Top 10 Lists : The Top 10 Games To Waste A Semester 2008/2009 Edition

I used Dance Dance Revolution X as a placeholder for the entire Dance Dance Revolution collection. DDR as it's commonly abbreviated, is THE series that birthed what would become the music/rhythm game genre. Although it's actually the sequel to Beatmania, Beatmania proved to be much too difficulty and inaccessible to the Japanese audience and thus DDR became its much more popular and successful successor. The PSone and PS2 adoptions of the arcade hits gave them proper justice to a home audience. There are few things more fun than hoping up on a DDR pad and getting your groove on. I've yet to go to a video game or anime themed convention that didn't have at least one copy of DDR running. It's a game so fun and addictive that chances are your legs and breath will give out long before your spirit and desire for more. I've played every DDR released on the PS2, (Max, Max 2, Extreme, Extreme 2, SuperNova, SuperNova 2, and X) and there's subtle differences to an otherwise ever unchanging gameplay. Of course, this isn't a problem. If you've played one DDR game you've played them all and that's fine. Like with modern music juggernauts like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it's all about the songs on the disc. You play one DDR until you either beat all the songs or become bored with them, then you pop in a different one. It's all the same, the game needs no true improvements over a simple design and premise which has proved for over 10 years it's still fun. There's a lot of naysayers that thought (or still think) the Wii is a fad with its motion controls or that Microsoft's Natal will be a wash for the same reasons. Yet, DDR was the first popular game that made us get up and move and those who really dug it never stopped moving and still play it regularly like a hobby. Here's saying that with DDR's place in subculture and its history that Natal (based on the same premise of getting up and moving can make games fun) has a great shot at making it.

This title was an instant hit when it finally came out about 20 months ago. While a lot of hardcore fans panned it as being much less competitive than it's predecessor it's clear this title is here to stay and it deserves its place near the top of all-time best, must own Wii titles. While the online play has been rough the game wins in every other aspect. There's a huge cast of characters, the deepest story mode ever in the series, and the largest set of modes, mods, and possibilities in the series history thus far. The pace of combat is slower than Melee which some like and some hate. There's a huge list of items to play with like the almighty Smash Ball which allows a character to perform a unique attack which could end or drastically turn the tide of the battle. Lots of old maps return while tons of new maps are available. All in all, as full featured as Melee was Brawl ups the stakes and increases the capabilities in every way and more. For the first time ever you can create your own maps and trade them w/ friends as well as take pictures anytime during gameplay and swap them with friends. Nintendo also sends you popular maps and pictures every week so there's always something fresh to try out/ While other fighters come and go Smash Bros. never seems to go away despite the competition from the likes of Street Fighter IV. You won't waste a semester on this game, not even if you're trying to grind to unlock all the goodies from scratch, but, this game will come up more often than not so be prepared.

It's been 17 months since this title was released but there's no age showing on this instant classic. Smoother than ever classic control schemes coupled with newly perfected motion steering provides instant fun behind the wheel of this established series' newest version. While still taking practice and a little finesse to unlock all the drivers and vehicles, the game is packed with 16 fantastic new tracks and 16 wonderfully reworked classic tracks from the series' previous game. Plus, there's a host of great battle modes, the classic balloon pop and the fairly new coin runner are as fun and welcomed as they've ever been if not more. Plus, battle mode features a new team based format allowing 2 teams of several Human/AI players to compete rather than just one/one battles. This makes online battle modes quite entertaining. This game features online racing and battling via Nintendo's WiiConnect, and it's as smooth as silk. Mario Kart Wii takes all the things that made Mario Kart DS such an incredible title and brings it to the Wii and improves on the fun, capabilities, and accessibility. All in all, you may not waste an entire semester grinding the online community, but with the incredible popularity of this title and it's stance as being the best Mario Kart title experience ever will ensure you'll keep coming back to this every now and then and jump back into online matches where the community is strong now as it ever was.

While arcades are slowly dieing out I always dug the racing games. Of course, I totally sucked at them on my first try but they were fun. I'd always wanted an arcade racer at home that was really fun yet didn't grow stale so quickly as just racing the same dozen or so tracks over and over. Until this year Mario Kart was the only series of racing games to occupy my shelf. Then I took a chance on Burnout Paradise, going by critics' reviews and my previous experience with Burnout 2. My investment quickly returned by the freedom and vastness of Burnout Paradise. Instead of having a series of modes, tracks, and options that you select before jumping in, Burnout Paradise introduces you Paradise City, a living city with ultimate racing freedom. You start small with just one car but you can drive anywhere you want at anytime and just having fun exploring and driving. The fun behind racing games is the simple idea of driving really fast in a world without consequences. By removing the confines and goals of the racetrack you get to just have fun without worrying about goals. Of course, when it comes to gameplay modes this game delivers better than ever. You get tons of variations (because they start and end in different parts of the city) of straight races, marked mans (avoiding enemies while getting to the goal without crashing), road rages (defeat a set number of enemies), and stunt runs (score points to beat the set score by doing stunts). Also, you can do time trials by just driving from one end of a street to the other giving you 64 streets to beat. Likewise, you can do the newest variation of Burnout's Crash mode at any time and try to get the best score you can by guiding your flying car wreckage into other cars. While this mode isn't as challenging and entertaining as it was in prior games it's still here in a sense. With so much to do in this game you can do even more online in freeburn challenges. There's currently 500+ challenges to complete requiring cooperation with the other drivers to accomplish goals. They're a fun way to chat with people who have mics and accomplishing small goals together. Of course, you can also, if you're the host, design and execute your own games with others, such as custom races. There's been a ton of DLC to come out the last 2 years that have made a great game hours and hours longer and an all around better experience. This is possibly the best arcade racer you can find on the shelves and it'll keep you entertained offline and online for months.

Bethesda sure knows how to make an experience, neh? Oblivion takes fantasy RPGs to a whole new level in this title. The graphics are top notch, the game world is gigantic (and it's not just empty space either), and the length is staggering. Just wandering around you could spend hours upon hours just exploring and you'd be hard pressed to find areas of insignificance despite how huge the world is to explore. There's so many quests to complete that this game literally takes months to truly finish. The GotY edition only makes it better. It adds all the enhancements and new content that was added in the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions to the core game. The capabilities of the experiences is as full featured as any I'd seen. You first create a character choosing from a bunch of races and then you pick a class and a sign. All these things lend to create a ton of possibilities for the player. The gameplay feels right at home from the styles of those who used to play popular fantasy games of the last generations to the modern FPS perspective. You can play in 3rd person or 1st person and both look and feel second nature. Oblivion brings the massive capabilities and time consuming activities of a fantasy RPG MMO such as WoW and turns it into a single player campaign that goes above and beyond what we thought RPGs were capable of. Oblivion is one of the best experiences ever created in a video game and happens to be in our generation at a cheap price. If you hadn't tried it and dig fantasy RPGs you can find this for $30 or less.

Let me just say that Final Fantasy XII, to this day, blows me away that my old PS2 can deliver the kind of graphics that sometimes makes me question the value of the PS3 and Xbox 360. There's only one other game that gave me that feeling and that was the first 2 God of War games. FF12 is one of the best RPGs around and easily holds its own against most games of this generation (timeline wise, it IS a member of this generation's games while it happens to be on last generation's hardware). Graphically, this game HAS to be squeezing every last bit of juice out of a PS2 because it's stunning despite not being HD resolution. Length wise this game kept me playing for probably over 100 hours before I set it down and I still hadn't completed everything that was there to be done. That out of the way, the storyline and gameplay are so rich and satisfying that it puts everything else about this game to shame, and that's saying a lot. The gameplay is almost purely real-time, a first for Final Fantasy, and almost resembles the gameplay of WoW. The characters handle battles with little to no input through a programmable gambit system that sets conditional commands. The character leveling system is one of the best systems ever implemented and allows some true customization though with some long hours of grinding and a bit of bestiary knowledge you can easily max out everyone's equipable capabilities. The storyline is probably the best one ever written for a Final Fantasy game, given the series' reputation that goes a LONG way. Not only that, but the voice acting has been refined and developed to suit an American audience in a more natural way. There's really nothing worth nothing about this game negatively it's just that good. This game will surely stand as a testament as to what the PS2 is and was capable of as well as assuring us that when Square Enix wants they can demonstrate complete mastery of the RPG genre for its time. Here's hoping that Final Fantasy XIII delivers on everything this title has.

"We would finally be one planet, sharing the world, doing what God meant us to do, kill blood-thirsty zombies with shotguns!" Patton Oswalt. I agree with Oswalt that our purpose is truly to kill blood-thirsty zombies with shotguns a la Dawn of the Dead. That's exactly what you get here, an excellently crafted co-op experience that pushes the value and reward of co-op gaming to a whole new level. The framework is simple. There are four survivors in your party armed to the teeth with high powered weaponry (pistols, shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles, hunting rifles, pipe bombs, molotovs, and occasionally mini guns) forced to work together in order to survive the zombie apocalypse. The details are scarce, there's 4 full campaigns of 5 maps each, and there's 3 modes of play. Now, ordinarily a game with little to no storyline, 4 mini campaigns that last about an hour a piece, and only 3 multiplayer game types would sound like anything but full featured, worry not! Every ounce of this game oozes replayability and unpredictability due to a whole new game mechanic never been used before, the all powerful AI Director. The Director monitors the survivors 'stress level' and changes gameplay accordingly by spawning more or less zombies (or as they're called in this game, Infected) and special infected. This in turn makes the game harder for players doing well and makes it easier for players doing poor. Wow, what a concept! Then versus mode allows two teams of four to assume the role of the survivors and the zombies trying to kill them. It's one of the most fun multiplayer modes I've ever played and provides a challenge to even the most skilled with survivors and/or zombies and relies even more heavily on teamwork than standard campaigns. I can't express how satisfying it is to instantly end a round by you and three partners pouncing all the survivors at once and watch their life bars quickly drain while you rack up the points. Recent events only made things better with Survival mode being added which presents the ultimate challenge surviving against waves of increasingly powerful zombies until you perish going for the highest time. Also the community is constantly making new maps and campaigns to test and have fun with. This in effect turns a set of just 20+ maps included with the game and official DLC into dozens more fully capable maps. In fact, Valve wants to officially release some of the better ones for Xbox 360 users to make it worth their money. Speaking of which, if you own this title for Xbox instead of PC then this title alone makes it worth the investment of Xbox Live Gold. This game is practically worthless unless you have two Xbox 360s and two copies of the game LAN'd together with two player split screen on both (yay for college roommate exploits). Of course, Xbox Live is a lot more practical and reliable to find players. This game is one of the hottest games around for good reason. Now go out there and do what God intended!

The more I play Rock Band and the better I get the stronger a feeling of creepiness washes over me. How can I, and millions of other kids and young adults for that matter, take fake music proficiency so seriously? I don't know, what I do know is this title proves to be one of the most addicting games ever released. Everyone wants to be a rock star right? Well, here's your virtual chance! Also, every week we're going to add new songs to play at a premium! Wow, sounds great, and it IS great. However, I feel the game is incredibly stale and repetitive if played alone and the premium price for new songs seems a bit steep (though, DLC is consistently proving itself to be a great way to make a few bucks for little value). If you always have the opportunity to play this game with friends however, maybe at a college party, maybe with dorm mates, maybe with your roommates? Well, that's where all those expensive songs become well worth it, despite maybe a few of them being purchased while wasted (guilty). Hell, I've never had more fun playing Rock Band than when I was playing guitar and vocals at the same time with two buddies, all of us on expert, and all of us completely fucking wasted on beer, vodka, and rum (FYI, we played Painkiller and 5*'d it). Good times, good times. For all the short comings I find in this new age of music games I never let my instruments gather dust as long as there's a friend nearby or a party or a convention in my area. For those about to rock, I salute you, cheers.

The Orange Box is hands down the most valuable action package of this generation. In the Orange Box you get a copy of Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and the first 2 Half-Life 2 Episodes. With the Half-Life 2 saga you get, in my opinion, the greatest single player action/fps campaign ever released. Half-Life 2 contains an engaging story, beautifully detailed environments and landscapes, and facial animations that are still some of the most impressive ever used despite Half-Life 2 being 5 years old. You get a marriage made in Heaven of puzzles and shooting action kept in perfect balance. Plus, this campaign is quite long and satisfying. The game took me several days to complete, an estimated 20+ hours to complete. Half-Life 2 delivers on everything you could possibly want in a perfect action/shooter sci-fi epic, and the two episodes included serve to continue the storyline for several more hours of story and gameplay no less impressive than the original campaign. The only real downside to the episodes is their short length. It is worth noting that Half-Life 2: Episode One adds virtually nothing to what Half-Life 2 brings to the table and comes off a big stale, however Episode Two is much more satisfying and adds many graphical improvements and new enemies making it the substantial jump improvement to the original. Half-Life 2 may be 5 years old now but it still stands as one of the greatest, if not greatest, games ever made with graphics as impressive as anything available today despite needing modest computer hardware to execute. A game has never come this close to perfection since Ocarina of Time. If that wasn't enough you get a copy of Portal. Portal quickly became a fan favorite and popular internet and nerd culture meme for it's witty story and environment and truly unique take on physics based puzzles from the developer that practically already reinvented it once. You may recall "the cake is a lie!", came from this popular but brief puzzle game. The premise is to solve puzzles using a portal gun to create portals and using physics and a simple premise to achieve complicated goals. Although the game is very short, a good run takes less than an hour to complete, it's easily one of the most satisfying games to come out in this generation. Team Fortress 2 is also included and serves as the multiplayer component of the package. Although the game was developed over 8 years the wait was well worth it. Highly stylized graphics and an incredibly well balanced class based system make this game as fun as it is unique. Using 9 vastly different classes teams of up to 16 players work together to achieve goals. Well known game modes like Capture the Flag, Arena (a variant of a Deathmatch where you don't respawn after dieing), and King of the Hill are available next to fresh modes like Capture Point (one team defends sequential points from being capture while capturing the enemy's points), and Payload (one team escorts a cart along rails while the other team tries to halt their advances). Each mode has it's own set of maps and effective strategies promoting on-the-fly decision making and class-swapping. As with team based games communication and team work are key and failure to use either usually results in frustrating pwnage. The game was released 2 years ago and since then both Valve and the community have gone above and beyond to support it. Valve constantly tweaks various game mechanics to balance gameplay, fix bugs, or add loads of new, free content. Meanwhile, the community hosts an impressive number of well designed maps which occasionally Valve themselves adopt and release officially to all users. I've never seen a game get this much attention and support before. Team Fortress 2, I'd say, is one of if not the best team multiplayer shooters of this generation. The Orange Box gives you a lot of game for a standard price. The greatest single player action campaign ever, the greatest team based multiplayer game of this generation that only gets better rather than worse, and one of the most unique, iconic games ever made (Portal). This game released 2 years ago for $50 but I got this last year for $20. If you don't own this package and have a computer strong enough to run it (not uncommon), then do yourself a favor and grab this. You owe it to yourself to play the greatest for a bargain bin price, right?

Fallout 3 is THE game to play this generation. The game plays and feels a lot like Bethesda's last major blockbuster, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but that's not a bad thing. This isn't a sequel or anything like that just a successor in terms of playability. However, the game is far more action/shooter driven and attempts to recreate realism rather than fantasy. That said, this game is as awesome as Oblivion ever was and more so using Oblivions development as a learning experience to enhance and perfect shortcomings in the engine and gameplay. You start by designing your character's face and then view the events of your early years. You get to fiddle with your attributes (S.P.E.C.I.A.L. in this game) and eventually are exiled from the Vault. Beyond the comfort and safety of the Vault 101 lies the barren post apocalyptic wasteland of Washington D.C., dubbed The Wasteland. Radiation, Enclave soldiers, vicious mutated wild animals, Ghouls (radiated humans who resemble skeleton zombies) Raiders (packs of human survivors who do what they want, like kill and rob you), and Super Mutants make the Wasteland a difficult land to traverse. Like Oblivion, the Wasteland is HUGE with many a sleepless night to be spent exploring its crevices and abandoned buildings. Despite this being set in an alternate history of 200 years post nuclear holocaust USA the level of realism and detail are second to none and not just graphically. The demonstration of human despair, disillusion, and otherwise good people driven to do horrible things creates an emotional tapestry that feels as real as we could have imagined back during the real life Cold War. The fight for survival is an authentically difficult task. Also, popping humans/mutants heads off with a sniper rifle in slow motion is just so much fun I'm surprised no one ever used it before. I think a great man once said something like, it doesn't get any closer to perfection than killing zombies in slow motion. Well, if that's the case, call this game perfect, you wouldn't be the first. It's worth noting that there are five DLC packs available that each add several hours of gameplay to the core game. Some packs are more substantial (Broken Steel) and fun (Point Lookout) than others (Mothership Zeta). I also experience many game crashes throughout my campaigns every now and then and I hear it's not just me or just the PC version. Bugs aside this is one of the best and most realistic interactive experiences ever created. If you haven't played this chances are every gamer you know is teasing you for not playing it, so I'm saying give in already!

While this list isn't my favorite 10 games of all time or even my favorite 10 games now they are the 10 games that have managed to consistently consume loads of my time and others I know with similar tastes. DDR and Rock Band are excellent music games showcasing where they started and why they were so much fun to whey they're going and why they're still as fun and addictive as ever. Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl are two of the best Wii titles so far and even if this motion controls thing is a fad as some people claim games like these should be more than enough to show the Wii is a great console. Burnout Paradise I just thought was fun as hell. Oblivion and Final Fantasy XII show the RPG and JRPG are definitely not dead and rather are still capable of some of the most enthralling campaigns in all of gaming despite the console they're on. Left 4 Dead and the Orange Box show Valve's impressive abilities to reinvent action games as well as prove that with support and enough playtesting you can perpetually make a game last forever (the countless number of Source and Half-Life 2 mods available around the internet are another proof of this). Fallout 3 is in a league of its own. I wouldn't recommend any of these titles for anyone in school because most are so deep that you won't put them down for weeks. However, there's always summer vacation. On that note, I've spent six vacations playing through most of this list and still hadn't finished off some of them. This is the best of the best in addictive, engaging gameplay. Enjoy! Now go kill blood-thirsty zombies with shotguns!

List by yamikarasu13 (09/22/2009)

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