Giggle and titter all you want, but if you've played the game you may know what I'm talking about.
From the moment you arrive in your new town, you are greeted by a raccoon who pretty much forces you to work for him by holding you in debt. So then you have to play the game enough to pay off your house. Then he expands on your house like 4 times, each time putting you into deeper debt, then you have to pay THAT off. Eventually you pay off the debt and finally get a chance to really explore the game. And now you're basically hooked hardcore to Animal Crossing.
If that didn't make it bad enough, the game exists in real time, meaning even if the game is turned off, shit still happens. People move away, days come and go, weeds grow, oh god do fucking weeds grow. Don't leave for too long because your town will be covered in weeds and NO ONE ELSE will pluck them up and ARGH.
But you don't have a choice anymore. You're stuck. Animal Crossing is your home now. You just have to make the town pretty again so new friends will move in. Hey let's go dig in the dump, maybe someone left behind that wallpaper that is the one final part missing from our school themed 2nd floor. Boy, this is a fun game, isn't it?
And you'll just keep playing and playing and playing...
2. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
GTA III changed the way video games were looked at. Vice City improved on that formula in a pastel-drenched 80s wonderland. San Andreas, though, took the GTA franchise to incredible heights.
Carl Johnson, returning home from a long stay in Liberty City, finds his city of Los Santos completely changed. The gang he used to run with, the Grove Street Families, is in disarray with multiple factions splitting off and forming their own gangs. Worse yet, crack is being pushed around his neighborhood, which weakens the gang dynamic.
In a quest to gain back respect for the Families, CJ embarks on a story that involves corruption, betrayal and revenge(because this is a Grand Theft Auto game) and takes him all over the state of San Andreas, where ends up doing everything from flying planes, taking down drug rings, pulling off a heist on a mob-owned casino and even invading a secret government facility.
The thing about San Andreas isn't all the things you have to do, it's all the things you CAN do. The heist mission takes place over a number of missions setting it up until the final huge execution. And that's all OPTIONAL. As a matter of fact, all of San Andreas can be considered optional, that's the great(and awful) thing about sandbox games like this: you can spend a long time exploring the massive state, from Los Santos, where the gangsters and celebrities rub shoulders, to the backwoods to Las Venturas, the glittering casino paradise.
Well, I mean, that or actually play the missions. You choice, after all.
3. Bioshock
"I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture."
From the start of the game when your plane crashes, you are in complete control of Jack. You have to guide him to the lighthouse in the distance, swimming for your life. Only when you enter are you greeted with a giant statue of Andrew Ryan, creator of Rapture. That's where all the good stuff stops. Soon you're dropped into an underwater utopia in ruins. Mutants roam the city trying to attack you. Audio diaries trace the people of Rapture to their end. The few that aren't mutated are mostly in hiding, protecting themselves and growing increasingly paranoid.
The massive, underwater Cold War-era city reflects the fear. The hospital level of Rapture has been transformed into a gallery of the bizarre as the head surgeon has gone mad trying to create the perfect human. Fort Frolic, the theater and shopping district, has been turned into a sadistic playground for Ryan's right-hand man, Sander Cohen, who makes art from death. Of course, by the time you eventually meet and kill Andrew Ryan, you've learned an awful lot about yourself and your connection to the city.
I would also be remiss not to talk about the hulking Big Daddies. These monstrous mutants are the perfect example of Andrew Ryan's own hypocrisy. The people of Rapture were moved from the land so they could be free from oppression, so how could Ryan justify the transformation of his fellow man into a lobotomized slave, stuck in a diving suit, roaming the sea floor forever?
It's questions on the duality of man and the morality that just make Bioshock all the more brilliant.
4. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Much like San Andreas, Snake Eater was willing to change the franchise completely. Putting you in an altogether familiar setting with an unfamiliar feel.
Taking place before any of the other Metal Gear games, you play not Solid Snake, but Naked Snake, the man who would eventually become to the traitorous Big Boss. He's on a mission to stop the Russians from completing the Shagohod, a metal monster the USSR plans to use to destroy the USA.
As opposed to the nuclear future of the past games, Snake Eater drops you into the jungle, relying on your natural surroundings to achieve your goals, preferrably as stealthily as possible. The Cold War-era setting also replaces your high-tech gadgets with technology more fitting for the time. Radars and the such have been completely replaced, leaving you with...bulkier instruments.
Of course, one of the appeals of the MGS series is the writing and after MGS 2 gave us a ludicrious plot to go along with playing as a pretty boy for more than half the game, we're given a heavily political, closer to coherent storyline, complete with a heartstomping ending.
Oh and because I have to mention it. "I'm still in a dreeeeeeam. Snake Eeeeateerrrrrr~"
5. Portal
All of you have almost ruined a great game. Yes, we get it. Still Alive is a catchy song, the weighted companion cube is our friend and, yeah, the cake is a lie. We fucking get it now shut the fuck up.
It's a testament to how good the game is that you shits haven't completely ruined it. Much like the Half-Life series before it, Portal puts you into the game immediately with you waking up in a test chamber before being forced to run around a series of challenges like a lab rat, all while being egged on by a computer who you come to learn is called GLaDOS.
The further you progress through the game, the more you realize something is going very wrong. Especially since it seems like GLaDOS is almost trying to murder you. Hell, this game is all about GLaDOS. It's an absolute delight watching her artifical sanity slowly turn into madness as you frequently defy her expectations by staying alive.
A witty, original game full of excellent writing, physics and characters(or character, I guess since GLaDOS is really the only person there, excluding your silent protagonist), Portal is pretty much one-of-a-kind.
I hate all of you.
6. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
When Nintendo revealed the first Legend of Zelda game for the Gamecube, everyone was excited. Until they actually saw it. Many decried at as a kiddy-fying of the beloved series, dubbing it the kinda stupid "Cel-da" due to its cartoonish, cel-shaded graphics. But those people are really stupid and they suck because Wind Waker is legitimately one of the greatest in a series of great games.
Taking place hundreds of years after Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker has Link traveling across the sea on a talking red boat, doing his usual dungeon crawling and eventually princess saving. And while it is more of the same genuinely excellent gameplay, people simply hated it because of the way it looked and I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND IT.
Every single bit of the game looks beautiful. From the piggy Moblins roaming dungeons looking like old school Moblins with pointed sticks to the sparkling blue ocean making waves. Link is more expressive in this game than he's ever been with his big toon eyes and he looks great. Take the time to look at the sky at night next time you play, the moon and stars are just lovely.
Nintendo now only put these in DS games apparently because they were too busy making the next platform Zelda a super gray pile. Twilight Princess was pretty bad. And I hate you all once again.
7. Psychonauts
Tim Schafer is the best guy ever. Dude made Monkey Island, Full Throttle and, most importantly, Grim Fandango. Then LucasArts fucked everything up and stopped making cool adventure games. So Tim just up and went and formed his own company, Double Fine. Psychonauts was its first product and holy crap is it amazing and hilarious and weird.
Your character, Razputin, is a psychic escapee from the circus and he's the straight man of the game. Surrounded by psychic summer camp students and deranged mental patients, it's up to Raz to eventually save the day by freeing minds from their disorders or just plain freeing minds after they've been captured. The hub world is the Whispering Rock Summer Camp and the insane asylum across the lake from the camp, but the real levels take place in the mind.
A party loving counselor has a dance party in her head(there's also a terrible secret). An insane heartbroken artist's mind is represented as a Spanish village terrorized by a vicious bull and it's all rendered like a black velvet painting. A paranoid security guard resides in a twisting neighborhood filled with poorly disguised government agents, suspicious girl scouts and a mysterious figure known only as "The Milkman."
The mix of the bizarre and the absolutely humorous, the expert character design, the quirksome cast. All combine to make an amazing strange game.
8. The Sims
SimCity let you build and manage a city, but The Sims let you build and manage lives.
They lack it all. They have no personality and no appearance. Until you give it to them, granting them life. But they're not your toys. Sure you can control them and, yes, you made them. But you have no real control over them. They pick and choose what they actually want to do. They'll get into fights, fall in love, even make love, but you don't do any of that, they do. They evolve as people naturally over time, becoming better or worse without your help.
Or of course you could viciously kill them all constantly. It's beautiful to play God.
9. Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 1 and a handful of Resident Evils came before it, but Silent Hill 2 still feels like the end-all, be-all of survival horror after these couple of years.
James Sunderland comes to Silent Hill after recieving a letter from his dead wife. He eventually arrives in the hell town which manifests his psyche as demons come to slay him. Mannequins and disfigured nurses haunt him as manifestations of his deepest sexual desires. But no monster holds a candle to Pyramid Head.
The triangular, razor-edged mask wearing monster is one of the sole male spooks in the town, representing James's guilt over the fact that he murdered his wife. He is unstoppable and the first encounter we have with him comes when we see him brutally raping one of the nurses. Not only a gruesome and haunting scene, but also one with a valuable message: this is one guy you don't wanna fuck with.
The invincible executioner haunts you from time to time, never really knowing when he'll appear next. He could be right behind you now. That only makes the game scarier.
10. Katamari Damacy
Your dad, the King of All Cosmos, got drunk and smashed up a bunch of stars. It's up to roll up shit on Earth and turn them into stars. Oh and your dad wears very tight tights.
Katamari Damacy is pretty damn Japanese with it's cutesy, catchy soundtrack, quirky plot and altogether fun playing. Using the two analog sticks of the Playstation 2's controller, you control the Katamari(the ball you use to roll things up) and run around picking things up with it. Starting out with very small items, you grow and grown until soon you're going from picking up thumbtacks to picking up entire cities with your Katamari.
It's addictive, fun, charming and oh so very Japanese. We love Katamari!
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