T w e n t y S i d e d
My week was hell. I’ve been sick and miserable. I don’t have anything thought provoking or interesting to share this week as my brain has mostly been concentrating on keeping my insides in the inside. However, I would like you all to have something to engage with this week. So I will leave you with a prompt for your discussion in the comments. Give me your answer and show your work. I want details.
Which 1998 classic is the best? Banjo Kazooie? Half Life? MGS? There are no right answers. You’re all wrong. It’s Glover. Have fun.
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Wolfenstein II
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
The Biggest Game Ever
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
Baldur’s Gate (1). I will accept no other answers. :P
EDIT: OK, I will concede that Ocarina of Time is a very close second. Starcraft: Brood War also came out in 1998, but as it’s an expansion rather than a full game release I’m excluding it.
Honestly I forgot Baldur’s Gate came out in 98. Such a packed year.
Mainline StarCraft also came out in 1998, though: March 31st.
Pat Stares At recently played through all of Banjo Kazooie in one sitting; he started out instinctively hating the game, and then that hatred only grew stronger over the course of twelve hours. So, as Gruntilda once said, Banjo Kazooie is “Ree ah Reh REE ah reh ra RUUUH.”
But, consulting the list of 1998 releases, there can only be one answer; for that was the year… of Trespasser.
(Also three spots on that list are Gex: Enter the Gecko. They apparently just kept releasing more Gex: Enter the Gecko.)
I was a huge fan of Pat back in the Super Best Friends Play era, so it surprises me he would subject himself to Banjo Kazooie at all. haha. I enjoyed what I played of it back in the day but I can’t imagine him tolerating that amount of collecting random items and whimsy all at once.
It was a donation goal; he played it after getting muttonchops but before dyeing them purple.
Makes sense. I don’t really watch Twitch very frequently but I’m very to see his and Paige’s success.
Final Fantasy VII and MGS are the only games on this list I played multiple times throughout the years. But Gran Tourismo was an eye opener to realistic racing games. Starcraft Broadwar was larger than the main game – and better written. Oddword: Abes Exoddus – I will always have a heart for the Oddworld series. Descent Freespace determined my love for space games.
Overall FFVII makes the race, as it is IMO the best FF counting the ones I played (7, Crisis Core, 8, 9, X, X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2, XV, World of, Tactics Advanced, Dissidia1+2). MGS, GT and Freespace are overshadowed by their successors (3, 4 and 2). While RTS and 2D platformers aren’t my genre, with Broadwar and Oddworld being the exceptions to the rule.
All this flirty negging is starting to work on me baby. You single or just a tease?
I feel like a lot of people are going to forget about arcade games. While Baldur’s Gate likely had the biggest impact on me of that year’s games, I’d also like to point out titles like Marvel vs Capcom, Soulcaliber, and friggin’ Dance Dance Revolution.
I had no idea the first DDR came out in 98! I am constantly finding new reasons why it truly was an absolute golden year for video games.
I have made multiple attempts over the years to play Baldur’s Gate, but dang, the quality of the writing (especially the dialogue) is all over the map! I mean, a Bob Newhart joke?
My vote is for Half-Life. It had a much bigger overall impact on my personal gaming experience.
I mean if it was on purpose it’d be very consistent with almost every D&D campaign I’ve been a part of. Too bad it wasn’t.
Reminds me of trying to play Jagged Alliance; it has a character questionnaire at the beginning, and one of the questions is just hating Barney the Dinosaur.
Are we insane here? The answer is Thief: The Dark Project. The Hammerites, The Pagans, The Keepers, Victoria, the crazy house, the creepy old man. Just for the pre-cutscene quotes and mysterious sounds alone it is a masterpiece. And the beautiful and weird cutscene animations. There is no game in existence with better overall atmosphere than Thief (1-3). Go down to the bear pits and pick up a copy today, Taffer.
Special mention goes to that famous and seminal bright colourful 3D platformer. That’s right, Rayman 2. Show me a better menu theme or a cuter Globox. The intro with the pirates having captured the creatures and lums is so sad. And Razorbeard eats a lum and the total world lum count goes down from 0/1000 to 0/999!! Horrifying. But it’s okay because the King(s) of the Teensies is here to help. Again, a game with such a weird feeling of mystery.
I love Thief 2 but could play the later levels of Thief 1 only with a trainer. Ghosts and demons that can see you in the dark. Meh. Thief 2 was much more grounded and fun.
I almost said Final Liberation, but turns out it came out in late 1997, so I’ll just point out to M.A.X.2, Deadlock II and expansion to Lords of Magic.