Top 5 Video Games

Raptor here saying all opinions stated in the following message are to be taken as fact.

As a mid 20’s red blooded American male, I’ve dabbled with video games all my life. I remember fondly defending America from ICBMs on my old Atari, the impossibility of the bike level of Battletoads, and destroyed the pride of Thailand with a head stomp and wind kick.

But what makes a game the best of the best? Replayability. Most games you can blow through in a couple of days, but then you’re just left with another cartridge collecting dust upon your shelf. These games kept you coming back for more well after you had stomped upon your final goomba.

5. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina in Time (N64)

This one was the hardest pick of the group and Zelda just narrowly edged out Super Mario 3 and the middle school awesomeness that was Street Fighter II. But I include it because this was the first time Zelda really came to life. And this is coming from a person who truly enjoyed the whole franchise. Ocarina just immersed you into the world of Hyrule with it’s expansive maps, fleshed out characters, and great animation. Sure it may seem boxy now but at the time I was completely blown away by the entire deal. And sure you could probably fly through the main plot, but there were so many fun sidequests to gain extra hearts, jars, and wallets that it took massive amounts of time to truly finish the game. Think Final Fantasy without the crappy turn based battle system (don’t get me wrong I liked those games too, I’m sufficiently nerdy, but I prefer to do my battling myself).

A friend of mine disappeared for an entire summer because of this game and I completely understood.

4. Madden 2003 (GC)

Every Madden has had some level of replayability, but this one was the only one my friends and I ever got past year 10 in franchise mode. This is also the game that lead to the most destroyed controllers (4 controller deaths can be directly linked to this game, narrowly edging out Madden 2006’s QB vision cone which lead to the destruction of 3 controllers). Really I think this version got most of it right. It introduced the Madden Trax which were pretty good, became annoying, and then somehow became good again. It allowed you to import NCAA classes (which also lead to the bizarre mixup where there were 2 Nate Vashers, Real Nate and the goateed Evil Nate). The graphics were pretty good. Most importantly the controls were tight and responsive unlike some of the later versions, especially on the next gen consoles, where it often took 3 seconds to get into your moves.

The only drawbacks I can think of are the fact that it created a completely irrational hatred of the real Ahman Green because computer Ahman would tear me up in the playoffs every year for 300+ yards and 27 break tackles.

3. Goldeneye (N64)-

When it comes to pure replayability nothing beats this game. I played this game consistently for 3 years. It was awesome in the one player mode. There was a great sense of pride in unlocking the Egyptian temple, or finally launching the moonraker in 007 mode. Why was it so good? It had great levels, that were pretty much shot for shot from the movie. It had responsive controls with perhaps the best first person shooter controller of all time.

And it had Bond.

But single player is only scratching the surface. The bread and butter was the multiplayer. Nothing was better than lining up the perfect head shot on your friends and then hearing the Tananana….brummmmm. How addictive was this? I don’t think I’m exaggerating at all when I say senior year of high school, the swim team played this every lunch period except maybe 5. We even sawed open the safety guard of a cable in a hotel during state to play.

2. Rock Band-

Now one could say, I’m prejudiced against the next gen consoles, and it’s not that. The graphics are great, but for the most part once you party your way through a game you never put it back in again. Enter Rock Band.

Who hasn’t wanted to be a rock star? Rock Band puts this dream tantalizingly close. You can jam on the guitar or bass, belt out some lyrics, or beat the shit out of some drums.

There’s surprisingly little to this whole game just hitting buttons in time to the beat, but it’s to the beat of some pretty awesome music. It’s one of the best group games of all time. And with new content coming out every week, theoretically, you'll never run out of new songs to master.

Hell, McBane is completely tone deaf, as evidenced by his thinking that Tegan is more rock than Sara, but goddamn if he doesn’t love banging out a little drum magic.

1. Perfect Dark-

These little fuckers toting Farsight XR20's were real bitches.

All you Master Chief fans can suck my balls. Joanna Dark is the queen of the FPS Universe.

This really has been the pinnacle of first person gaming. It had a great and highly replayable single player mode, and it had a plethora of multiplayer options. There was the straight up split screen action. Then you could also try and hold your own against sims of varying levels. There was also capture the flag, hacker mode, king of the hill, and my personal favorite Pop a Cap mode where one person was the assassin and you had to kill him to become the assassin. Other systems have come and copied a few of the options here and there, but none has packed them all into one package the PD did. Really nothing beat the Raptor/McBane races to 500 kills with 8 meat sims and nothing but slayers.

I don’t know how many times we’d be cramming for a test or finishing a paper at 3 AM and have this exact conversation:

Me: “ Soooooo, a little PD?”

McBane: “ Dude we got this test and we really need to study”

Me: “Ok. how many perfect sims”

McBane (while holding up 4 fingers): “No man I’ve got 30 more pages to memorize”

Me: “Weapons draft?”

McBane: “Seriously dude, only one game…”

Sometime after the sun came up, we eventually got back to reading.

Ok, maybe I am prejudiced against the next gens, because for the most part they don’t get it. Yea, the graphics are light years ahead of what they were on the 64 or Genesis, but they fail to capture the spirit of game play. Sure capping some random Korean kid from Seoul over the magic of the internet is great, but it doesn’t beat the satisfaction of taunting your friends right there in the same room that you just shot them in the head.

God I miss that game…sigh…