The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Nintendo - 1998 - N64/3DS

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

I was having a discussion with a friend about which Zelda game a newcomer to the franchise should play first. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were brought up, but Ocarina of Time wasn't even mentioned. And I wasn't really opposed to that. This game is a difficult sell to someone who has never played a Zelda title before. It's not so much that subsequent games have made massive improvements on the formula that OoT established or anything like that. But I realize that the reason I love this game is that I have SO MUCH NOSTALGIA tied up in this game. It was the first Zelda game where I got to explore the sprawling fields of Hyrule, the first Zelda game that really hooked me on its story and got me interested in its locations and characters and it was the first Zelda game I replayed over and over again obsessively. And the music! Oh man, the music. It always brings back so many memories. So either you read the last few sentences and knew exactly what I was talking about or you haven't played OoT. While I don't necessarily believe that subsequent Zeldas are "better" games, it's hard to come up with a sell for this game over other Zelda titles that isn't childhood nostalgia. But it's important to note how hugely important and impactful this game was when it came out.

This game was made in the era where 3D games were starting to come into their own. The first 3D game I played that really blew my mind was Mario 64. Those Mario worlds were fun to play and run around in, but what set the 3D worlds of OoT apart from Mario 64 were that OoT's 3D world felt "real" and lived in. It was a joy to explore. Especially with all of the detail put into the world; it made you want to explore each nook and cranny to make sure you didn't miss a hidden secret. I can distinctly remember being totally blown away by this the first time I played the game. I remember just walking around some of the villages and using the first person camera to admire all of the details.

The gameplay of OoT was revolutionary at the time and set a lot of precedents for how the rest of the 3D Zelda games would play. It sounds kind of silly now, but a lot of what we take for granted gameplay and systems wise not only in Zelda games, but 3D games in general had to be invented from scratch here. Everything from the way the puzzles worked to how the combat would function had to be converted from a 2D world to a 3D world. One of the most notable of these new 3D game systems was OoT's "Z targeting" system which governed how the camera would function in combat. By facing an enemy and pressing the Z button, the player could focus the camera on just one enemy until either the focus is switched by pressing the Z button again or the enemy is defeated. The developers did a fantastic job bringing this franchise into a 3D world

The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time Video Review

Summary:
OoT is sort of a difficult sell for someone who has never played a Zelda game before, because I'd only be selling them on nostalgia. My personal recommendation is to play Wind Waker if you've never tried this franchise before. I understand the WiiU version, which contains some graphical enhancements and gameplay tweaks, is the definitive version of the Wind Waker. But for "game connoisseurs" and people who have somehow otherwise missed out on playing OoT and are interested, it is one of my all time favorite games. I actually haven't played the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time, so I can't speak for its quality, but I hear good things. I'm not really interested in playing OoT on a handheld and while the enhanced graphics look beautiful, they also clash with all of the great memories I have of playing the original version. And while I admit there's a great amount of nostalgia tied to my Ocarina of Time love, I am still confident in saying it is one of the greatest video games ever made.

Final Fantasy VII

Squaresoft - 1997 - PC/PS1

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

I actually played Final Fantasy 7 for the first time several years after it was released. A friend of mine gave me both the FF7 and FF8 discs at the same time. I initially decided to play FF8 as it was the newer and more graphically realistic of the two games. FF7's blocky and cartoony graphics initially turned me off and I didn't get around to playing through it until after I finished FF8. I liked FF8 well enough at the time, but it wasn't until I went back and played through FF7 that I realized how superior of a game Final Fantasy 7 is. It taught me an important lesson that I still think about when playing games now: graphics are just not as important as good gameplay and an interesting story

Final Fantasy 7 was the first game in the series released on the PS1 and was also the first game in the series to not appear on a Nintendo console. More importantly, it is also the game that is credited with popularizing the Japanese role playing game genre for western audiences. It is also the first game in the Final Fantasy series to fully embrace a futuristic sci-fi setting as opposed to the Tolkien-esque fantasy settings found in the previous games. Earlier games in the series had some futuristic and science fiction elements, but Final Fantasy 7 really embraced this aesthetic and fully built its characters and setting around it

Final Fantasy 7 follows the story of Cloud Strife, an amnesiac mercenary who joins a band of freedom fighters who call themselves Avalanche and are trying to stop the money-loving Shinra corporation from installing environment polluting "mako reactors" across the planet. The first part of the game deals with the Avalanche vs. Shinra conflict, but then the game and story really opens up as you begin to uncover the details of Cloud's past, his lost memories and how a mysterious man known as Sephiroth ties in to the story. You'll also of course explore the backstory to all of your party members, who are all well written and interesting characters. It's a truly gripping and mysterious story that had me hooked from the beginning and kept me interested to the end. It's a difficult game to put down because if whatever's happening in the story doesn't hold your attention, the addicting and well designed battle system probably will.

Just like any other entry in the Final Fantasy series, the battle system in FF7 is completely unique, but I believe this is my favorite battle system found in any of the Final Fantasy games. This battle system allows for a high degree of character customization through the new "materia" system. In the game, materia are basically little magic jewels that characters can equip on their weapons and armor to grant additional stat bonuses or new abilities. For instance, if you want a party member to learn a fire spell, you simply place the "fire" materia into one of the materia slots on that character's weapon or armor. What makes this system interesting is that some materia can be paired together. For example, if you wanted to be able to cast fire on all enemies at once, you can pair a "fire" materia with an "all" materia, assuming you have both. Players have to make some fun strategic decisions when building out their party as some weapons may be statistically better, but have fewer materia slots. Further adding to the strategic complexity of this system is that materia can gain experience and level up, granting you further statistical bonuses or more powerful spells. Another smart piece of game design is that some weapons and armors can increase the growth rate of the materia, but at the cost of fewer total materia slots. It's an excellent battle system that forces the player to think carefully about their party's build.

Adding to the perfect harmony of excellent gameplay and well-told story is the masterfully composed soundtrack. I know I've said it before, but Nobou Uematsu is a genius. The PS1 sound chip makes the tracks sound very MIDI-ish, but pay attention to the composition of the pieces. It's genius. Even more mind blowing is the crazy musical variety found in each track. There's the sleazy "Oppressed People", the dark and beautiful "Anxious Heart", the playful carnival-like "Gold Saucer", the nightmarish "Those Chosen by the Planet" and of course, the rockin' boss battle anthem "Those who Fight Further". But really, the whole soundtrack is totally amazing from top to bottom. Give it a listen if you're into video game music

Final Fantasy VII Video Review:

Summary:
Final Fantasy 7 is a masterpiece of a game. It's a perfect blend of engaging story, smart game design and a top-notch soundtrack. I've tried many times to recreate the experience of playing FF7 for the first time be trying various other Japanese role playing games, but none can quite recapture the brilliance of FF7. It's a must-play for fans of RPGs with great storytelling, don't let the blocky graphics scare you off. Speaking of which, I'd love to see that FF7 HD remake sometime in my lifetime

Portal

Valve - 2007 - PC/PS3/X360

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

Continuing my little list of favorite games, this week I want to write about portal. I'm quite aware that most everyone who is reading this is probably already quite aware of the brilliance of Portal, but if there is by some chance some soul out there that is reading this and hasn't played this game, YOU NEED TO PLAY IT. Portal gets an emphatic and universal recommendation for me no matter what gaming preferences are or what genres you usually gravitate towards. It is that important of a game. 

Back in 2007, Valve released "The Orange Box" in retail stores. It was a combo pack of Half Life 2, both Half Life 2 episodes, Team fortress 2, and a little game called Portal. I bought the Orange Box mostly for Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 as these were titles I was already familiar with. Portal was pushed to the side for a while while I played the other games. HL2 and TF2 were fantastic games, but when I finally started Portal, my mind was totally blown. I don't use that term lightly either. I can count on one hand the number of games whose mechanics have blown my mind. The original Pokemon blew my mind. Mario 64 blew my mind. Ocarina of Time blew my mind. And Portal blew my freaking mind. 

So for those who are reading this and are unaware, the main gameplay mechanic in Portal is the titular portal gun. The gun allows the shooter to create two separate spatial rifts on flat surfaces that connect one place to another. For instance, if I placed one portal on my floor and one on my ceiling, I could jump down through my floor and come out of the ceiling. Or if I placed one portal in my kitchen and one in my bedroom, I could have an easy shortcut for getting midnight snacks. You can start to imagine the gameplay and puzzle possibilities with this mechanic. The spatial reasoning puzzles were absolutely mind bending and I loved it. Even the momentum based platforming challenges were a blast. The gameplay varied from puzzles to platforming to bullet dodging and sometimes blended all three. The entire game felt fresh and each room was a new challenge to conquer

From a game design, balancing and difficulty curve perspective, this game is as close to perfection as I think I'll ever see a game come. It's a game that knows its mechanics are difficult to grasp for first time players, so it starts out slow to make sure the player understands the basics before things get more complicated. It first introduces the basics of how portals work before it even gives you the gun. Then once you get the gun, it only shoots one end of a portal at a time while the other connecting portal remains stationary to help minimize unwanted confusion while players are adjusting to the mechanics of the game. Then once all of the mechanics are introduced, the game starts slowly ramping up the difficulty of the puzzles and platforming at a perfect pace to match the player's understanding and comfortability with the game. Once you master one mechanic, the next room throws a different one at you. Or sometimes even layers several mechanics from previous rooms all together to make sure you understand them all. Another important thing Portal does is that it never outstays its welcome. Right when it's done throwing all of its layers of tricky game mechanics at you, the game winds down. It winds down particularly well with a satisfying and hilarious boss fight too, but my point is that there is nothing that feels stretched out or tacked on with Portal. Every part of that game feels very necessary and deliberate. It's totally brilliantly constructed and Portal is my gold standard for excellent game design

Also not to be forgotten about is Portal's excellent sense of humor. There's really only two characters in Portal, yourself and the intelligent computer system guiding you through the maze of rooms who is known as GLaDOS. Since your player character is silent, all of the humor in the game is delivered through GLaDOS. It's a subtle type of humor. The game initially wants you to trust GLaDOS as she is the voice who is instructing and coaching you through the test chambers. But then every once in a while, GLaDOS will utter a line of dialogue that makes you think "wait, what?" "did the computer just say what I think it said?". A lot of these lines are intentionally humorous and the game uses this subtle humor to eventually break down the trust that you place in GLaDOS in the beginning of the game as it slowly becomes obvious that GLaDOS is trying to kill you. The game brilliantly uses its subtle brand of humor throughout the course of the game and it has become famous for well known memes based around "the weighted companion cube" and "The cake is a lie".

Portal video review:

Summary:

Portal is an experience that every gamer should have. The puzzles are mind-bendingly brilliant, the platforming is fun and challenging, and the subtle humor keeps the game interesting throughout its duration. Portal 2 was a great game as well, but it didn't really add anything THAT new or mind blowing other than the multiplayer. The game's humor was still really funny, but it was more of an "in your face" comedy than the subtle "what did she say?" style. In any case, you absolutely must play Portal if you haven't already. It's my favorite video game in the last 15 years. 

Mass Effect 2

BioWare (EA) - 2010 - PC/X360/PS3

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

I initially thought it would be a neat idea to close out this year and the month of December by doing a countdown of my all-time favorite games and writing reviews for them. But then I realized that I had already done reviews for some of my all-time favorite games like Project M, Minecraft, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. So while this isn't truly a countdown of my favorite games, the games I write about this month are still very important to me and I have replayed all of them many times. 

The first BioWare game I ever played was Knights of the Old Republic. I admittedly picked it up mostly cause, you know, it's Star Wars! But I actually thought it was mostly a pretty good game. Then Mass Effect came out. I freaking LOVED the first Mass Effect game. Even without the Star Wars license, it was an undeniable improvement over KOTOR in every way. It had a much more interesting and engaging combat system, it had more impactful narrative decision making, and it had more interesting characters and better told story. But maybe most important of all is that the in-game world felt so real and immersive. It had massive lore and backstory and I could read as much or as little about all of the locations and technologies as I wanted. The voice acting and writing was excellent and the game pulled off humor and sarcasm better than most other games at the time. Plus the game looked (and still looks) pretty darn impressive.

Mass Effect 2 is all of these things and more. I believe it to be the epitome of the Mass Effect franchise. ME3 is a good game too, but it didn't feel as refined or complete of a game as ME2. It seemed like one of the design goals of ME2 was to trim a lot of the excess fat that was present in the first Mass Effect. Gone are the clunky vehicle sections. Gone are the annoying canisters of useless extra weapons and armor that you trip over every 5 steps. But returning is the excellent writing and character design. The crewmates on the ship were so varied and interesting, even more so than ME1. Arguably the least interesting characters were the ones that returned from the first game which isn't so much a slight of the first game as much as it is a compliment to the excellent character design of the second. I loved that you also got to see some of the impact of the decisions you made in the first game. It's also a nice reminder that the impact of a lot of the important decisions you make in ME2 will be felt in the next game. Or at least felt at the end of ME2.

Perhaps the most notable improvement in Mass Effect 2 is the combat system. Combat in the first game was somewhat clunky and awkward. It was sometimes hard to tell if you were actually hitting your target and shots tended to clip into invisible barriers or sometimes seem to miss for no reason at all. The combat in ME2 is much more polished and visceral. You KNOW when you get a kill and it feels satisfying. My favorite change in the combat system is with the different weapon types. It's much more rare when you acquire a new weapon, so it feels more exciting. And it's not simply a binary "Is this gun better or worse?" like in ME1. The weapons are all different and have varied strengths and weaknesses. They all play and feel fundamentally differently with different reload speeds, ammo clip sizes, range, and also varied damage and accuracy. You have to play around with the weapons a little to see which one best suits your playstyle. And I love that. Also the excellent level design in ME2 facilitates constant changing of weapons. Some levels are close quarters with lots of short hallways that are perfect for strong shotguns while others can be long, open courtyards perfect for sniper rifles. And the refined abilities and powers are a nice added touch that separates Mass Effect from other action-shooter games. 

While the refinements to the combat system are nice, the real reason I come to ME2 is to get my story on. I loved the darker or at least somewhat more mysterious themes of ME2. I liked that Commander Shepard was no longer a pawn of the Alliance, but was a renegade in league with Cerberus who were villains in the previous game. Sure, Shepard sort of takes orders from the mysterious "Elusive Man" throughout the game, but you're always free to pick your own destinations on the map and unfold the story at your own pace. It gives the game a more open-ended "explore the galaxy on your own terms" kind of feel. The game seems thematically closer to Star Trek than Star Wars which is ironic considering the development team's pedigree. But I loved exploring and discovering the game world in ME2 and the set pieces are all so well written and memorable. Especially at the end of the game. I won't spoil what happens for those who still haven't played it, but ME2 nicely and meaningfully wraps up all of the choices and decisions you've made in the game up to that point. And it does it in a way that is both exciting and memorable.

Mass Effect 2 Video Review:

Summary:

Mass Effect 2 is a great example of a perfect marriage between excellent gameplay and storytelling. It's an excellent sequel that refines everything that was good about the first game in the series and trims out everything else that was not. It should be a must-play game for fans of shooters and fans of great storytelling alike