Tim Rogers and the gang over at Action Button have posted their bottom three games in the first installment of their "Manifesto: A List of the Twenty-Five Best Games of All-Time". Now, I'm not one to give special consideration to a listicle. Though I hardly blame their creators (we're pretty guilty over here, and as long as you keep reading them, we'll keep writing them), the "best games evar" list has been done dozens of times over. But, not like this.
The criteria:
...clean games with crunchy, frictionous play mechanics, self-confident graphics and sound, and natural flows, where the in-game challenges get progressively more and more difficult due solely to the arrangement of obstacles and positioning of enemies, not because you’re under-leveled or ill-equipped: in most of these games, the game is over when you are not good enough, not because you don’t possess the orange lantern, whose red fire is the only thing that can burn down blue trees.
The first three games, which you've probably never played or even heard of, are as follows:
25. Castlevania: Bloodlines
24. Spartan: Total Warrior
23: Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G
Say what you will about the the objective value of the site's rollicking prose. The reviews are an absolute joy to read, and a 4-star (the site's highest honor) score basically equals a must-play for me. They've been called charlatans and pranksters, but the folks at Action Button are simply interested in game mechanics (basically, how fun is it?). The list is proudly predicated with the manifesto, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that videogames are created awesome."
If we're being honest with each other, good video games aren't (or shouldn't be) about cultural critiques or postmodern aesthetics, they're about very simple rules -- progressive difficulty, tactile response, complexity and depth. Everything else is just paint. You'll find no sacred cows among this list. Chances are, this it's going to fly in the face of everything you've been taught about games, but in a good way -- you need to hear it.
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