As far as I’m concerned it feels more tight and cohesive than the sequel which would often meander and needed further episodes grafted onto it to tell its narrative.

[Ruffers]

Original wipeout was a work of absolute art. Really solidified the ps1 as trying to grab the late-90s ‘‘coming down off pingers vegetating’’ crowd but with the most exciting racing engine there’s been that doesn’t have Waluigi as a playable character. The bangers on this thing.

Wipeout Soundtrack (PAL PlayStation 1 Version)

[Bamnan]

just so damn stylish

[the_ravens]

That and rollcage saw me through meany Sundays

[TVDenimChap]

There’s never been a better tutorial level than the snowball fight in FFTA

[leopard_insane]

Probably been said already, but really think you could write about games (plus do the artwork) for a living if you ever wanted to.

Despite knowing about 4 of the games listed so far, the depth of knowledge and quality of the writing is making this one hugely enjoyable thread!

[Gorkys_Forever]

what a game!

[colinfilth]

Somebody a bit more outgoing here needs to get together with him and make a viral podcast

[SunnyB]

2097 might be in my top 20

[Ilovetoast]

Regret selling my copy of this. Ps4 has so many banging definitive versions.

[Yesiamaduck]

Came from the golden era of tennis games. It was excellent a nice mix of arcade and sim

Virtua tnnis 4 and Smash Court Tennis are both 10s in the sports genre

[Berrrk]

I really wanna play this, original Half Life is probably the most memorable game from my teenage years. Problem is I only have a PS4 and a Mac, for work. Might try streaming it on Boosteroid (never heard of it until today but Google suggests this is the easiest way).

PS fucking love your artwork and writing in this thread, great work

[Bamnan]

80. Yoku’s Island Express (2018)

Ok boys, we need a new mascot, Mario and Sonic are eating our lunch money! What kind of anthropomorphic animal is left that can really stick it to the competition? Let’s see here…a dung beetle? Oh, ok…well good luck I guess!

Lucky it’s no longer the mascot wars of the 1990s and Mario stands unbowed and undefeated atop the broken bodies of Rolo the elephant, Jazz Jackrabbit, Gex the undercover Gecko and that other blue guy.

Even luckier though, Yoku’s Island Express is not a mascot platformer! Instead it’s the rarest treat of all in video games, a new and novel idea! YIE takes the tried and true Metroidvania formula (exploration backtracking platformer with ability upgrades) and blends it with pinball, which we already know is great thanks to number 96 on our list, The Pinball Arcade.

So how on earth does that work? Well, our dung loving friend is tethered to a “pinball” of sorts, you can move him left or right across a beautiful tropical island but you can’t jump or use other abilities to reach areas, instead flippers are positioned across the island and put you into mini-pinball tables of sorts that let you ricochet Yoku around, collecting delicious tropical fruit as you whizz satisfyingly through tunnels and hollow logs only to pop out somewhere else to continue your quest. It’s a fantastic and silly blend.

If you really need a story hook at this point, you’re taking over from the island’s previous postman who has retired or got depressed or died or something. You’ll deliver letters to a bunch of different charming critters across this adventure and probably discover there’s probably an ancient evil living there somewhere, I don’t really remember but PINBALL!

It doesn’t hurt that it’s a delight to look at on the switch with clean and simple 2d art that pops out of the screen with bright colours and a goofy reggae-esque soundtrack.

[bears]

@Bamnan

the broken bodies of Rolo the elephant,

No one is broken in video game heaven.

[Bamnan]

79. Relic’s Warhammer 40,000 Dawn Of War 1: Dark Crusade presented by THQ (Games Workshop ™) (2006)

The fantastically over the top, cartoonishly violent grimdark universe of Warhammer 40,000 is surely fertile ground in which to plant your videogame seeds. Despite this it took some time for a developer to really get it right. Early efforts such as Chaos Gate and Spake Hulk were admirable but didn’t quite manage to capture the huge doofy scope of Games Workshop’s tabletop game.

This changed with 2004’s Dawn of War but the standalone second expansion, Dark Crusade, is the heretical demonic cherry on top of a solid cake of RTS goodness.

It brought a total of seven unique factions (Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, Tau and Necrons) that all play differently and feature their own richly detailed units barking out responses dripping in the over top Warhammer goodness such as AN OPEN MIND IS A FORTRESS WITH ITS GATES UNBARRED AND UNLOCKED or WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! (orkish).

If it just let you loose in skirmish matches against the AI or other humans online, that alone would make it one of the most generous Real Time Strategy games of all time. However the real star of the show is the campaign.

It’s a risk-esque battle for domination across an entire planet against all seven other factions. Territories you capture will give you requisition points that you can spend to create a mobile strike force that you can start each individual battle with. Don’t worry these battles are still full of RTS base building goodness allowing you to slowly turtle up and stomp the enemy with a wave of Terminators, Dreadnaughts, Lemon Russ battletanks or Tau mechs. There’s a light RPG flavour too as more victories allows you to kit out your commander hero unit with increasingly powerful Wargear. Eventually you’ll eradicate each faction in truly epic showdowns against their fortress stronghold and become the sole ruler of just another miserable rock on the edge of known space.

[Ilovetoast]

Brilliant game