Polly's Top 25 Games of All Time
by Polly

Half-Life was one of the first games ever to make me almost afraid to continue playing. For its time it had some of the most amazing amtophshere and ambience I'd ever experienced in gaming. It also had some of the most fun and intense combat situations I'd ever been in and AI that STILL holds up to this day. More so than its disappointing sequel.

This game still defines the genre for me. Though many good ones have come and gone, I simply can't bring myself to dethrone Half-Life in my heart.

Sure, the game's a bit rough around the edges here and there and the On A Rail chapter sucks so much donkey dick its astounding. But the fact remains that this is probably the most enjoyable FPS experience I ever had and only Doom III has come close. I expect some of that to change once BioShock completely sets in.



One of the most insense and insane shooters ever, period. Though, honestly I've always felt more inclined to consider Ikaruga a puzzle game in shmup's clothing.

Ikaruga presents you with gameplay mechanics that seem utterly simple on paper. Your ship can switch colors between black and white. Enemies fire black and white bullets. If your ship color is black and you collide with black bullets you absorb them without penalty. If your ship is on the unfortunate receiving end of a white bullet while you're still black, then your happy ass is toast. And it works the other way around. Whee.

The brilliance of this game lies in its simple concept. It's a mechanic that's easy to understand and comes to grips with the first 20-30 seconds of gameplay, but difficult to master. Each of the game's short five stages pummel the player into oblivion, testing their reflexes and hand/eye coordination. Things start out easy enough, with the first stage being a bit of a gimme, but from stage two until the end, it's no hold's fucking barred. There isn't a time after the first stage that the entire playfield isn't literally a SEA of bullets of both colors and it's up to you to navigate these treacherous waters while constantly switching polarities AND trying to focus your fire to down enemies.

With as EEEEEVIL as the game could be just with all that alone, you'd think it couldn't possibly have more up its sleeve. You'd be wrong. Ohhhhh. Soooooo. Wrooooooong.

Once you take off the training wheels and Huggies Pull-ups and decide to play the game for real, you'll discover the game's TRUE addictive force... The chain scoring system.

Normally, enemies aren't worth many points when destroyed by themselves. The path to scoring big points in Ikaruga is in destroying 3 enemies of the same color. Once you've done that you begin a chain. Continue chaining 3 of the same enemy color (black or white is fine) and you'll see both your score and gaming muscle grow exponentially. All five of the game's stages on every difficulty are meticulously crafted so that it's possible to chain your way through an entire stage. A feat this awesome may not get you laid, but go ahead and practice. Pull off chaining an entire stage just once. Fuck yes, you are one of the BEST ORGASMS EVER.

Sadly, Ikaruga is nigh impossible to find on GameCube or Dreamcast unless you wanna pay over $100 or more for it. Luckily, it's coming to XBOX Live Arcade sometime soon to humiliate an entire new console generation.



Ninjas: CHECK
Tight/Responsive Controls: CHECK
Best NES Soundtrack EVER: CHECK
Awesome Cinematic Presentation: CHECK
Painful Yet Pleasant Difficulty: CHECK

One of the greatest games to grace the little grey shoebox: FUCKIN' CHECK



Sonic the Hedgehog was a pretty fucking big deal when he made his debut in 1991. Sonic was Sega's answer to Mario. Though the first Sonic was indeed a good game, I felt that it lacked a lot of what was advertised. That being the speed.

The first sonic was nowhere near as fast as Sega wanted everyone to think. Sure, the Green Hill Zone was pretty zippy most of the time, but after that it felt as if they sorta forgot that Sonic was supposed to be fast as the game tightened up the reins and turned into more of a Mario clone than they may have realized. The Marble Zone, Labyrinth Zone, and Scrap Brain Zone all featured Mr. Tude-hog standing around most of the time waiting for platforms to line up for timed jumping segments than actual speed.

In 1992 Sega released what would be the game that would level the playing field of the 16-bit era of gaming. Sonic The Hedgehog 2. with this game alone and some very edgy ad campaigns, Sega closed the gap and created a 50/50 market share between themselves and Nintendo.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a definitive sequel. It takes the original ideas, understands where it went wrong the first time, corrects them, and then adds a whole new mess of goodness to the mix. Sonic 2 is bigger, faster, and better than its predecessor in every way imaginable.

With Sonic 2, Sonic finally got that speed that he was lacking the first time around. Almost every stage features one or two areas where the game will send you screaming forward so fast you almost lose track of where you are on the screen. But it's not just the speed that makes it great. Sonic 2 still features some of the slower platforming elements that the first game did, but they now serve to kinda calm you down for a bit, then it's back to the speeding. They really hit the nail on the head with balance here.

Sonic 2 is also god damn gorgeous. I still can't help but enjoy the graphics featured in this game nearly 15 years later. Every Zone in the game is wonderfully unique with a color palette more vivid than probably any other Genesis game EVER. Have a look at the Oil Ocean Zone, Mystic Cave Zone or the Aquatic Ruin Zone and tell me that shit's not pretty. On top of the awesome graphics you also get one of the greatest soundtracks that the 16-bit era has to offer. Rivaled on the Genesis ONLY by Streets of Rage 1 and 2. The tunes are so damn catchy that I can't help but have them stuck in my head for a week after playing the damn game.

This is also the first Sonic game to feel truly EPIC. As you got deeper and deeper into the game, the stages got crazier and crazier, as did the bosses. It's hard to still not get that nervous twitch when I head into the Sky Chase/Wing Fortress Zones or the final epic battle with Robotnik.

I haven't even mentioned the stupidly fun 2 player modes. Sure, they may have been a tad tacked on in hindsight, but they're still fun as hell.

FUCK YEAH! Sonic 2!



The story behind this one is kinda simple, really.

I received a used copy of Gradius III from a friend one year for Christmas shortly after getting my SNES. What followed for the next month and a half was a Gradius-fest like none other. Almost every day without fail, we'd end up playing this game non-stop for 5-6 hours trying to beat it. Since the game lacked any kind of true simultaneous 2-player gameplay we just played 1-player mode and alternated turns after one of us lost a life.

It took us over a month of constant Game Overs to finally see the end of the game on Normal difficulty, and once we were finished with that we graduated to Hard mode which took another week or two for us to finally proclaim victory. I really miss the days when that shit was commonplace. Now that everyone's grown up and has lives you just can't do it anymore. Online gaming is an okay substitute, but it's just not the same. Ah well...

Gradius III isn't the best shooter for the SNES, but the sentimental nonsense put it here over Super R-Type. I'm a fuckin' sap.