Lunar's Top 100 Games - Episode III
Games #80-71
Honestly do I need to write another intro? We’re here for part 3 of my top 100 games list! Let’s get into it!
The Games
80. Left 4 Dead 2
This one is kind of cheating, as I am rolling the first Left 4 Dead game in. Left 4 Dead (2) is an incredible co-operative zombie experience, and it set the bar moving forward. I have never had as much fun playing a Zombie Shooter as I did playing through the campaigns of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.
You play as one of four survivors, the others controlled by players or bots, and your goal is to move from safe-house to safe-house across a few levels across one longer campaign. On the last level of this campaign, you are trying to escape with as many survivors as possible. The levels feature many guns, melee weapons, and grenades, which you use to mow down hordes of regular zombies. Don’t be caught off guard though, the special infected level the playing field, often with ways to incapacitate one of your survivors, requiring the cooperation of the others to survive. When a hunter jumps on you, you better hope your friends are nearby to get him off, or you are dead.
This gameplay formula is replicated across multiple campaigns in both games, with the survivors from each interacting at some points. Left 4 Dead 2 had the entire story from Left 4 Dead imported via DLC eventually, so Left 4 Dead 2 is the definitive version.
If you haven’t enjoyed a 4 player game of Left 4 Dead, get on it! It’s a great, if maybe a bit dated feeling, experience. The asymmetrical multiplayer never appealed to me much, but being able to play as a Hunter or a Smoker were still fun in their own rights.
79. Everquest 2
The world of Norrath will always be nostalgic to me, and the post-shattering world in Everquest 2 felt magical and bizarre in a way that entranced me as a kid.
Everquest 2 is a tab targeting combat MMO with a focus on group content, that had a very ahead-of-its-time combat system. This combat system involved chaining together attacks and abilities with your group in order to add special effects, buffs, or debuffs to the encounter.
The game also featured a robust class system, wherein you would pick a starting archetype, and as you level you would define who your character was. I loved this system, and I am sad it was removed.
The music, world, and atmosphere still hold up, but I cannot recommend Everquest 2 in its modern form, it is just too bloated with microtransactions and mediocre content that it isn’t anywhere close to the experience I spent thousands of hours on.
78. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
In my mind, The Binding of Isaac was part of the birth of indie darlings, along with games like Super Meat Boy and Braid. Rebirth turned the flash, keyboard only game, into a substantially deeper and more fun experience that could be played across many consoles including the New3DS (one of the only New3DS exclusives) and the Vita.
You play as Isaac, a young child who has been forced by his very religious mother into his basement, and inside you shoot your tears at all sorts of monsters. Flies, spiders, other children, etc. The game plays similarly to a twin stick shooter, but you progress your character in a rogue-lite fashion, collecting power-ups to make the run possible, but also unlocking more power-ups and variations for the future runs.
If you haven’t played The Binding of Isaac, I would say you should. The game is dark, has a great sense of humor, and is very capable of being an infinite experience if it sucks you in.
77. Warframe
Gosh, another MMO on this list already? I spent a lot of years loving Warframe, and I am surprised it made the list above Everquest 2, but when I loved Warframe it was an intense one.
You play as a Tenno, ostensibly a robot space ninja, running, jumping, shooting, and slicing your way through alienoid enemies across a variety of levels. The movement system is perfect, with jumping and gliding and crouch jumping just feeling fast and fun. It takes learning to get good at, but it is worth it. You unlock more weapons and modifications and Warframes with new abilities, and you get to explore the star chart and complete stories as you go.
The biggest reason why Warframe isn’t closer to the top of this list is simply that it has been several different games over the past decade and a half, all wearing the same trenchcoat. Originally more akin to Diablo, with lobby based missions and 4 player capacity, the game has grown to have huge open world spaces with dozens of players all running around and completing quests and missions. I didn’t really stick with the game at that point. I yearn for the days of lobby based enjoyment.
However, I would recommend Warframe if you have unlimited time, it is an excellent experience, just don’t expect to ever be able to complete everything. It is free to play, and relies on microtransactions, the same model as Guild Wars 2, and you are able to grind for the currency and trade items with other players to make purchases.
76. Halo 2
Halo 2 was my first introduction to online shooters, and boy it was a good one. The campaign was excellent, the multiplayer was something unbelievable to me on the Xbox, and Spartans are just cool, man.
The story follows Master Chief after the events of Halo 1, starting at Earth with a Covenant (a collective of alien races) invasion. You also get to play as the Sangheili (Elite) alien titled Arbiter, which was new for the series. The story shifts between the two of them as they try to unravel the Covenants plots to set off another Halo. Oh, Halos? They’re massive discs capable of destroying worlds when activated, but they’re also essentially ring shaped planets in their own rights.
The ability to dual-wield different types of guns added a lot of variety to the campaign and multiplayer, and the gun-play of Halo 2 is still regarded as top in its class.
Halo 2 is great, and the Master Chief Collection version is very accessible. I’d give the whole collection a shot, don’t skip Halo 1 (even though it didn’t make this list, sorry Combat Evolved fans)
75. Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition
I’ve never been a big racing game fan, but Midnight Club 3 enraptured me. Driving around the open-world to different races, in different classes of cars was great, but being able to roam and race online with strangers was a really wild experience.
I don’t have many ways to describe Midnight Club 3’s racing, I could call it “arcadey” but as someone who doesn’t play a lot of racers, that term is almost meaningless. Rockstar did an incredible job integrating the races into realistic cities, with traffic and environmental hazards. The police make their presence known as well, although they’re never as dogged as a Grand Theft Auto title. The characters you meet aren’t anything to write home about either. The story takes you to several different cities in order to race and advance further.
Where Midnight Club 3 really got me was the progression and car customization. Do you want nitrous oxide? How about glowing lights under your car? Sick paint jobs? It felt like the game could do it all.
Having replayed a bunch of this game fairly recently, I can confidently that that I would recommend it. It’s not my favorite racing game, but it does its job very well. The licensed soundtrack is pretty good too.
74. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
I originally played the Wii remake of Klonoa, and didn’t enjoy it much. The game didn’t “click” for me like I had hoped. So, when I started playing the Playstation version a couple of years ago, I never expected to finish it.
Boy was I wrong, Klonoa’s aesthetic on the Playstation really caught me, and I found the original story and voice acting a lot more charming. You play as a nondescript anthropomorphic animal (a bunny mixed with a wolf mixed with a fox maybe?) named Klonoa, with his Wind Ring, containing the spirit Huepow. Klonoa can jump, do a little hover, but can’t really make most of the jumps. Rather than using your Wing Ring to fight enemies directly, the main gameplay loop involves using the Wind Ring to grab enemies, and throw them around, either at other enemies or to double jump. The game never gets too challenging, but it’s an interesting premise, and one that I really enjoyed.
The ending of the game is a huge tonal shift, and a gut punch, and really why the game has been cemented in my top 100. I would recommend trying the game, but if you don’t like the gameplay, watch the cutscenes on YouTube, I cried so hard at the end.
73. Balatro
Another game that I feel like everyone has played, and certainly a modern example of the indie darling, Balatro’s poker gameplay and aesthetic took the world by storm.
Balatro is a poker rogue-lite, where you score poker hands to earn score and progress through the game, including “boss fights” where you need to both meet a certain score, and have limitations placed on you while you’re “fighting” them. During the run you collect power-ups for your poker hands, sculpt your deck, and collect Jokers (a huge part of the game’s marketing and aesthetic) which effect your score in wild ways. Combinations of jokers can get very out of hand, which is sort of the goal.
In standard roguelite fashion, every run you complete gets you closer to unlocking more things for further runs, and Balatro has that Skinner Box nailed down to a T. You should definitely play Balatro, just be prepared to lose many hours to it, and not even realize it until you put your device down.
72. Dark Souls 3
My first Dark Souls game to show up on this list (and certainly not the last), Dark Souls 3 is often lamented as the “easy one” or the “normie one”. While it is my least favorite in the Dark Souls series, it is still one of my favorite games of all time.
Dark Souls 3 is a bit gentler at the beginning than the rest of the series, but the game ramps up heavily. You play as a the Ashen One, or the Unkindled, and your goal is to re-light the First Flame to continue the cycle of the world. In the world of Souls, time isn’t strictly linear, and the world of 3 specifically is a combination of things from the first two entries.
The gameplay is… well… a Souls game. A third person action RPG with punishing combat that requires patience to learn, and then even more to master. Dark Souls 3 is the most linear of the three games, with a singular main path with few branches to follow off of it. But this linear design has a couple of advantages, one being encounter design, and the other being a more linear difficulty curve. The game uses linearity to its advantage to ensure that the scaling is a bit smoother than the previous two games, leading a lot of people to think the game is strictly easier. “Dark Souls for Babies” is what I’ve seen the game mischaracterized as, and I hate that.
Not to rant about people who think that these games are all about being as difficult as possible, and purposefully handicapping their experiences (no summoning, etc) and pushing others to, but they fucking suck, and I don’t think they’re the best the Souls community has to offer.
Souls games are a community based experience, filled with in-game asychronous multiplayer elements, as well as co-op, and the intention is to share hints and tips with each other. People who act like everything needs to be solo, and you can’t learn about anything, and can’t look anything up, are the worst.
Anyway, I would recommend playing the Dark Souls games in release order, so I would start with 1, but this one is definitely worth not skipping.
71. Control
My second Remedy game on this list, Control fixes most of the issues I had with Alan Wake, including a great third person shooter experience, and a story that impresses me time and time again.
You play as Jesse Faden, who enters the Federal Bureau of Control, seeking her missing brother. Once inside she meets an eldritch entity, who names her the new director of the FBC. With her new, very alien, modular, ammo-less “service weapon” she must fight off The Hiss to save the survivors inside the building, and look for her brother.
Control is a 10/10 recommend if you enjoy games that have deep plots and interesting settings. It also feels like the “critical nexus” for the lore in Remedy’s connected universe of games
Outro
Thank you all for being interested in my favorite games, the competition is still so tight. They’re all incredible. I can’t wait for next week’s list. As always please check out Emory’s article, and Glen’s article, as they have released at the same time! See you next week.
Next week will be switching to Tuhat, so goodbye Substack! I hope you all will follow me there, or stay in touch with me on my Discord!