Playlist Essay: My 10 Favorite Games And Why You Shouldn't (Or Can't) Play Them

     So, when I set out to make this list, I figured the best place to start with it would be explaining what my criteria are, just to at least make some sense of the ordering later on. For one, my main points of measurement are inversely proportional, with the two scales being my personal enjoyment of the game and how poor of an experience I feel it would be for what I consider a casual player base. The less I like the game but the better of a casual experience I feel it is, the lower it is on the list. The more I like it and the more averse a general audience might be to it, the higher it is on this list. As for the games that are on here due to no longer being playable, I don't really have a good justification for where they're placed, so it'll be fun to try and rationalize it as I go, I guess. Not much more of a preface needed, it's a fairly standard top 10 list, so might as well jump right into it with #10.

10. City of Heroes

    City of Heroes was an MMORPG that released in April of 2004, a whole 7 months before World of Warcraft would release and completely dominate the MMO landscape for the next decade. It's actually the entry I had the most difficulty justifying why I wanted to include it, mostly because it's the one I've played the least of, having only clocked a few hours into it. But I felt it was noteworthy enough for two reasons, primarily because it fits neatly into the "no longer playable" subcategory, but also because I felt like it was a refreshing new idea for an MMO at the time of its release. MMOs have long been represented mostly by fantasy-based settings, with games like Everquest, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy 14 being the big ones almost anyone can name as sort of the faces of the genre. For there to be a superhero based MMO that also wasn't based on an existing IP like DC or Marvel was quite groundbreaking for its time, though DC Universe Online would release only a few years later and effectively supplant City of Heroes as the premier superhero MMO.

    As for why I can't personally recommend it even if it were playable today, it's mostly because of the monthly subscription model most MMOs push nowadays. This will come up again when I talk about some other entries later down this list, but suffice it to say that I don't much care for having to purchase a game and then continue to pay a recurring fee just to access some of the its core functionality. That said, there's nothing specific to City of Heroes that I can think of that would make it so objectionable that I would never recommend it to anyone, so that's why it's so low on the list; seems like a fine game if it were still available, but MMOs are always hard to recommend.

9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

    This is probably a decent spot to bring up another sub-category of criteria for these games; how much is the base experience worth your time. This means that, for the most part, I'll be excluding add-ons, mods, DLC, and other similar bits of content unless otherwise stated. In this respect, I think I can comfortably say that Skyrim is a pretty bad game. It shares a lot of that Bethesda charm with Fallout 3, being rife with bugs, glitches, freezes, easily-breakable quests, and other game-breaking issues. There's also approximately three voice actors throughout every NPC you talk to, one of which is the studio's notorious head Todd Howard, and all of them are pretty obviously phoning it in because they have about 200 other lines to read in the same faux-Nordic accent. The quests mostly don't ask anything particularly interesting of the player; go here, talk to this person, kill this thing, navigate this dungeon that looks identical to three others you already did but maybe has one or two new traps, loot the chest, repeat ad nauseum. The main story is as basic as it gets, with an evil dragon threatening the world and you, the blah blah chosen one blah blah special powers blah blah kill dragon. There's something about an ongoing civil war that gets resolved in a single conversation by you choosing whether or not you want to side with the Nordic racists or the not-Roman empire. All in all, Skyrim offers an impressively shallow experience for how expansive its game world is, only somewhat salvaged by the player's own agency in how they want to engage with that world (usually by breaking it over their knee and finding the fastest way to max out stealth and archery).

    Skyrim is only on this list because while it would otherwise be so uninteresting as to not even be considered, I feel like there's not even much point in even saying I don't recommend it. If you recognize that name at all, you've probably already played Skyrim. You probably bought it more than once. You've probably modded sixteen different ways to kill those annoying children into the game just to get them to shut up every time you walk into Whiterun. For that reason, I feel like it's at least worth recognizing for its near-universality, even if I feel like its defenders are far too kind to it for what it really is.

8. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2

    Unfortunately this is another contender for the least interesting title on this list. Xenoverse 2 is a pretty boring game whose main appeal is making your own custom character to re-experience the story of Dragon Ball with some minor twists for the umpteenth time, and then engaging in online battles against other people who have done the same and seeing whose connection holds out the best for someone to actually land a hit and win. It's not particularly good looking, it plays pretty poorly, and it has an absolutely absurd amount of DLC to the point where you'd think it makes up more of the playable roster than the base game had. The main reason it's on this list is my own personal enjoyment. I really, REALLY love Dragon Ball. It's my favorite series of all time, and any opportunity to get even the tiniest crumb more of Dragon Ball content makes me forsake all previously held standards of quality. So I guess unless you're just as susceptible to nostalgia pandering as I am and are willing to put up with the most repetitive combat in a 3D RPG fighter thing in a long time, please avoid this like the plague.

7. Elden BloodSouls (AKA the FromSoftware games)

    I will preface this by saying that these are probably overall the best games on this list, which is why they are so low ranked. They are extremely well-crafted experiences that invoke dark, atmospheric  worlds without ever making the player feel like things are completely insurmountable. There's always a way to beat the boss, you just have to figure out if it's an issue of equipment, or an issue of skill. But therein lies the rub; sometimes, it is actually a skill issue, and some players, for any number of valid reasons, cannot or do not want to develop the skill necessary to beat certain bosses, at which point they are likely to become roadblocked and stop playing. This is not the fault of the players, nor the fault of the game developers, but some kind of nebulous concept of difficulty. How do you make a game difficult enough to be a rewarding experience without alienating players who aren't good enough to overcome that challenge? There really isn't a right answer that anyone could come up with, given how subjective of a topic difficulty is, but I think FromSoftware has done an impressive job at giving the player every tool necessary to overcome (almost) every boss in their games without jeopardizing the difficulty of the game.

    All that is to say, these games are ones I could easily recommend to almost anyone, with the caveat that they will sometimes be brutal and feel unfair. There will be a time when a boss feels cheap, like you don't really get what you're supposed to do, and that repeatedly slamming your face against a wall isn't worth your time, and you'd be right to feel that way. All I can say is that these games offer some of the most intense, satisfying, and heart wrenching moments I've ever experienced in a video game, and nothing has come close to overcoming a challenge that just moments before I had considered beyond my own capabilities. These games made me want to get better to beat them, but I also understand people who may not adopt that same mentality, and for that reason they all felt deserving of a spot on this list.

6. Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism

    This one may require the most preface out of all the entries on my list, but I'll try to keep it brief. Touhou is a franchise that centers primarily around the bullet hell genre, a genre classically defined as looking something like this:

See that tiny red pixel near the center left of the image? That's your character, and if any of those orbs on screen touch you (both the big red ones and the smaller blue ones), you die. Somewhere in that mess is the boss, who you shoot until they die.

    With that explanation out of the way, why did I pick this particular game over any of the other numerous entries? Simply put, it's my favorite one and it's also the hardest one that I've played. Touhou games are not particularly well known for their story, given that the characters and backdrops mostly serve as setting for the core gameplay, that being the bullet hell-ing, but Subterranean Animism, as well as the games that immediately precede and follow it, do an interesting job of following a multi-game story line where the consequences of one game directly lead into the next one. While continuity isn't exactly foreign to the franchise, it had not nor has it ever since quite pulled off this sort of long form storytelling.  On top of that, it features something else integral to the Touhou series, that being an absolutely killer soundtrack composed by the game's developer, ZUN. Even among his other works, Subterranean Animism has my personal favorite soundtrack from start to finish, making even the stage themes (usually just there to build to a boss theme) into fantastic earworms.

    As for my reasons not to recommend this game, the difficulty discussion comes up again, but also I feel like Touhou is niche even among bullet hells. There's probably not a huge demographic of people interested in bullet hells based around Japanese mythology and culture as represented by cute girls with weird hats, as unfortunate as that is to say. Also, while the in-game work to make the bullet patterns look good is phenomenal, the actual character artwork is... an acquired taste, to say the least. ZUN is a respectable man in that he does almost everything himself to produce these games, but while his music composition and programming skills are commendable, his illustrations can be a bit off at times.

5. Magia Record (The Sacrificial Lamb Representative of All Gacha Games)

   

   While I could go on and on about the predatory nature of gacha games and list off about a dozen other worthy candidates to fill this particular spot on my list, this one I feel is the most worthy to really tear into because of just how awful it was (and still is, if you're for some reason willing to play it in Japanese). Magia Record is a free to play game that has admittedly good artwork and (some) good character voice acting, but that is where my praise for it ends. This game, a spinoff of the anime series Madoka Magica, is designed to do one thing and one thing alone: rob you of your hard earned money. There is no rewarding experience to be had, no moment of triumph to celebrate your hard work, no compelling narrative to keep avid readers invested. There's just a hole to throw money into, and sometimes that hole will show you a pretty picture to convince you that the money you threw in was actually doing something. Worse, it is uniquely offensive as the images it rewards you with are exclusively of young girls, and I believe it goes without saying how this treads dangerously close to some incredibly suspicious territory.

    My enjoyment of this game was exclusively based around its ties to the Madoka series, something I would recommend people engage with if they have any familiarity with the magical girl genre at large. That, however, is nowhere near enough to justify any interest in this atrocity, especially given the state of its global version's last few months as it rushed every last piece of content to squeeze each and every penny from its player base before unceremoniously shutting down.

4. Heroes of the Storm

    Heroes of the Storm is a multiplayer online battle arena (or MOBA for short) based on essentially every major property owned by Blizzard Entertainment, in the same vain as League of Legends or Dota 2. It features an impressive cast of Blizzard's all stars and a number of varied maps with different objectives to help push players towards victory over the opposing team. Unfortunately, Blizzard has been increasingly cutting support for HotS, and the game is currently in maintenance mode, meaning it is unlikely to ever receive any more new content or balance updates. With its dwindling player base, the game is effectively dead.

    However, this is also probably the saddest entry on this list for me personally, because I loved HotS in its hayday. Having been a long time supporter of Blizzard (right up until the acquisition by Activision) and a fan of League of Legends, this game was a perfect blend of two of my favorite things at the time. Characters I was already familiar with through having played Diablo, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and even some new faces from older Blizzard titles like the Lost Vikings made for a game that had nearly infinite replayability, because at any time I could just pick another one of my favorite characters and quickly hop into a match with them. Sure, the game wasn't very well balanced and was dependent on teamwork which made playing without friends a hassle, but to this day I have never had more fun playing a MOBA than HotS. It's such a shame to me that this game was left in the state it was, because I would still be playing to this day if it weren't running on life support.

3. Pokemon Radical Red

    

    Radical Red is the only game on this list that will be breaking the standard of not really being the "Base game", given that it's a modded version of Pokemon Fire Red. I think this one struck my interest particularly because it's what I consider to be a really well crafted experience for those looking to push their knowledge of the Pokemon games to their limits. This particular ROM hack includes mechanics and Pokemon from every generation of games up to Sword and Shield, and to account for giving the player so many tools, the variety and level of Pokemon used by enemy trainers that you fight along the way have also been massively tuned up. Many of the later "boss battles" have teams that were crafted to be viable in the highest levels of competitive play and sometimes require very specific strategies to be able to counter.

 

   For all the above stated reasons, I consider this to be the kind of Pokemon game that would make a casual player no longer enjoy Pokemon games. It requires too much digging into the hard numbers, learning how the AI works in order to exploit it, hoping and praying for RNG to work in your favor, and the only real reward to be found in it is saying you beat a Pokemon fan game. Not exactly the highest of accolades in most circles. But still, for those looking to really test themselves in their Pokemon expertise, I can't recommend Radical Red enough.

2. Warcraft 3 (Original)/World of Warcraft

    Warcraft 3, in its original form, is no longer playable through any official means. Through some hairbrained scheme cooked up in the bowels of corporate sludge, Activision Blizzard decided that once they released Warcraft 3 Reforged, no one would ever be able to play the original version again. To this, I have only the utmost disdain for them. I consider myself someone who wants to see the history of video games preserved in the same way we preserve books, movies, and other art forms, and to see something as influential as Warcraft 3, the game that arguably made Blizzard a household name, be swept into the dustbin to make way for the utter disappointment that was Reforged will forever go down in my mind as the single worst decision ever made by a video game company.

   

     But, of course, one can't talk about Blizzard without talking about their flagship game, World of Warcraft. I've already said much about why I can't condone the subscription-based MMO model, but I'll reiterate it here that WoW is no exception despite my belief that it is worth the asking price. On top of that, the game has been going for 18 years now, and that's 18 years worth of expansions to catch up on, which is simply too much for a reasonable person to get through, especially with how expensive an investment that is. And, of course, I cannot encourage anyone to financially support Activision Blizzard, formerly my favorite game developers, after the horrific revelations of what their workers had to endure at the hands of the higher-ups. That degree of workplace harassment and the culture that encouraged and propagated it is completely unacceptable, and as much as it hurt me at the time to hear about it, I have no qualms about standing in opposition to the company I used to go to bat for until significant change is made internally.

1. Asura's Wrath (My Favorite Bad Game)

    Asura's Wrath is, as a video game, bad. The core gameplay involves mashing one button over and over again to whittle away at a boss' health bar, mashing your way through a quick time event, and then repeating until you win. It's not particularly hard, it's not even really that aesthetically pleasing, and the most you really get out of it is a fairly generic revenge story about an angry man getting his daughter back from the bad guys. It's also one of the worst cases of the corporate greed on display by Capcom, as one of the main reasons this game is #1 on this list is because of the nature of its DLC content, but we'll get to that a bit later.

   

    With all the negative things I've had to say about it so far, you might be wondering what makes this game my favorite bad game of all time. To be honest, it's really hard to properly explain besides it just hitting a lot of checkboxes for me. I really like furiously mashing buttons during quick time events because I feel like my reflexes are good enough to excel at it. I like over-the-top anime bullshit, fighting bosses larger than the planet or a guy whose sword can cut the moon in half. I like the cheesy melodrama and all the voice actors who are clearly too good to be in this kind of game, but still feel like they're giving it their all to make something decent. And most of all, I like that it draws its inspiration from Hindu mythology, a source of ideas that feels woefully underrepresented in a lot of modern media outside of the specific cultures it originally comes from. Even through all the boring segments of bosses with too much health or that spend too long being unable to take damage, through all the cutscenes that are painfully mid-2000s in terms of their quality, I still just really love this game and the experience it offers, how all the negative elements make me sympathetic for the unending rage monster that is our protagonist as he smashes through all this garbage content to get what he wants.

    

    But, alas, this game is at the top for a reason, and as I said before, we'll get to it. This game is, as far as I'm aware, the only game I've ever played where the true ending cannot be achieved through the base game. No, my friends, Capcom decided that it would be a good idea to lock the true, canon ending to their game behind paid DLC. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, could ever convince me that there is any reason or rationale behind this other than corporate greed at its finest, and that spectacular display of stupidity is what gives Asura's Wrath its comfortable position at the #1 spot on this list.

    Honestly, I started feeling a lot better about this the further along I got with it. I really dreaded talking about those early entries where the most I had to say is "they're bad but not terrible" because of how tired a talking point that is, how little it feels like it offers to fellow consumers, but getting to rail against the worst of the worst really got me interested in talking again. There's some kind of schadenfreude to be found in salting the wounds of some of the biggest failures in the industry by warning potential future players away from them, though I'd never be so full of myself as to think I could single-handedly sway people's decisions from something that might potentially interest them. I guess I just wanted this list to serve as a bit of forewarning about some of these games before anyone spends any money on them, and also to serve as a little bit of that preservation of gaming history I'm so fond of.

TV Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 1)

 Well, after so much time committed to Japanese media, I figured it was time to talk about something to come out of the West for a change, and what better than a children's TV show openly inspired by various forms of Asian media? 

Avatar The Last Airbender is, flat out, one of the best TV shows I've ever watched, and it's incredible that even the first season, for what shortcomings it has, still manages to tell a compelling, tightly-packed narrative that feels as satisfying on the fourth viewing as it does the first. The characters are all packed full of energy, and it's clear just by the way they're performed that the voice actors are having a great deal of fun bringing them to life. A special shout-out must go to the late Mako, who brought a sense of world-weary jovial wisdom to the character of Uncle Iroh that greatly contributed to his position as one of the highlights of the entire series.

 Book one is not perfect, though, as the flaws in the animation became retroactively more noticeable as the series progressed and improved, minor as they are nonetheless. This first chunk of the series also contains what I would consider the only truly bad episode, as it requires the recently-established main cast to suddenly act wildly out of character in order to tell a "both sides" narrative that, unfortunately, does not hold up very well in our modern political climate, especially when the resolution to that conflict is to lie to everyone and just hope that they accept that new version of the story.

Overall, though, it manages to maintain a stride that never feels rushed while still packing in tons of world building, a staggering cast of side characters that are never just one-offs, and progressing the central narrative and character arcs without so much as stumbling more than a few times. Avatar truly set the standard for what animated media - even targeted at a younger demographic - could do, and it would only continue to shine brighter as it entered Books 2 and 3.

Side note: It probably goes without saying at this point, but I do not recommend even jokingly watching M. Night Shymalan's live-action movie adaptation of this series.

Movie Review: Dragon Ball Super: Broly

     Dragon Ball is without a doubt the most influential piece of Japanese animated media ever produced, even if it has faded from its former glory in the eyes of many recently. However, that growing malaise towards Dragon Ball was briefly washed away, and suddenly everything felt shiny and new again with the release of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, back in 2018. Taking an old idea and bringing it to life in a new light, it follows Goku and his friends (mostly just Vegeta though) as they face off against a new threat; a heretofore unknown warrior named Broly who bears incredible power but lacks the knowledge or will to use it. Broly, however, is basically a tool to be used by his father, who himself is a servant to the evil tyrant Frieza who wants nothing more than the eradication of his arch-enemies, the Saiyans. It is a heartwarming story about found-family, and it does a great job at framing its titular character, Broly, as a tragic main character, which in and of itself is a step away from the usual Dragon Ball format where Goku and friends are otherwise always the protagonists.

 The animation? Spectacular, a feast for the eyes and a true display of why certain things can only really be accomplished in the 2D space. The story? Surprisingly thoughtful and emotional for what is essentially 40 straight minutes of fighting framed by the narrative set-up. The voice acting? Phenomenal, and as is so rarely the case, it can be enjoyed in either its subbed Japanese dub or its English dub without the usual hit to quality that often accompanies anime dubs. It even manages to carry the signature humor of Akira Toriyama, always ready to remind us that Dragon Ball is predominantly about having fun, action-packed adventures that aren't bogged down too much by logic or intense drama. It's an easy recommendation for anyone who is a fan of Dragon Ball, or otherwise just generally enjoys well-animated movies.

Kamen Rider Zero-One (The First 16 Episodes)

     As a preface, for those woefully uninformed: Kamen Rider is a long-standing series from Japan that fits into a broader genre known as "tokusatsu", one usually identifiable by low-budget special effects, impressive physical choreography, and its plethora of iconic acting suits. Zero-One marks the series' first entry in what is known as the "Reiwa era", with each era being denoted by whoever is the current emperor of Japan at the time (Reiwa, Showa, etc.). The central premise of each Kamen Rider series involves an average human who transforms into a masked, motorcycle-riding hero (hence the name, roughly meaning "Masked Rider") with a multitude of different forms to fight against a colorful cast of monsters typically as a broader battle against an evil organization bent on taking over the world or otherwise generally engaging in evil activity.

    With that out of the way, Zero-One's first 16 episodes.

     I chose these 16 episodes to review because they feel very much like a complete mini-arc within the broader series. If not for a few hanging threads, you could probably stop watching after episode 16 and feel like you got a very condensed experience of pure tokusatsu cheese. That's really the main appeal of this kind of series; cheesiness. The suits are refreshingly real compared to the CGI monstrosities we're regularly exposed to in modern media (though even Kamen Rider isn't immune to dipping its foot into some truly ugly computer generated nightmares), the fight choreography is often fantastic, and there's a kind of childish glee one can feel well up inside them whenever the protagonist shouts the series' iconic "Henshin! (Transform)" only to don the silliest suit of neon-colored plastic armor over black spandex you've ever seen and then proceed to beat the living daylights out of the monster of the week (or, rarely, another equally-ridiculously dressed Kamen Rider). I think one of the most important things to keep in mind is that, with the exception of the painfully obvious, everything being shown on screen is done by a real person. Those suits aren't animatronics: there's a real person doing kung-fu under tens of pounds of rubber at another person doing kung-fu under tens of pounds of plastic, and watching everything unfold with that layer of immersion really sells the experience.

    Stepping more into the events of the series itself, it follows 22-year old Aruto Hiden, a failed comedian who finds himself inheriting the role of president of this world's leading AI development company. This position of power also comes with the responsibility of donning the mantle of Kamen Rider Zero-One to protect both his company and the world from an uprising of rogue AI seeking to wipe out humanity. It's incredibly fast-paced for these episodes, especially if you're familiar with other tokusatsu series, with new forms and gadgets designed to be sold as toys being introduced every episode, to the point where what initially seems like it might be Aruto's "super form" (a staple of the genre that typically represents the character's strongest level) being upgraded even further only two episodes later with little-to-no foreshadowing. That being said, the rapid pacing does do quite a bit to keep the series from getting stale, as there's always some new thing to look at or some new major development just a few minutes away in each episode.

    To name another strength of this particular entry: The core cast is incredibly small, consisting of Aruto, his AI assistant Is (or Izu), the two rogue AI terrorists known as Metsubojinrai.net, and two supercops who function as the series' secondary Riders. This tight-knit cast helps to balance each other out, with the overly-serious supercops having good chemistry while also bouncing well off the tryhard comedic stylings of Aruto, who then impresses his mannerisms upon Is, whose naivety mirrors the younger of Metsubojinrai's members' childlike demeanor, while the elder member's malice and hostility towards humanity contrasts the optimism of Aruto that humans and AI can live together in harmony, as exemplified by his relationship with Is. Furthermore, the character acting for each of the central cast members is handled very well, with the standout being Is and her fantastic physical comedy to compliment Aruto's canonically terrible jokes... at least, to everyone but one of the supercops. That being said, if you have a weakness to cringe, then Zero-One may not be the series for you.

    All this aside, do I recommend Kamen Rider Zero-One? If you're someone who grew up watching Power Rangers and have fond memories for it, like me, then it's a definitive yes. If you're a newcomer who has little to no experience with tokusatsu, I might suggest looking for a slightly different jumping off point than Zero-One, as I feel like some of its characteristics require a bit more familiarity with the genre to truly be appreciated (That said, I highly recommend Kamen Rider W as a gateway to the franchise). If you're someone who turns their nose up at low production values or cheesy character acting, then Kamen Rider probably isn't the series for you.

Color Critique: Orange

     Orange is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting colors I've come across in my travels. For one, it is the only color that is directly and unquestionably linked to a physical object, the fruit that shares its same name. Also, it is the only color that does not have a word in the English language that rhymes with it (and to those smart-asses out there who ascribe to the "door hinge" defeater, I know where you live, and I will apply orange juice to your door hinges). Orange is a color that in many ways defies criticism, not because it is strange or unfamiliar, but rather because it is omni-present: Pumpkins, oranges, "red" hair, Halloween AND Thanksgiving, the Former Guy, the cover of my notebook in high school that I designated the "social studies" notebook because that was the color-coded hallway the classroom was located in. But how does one grade a color, perchance? Well, for me, that's obvious; you simply use it in conjunction with teal, with the teal being pushed more into shadows while the orange is used for highlights which, due to their complimentary nature, will allow the dark and light to contrast with each other nicely without being too harsh on the eyes.

    Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Tune in next week when I review The Color Purple.