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Top 10 N64 Games [top ten]
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12/30/16, 08:11 Edited: 01/28/18, 04:35
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Taken on its own, the second outing of the titular bear and bird is pretty great. It's only when comparisons are made between the sequel and the original that disappointment arises. For the second outing, Rare pushed the boundaries of the series in a lot of ways. The underlying philosophy seemed to be that more was better, so we've got more moves, a ton of eggs, a bigger overworld, and more expansive levels. In some ways, this game is more creative than the first title as its levels draw from less cliche platformer environments, featuring factories, sunken cities, mayan inspired temples, a carnival, and an ancient dinosaur area. So then what is keeping Tooie from replacing my beloved Banjo Kazooie in the cockles of my heart? Well, sometimes Banjo Tooie slips into becoming a case of quantity over quality. That aforementioned Dino level in particular has large expanses of open spaces with little interesting to do or see. The same is true of the mine level, albeit to a lesser extent. And the factory level is a convoluted mess to navigate and mentally map out. It also feels like there are too many moves that are only useful in too few situations. Banjo Tooie has it's fair number of instances where less would have been more. But that doesn't stop Banjo Tooie from being a great game. It is a well made 3D Platformer with the unfortunate position of having to follow in the footsteps of one of my favorite games.
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Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards |
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He's more than you think, he's got maximum pink. And thanks to the future magic of new millennium polygons, he's more well rounded than ever. It's Kirby!
Kirby 64 is fantastic. It's got a soundtrack crafted by gods in the halls of Valhalla, capable of instilling a variety of feelings ranging from energetic optimism (Grasslands 1) to somber, mechanistic determination (Factory Inspection). It's absurd that a game so bright and cheery can produce music that feels so melancholic.
And this game has an incredible 64 different power ups! Actually I made that number up, but it's a lot! Being able to combine longstanding series powerups to create creative new abilities is brilliant. Some are much more effective than others, but even the upgrades that aren't all that useful are inspired and interesting. When I was younger, I would challenge myself to see how much of the game I could get through using the fridge ability.
The Kirby series is like the eternal bridesmaid or that employee who has been plugging away at a job for 20 years but is hardly noticed. The series puts out a ton of games, both experimental and traditional, with almost no duds and consistently phenomenal music, but the series always seems to be overlooked when considering Nintendo's greatest IPs. I'm guilty of this too, so we're all the asshole here. Kirby deserves better than this.
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Like Conker, the core gameplay here isn't really anything special. There's an appeal to the simplicity of the RPG mechanics, but it wears thin after a couple dozen hours. The main attraction here is the presentation and elements surrounding that core gameplay. Except this game excels above Conker by a sizable margin. Paper Mario is utterly charming. The character designs, writing, and story are simply delightful, effortlessly evoking positive vibes. You're pushed to keep playing because you're dying to know what new character or area you will encounter next. Of particular note are the partner characters who join your party throughout the journey. And that's what this game feels like: a journey. You're bonking folks with your hammer throughout the land. By the end, it feels like you have thoroughly adventured through the mushroom kingdom, meeting friends along the way and stopping eccentric foes. I think that's why recent Paper Mario titles have burned so many fans. I don't think most people are coming to these games for the gameplay. What most people want from a Paper Mario game is a fun journey with interesting characters and storylines. So when you make everything surrounding the gameplay dull and predictable, you are actively and intentionally diminishing what makes the series appealing to so many people in the first place. IT'D BE KIND OF LIKE TAKING A WELL WRITTEN STRATEGY SERIES AND MAKING IT ABOUT MANIPULATING STATS AND ABILITIES FOR THE BEST TEAM AND COURTING SHALLOW, ONE DIMENTIONAL WAIFUS. WOULDN'T IT, INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS? Who is your Paper Mario waifu? Mine is Luigi.
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time |
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Ocarina of Time is secretly my favorite game, but I have to put it here to retain my hipster cred. Don't tell anyone. Nah, not really. But I love this game, folks. It's a classic Zelda experience that sets a fantastic template for future 3D Zelda games. You've got your typical fire, grass, water, desert, and haunted levels, but it never feels like they're phoning it in. There aren't really any dips in quality, with a steady stream of dungeons and sidequests that all bring the fun. So much of the design in this game feels like iconic Zelda. From the characters, to the puzzles, to the dungeons. It's prototypical Zelda, through and through. And there's a reason other 3D Zelda games use this as a foundation; it's nearly perfect. I would love to play a Zelda Gaiden type expansion for Ocarina of Time. It's just such a great template. Perhaps I would have rated this game higher, but I've played this game too much for me to honestly enjoy it as much as I do the next 3 games.
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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask |
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The reasons Majora's Mask is tied for being my favorite game are very personal and subjective. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a fantastically made game with plenty of touches that I love, such as the mechanics involving the masks, the emphasis on sidequests, and the ways it deviates from the "baseline Zelda" design of Ocarina of Time. But for me the game runs deeper than that. I had Majora's Mask since I was little, but I was always too afraid and terrible at games to get very far in it. I reconnected with this game later in my life at just the right time. I was struggling with grief and depression when I suddenly discovered this world where you could help people solve their struggles in the face of apocalyptic stakes by observing and understanding their lives and personal problems. You have the power to help these people and help them in a personal way. It was downright cathartic. In the face of imminent death, you're still able to find some sort of joy in the little victories, such as watching a baby chicken grow up, finding a baby's grandfather so he can play a song to calm the baby down, and helping a mailman come to terms with the conflict between his vocational and personal responsibilities. The small, interpersonal victories keep you going and stack up to make a world of change. Hurt people hurt people, but if you can understand where they're coming from and why they're doing what they're doing, you're one step closer to helping them. Sometimes the answer is as simple as listening to the musician by the laundry pool, sometimes it's more involved like reuniting Anju and Kafei. And not everyone can be saved. Darmani, Mikau, and the Deku Butler's son are dead and there's nothing you can do about it. You can wear their masks, but you will never replace them. But you can carry on their legacy- their will- within yourself through your actions and the decisions you make. They are gone from this world, but their ideas and what they fought for can live on within you. By inheriting their will (metaphorically or metaphysically, depending on your views) you can carry on a cascading effect for generations, helping those around you and creating all those little victories that gradually make things better. Do not sit around and mourn their loss forever. Use their life and who they were as motivation to become a better person and make a difference.
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12/30/16, 08:11 Edited: 01/28/18, 04:35 |
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Mop it up said: It isn't necessarily that I don't like those things, it's more that Majora's Mask doesn't have the elements I want and expect from a Zelda title, specifically. It has more of a spin-off feel to me, which I don't mean as a negative thing, just that it's quite different. The game should be better on its own merits as a game if I can pretend it isn't a Zelda title
Oh, I get that. A big part of why games like Majora's Mask and Mario Sunshine appeal to me so much is because they use the phenomenal starting point of their predecessors to dive into some new, unexplored idea. It's like the developers said "We've got our more basic Zelda and Mario games already set up, so what interesting new thing can we try? What if we put the next Mario game on an island? What if we made the next Zelda about sidequests and collecting things? What if Metroid Prime 2 tried a dual world mechanic." The danger of developing a game like this is that it is going to appeal to fewer people, but most of the people who enjoy it will get that much more out of the experience because it is filling a niche that they like. The more specialize it becomes, the better it will fill that niche, but at the cost of potentially alienating more people. Between Mario 64 and Sunshine, I think 64 is the higher quality game, but I prefer Sunshine because it appeals to me in specific ways that 64 doesn't. But we also need those more traditional games to give us a baseline. If every Mario game was in a tropical setting and every Zelda was so focused on optional content, Mario Sunshine and Majora's Mask wouldn't feel so special and developers wouldn't have a pre-made foundation to then deviate from. |
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