Rudie’s Top 100 Video Games

Volfied

Arcade, Taito, 1989

I wanted to put Gals Panic here, but in striving for moral decency, I cannot. I love Qix in all its forms. I cut away at the game board until I am the winner. I fret as an enemy approaches my extending line. In the original, there is no reward for filling in the board. Geniuses later realize that you could reveal an anime girl and everyone got too worked up to ever think of a better idea for Qix.

Between those two endpoints is Volfied, which is an ugly game by Taito. It is still Qix but now there are bullets. I love cutting away at a screen while under violent pressure.

Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day

PS3, Grasshopper Manufacture, 2014

Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day paid off the good faith I gave Grasshopper Manufacture from Killer7. It features gorgeous multi-styled cutscenes. The action is nominally a speedrunning platformer, right as that was becoming a genre to itself. It then twists and turns the game on its head for boss fights and bonus stages.

It is Grasshopper at its best thinking how to establish then succeed and subvert expectations for its brief 90 minute runtime. Screenshots fail to do it justice because a still image is only there before completely changing. It nails a tone of coolness and confidence that video games frequently overshoot. There’s very little like it and it’s severely underplayed.

Ghost In The Shell:Stand Alone Complex

PS2, cavia, 2004

Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex (GitSSAC) for PS2 got both the English and Japanese VA casts of the original show for this game. It is an episode of the TV show, with all the twists and political-cyber jargon that implies. It is also a fantastic action game with great guns and explosions. It has twin stick controls just before that was standard, which makes it playable today. 

It is also a fiendish platformer. You are required to pull off the same devilish jumps The Major would make in the show. At one point you need to wall jump and shimmy up six stories. At that point I loved the game. The controls are springy enough to allow this. 

As you are shooting and jumping a Ghost In The Shell plot is happening involving rice and a militarized autonomous zone. It is a perfect licensed game that respects the source but built a fantastic game on top. 

Outer Wilds

PC/Xbone/PS4, Mobius Digital, 2019

It’s Myst: The Video Game. I have a full solar system to explore, complete with weather and gravity. In 22 minutes, the sun will go supernova and destroy everything. I need to solve the mystery of navigating each planet and how to stop the supernova. Eventually I will be ready to “beat” the game in 22 minutes. The only puzzle in the game is information. Once I know how to do something, I can do it every time. 

Outer Wilds set my brain on fire. I didn’t think I liked it when I first played it, but every night I was ecstatic to work at the puzzle of this world a little more. They eventually released a DLC that reminded me how incredible the game was. The game has a world mission chart to track what I know and what I don’t know. I can stare at it and think and wonder. Decide which planet to explore this time loop.

Silent Hill 4

PS2, Team Silent, 2004

I must give special nod to the soundtrack of Silent Hill 4.  Specifically the Gamestop promotional soundtrack.  That specific CD feels like a mixtape the protagonist made.  The last song ends with a bootleg live recording of the Silent Hill theme.  It is one of my most listened to albums.  I have gotten dozens of hours of entertainment breaking down “Cradle of the Forest” with friends.  

Silent Hill 4 is thought of as the most uneven of the original games. The structure still excites me. In the first half, I am trapped in my apartment and escape into a hostile hell world. At the midpoint, the game and the world notices me. The first person segments in the apartment are more and more dangerous and stressful. The escort mission in the hell world becomes a welcome reprieve. 

All the surprises and oddities in The Room only work once. Each time I return to the apartment it seems worse. But is it? I keep looking if anything has changed. I’m alone here, aren’t I? How does this relate to the other Silent Hill games? It’s a game I wish I could forget, because not knowing what comes next is the whole effect.

Persona 4

PS2, Atlus, 2008

Persona 4 is the Persona game that finds the best balance of social Anime High School in rural Japan and complex demon collection dungeon crawler of Shin Megami Tensei. Whenever I start to get tired of one half of the game, the other half is there for me. The music rings in my ears to this day. The characters are well written and complex even if the writers didn’t even understand them.

What makes it great for me though, is I got in the best shape of my life playing Persona 4. It is timed just well enough that each time I got a social or RPG level up I did some exercise. 10 pushups, situps, jumping jacks, whatever. It was a promise to myself. The game marks each of these level ups just enough that it is easy to set down the controller. I got stronger through video games. I have played through the game twice and considered a third time, just for the health benefits.

Kingdom Hearts 3

PS4, Square Enix Business Division 3, 2019

Sure it only makes sense to people who’ve played somewhere between 2 to 6 other games before even pressing start on the title screen. And I’d also recommend pacing out those games over almost two decades. 

Kingdom Hearts 3 is Kingdom Hearts at its most maximalist. I screamed so much playing this game. They re-rendered the song from Frozen. They left out the Final Fantasy because they had too many original characters. The unique alien cadence of Kingdom Hearts dialog remains present with strange pauses between sentences. It is still all mysterious gesturing towards something right until the end. It then has flashes of insight into male relationships. 

Every Kingdom Hearts game ends with an absurd question and they pulled it off here as well. Before that, I swung a keyblade in a truly magnificent amount of video game and surprises.

Ace Attorney Trilogy

GBA, Capcom, 2001

The first three Phoenix Wright games need to be considered as a single unit. Each one builds upon the last. The jokes and motifs and reoccurrences get stronger as each game continues. Part 3’s shocking reveals and turn-abouts work best with knowledge of Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey’s adventures in parts 1 and 2.

Which is easy because all 3 are great fun. Playing detective is fun. Trying to pull an impossible win for the defense from the Japanese justice system is always exciting. It only works because the writing is sharp. The characters are fun. The sprites tell me their personalities and emotions in an instant. 

It’s all pretty lighthearted for a series of murders frequently made into a frame job. But that’s the player’s job. Bring the truth to light regardless of how ugly it is.

Live A Live

SFC, Square, 1994

I admit I haven’t touched the remake. The original released in the prime of Super Famicom RPGs as a beautiful experiment in storytelling. Nine stories told within the framework of an RPG. Each story is vastly different from the others, outside of involving defeating enemies in grid based combat. 

I’ll pilot a giant robot, save a western town with a lone gunslinger, escape an alien, and jump around rooftops as a ninja. It encourages me to bounce around. Each story is just long enough to be fulfilling. The whole game isn’t too big to be overwhelming. As a video game talking about video games, it is one of the best. It does it with earnesty and none of that coy winking or eye-rolling fourth-wall breaking.

Banjo Kazooie

N64, Rare, 1998

Whenever the spring air starts to come around, I start to remember the multiple summers I spent collecting poorly named bobbles from gibberish talking animals, taking possession of a gradual series of bigger jumps so that I could further navigate the twisting turning labyrinth of a witch’s tower. The music seamlessly changed as I moved around in the same way it does in Disneyland. The other Rare platformers of their N64 era would get too big for their own good; and other companies’ comparable efforts on Playstation would lack the world aesthetics. Every time I reach the ending quiz about tiny details of the world, I get caught off guard with how little I’ve paid attention to something I’ve given my full attention to.

Next Up: As a D 1/64.

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