LoTR_Dan's Top 25 Games of All Time
by LoTR_Dan

The best Street Fighter game. Period. Some fighting game snobs will tell you that 3rd Strike is the best, but they are wrong. I'll take Gen, Dhalsim and Dan any day over Yun, Neco and Sean. Alpha 3 has over 30 fighters and 3 different -isms, giving you tons of different combinations. Yes, some of these matches are a little unbalanced, but it's a small price to pay for this much fun. Add in a story (sorta) and an awesome world tour RPG-ish mode and you have an incredible solid fighter.



The best King of Fighters game. Period. You think Alpha 3 had a lot of characters? KOF '98 has even more. Something like 45 guys and girls in teams of 3 trying to beat the crap out of each other. The game is a solid fighter, but honestly, this game is good because of its sheer amount of character combinations. They don't call it a dream match for nothing. They bring back almost everyone from the past games. Vice is back. Heidern is back. Even Heavy D! is back. It is pretty much amazing. The fights are fast, the graphics look pretty damn good and did I mention how many characters there are? And they are all pretty different, not just a bunch of Shoto Clones.



I'm not usually a fan of racing games. But the Mario Kart series is an exception. It's just plain fun, refined into its purest form. The tracks are fun. The weapons are fun. The characters are fun. The Multiplayer is fun. The Singleplayer is fun. The music is fun. So yeah, it's fun.



There are more WWII shooters than there are grains of sand on the beach these days. And most of them are pretty mediocre. But not this game. This game is sheer insanity through and through. When I started playing it, I was simply expecting another shooter. But I was sorely mistaken. You are constantly put into the most ridiculous, over the top situations imaginable. You have to run up to tanks and put bombs on them. You have to hold off a Nazi attack, and it turns out you can't, and are forced to fun away while still fighting back. You have to scale a cliffside to destroy a big fixed gun, only to discover it's been moved somewhere else. And you aren't just going through corridor after corridor. No, you get huge open areas to run around in, looking for cover and flanking positions. The voice work is excellent, the graphics are sweet (especially the smoke effects) and the action is insanely fast paced. Sure, this isn't what WWII was really like, but who cares. It's awesome.



This game combines my love of history with my love of killing people, so that's always a good thing. It's got 18 different sides to play as, all who are similar enough to make learning them easy, but different enough to allow for completely different strategies. Speaking of different strategies, you can win through numerous ways besides just killing everyone. You can collect holy relics and hold onto them or you can build a Wonder. (Thank you Civilization) This means a defensive game is a viable strategy, adding even more depth. Really, if you haven't played this game, do yourself a favor and get it. Any game where you can have Vikings Berserkers go against Japanese Samurai has to be good right?