No love for Star Soldier?
Ok, have both a mainstream and an obscure game now
19Plants vs Zombies2009
I have no idea why I love this game so much. I'm not even a fan of tower defence games. It looks for children. It has zombies. It's easy to play. So what's the deal?
It's brilliant design.
The concept is quite simple: Zombies want your brains, and they will try to reach your house, but you have lots of
leaf pokemon plants that can defend you. And at the end of each level, you unlock a new one. Or sometimes there's a minigame. And zombies get tougher and new kinds are introduced through the whole 50 levels.
There are 5 maps with 10 levels each, but they're quite different. Not just in appearance (although 2 of them are "night" versions of the previous "during the day" maps), but in how they're played. You start with your front garden, which has just 5 rows, and it's sunny. It's quite easy to beat, and most of the plants you use throughout the game are found here. And the following level is your front garden (again), at night. What does this mean?
That you can't collect suns that fall from the sky. Each plant costs a certain amount of suns (energy points), and the sunflowers can produce them for you. During the day, suns will fall from above the map quite often, so putting enough sunflowers will provide you with all the energy you need. But at night, that doesn't happen.
The player starts with 50 suns, the cost of a single sunflower, and each sun values 25 units. And sunflowers produce suns every minute or so. So during the night you'd have to wait a lot until you can have enough suns to plant more sunflowers, and then start defending yourself. But the designers were smart, and included both an alternative and a solution.
The alternative is a small golden mushroom, which costs 25, but they only produce small suns, of 15 units each. But let them grow for a few minutes, and they start producing normal suns. The solution is a small puff-shroom which costs absolutely nothing and recharges quite fast, so that's your first line of defence at night.
On the third map, it's day again, but you're on your backyard, where you have a pool! And 6 rows now. It increases the number of plants and the variety (water plants), but it also means more zombies. Including those who swim on dead dolphins. Don't forget that they can eat your plants, but more important is being prepared for the flags. Several times in a level or just at the end of it, a huge wave of zombies appears, so you have to ready to face it.
And the fourth map is on the backyard again, at night... with fog. They are by large the most difficult and frustrating 10 levels you'll play here. Just thinking about it makes want to stop writing
. And the fifth map features an interesting part of your house. But I'll let you discover it.
I guess that, in the end, what fascinated me more was how original and addictive it is. And hilarious at times. How is that football players, miners, and even disco-dancing people turned into walking deads? And how is that a traffic cone can instantly raise up the defences of one of them? Seriously. But anyways, I've replayed this one countless times, completed all the minigames and puzzles, bought all the special plants, and even reached around 80 flags on the endless survival. If you haven't played, go and get ASAP. It's available on lots of consoles, and even for Android/iOs. You won't regret.
18Shinobido: Way of the Ninja2005
So after my beloved PSOne, what did I do? The natural, obvious thing: bought a PS2
This title is among my very favorites from that console.
You take the role as an amnesiac ninja who just woke up in the middle of the forest, next to a river and an abandoned shack. And a sword, lying next to him. He sees an arrow, lodged on the shack's wall., which has a written letter attached. The writer, apparently, is simply a "concerned bystander", and further identifies the amnesiac man as "Goh", a ninja of the Asuka clan, which was wiped out the previous day. The letter informs Goh that his memories and soul have somehow been stolen and placed within eight mystical stones which were scattered during the initial attack on the Asuka ninjas' village, and then further scattered by people who have located and claimed the stones.
Using your old hut as your headquarters, it's your duty to locate the stones to reclaim Goh's memory and discover the truth regarding the destruction of the Asuka village. But this is such a monumental task, and one single man can't do it. So you have to gain the protection and trust of either one of 3 powerful warlords and charismatic leaders, which will assign you missions to complete.
And here's the great thing. You can either complete them by being completely silent as the ninja you are, or going crazy, killing dozens of them at one time and having another dozen looking for you through the city, or the fortress. Normally, the silent way gained you much more respect from the warlords. Specially when they asked you to do it so.
But sometimes folk won't like your actions, and will send assassins to your hut. Thus, you can set lots of smart traps on your garden, and watch your enemies die. But if they manage to trespass your guard, you have to go and fight them. On this mode you can design your backyard as you please - with a certain limit, of course, but seeing your enemies fall into a trapdoor with spikes on the bottom is priceless.
And of course have the alchemy. Sometimes you might find recipes, of certain poisons that would recover you health, or increase your strength. Or just spare notes about a poor man that was experimenting with an invisibility poison, but before finishing, he added the wrong ingredient and it all exploded, killing him. Gathering mushrooms and herbs on the forest before going to kill a wild bear (an extra mission), or stealing some from a special room in a fortress, are some ways of collecting them.
But the funniest part is a special mode that is unlocked once you finish the game. It enables you to make your own map, and mission! Although the map wasn't too big, I'd spend hours designing fortresses, awkward forests, and giving myself weird tasks, like escorting someone from point A to B, or killing a huge enemies who was surrounded by thousands of solders. It was fun.
It's been years since I last played it, but I'm now amused by the huge amount of content it had, and even 4 different endings (I only managed to see 3 of them
)! Damn, I should get an used PS2 (guess what happened to mine
) and replay it ASAP, for I think PCSX2 doesn't run it. If you still have one, go and get this shit. Oh, and did I mention it was made by the same company as Tenchu?
Topic: Top 25 Video Games Lists! v. CableX's "Worse Than My Top25 VG Music" (pg. 62) (Read 235522 times)