BoB's Top 100 Games

[Ayen]

I never played any of the Far Cry games, but I hear good things.

[Wolf Kanno]

...So why is everyone waiting for BoB to finish?

Being courteous. Besides, I don't even have my list in order, I'm just being an ass about BoB being slow.

We all know your top 20 are Final Fantasies.

You would actually be surprised how few FFs are in my top 20.

I never got around to playing Far Cry 3, largely cause I was never much into FPS games but my GF loved this game and talked about it all the time so I can understand the love it gets based off her own excitement for it.

[Quindiana Jones]

I would have liked more of Far Cry 2's gameplay in Far Cry 3. The GPS, the watch, oh man. I loved that stuff.

[Psychotic]

Just gonna leave this here.

Far Cry 3, a lovely open world jungle FPS/RPG hybrid.

The second attempt to capture the base.

My second attempt to capture the enemy base was poetry in motion. I began by scouting out the encampment from a nearby hillock, marking all of the guard's positions and formulated a plan. I crept out of the jungle and lured the guard at the gate away by throwing a rock. As he investigated the noise, I silently approached him from behind and gutted him with my knife. So far, so awesome.

Now that I was inside, I knew I had to disable the base's alarm systems. If a soldier spotted me, the alarm would be triggered and reinforcements would be summoned to pile further misery on me. The only problem is that it was guarded by two guards standing opposite each other. I couldn't kill one without the other one noticing. I had to be quick. I had recently learned a new skill and decided to try it out. As before, I crept up behind one of the guards and shanked him, but this time while my knife was still inside of him I reached for his and with one smooth motion unsheathed it and hurled it directly at his colleague. Aforementioned colleague had his comrade's knife in his neck before he had time to realise what had happened.

Now, this posed another problem. Sooner or later someone was going to stumble across the second guard's body as it was directly in the middle of the path. Well, may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, thought I. I planted a landmine right next to the body, and flitted round the side of the base, scrambling onto a rooftop just in time for the show. "What the smurf?" I heard a guard exclaim in his delightful African accent. "Is that a body?" Just to make sure, he decided to wander over just to check. It was, as he suspected, a body. However he had not anticipated the explosion to the face.

That had done it! The entire base was utterly confused and panicked at the explosion. It was at that point I hurled myself off the building, knife in hand, onto one of the guards. I then took advantage of the confusion by running out into the three of them that remained with my flamethrower blazing. Job done. Base Captured. No Alarms sounded, XP bonus. No detections, XP bonus. Who is the smurfing man?

You may of course have noticed that this was my second attempt. The first went a little like this.

The first attempt to capture the base.

I began by scouting out the encampment from a nearby hillock, marking all of the guard's positions and formulated a plan. I crept out of the jungle and lured the guard at the gate away by throwing a rock. As he investigated the noise, I silently approached him from behind and gutted him with my knife. So far, so awesome.

It was at this point that I received a flying kick to the face. It turns out a pair of cassowaries had taken offence to my presence in their patch of jungle and had decided to murder me. Trust me, those things do not smurf about and have massive talons. Needless to say I had not expected this at all and nearly shat myself. I tried to defend myself with the first weapon I had to hand: The flamethrower.

Now, as I'm sure you are aware a flamethrower is not the most subtle of weapons. Nor, too, are Cassowaries the quietest of animals. So as you can imagine, the commotion right outside the base's gates drew some attention. Quite what the guards at the base thought when they saw a crazy white boy running around backwards in circles spewing fire everywhere while shrieking and yelling birds hurled themselves at him I'm not quite sure, but I have a pretty good idea.

I had just managed to defeat the brutes and put myself out (do you know how difficult it is to remain un-ignited when a couple of flaming birds try to rip your throat out in the middle of a rapidly burning jungle? It's not easy!) with a slither of health left, when I turned and looked to see four guards with assault rifles pointed at me. Well, smurf.

[Loony BoB]

11. Final Fantasy V
SNES, 1998

This game has an average story but I don't care, because everything about it is awesome. It's probably the most light-hearted of the entire series despite there being tragedy thrown in left right and centre that, if done in the style of the newer games would be mortifying. The best character dying, entire cities being thrown into oblivion, the enemy is a tree... wait, what?

The job system made this game. The gameplay of having, what, 20 jobs to pick from? I think that's right. And you can change them between battles and you don't lose experience in other jobs if you change and you can borrow skills and you can max out jobs and the balance is amazing and I don't care what anyone says I just love this job system so hard. Thankfully even if I did care what other people say, most other people agree. It's that good.

Also, this is the only Final Fantasy with Galuf and the only Final Fantasy with Syldra and the only Final Fantasy with a cross dressing pirate (I think it is anyway) and the only Final Fantasy where you can get a lap dance from three dancers at once. Whew!!

[Wolf Kanno]

the only Final Fantasy where you can get a lap dance from three dancers at once. Whew!!

Cecil Harvey would like to remind everyone that before Bartz got three Lap dances and Cloud Strife hanged out in the light district that he was going to underground burlesque shows getting lap dances from nine ladies at a time.

[Loony BoB]

Ha! I never knew about that. Although I don't know if they actually gave him a lap dance or just performed twirls. With Bartz, they actually jump on his lap and put up a little heart while they "dance" on top of him while he sits down... xD

[Ayen]

Oh, looky here. A game I played.

Love this game <3

[Karifean]

Final Fantasy V is all sorts of amazing. It marks the beginning of Gilgamesh, one of the most awesome antagonists in the series. It also falls under my list of FF games that are just downright a lot of fun to play (along with VIII, XII and X-2) and it has probably my second-favorite gameplay in the series.

With this at #11, I'm definitely looking forward to the Top Ten.

[Loony BoB]

10. Freelancer
PC, 2003

Possibly the least "perfect" game in my top 20 or so, but it gets here because it is as fun as any game of this kind has been for me. I love space combat & trade simulators. I love them most when they are properly 3D, have the option of FPS or TPS, allow me to actually do things other than dogfight, allow me to land on worlds, allow me to explore said worlds, have good mining systems, good "research" systems and so forth. Licences! Co-op! And you know what? Freelancer has some of these things! More than any other game of it's kind that doesn't have a steep learning curve (Hi, X series) and can be played without a subscription (Lookin' at you, EVE Online), that's for sure.

Despite not having everything I really really really want, this game is awesomely replayable. I know, because I have been playing it over the past week or so. It's also great for modding, and I'm playing through a mod that does something like double the size of the game's universe, doubles the difficulty, doubles the storyline and doubles the amount of ships and gear you can deal with. And it's going great so far!

I so can't wait for Star Citizen. I'm seriously excited. I haven't been this excited about a game for quite some time, especially for a game that isn't Final Fantasy. I just hope it will meet those expectations! I am struggling to manage them. xD I mean... in an ideal world, EVE Online would have an offline option that doesn't requier a sub and it would have an epic storyline and obviously a more balanced (time-wise) skill tree given it's single player and has no sub. That kind of thing would be the perfect version of these kind of games to me. I'm not sure if it'll ever come out, but I live in hope. I really want to play EVE Online pretty much all the time, but I know that if I do then it's just boring because I have to wait days for each skill (after the initial burst of the smaller ones) and eventually it will extend to weeks and months and perhaps even longer if I play long enough. And that kind of grind isn't something I'm willing to invest in. I just wish I could play the game and experience it without that requirement.

Until then? Freelancer and (soon, I hope!) Star Citizen.

[Ayen]

And now we're back to games I never heard of. Drawback to not being much of a PC gamer, I guess. The game looks and sounds awesome, though.

[Loony BoB]

Still a good play today, I gotta say. You know it's a good game when you finish it and start looking for mods to extend the story so you can keep playing more.

9. Final Fantasy VIII
PSX, 1999

Probably the best gameplay of any of the Final Fantasy games. It had so many fun things to do that were all rather easily accessable and while the difficulty was generally really low, even by Final Fantasy standards (in fact the lowest of the entire series by some distance), there were still some fights that could test an unlevelled party and people have come up with all kinds of challenges that can allow for good replayability. I haven't done any of these - hell, there are a number of things I haven't done in this game.

For me, it was all about maxing out your characters with loads of drawn magic until you reach the point that you can wipe the floor with all the enemies you can take on in The Islaands Closest to Heaven & Hell. Also, getting every one of the junction skills unlocked. Probably more the latter with the former being a method to do just that, to be honest. I'm a bit of a nutter for skills and traits and so forth, so this was right up my alley.

People have a lot to say about how bad the story was and I agree to a large extent (I'm never a fan of time travel or anything like it), yet I feel the romance wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. I mean, I actually miss a bit of romance in my Final Fantasy these days. There was none to speak of in XII and the romances in XIII weren't much to write home about. I could do with a bit more of the ol' PSX generation lurve in my video games.

Triple Triad was another great thing about this game. It's the best minigame in the FF series bar none. I never finished the Card Queen quests but maybe when I replay this game for the fourth or fifth time I'll bother to get around to it. =] Other little bits worth saying are that NORG is one of the most underrated NPCs in FF history and that for me, the Shumi are without question the most interesting and underrated race in FF history. I really wish I could learn more about them.

PS. In before NeoCracker.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Glad to see this game so high on the list!

[Bubba]

Final Fantasy VIII is a superb game. I always say it suffered coming after FFVII which was monumental with the impact it had. It has so many outstanding moments and the FMV at the time of release was ridiculously impressive. There's a reason the intro is still regarded as the best in FF history.

It has moments of weakness sure, but that can be said for every one of the entries. I think it gets a lot of unnecessary hate (see Neocracker's post shortly after mine) but it truly is one of the best games in the series, in my opinion.

[Karifean]

Ah Final Fantasy VIII. Love it so much. Best gameplay in the series? I disagree. Although it is an exceptionally fun game and Triple Triad definitely is the best minigame in the series, bar none.

If it weren't for your objectively wrong dislike for Final Fantasy X, this list could've been pretty acceptable.