It's the game that I had been waiting for, for 20 years. For the first time since 1994 Sonic was back in it's 2D best. They had tried the Sonic 4 episodes, but it was poor to say the least. They had tried sonic rush and other hand held games, which were fine for what they were, but for someone who loved Sonic on the Megadrive as much as me, this was it. It also nailed the 3D platforming at last in a Sonic game (to be fair, the platforming in Sonic Unleashed was good, but the rest of that game with the 'warehog' was atrocious (also, I haven't played Sonic Colours, which was supposed to be good)).
Of course, the idea here is some kind of time/parallel universe switch where modern Sonic meets old Sonic and they have to fix time and save their friends. The story doesn't matter really though, when has it ever in a Sonic game. What is important is how the levels come together. They basically took 3 era's of Sonic games, and re-did certain of the levels. For example, the first level is green hill zone, however, it isn't a recreation of the original from Sonic 1, it is just in the same setting with the same badnicks (that's the name of the enemy robots). Then, the second act is done in 3D in the same setting. The 3 era's they cover are the Megadrive era, the Dreamcast/PS 2 era and finally current gen (well, last now, but it was current at the time of it's release). As well as levels, there are also boss battles based off of classic bosses.
Perhaps the best part, however, is the music. Not since San Andreas had I never got bored of a soundtrack and ended up muting the TV, until when this game hit. It dd modernised versions of the classic music from the original levels they were based on, with the act that wasn't in the same dimension as the original game (be it 2D or 3D) would have an alternative feel to it. On top of this, there were other unlockable tracks such as the classic 'Sonic boom' title track from Sonic CD and what's more, you could change the song on any level to whichever of these you wanted. Also, this game looks beautiful.
19. Timesplitters
With every other game series, I managed to pick out one particular game from the series, but for this one it's a lot harder. They were all great, and the different games had different strengths and weaknesses. For example, the first game had the best multiplayer maps, but it didn't really have a lot of single player gameplay, whereas timesplitters 2 had and extra single player mode in 'arcade league' in addition to the story mode where you could unlock lots of extra characters. Then come Timesplitters: Future perfect (henceforth referred to as Timesplitters 3) EA got it's hands on it (only published though, Free Radical still made it) and the style went to another level, it finally looked as good as it played, and it had a fully fleshed out story at last (it was quite weak on the others), but it did have an annoying commentator on the multiplayer, plus, they got overly obsessed with monkeys for some reason.
This is another game(s) that mostly gets in here for it's multiplayer features, although you could play the multiplayer modes alone, because back in these good days, there were bots (AI controlled enemies/team members), which could be used to play the multiplayer alone, or to add more in to a multiplayer game, after all, only having 4 of you in a whole map would be pretty sparse. Timesplitters also came with a map creator, (which is fairly self explanatory) that was simple, and yet gave you plenty of options to create some pretty good maps. Of course, there was also a wide array of options when setting up multiplayer games, with lots of different game types, you could choose which bots you wanted, how many there were and how difficult they were, as well as what weapons there were, what order they were, how many kills to go to in a deathmatch, how many bags needed in capture the bag and dozens more.
There was a good helping of humour in them too, with an array of stupid characters (like the handyman/ the gingerbread man, the Shoal and plenty more) as well as some genuinely creepy characters (like the deer haunter, Jo Barf Creepy and many more) too. There was a great selection of character bio's as well, with mostly brilliantly stupid back stories for all of the characters, and not forgetting the great array of weapons across all of the games too.
18. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I had never been one to play turn based combat games before, but this game open my eyes wide to it. I know now how much I missed, I remember playing the original xcom when I was 6 or 7, but i didn't get it, but when I saw the ratings this was getting, I knew I had to give it a try, and I wasn't disappointed. So, there's an alien invasions, and you have to prevent it, with some RPG elements mixed in with turn based strategy gameplay. While having to make sure you had everything you needed to fight off enemies that (naturally) got more difficult as the game went on, you had to research projects to advance the game, but also supply help for different nations of the world to keep them happy, or they would withdraw your funding. This meant that there was a lot of panicking and a lot of death amongst your men, which could be heart wrenching at times.
See, you could name all the soldiers you hired (if you so desired), so when you named someone after a much loved TV show character, who you had levelled up so they had great attributes and then they died, it would be very hard to replace them. However, there was a great stat keeping system, where you could see every single soldier you ever had (or still have) and how many kills they got, how many missions they went on, what level they were and the date and mission of their death. There was also plenty of tactical nous involved with the different types of soldiers, and what skill set you wanted them to focus on to make the best team you can, so you may find if one key man in your team died, they might all follow suit.
There was plenty to think about, and you'd often find the actual gameplay getting distracting when you are trying to get to a certain date to be able to build enough of something to send it over to whichever country it is that needs it before they withdraw from the programme and take their money (and ball) home with them, but then suddenly, you'll have a mission, and end up not going to some country, then some other country will get pissed off, and then you have to decide which of these 2 you want to keep now. I would often find my mind drifting when i was doing something else planning what i wanted to do, it was akin to playing chess.
17. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Knuckles
Okay, so technically it's 2 different games, but they were supposed to be released as one, plus, if you plugged Sonic 3 in to Sonic and knuckles you could play the whole game through with a bonus level at the end (if you collected all the chaos emeralds through both games).
So, I've covered before my love of Sonic as a child, and this game is right up there, it;s got all the classic Sonic action you could want, as well as being able to play as knuckles (and for the first time, Tails), and the games were different if you did. Playing through as Sonic (or Tails), you would have to have a boss fight against Knuckles (see above) and end up on the death egg having to defeat the Death Egg junior again (just like in Sonic 2). Whereas playing through as Knuckles, you don't have to fight Sonic, just the Emerald powered metal Sonic (he has no emerald power when you play through as Sonic).
Other differences were that there were certain places where only one character of another could get, be it only somewhere tails could fly to, somewhere only knuckles could climb/glide to or somewhere only Sonics special shields or higher jump could get you to. Sonic 3 also came with a game save ability on the cartridge, which was very rare back in the time it came out, which was a very welcome addition, meaning you didn't have to sit down all day to finish it, or leave you Megadrive running for days on end so you could come back to it later (my old favourite trick). It had everything you could want in a classic 2D platformer, with widely varying levels, great music, powerups and bonus stages, and of course, different playable characters with different skills. Not to forget the multiplayer race mode (actually, do forget it, it was awful). What with it coming out in the early 90's it was of course, very difficult to boot.
16. Bioshock Infinite
In one of 2 great man and young woman relationships (sounds dodgy) in gaming in 2013, Bioshock Infinite provides one of, if not the best story ever told in a game (plus, a boon for Troy Baker as he played the lead male in both). I don't want to spoil the story for Bioshock Infinite too much, which will probably result in this being quite a short round up of the game, but basically, you have to rescue a girl (Elizabeth) from the tower she's being captive in, which all takes place on a city floating in the clouds, controlled by the evil Zachary Comstock, with just you, Booker DeWitt to do it all. Of course, the story ends up nothing like this in the end, but never mind, that's what it sets out to be at the start.
It is a beautiful game tough, with Columbia (the floating city) looking great, with lots of different areas throughout it, even including slums, but also including a great acapella cover of the Beach boys, as well as other hidden bits of music in the tears found throughout the game. Plus, you briefly get to go back to rapture (the location of the first 2 Bioshocks), which is pretty exciting (although made less so as both parts of the DLC take place there (well, there's actually 3 DLC's, but I've chosen to ignore 'clash in the clouds' because it focused on the wrong thing)).
The main problem is that the gameplay is good, but doesn't live up to how good the story is, or that of other games in this list, in fact it's probably a step back from the original Bioshock, and if it were better, it would be even higher on this list. Not that there isn't some good gameplay elements, there's some good action on the skylines, plus you can smash people gruesomely in the face with your skyline hook, and there's some pretty handy vigors (no longer plasmids), like using a wave to send enemies flying off the city (water way to go...), or distracting enemies with the 'murder of crows'.
There is a loss of iconic enemies though, such as Big daddies and splicers, because the handymen and motorized patriots (which appear a lot) are poor replacements, plus you get a lot of just normal FPS style enemy types, just guys with guns, which never really happened in the first one. (note, i never played Bioshock 2, so can't speak for it). Not that there aren't any tough enemies, the crows, Sirens and boys of silence are all interesting. Of course, the most interesting part of the whole game though, is how so many people manage to fit pineapples in their pockets.
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