19. Zelda 1 (NES, 1986)
Another year, another old Zelda game for me to try for the first time. This time it is Zelda 1. You know, I don’t really have that much to say about the game. It is old, it is silly, it has things that old games have that are annoying and bad (the deflector shield eating enemy is just so obnoxious), but the battles can be quite engaging, for all that the difficulty spikes and falls pretty rapidly, especiially between Castle 6 which is brutal and Castle 7 which is a complete joke. Plot is of course bad as all NES game plots are, but overall it’s a fun enough game.
18. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS, 2009)
Token SMT/SRPG of the year. It’s pretty good at its best and pretty annoying at its worst. The final boss sequence is a flaming pile of turds, and some of the other boss battles are total shenanigans, but sometimes the game hits a fun difficulty between absurdly easy and stupid hard. Sometimes.
The plot is bad in that SMT way. There are demons, they are bad and stuff, you have choices because you are Jesus or maybe neo-Satan, or you can just be a pussy ala Riou. I’m not opposed to playing its sequel but nor am I clamoring for more of this game.
17. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (WiiU, 2014)
I am very glad this game exists. It is so cute, so adorable, and just good fun. The puzzle solving is always pleasant, the aesthetics are very appealing, and it’s just so darn sweet. While the game does hold a special place in my heart, I can’t really say that it is very wowing – merely a pleasant ride.
16. Long Live the Queen (PC, 2012)
It’s like a choose your own adventure in video game form~ I like this game quite a bit. Nice writing, decent plot, adorable outfits for the main character… it’s not necessarily ‘my thing’ with limited gameplay which prevents it from getting a particularly high score, but I have a lot of respect for the game and its writers. I like how the game lets you use multiple different skills at different levels to do things, and I enjoyed some of the crazier endings; villain minion and shaming the villain with the power of music are both pretty good endings.
15. The Last Story (Wii, 2012)
This is one of the games on the list that I have the most conflicted feelings on. On one hand, its plot writing and character work is very solid, and the game’s ‘design your own clothes for everyone’ thing is fun. I think that the mercenaries are very fun characters; I’m particularly fond of Syrenne, and the others can be quite amusing as well. Dagran is not a perfectly executed character but I’m overall at least moderately satisfied with him? Zael and Calista are both pretty good as well, although I feel like Calista is a little bit underused/fades into the background. Count Argy is pretty good when he’s around too, but again feels a little underutilized.
On the other hand, its gameplay, particularly its bosses, are quite problematic and the game largely suffers from either being too easy or too tedious in its combat. There’s a middle section in the game where you have to do solo combat for multiple battles, and the game is not designed around solo combat at all and it was just awful. A lot of the other bosses have weird gimmicks that you have to continually exploit, which is just not very fun gameplay. The weird thing is that the final boss is actually a pretty fun and well-designed fight! Too bad about the rest.
14. Deemo (iOS, 2013)
This game is a piano rhythm game with artists/music from various parts of east Asia, with a small story accompanying it. The story is sweet if a little Engrish-y, and the gameplay is simple but fun. It is somewhat hurt by being lack of variety since you just do the same things over and over, but it’s a cool game. I recommend it to fans of rhythm games.
13. Yoshi’s Woolly World (WiiU, 2015)
There were three major WiiU releases in 2015 that I was looking forward to; Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, and Yoshi’s Woolly World. On a whim I decided to pick this one up first. It’s a fun game with a lot of color and great music. The stages are pleasant; not too hard, but can be tricky and challenging sometimes, and finding the flowers and items can be quite fun. It is definitely cribbing pretty heavily from Super Mario World 2, but I do think it does the formula a little more crisply.
12. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS, 2006)
The tried and true formula of Castlevania is hard at work here; fun and engaging gameplay, a big castle to explore, laughably bad plot (Jonathon being kind of emo and wanky is even less compelling than the normal Castlevania main; why can’t I use the whip?!), and a really stupid true ending requirement. The weapon system is okay but much clunkier than Order of Eccelsia and the weapons aren’t as interesting or diverse. Really, the game is mostly proto-OoE with worse everything; weapons, plot (?!?), doesn’t have a world map, has a harder to find BS ending requirement, and the bosses are just a little less exciting on average.
Still, it’s not a bad game, and certainly improves on the Aria of Sorrow formula.
11. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (WiiU, 2014)
As someone who enjoyed DKCR, I had to play this one at some point. It’s a bit better than DKCR in every way, with multiple characters that you can use as assists which adds spice to the game as well as more colorful character designs. I think the bosses are also a little bit better but still not all that great since they can often be tedious. Lots of death, though, and lots of fun.
10. Mass Effect 2 (360, 2010)
ME2 is a nice game, with a strong emphasis on character arcs and character development over writing an overarching plot. The ‘plot’ of the game is basically just a series of character interactions. This is pretty similar to the first game; the main difference is that the writing is much more competent and the set of characters you are given is better and more diverse (and even the characters from the previous game, such as Tali, are more well-defined and feel less like exposition boxes). I like the increased range of romance options in the game. Mordin, Miranda, Samara, and Jack are all fun and distinct characters, and even Kasumi is pretty cool even though she’s a weird plotless DLC character. The DLC in this game, btw, is pretty excellent, at least the two missions that I did (Shadow Broker and Kasumi’s).
The gameplay is… not a flaming dumpster fire and the Mako no longer exists, so the game has a pretty major advantage on both ME1 (and it’s less annoying than TLS’s gameplay, I’d say.) The gameplay is largely bland and unexciting and the entire game feels vaguely cinematic, but that’s better than the what the first game offered.
I do wish the game’s plot had a little bit more meat to it than what it does, but it somewhat feels like it’s setting up Cerberus for ME3? We shall see.
9. Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)
Old school game is old school. It’s a pretty enjoyable game, and its singleplayer is more challenging than the future games. On one hand, I feel like the game is less luck-based than the future games, which I am somewhat neutral on (while it is nice to be able to say you won because of your skill, it is fun for less experienced players to have a chance by equalizing the field. I think that the game’s controls are a little weird after playing the newer games, and obviously the graphics aren’t as amazing or realistic, but it’s still a fine game.
8. Paper Mario (N64, 2000)
This game is a bit of a quirky one, with a very silly plot and very simple, yet beautifully complex, gameplay. The plot and writing is generally pretty weak, but the gameplay is fun. Very cute art though
7. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 2007)
3D platformers are a genre I don’t have much experience with, but I decided to play this. It’s a very interesting game, with a lot of motion mechanics that were later abandoned by later Wii games, and the gravity mechanics are quite fun. It’s a very solid game all around; my biggest problem with the game mostly just lies in the controls (and swimming) rather than anything. Great stages, fun bosses, and I largely enjoyed the gravity mechanics.
6. Child of Light (WiiU, 2014)
Another one of those 2014 releases that I didn’t quite get around to last year. It’s a good one, with an interesting and diverse cast, good music, and really cool character art and designs. It’s held back by its weak plot and the fact that I feel like the game ran out of ideas around 75% in for the gameplay and the rest feels vaguely mailed in. The penultimate villain/boss feels very lazy in particular. I also think that the game is a little whiplash in its tone, which can sometimes be a drag.
The gameplay is a lot of fun though, and that makes up for a lot of the game’s other flaws. I enjoyed the skill branching system and the cancelling and buffs quite a bit. Lots of turn micromanagement.
Cool game, thumbs up.
5. Shovel Knight (WiiU, 2014)
It’s a good game, very simple classic platformer but very fun. I think it has both fun bosses (Spectre Knight and Tinker Knight are two of my favorites) and fun stages (most of them honestly, but Propeller Knight’s and Plague Knight’s are two I like in particular), which is a bit of a rarity in the genre. The weapons are really fun on average (and not overpowered for the most part). I will definitely play Plague of Shadows at some point.
I have a couple of minor complaints (Black Knight is very wanky and the ~girl~ is the prize at the end of the game even if she’s technically a badass?) and I can’t shake the nagging feeling that the game exploits and panders to those who wish they lived in the early 90’s before they were a jaded, cynical adult, but eh, not too big of a deal overall.
4. Rayman Origins (360, 2011)
Somewhat a copy and paste of the previous entry (minus any plot complaints but replaced with wtf is up with this game's setting/story?), but Rayman is better at making you have to make interesting platforming decisions and its music is way better. Bosses are worse, but there’s only a few of them and they don’t detract from the game that much. I think the level design, and there are a lot of levels, is pretty top notch, and that counts for some much in a platformer.
3. Bayonetta (360, 2009)
The game is a mixture of great gameplay ideas, strange plot ideas, over the top/controversial ideas about female action heroes, and some goofy gimmicks that largely detract from the game. The base gameplay is great, with the 3D action genre being taken to another level. I definitely like it more than both DMC1 and DMC3 gameplaywise, and it’s not even that close. I enjoyed the plot well enough for what it is, and Bayonetta and Luka are both endearing characters. My biggest problem with the game, though, is the weird shooter stage and the strange thing at the end of the game where you had to fire at something out of a weird cannon. But that’s not too big a deal.
2. Splatoon (WiiU, 2015)
So I got this for Christmas, but I’ve played enough of it to say that I love it. It is fun, has fun stages and fun mechanics and the multiple types of weapons and subweapons add a lot of diversity to the game. And it is so colorful and fun. I’m not sure about the singleplayer mode, since I’ve not played as much of it yet, but it sounds pretty good. The main reason I rated this at all is because I played it more hours than…
1. Metroid Fusion (GBA, 2002)
I got into Metroid last year when I played Super Metroid, so I decided to pick up this game on the WiiU VC. To me, the game surpasses SM in most ways aside from concept/creativity, with the atmospheric setting, more challenging bosses, and less pitfalls (such as the weird walljumping tutorial in SM). I think the biggest knock on the game is that it’s too similar to SM, but I think it is distinct enough that it isn’t that big of a deal. I think the horror elements are more present here as opposed to more exploratory elements in SM. I generally preferred the horror and atmosphere setting, I think.
Game is harder than SM by a notable margin, which can be frustrating if you just wanna get on with the game, but fun if you are into that. Regardless, great times were had by me, and this is my favorite game of the year.
I will say that I actually like everything on this list. Zelda 1 is quite endearing, even if it's a pain in the ass.
