Vidya Gaymes

For those of you that don't know, I am spending the summer in Seattle working for the Army Corps of Engineers. Yes, Yes, I know I am a big deal, but I have learned to accept it. Maybe you should too. I have been having lots of adventures both at work and at play and meeting many strange and interesting people and seeing fantastic things. I could write a little something about that, but since summer isn't over yet, I am going to wait on that and instead give you what I have got here. Plus, when it comes to stories about my various escapades around here, I would much rather talk about in person. I still feel the need to write, but I don't fee like trying to be serious or smart or try to put my experiences here into words or anything like that, so I have decided to make another of these little lists. I have been reading this humor writing website a lot lately (www.cracked.com) and a lot of their pieces have the title "The Top 10 Blankiest Blank" or something to that effect. This kind of makes me want to do one too. And since I am a fan of rambling on and on, I am not going to tie myself down with a solid number, I am just going to go until I feel like stopping.

I recently read someone else’s blog about their favorite video games of all time. One thing you should know about me, I am a gamer. Maybe not so much now than I used to be, but I can still appreciate a good play through a great game. As my brother said a couple days ago, we as humans need that competition with each other. Since I lack the coordination to actually provide competition at most sports, and the low IQ to get anything out of watching other people play sports (Ba-Zing, just kidding), I like to play video games. It is a nice break from the real world because you are in control but you can do things you normally can not do in real life. That being said, you won't find sports games on this list, or any simulation games for that matter. I think that last sports game I liked playing for extended periods of time was NBA Jam back when I was a little kid. Some people just don't understand video games, this post is not for you, but if you are bored or interested, by all means, please continue.

The criteria for making this list are pretty loose. Some of them are newer games that have recently came out, although I do not have a lot of exposure to the newer consoles (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360), although a few of those games will make the list. What you will find on here are a lot of RPG's (That means Role Playing Game you R-Tard) and adventure games. I really like a game that can suck you in with a great story, like a movie, except you can control what goes on, and for some of them control how the story plays out. Also, I have always been pro Nintendo and therefore have never had a Playstation, few of those games will make it on here, although a lot of them would have a place on here if I ever get the opportunity to experience them. But basically if I liked the game at one point and still sometimes feel the desire to play it again or have played it so much I know it front and back, or maybe I just really liked it at the time. There will be some sequels to games on here as well. I will put them on if I enjoyed them more than the first. I realize that the first on introduced the franchise and it deserves some credit, but if I like the second or third one better, that is just the way it is. As always, I welcome any comments or suggestions on anything you feel is missing from this list, or if you want to call me a giant dweebo or whatever you can be my guest, it had been awhile since I have told anyone to “fuck off” so it might be fun to get another opportunity. Also, these games are in no particular order, although the ones that are higher on the list, I thought up first, so that should tell you something, but generally the order is random, much like the way my mind works.

Final Fantasy VII (PC)
I can safely say this is one of my all time favorite games. Everything about it was implemented perfectly. Some people may not like all of the character designs, they are pretty blocky and cartoony, but they fit well for some reason. Plus they look really good when in combat. The story is top notch; it has lots of layers and twists, with lots of interesting characters and backgrounds for each character. I believe this game defined what a 3-D RPG should be like.
You are a mercenary hired by a rebel group trying to take down a evil corporation whose reactors are draining the world of its life force, polluting its environment, and keeping the citizens under its foot by controlling the price of the electricity they produce. This is only the beginning and eventually a new, worse villain rears his head and threatens the world more than the corporation possibly can. But I digress, for any fan of role playing games, this is a must play.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (Xbox 360/PC)
This has to be one of the nerdiest games I have ever gotten into. Besides maybe it's predecessor Morrowind. This is a role-playing game that is probably one of the biggest I have ever played. You can pick the class, skills, race, and even the appearance of your character, down to the structure of their cheek bones. Once you have started, Captain Picard tells you about some sort of evil threatening the land... Hell on Earth, pretty standard adventure game stuff. The story is good but kind of inconsequential. Once that gets going you are able to walk around this world and pretty much do anything you want, plus the graphics are very good so with a huge world full of good scenery and plus another dimension called Oblivion, which is basically like hell that has its own architecture and vibe. It makes me feel all free and able to ride on horseback through a flowery meadow.... or something like that.

Super Mario World (Super Nintendo)
The previous Mario games are good, but this one is my favorite, in the 2-d world anyway. It brings everything that was good about the games for regular Nintendo and makes it better with more colorful worlds and characters. This is one of those old games I don't mind picking up and playing again just for shits sometimes. There are so many secret worlds and special levels that can keep you busy for a long time. This is truly a game for the ages.

Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox)
Pronounced Gi - Den. This game is one of the greatest action games I have ever played. The graphics are great and the fights are intense and deep. You get to control several ninja weapons each with its own strengths while fighting monsters and people with guns while saving the world and a girl with large breasts and an even larger hammer from an ancient evil. There is no part of that last sentence I did not like. The game also features many unlockable costumes and challenges that will have you pulling your hair out long after you finish the main game. The difficulty of this game is also one of the high points. It is hard enough to give you a challenge, but it is still possible... if you have the stones necessary to keep going with it.

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
I thought the previous 2-D Zelda games were fun, but this one really blew my mind when it came out. It brought a timeless adventure into the third dimension perfectly while still keeping the secrets and spooky dungeons found in the previous games intact. I really did get lost in this game when it first came out. You can travel through time in between a kid and a young adult in order to solve puzzles and eventually save the princess... again. It is an old story but they make it seem fresh every time.

Earthbound (Super Nintendo)
Man, what can I say about this game? The graphics for this role-playing game weren't all that great, even for the time it came out. But do they ever make up for it. The story is great and it is full of a strange kind of humor that I just don't see in other games. One of your main enemies throughout the game is your fat, annoying neighbor, I just find that hilarious for some reason.
It starts out with you, a kid, sleeping and being woken up by a meteor smashing outside your house. Then strange things start happening, monsters begin appearing and animals start acting all crazy and attacking everybody... and mushrooms start walking around. Of course throughout the game you get homesick and may have to call your mom and say hi or maybe call your dad and ask for some money. It is a long game and I can remember from when I was a kid, I got strep throat a few times and I would be out of commission for a few days, I would rent this game and it would keep me occupied until I got better.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Gamecube)
One of the more trippy/spooky games I have played. You start the game as a woman investigating the decapitation of your grandfather. Then you begin to find the history of what is going on, and you play through the history from about 2000 years ago to today of a great evil that has been working all that time to be released upon the world. As you play though the game your character sees some strange stuff, zombies, monsters, creatures bursting out of people’s bodies, etc... Seeing this affects your sanity and if you lose too much of it your character begins to hallucinate, they see blood dripping from the walls, their arms start falling off, or they are surrounded by bad guys with no weapons. The game also breaks the fourth wall on occasion when your sanity is low. It shows bugs crawling across the screen, or it will turn the volume all the way down, or it will make it look like you just deleted all of your saved data. The Blue Screen of Death also makes an appearance.

Grand Theft Auto 3 (Playstation 2)
This game really revolutionized gaming I think. It took an old game that select moms and congressman thought was evil and turned it into a 3-D world where you could do pretty much anything. Effectively making every parent and priest and government official scared of it. Of course, some morons went and did stupid stuff and then got caught and tried to blame it on the game. Take a car from anyone and drive it off a cliff. Or maybe just run around committing random acts of violence or worse. That kind of freedom makes me go a big rubbery one. I have got a chance to play a bit of the newest installation, Grand Theft Auto 4, while that is a stellar game that has amazing graphics and terrific physics, it just doesn't really wow me like GTA 3 did in its time.

Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube)
This was a new entry into an old classic franchise. And I must say that it blew me away. There are no more zombies, and instead of an American city, you are in a European city and the villain looks like some sort of tiny soldier from the Revolutionary War. It brings an improved control scheme and an old favorite character back. A great play if you are looking for a weird, spooky game to play through. There is even some propaganda in there to piss off all you right wing types.

Fallout 2 (PC)
This game takes place in southern California after a nuclear war over the worlds last known oil reserves with China. Society has crumbled and radioactive mutants roam the land. You are sent out by your dying village to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit in order to save it. As you wander around the wasteland you encounter many good and bad people, who you can choose to help or harm. The game has a very strange sense of humor, lots of swearing and violence, and the animations look like they were taken from a "duck and cover" movie from the fifties, which I find hilarious. Also the intro has a song by Louis Armstrong

Half Life 2 (Xbox)
This is probably one of my favorite first person shooters ever. The graphics are amazing, the story is epic and pays homage to a lot of classic sci-fi movies, and the enemies are smart. This game also introduces the gravity gun, which is a weapon that allows you to pick up objects like paint cans, saws, or lawn gnomes and hurl them at enemies or really anything that tickles your fancy. One of my favorite parts is towards the end of the game when the gravity guns starts wigging out and becomes super powerful, allowing you to pick up people and throw them around. If you like first person shooters, you gotta check this one out.

Space Quest 2: Vohaul’s Revenge (PC)
This is an old game, where you control a man and you can type things for him to do into the keyboard, such as: "Look around" "pick up the gem" or "get fucked" or whatever you want. The story is that you are a janitor on a space station who gets kidnapped by aliens who then crash land on a strange world. You must escape this world and stop your nemesis Sludge Vohaul before he releases his army of insurance salesman on an unsuspecting universe, which will surely cause its destruction.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day (Nintendo 64)
This is probably the funniest game I have played. You play a squirrel that gets too drunk one night, and wakes up hungover and not knowing where he is. Your task is to help him find his way home while collecting all the money and causing all the shenanigans you can. It is a cartoon world that looks like it is for kids, but it is a very adult game. Most of the inanimate objects you see in real life are alive in this game and have their own personalities... most of them negative. Hey if you were a paintbrush living a barn, wouldn't you get bored and help the can of paint convince the pitchfork to hang himself from the rafters even though it hasn't got a neck? The money you collect tells you to "Pick me up, ya greedy bastard", or a cog tells you to "Fuck off" repeatedly. Also you can get drunk at times and pee on your enemies. Like I said it is a game for “mature” audiences who can handle this sort of stuff.

Banjo-Kazooie (Nintendo 64)
Here you take control of a banjo playing bear named Banjo and his best friend that lives in his backpack named Kazooie, who strangely enough, plays the kazoo... who thinks this stuff up? Anyway your sister gets kidnapped or something by a witch and you have to rescue her by going through a bunch of differently themed levels and collect puzzle pieces in order to find her. It sound strange and kiddie and it is, but dammit, it is fun. You get transformed into several different creatures throughout the game and the level design is great. My favorite level was one in a forest that had a giant tree with a bunch of woodland creatures living by it. The cool thing about this was that you could play the level in the four different seasons, each with its own puzzles and behaviors for the various forest critters. For example, you couldn't talk to the beaver during winter because he was hibernating. Anyhow, it was a fun game and had some pretty stellar graphics for its time, plus a neat musical intro with a banjo and a kazoo.

Goldeneye: 007 (Nintendo 64)
This game really defined first person shooters to this day. The single player game was fun to play through and featured many different locations and scenarios to play though, but the real fun was the multiplayer that came with the game. Even today I can still have fun playing this mode with my roommate and any other poor sucker she brings over who wants to be dominated by yours truly. You can even be Oddjob and it won't matter, so long as I get to be Boris.

Lemmings (PC)
A great puzzle game. In this game you take control of some sort of God or sadistic motherfucker, I am never sure which, and guide Lemmings through various stages giving them various occupations to perform. The lemmings don't seem too smart and just walk in the same direction until acted on by some kind of outside force. This means they will walk right off a cliff or into an incinerator or whatever else the game puts there to kill them. It is a fun game that has a lot of tricky puzzles to solve and has occupied a good amount of my childhood playing it on an old Mac.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox)
Yet another role-playing game. Damn I am kind of a nerd when it comes to this. Oh well, at least I get a piece (not really). This game takes place around 4000 years before the original trilogy and you take the role of a Jedi who must save the galaxy from some major asshole that seems so common in this galaxy from a long time ago that is far, far away. The fun part is that throughout the game you can make choices that determine your path to the light side or the dark side of the force. As you fall to the dark side or walk on the light side, your appearance changes to reflect that. For example, when you get evil you get all pale and veiny and your eyes turn yellow. The story is top notch as well; with a twist that rivals that whole "Luke, I am your father" bit. Plus you get a Wookie side-kick.

Earthworm Jim (Super Nintendo)
One of the first truly funny games I have played. You play a worm who finds a power suit from outer space that makes him an action hero, forcing you to battle your way through junkyards and several other videogame cliches in order to rescue some chick or something like that from a cat named Eek! the Cat... I think, I am going from memory here. The game play was good enough, but the turn on for me was the humor and the squishy sound effects. I cannot stress enough just how much I like games that don't take themselves too seriously and can just be funny for the sake of being funny.

Super Mario All-Stars (Super Nintendo)
I got this game with my Super Nintendo. It has Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3, along with some bonus levels and updated graphics and sounds, 'nuff said.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (Nintendo)
This game was one of my favorites because it had the turtles in it of course. Shredder took the city of Manhattan hostage, but more importantly, he kidnapped April, what a dick. Anyway, you could play by yourself or with a friend as any of the four turtles through many different stages fighting all of your favorite baddies along the way. Each turtle also had their own special attacks and strengths that made them awesome. My favorite one to play with was Michaelangelo of course.

Armada (PC)
An old Ass strategy game. You took control of a race of beings and set about colonizing all of the stars around your home planet. Then you would build up a fleet of ships and go and conquer the rest of the galaxy either enslaving or exterminating the other races that stood before you. Or if you were feeling especially heinous, you could drop a neutron bomb on their planet and blow the whole fucker up. The research allowed you to advance the science of your civilization in order to find better ways to kill and/or conquer your opponent, just like real life.

DOOM II (PC)
This was an old shooter I got for Christmas and was one of the most violent games I had played back then. You control a marine who must battle the demons of Hell that have broken loose on Earth. It is a good thing my dad didn't know how gruesome this game was or else he would not have bought it for me. The weapons were cool and the monsters and their eventual deaths were hideous and scary. A great thing to keep a 12 year old occupied. You might think this may have been damaging to me, and you may be right, but I don't think so. Try spending a day around my house on chicken butchering day and see what you think then. With 30 some levels it was also a very long game. Also about half way through the game I found a secret portal that I am not sure I had found, but it took me to this game from the same developer called Castle Wolfenstein, which was about killing Nazis. You ran around killing Nazis and then the demons from the Doom game you were in began to show up and try to kill the Nazis and you as well. At least demons are equal opportunity killers.

Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (Super Nintendo)
This game took one of my favorite genres of games (RPG) and put in the Mario universe with all the old favorite friends and baddies. The story starts out with you as Mario going to rescue the Princess from the king of the Koopas, Bowser, yet again, but something goes horrible wrong and a new enemy surfaces that is worse than Bowser. As you make your way through the various worlds, you make new friends as well as some old ones. You even team up with Bowser later on. This really was a great game that had a great story but still retained all the fun, humor and great gameplay we have come to expect from Mario games.

Oregon Trail (PC)
This might be considered a simulation game, but it is still great. You and a few of your friends could pick an occupation and buy supplies and then take off across the country in wagons in hopes of reaching the Promised Land. If you were tough enough to endure the hardships along the way, and you were a good enough hunter. And if you didn't have someone named Courtney traveling with you who would stop to rest for a week if she caught a cold, you would make it to Oregon and live a life of freedom and tolerance, or whatever reason you went over there for.

River City Ransom (Nintendo)
This game was a fighter where you and a friend took control of two dudes whose girlfriends were kidnapped. The boys must rescue them so they can go and finish their shopping. You have to fight your way through the mean streets of River City. This doesn't seem like a very good place to live since pretty much every street is infested with gangs who want to kick your ass for no reason. But you could steal their money and weapons once you beat them up, allowing you to buy powerups from some local shopkeepers where they service was good and smiles were always free. One of the funny parts was when you beat a guy up; they would yell something as they vanished... My favorite was "BARF!!" Apparently you could beat someone bad enough to make them vomit loudly. Ah those were simpler and happier times.

X-COM: UFO Defense (PC)
I like this game because you must defend Earth from alien invasion by setting up bases around the globe and then going out and attacking the various UFO's then killing or capturing the aliens and taking them back to study them and their technology. Then learning their weaknesses and then using their own technology against them. This was a strategy game where every move you made affected the outcome of the battle, plus it had a pretty cool sci-fi story and lots of cool pictures of aliens and spaceships and whatnot.

Wii Sports (Wii)
You can always count on Nintendo to put game play before anything else. In the world full of hi def hoopla, Nintendo released the Wii, with a weaker graphics processor than the competition, but with the stellar controller, this put game play before graphics and it really paid off for them. The first game to show off the new controller, which was also included with the console, which is unheard of these days, was Wii Sports. This let you try your hand at around five sports and you would actually move instead of just sitting there pushing buttons. My favorite is boxing, probably followed by bowling, since you can make into a drinking game. Ok so I guess there was a sports game on here. Oh well.
Well that is it.... God damn I am a nerd.
Peace out
--Seth