My Favorites
A smattering of some of my all time favorites.
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Daisuke Ishiwatari and his team have mastered the design of 2D fighting games. Guilty Gear where each character feels unique but never inaccessible. If you're already up to date on your fighting game lingo then each character can be explained with a sentence or two. But in those couple sentences is an endless amount of depth all of which promotes a fast paced frantic offensively driven affair, but most importantly also offers a slew of defensive options that allows for a fierce competitive experience Xrd offers you all the tools to feel like a combo artist.
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If you don't count fighting games, Robotron is without a doubt my favorite arcade game. The fast paced, enthralling, challenging shooter with sound design that will ring your ears raw and give you a fat dopamine rush every time you complete a level and hear that distinct sharp square wave that fills your brief moment of respite before having to quickly take in the smattering of enemies before you. Robotron is the type of game to make your blood rush, to make you exhale with relief in that few seconds you get between levels. I can and have played this simple game for hours. They had this shit right early.
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Persona 4 is just a game that captured my heart. It comes off as so earnest, so genuine. It was a refreshingly more lighthearted take on the JRPG genre, and amounts to a 60 hour Scooby-Doo episode with some of my favorite game characters out there. Persona 4 is a game that managed to create such an all-around fantastic cast that is endlessly memorable.
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When aliens come to Earth and ask for our best game designer, I'm sending Hidetaka Miyazaki. The control he has over the form that he shows in Dark Souls constantly amazes me. An elegant yet deep and exploitable leveling system drives my love of systems while the environmental storytelling reveals an embedded metanarrative that I just eat up. I constantly wish that the team hadn't rushed the second half of the game, but even still the world built in Dark Souls is endlessly interesting and is told masterfully. This all comes together to fuel the feeling of discovery and mystery--feelings that very rarely crop up in games, but ones that when they do provide for a special experience.
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