Batman or Spider-man? - Saturday Morning Beatings! (Pt. 3)

Very few characters have ever had so many iterations of animated TV shows. Both of them had their own live action and animated series back from Batman's start in the 1930 serials to super hip 60's and 70's shows for both of them with horrific special effects. To Batman's credit, his flew on for entire seasons while Spider-man's poorly received series not even going past 13 episodes. Adam West's TV series went on to be respected as the shark-spraying piece of cheese that it is, but it was hardly the peak of the Caped Crusader's most popular outing. Both of these superheroes have an entire plethora of TV history, but their true renaissance wouldn't come until their Saturday morning animated series in the 90's. 

Batman The Animated Series

Bruce Timm and Paul Dini are the two men credited with making this show the great entity that it was. After Tim Burton's 1989 movie took the fanbase by storm, they wanted to follow it up with a shadowy, more young adult oriented animated series that was also safe(ish) for kids. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill brought about a Batman and Joker that would live on for generations as two of the greatest versions of each character. Each episode was so amazingly crafted with developing stories for both the Batman rogue's gallery and the batfamily, even going so far as to create its own ever-spanning characters like Harley Quinn. Joker's jester-like partner and underling came about with this series in the episode "Joker's Favor". 

Even Mr. Freeze, a character that was never taken seriously before this cartoon, was expanded in his lore and treated as one of Batman's most dangerous opponents. With a wife in a coma with which he is finding a cure, he needs to resort to crime in order to gain the funding. This version of Freeze would become the real version that everyone turned to for reference. Killer Croc, The Mad Hatter, Clay Face, Catwoman, all of them were so done with astonishing quality in both writing and character progression throughout. 

The scripts were written with intelligence and even the worst episode, "I've got Batman in my Basement!", is still good enough to hold its own against scrutiny. Villains were given understanding motivations and some of them are genuinely heartfelt in their dispositions. Sometimes, they don't want to be this way and just succumb to mental illnesses. Most of them are just greedy, though, and with Batman's no-kill rule, it's not as if he's over punishing them. H.A.R.D.A.C. Batman was just confused as to who was the real Batman and actually thought he was the Dark Knight himself. He was a robot clone that was just trying to be Batman. These stories really can go to some dark places and make you think.

The animation and artwork became iconic for Bruce Timm's style and all the way to the Superman crossover and art change, they were very aesthetically pleasing. Once the art change happened, though, Joker, Scarecrow, Bane, Mad Hatter and some others took a bit of a nosedive in character design. It wasn't a dealbreaker and it didn't outright destroy the show, but it didn't do it any favors. The last season is seen as a bit of a weak point but the show was still great. Even when it added the Robins and Batwoman, this series never faltered in its quality. The series in its entirety is still seen as a milestone for the character and comic series of Batman.

Spider-man The Animate Series

Once Spider-man threw his hat into the ring, it took a lot of fans by surprise. You would think it would just copy off of Batman's homework, but it took the series in a whole other direction. The idea for a series was, in fact, directly connected to Batman's, but beyond that, it exists in its own style of art and storytelling. It is far more into progressive storytelling, where the Dark Knight was more episodic. This was a good and bad thing for both series for two different reasons. Sometimes, Spider-man just carried on its stories for a little too long. Sometimes, though, Spider-man pulled off a real banger of a season. 

The early episodes are far superior to the later, though. By season 3, the stories began running on for far too long and this came to a head in season 4 where it ends on a cliffhanger that would never be resolved. It went from episodic and 2 to 3 parters to just going on and on and on with the same story that just ends up getting old. To try and spice it up, they even bring in the X-men 92 characters, but it didn't have exactly the hyped effect that they were hoping for. 

When Spider-man started with fighting Vulture, Scorpion, Rhino and Doc Ock, many agree that the series was at its peak. When Venom and Kingpin had plots, they tended to last longer but kept up the quality writing. There were some fantastic stories being told with pacing that was willing to take its time and build up to the bigger battles. This was when the series was hitting them out of the park! Peter Parker struggled with his home life and his hero life while trying to get with Mary Jane and this had its ups and downs while only really getting annoying by the last season. Then there was the more complicated relationship Spidey had with Black Cat. With villains like the Green Goblin or Lizard being people he looked up to professionally, it held real weight because these were characters we've been introduced to before they went to the baddies. 

There were limitations, though. This was a time when bullet guns were seen as bad, so they switched to lasers. They also wanted to keep a hard Y7 rating for the younger audiences and Fox was on a no violence kick, so there could be no on-screen punches. So, you get more jump cuts away from hits and a whole lot of web shooting to debilitate villains. Spider-man had to use his brain and out smart a lot of his opponents and a lot of kids never even noticed the nonviolence. It didn't really suffer as a result. It was more the graphical aspect and the framerates that hurt the series. Sometimes the slow-motion would just make the screen bug out and the animation would get jumpy and it was weird, even for the younger audience. 

The voice work and the overall execution of the series had its very high points, but also had a few flops. A lot of people will point to the Black Spider-man calling after Shocker, and yeah that's when it was most noticeable. While Kingpin's voice became iconic for the character, there's more stock villain voices for a lot of the rogues. After a while, they started making up villains and pulling some of the more not great versions of well known characters. Blade was done pretty well, but Morbius wasn't. Instead of being a blood-sucking vampire, he absorbed plasma through weird growths on his palms. If they weren't going to go full on with him, then they shouldn't have brought him up in the first place. The did the same with Punisher. Obviously, he wasn't going to go on his normal blood baths like in the more adult themed comics, but the laser blasters just took something away from the more tough-guy persona. 

So, obviously, Batman wins this one by a longshot. Spider-man was not a bad series, it just didn't age as well and took a much deeper dive in the later seasons. It had its place in the vast amount of superhero cartoons, but Batman was seen as the prime example to follow. Many could make the case that Spectacular Spider-man was a better choice to face this challenge, but it was made in a different era, whether it was better than the 1994 series or not. The two of them did well in their own right, but this is definitely 5 points to the Caped Crusader himself! Give them a try and next time we'll examine some of the lesser animated series tries. So, be warned that we may be viewing Beware the Batman. That's right, a warning. You're Bat Warned. 

Wolfenstein: The New Order - Chaingunning to the Moon

Sometimes, rebooting and reimagining a game can mean its death. Well, this series jump started Wolfenstein's popularity after a bit of a lukewarm reception of the 2009 version. This was a brand new installment with a grand bit of worldbuilding. This takes place in an alternate future where the Third Reich win the war. BJ Blazkowicz starts us off in World War 2 where the Axis's technology is far more sophistocated than this timeline. As they launch an attack, the allies are all killed except for BJ. 

Our hero gets put into a hospital, and is basically forgotten about because the Nazis believe him to be dead. However, since they won the war, their stranglehold on Germany only grows more and more ironclad. Blazkowicz wakes up from his catatonia to find the world in a neo-fascist state where the Nazi Regime reigns supreme, and soon they come to the hospital and begin killing patients. Anya, the girl who was taking care of him and with whom he becomes interested in, also gets taken by the Third Reich before he comes out of his coma, ready to shoot and kill. Using a dinner knife, he kills one guard, takes his gun and from there, it's time to take the fight to them. 

Basically, it gets to the same place as the original, but then spins it to where you're not just in Castle Wolfenstein. You're going all across a new aged Germany if it was still under Hitler's rule. You find and rescue Anya and you find and join the rebellion against the Third Reich. Throughout the game, you go on missions that gain more and more intelligence about their plans and this eventually leads you to the moon. One of this game's biggest draws was that you are literally killing Nazis on the moon. What sells this idea is that they actually sell it story-wise. You feel the stranglehold the Nazis have because you interact with them and see their cruely play out in front of you. You meet one woman on a train surrounded by guards and you genuinely think they found you out. What it actually was was them screwing with your head and making fun of you. They can play the most horrific practical jokes and just laugh about it and you naturally want to take them down. 

When I say futuristic, I mean giant machine attack dogs, futuristic tanks and mech suits! They even have drones and the combat becomes chaotic when you're having to take down all of these elements along with the normal human guards. You can dual wield machineguns and feel like a real badass in all new ways as you take down the evil Axis!

The graphics are so huge that this game had to be released on multiple discs for the Xbox 360. With PS3, it simply had a lot of load screens. That doesn't take much from the gameplay aside from some textures and frames. The great thing is that you can see where all of that storage space went when you look at the game itself. It's not without its glitches, but it still came out a finished game that is so fun to play because you feel as powerful as the Wolfenstein man himself in Wolf 3D of old. It's science fiction, dystopian fiction rather than the more fantasy/scifi/horror of 2009 and RTCW.  

It is also much more realistic with such detailed graphics and that is felt when you have a Nazi torture session. To find and rescue the rebellion fighters, you need to hurt an SS officer and threaten him with a chainsaw! This man is ready to take down the entire regime himself and that all begins with a new team to do it. BJ builds up this entire resistance himself and together they fight against the entire world order on every front. You want to succeed because you believe in the cause and it means you kill Nazis on a large scale. The story is engaging because you want to finish the mission and kill a lot of guys with big guns. The story has its highs and lows, the biggest low being the open ending that invites a sequel. The problem is that the sequel wasn't quite as good. The series itself took a lot of highs and lows: From the Old Blood to the terribly unoriginally titled Youngblood, the franchise didn't end up going out on a high note. No, it went out thanks to poor writing and ill-conceived story continuations that made no sense. Still, that's a story for another time. The New Order is awesome, it is totally worth your death---time! Totally worth your time. 

Resident Evil 3 Remake - Death by Exasperation

We should be used to disappointment by now. Thankfully, I had never played the original Resident Evil 3, so I didn't have such expectations. I had played Resident Evil 2 remake, though, and I had those types of expectations. Either way, both parties were extremely let down. This game was missing something, a lot of something, and it was style. This game just was not that engaging. We barely even got a look at our character before her wall imploded with the attack from a giant zombie! Seriously, everything is just so condensed and noticeably shallow throughout this entire game. 

It has a lot of what made the RE2 remake work. It has a good UI that's fairly easy to figure out just from intuition, which is important. The real problem is that it didn't know how to pad out its runtime with anything extremely interesting. We start off with a dream sequence where Jill Valentine has the T-Virus and kills herself. Yes, quite shocking. Then we have the exact same thing happen, sans the T-Virus. Instead, we answer the phone and find out that the T-Virus is taking over the city. Before we can do anything, Nemesis knocks through the wall and becomes more of an annoyance than an imposing figure bringing fear to the player. 

He just becomes more and more annoying with the use of his tentacles and the use of his super-charged virus that makes the zombies harder with bug legs opening from their faces. Instead of becoming more interesting, the game just becomes more and more tedious. It was already annoying enough with the zombies coming out of nowhere to bite you while you're concentrating on another one coming in at you. This can be effective, but there needs to be more than that. It's really just a game of backtracking over a small area to do little tasks and get fetch quest items so that you can escape on a subway train. 

There were some seriously nasty parts, like when Jill gets some tendril shoved down her throat and she injests some disgusting bug parasites. This was horrifically nasty and we think it's going to affect her in some serious way, but no. You walk around, unable to run, until you turn on some machine and then she suddenly vomits it all up and carries on. Seriously, this was not cool. Seeing your character treated like this while having to fight off giant spiders, all for it to add literally nothing but a slight difficulty, it's a little insulting. 

All of this, paired with the annoyance of Nesmsis coming out of nowhere to pull you in with tentacles and hit you really hard, this game was a slog to get through. You go from the streets, to the subway, to the laboratories and it's all just so by-the-books at this point. It tries to add more interest with the zombie mutations but it's just more of the same. There really isn't much more to say. The main boss battles are lackluster with the last battle of Nemesis just being a constant process of wearing him down in different forms. It's not without its merits of an interesting battleground and cool rocket fire wearing him down, but it's not worth the journey. 

A lot of people noticed that this game was stripped down of a lot of gameplay from the original. I'll be playing and reviewing the original Nemesis, and I'm really hoping it's a better experience than this. The survival elements are all there. They keep you low on ammo and health items. It does keep you starving enough to choose your battles wisely and try and sneak past Nemesis as much as you can. Does this add much, though? No, it really doesn't. It just makes the game more frustrating while also being outright boring. 

Boring, that's the real word for this game. Jill is a nostalgic character, but that's not nearly enough to carry the game throughout its entire run. There just isn't enough to keep it exciting. You're still just running around performing tasks while some people yell at you to get a train moving. Then you're in another laboratory with a bunch of new zombies and it does very little to keep interest. This game is just not worth the time and effort. Resident Evil 2's remake is far better and full of more interesting content, including the puzzles. This game is lacking a great deal in puzzles. The closest thing it has is a confusing part where you need to get the tracks working to get to the subway's destination. Maybe if they made Nemesis more like Mr. X, it could have been more natural, rather than him just popping up out of nowhere in random stints of the game. It is kind of funny when he punches random zombies out of his way, though. He's still a cool character, but this game just couldn't do him justice. Just try and keep away from him without wasting too much ammo. Also remember to drink your water.

Pryde of the X-men - The Franchise that Almost Was

There aren't many that have ever even heard of the X-men animated series before the 1992 iteration. As awesome as that series was, there was, indeed, another series right before it. It all began with, surprisingly enough, Robocop the animated series. They gave that series 12 episodes and the reason it didn't have the full 13 is because the final episode's funding was transfered over to what is now known as Pryde of the X-men. This series failed to take root, mostly because it wasn't all that great. The voice acting was a little off, especially with Wolverine's weird Australian accent and Magneto's cliche ridden villain voice. There was a lot wrong with this pilot episode, but it also grew a cult following because of everything it did right. 

We get a fairly decent, albeit long, introduction to each of the X-men. The roster is actually different from the one in 1992, but not really in a good way. Yes, Rogue was one of the greatest characters, but the exclusion of Colossus and Dazzler is a bit of a downer. I like Nightcrawler too and he was barely in the 92 series. Aside from that, we still get Wolverine and Storm, so even with his weird voice, he's still the character we know and love. 

The movie is based around Shadow Cat, who has a very annoying baby voice of Kath Soucie. They call her Kitty Pryde (hence the title) and honestly, she should have been the character they did rather than Jubilee. Her powers aren't exactly comparable or quite as useful in combat, but that gave her a bit more charm than what we ended up with. Professor X still remains basically the same, though his 92 voice is far better without sounding like Charlie from Charlie's Angels. He also gets an upgrade from his normal looking wheel chair. 

The animation is actually far better than what we normally get from old 80's cartoons of the time. They actually stepped up their game, probably because it was the pilot and/or finale of Robocop amount of effort. What could have come from the series may have been a massive downgrade, but I guess we'll never know. The best thing you can say about this show is that it is better than the average animated series. The real problem is that the story/plot is extremely basic and seemed to want to cram anything and everything in its runtime. 

For some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to literally plop this into a story EXTREMELY similar to its videogame counterpart. All of the Brotherhood of Mutants in this show are treated like boss character underlings while Magneto literally stays in the back and gives commands. Then all of the time, Kitty Pryde is whimpering and whining like a little tiny baby with a rattler. Her dialogue is so cringeworthy, a bit more realism in her demeanor would have been nice, but we got what we got. 

The cool thing about treating every villain character like a VG mini-boss is that we got some pretty awesome dream battles. Juggernaut vs Colossus may have lasted 5 seconds, but it was still cool with the face off with "Me, Juggernaut!" Still, seeing the White Queen relegated to a minor obstacle was a big downer. With so many characters in the toy box, not all of them could get the needed attention, but really, why Kitty? 

Despite its flaws, though, it is still a nostalgic piece of art that many saw in their childhood and loved when they were kids. It may not have aged well with people, but it did become a staple in many collections. I saw this when I finished the 92 X-men's first season and was hungry for some more. This was weird, I'm not going to lie. It was a big difference between this and the far more serious show of the 90's. I had no idea that this was produced by the same lady, Margaret Loesch, who literally put her career on the line to create this entire franchise because she loved the idea so much. This was a fun show and it had all kinds of charm, including that wondrous 80's cartoon charm that so many love and will almost cry from such gorgeous nostalgia. It brought one of the best beat'em ups out of Konami and it was the precursor to one of the greatest cartoons ever made. We owe this random cartoon pilot a lot and it's fun to revisit from time to time. It may be a little hard to watch without crying, but that's just life. Comfort works in strange ways. Virtua Comfort.

Mouse P.I. for Hire - Death on Vinyl

Every so often, not often enough, there comes a game that not only lives up to the hype, but has some very pleasant surprises as well! Mouse P.I. was announced a little over a year ago, when Steamboat Willy became public domain. It caught many eyes with its 1930's animation and film noir style in the wonderful First Person Shooter style. It was hard to imagine how they would pull off a Betty Boop style animation in a 3D world, but it actually works. It's so true to 30's cartoon style that I felt like stockpiling my booze to foil Eliot Ness and his Untouchables! And prohibition was more in the 1920's! This game's got style!

What took me next was the controls. The walking, the jumping, the basic movements are very smooth. Moving through the strange art style in 3D did show that the NPC's were 2D in a 3D enviornment, very much like Doom. You can see their edges as you move. It looks so stylistic and strange but I absolutely love it. The gangland violence is also very cartoony. Instead of blood, it looks more like ink coming out. Their heads come off like old Tom and Jerry cartoons but it reacts like Itchy and Scratchy. The turpentine gun makes them turn into a skeleton before they fall into bones and the TNT makes them into piles of ash, as it should. 

Instead of letting you get lost in levels, though, they have an investigative supplement of dusting for footprints that shows you where to go next. This is much in the vain of Bioshock Infinite or Batman Arkham Asylum. You also collect clues that you pin onto your cork board, as well as baseball cards. Yes, you collect baseball cards and can also find comic strips here and there if you search thoroughly enough. Money is also a thing in this game, and you can find more of it the more you search for secrets and behind objects.

That's not to say that sometimes the levels do get a little confusing in the wayfinder and the instructions of where to go and what to do. It does get a little crazy when you go to the place that is shown and it turns out you need to use another route or someone will be standing in front of you or you didn't see that one object that you need to go pick up. It's not a game breaker but it does get a little annoying. One fun little shout out was, in true Dick Tracy NES fashion, you drive your car across the map with crappy controls. It can also be read as a sort of Cuphead type level map. 

The weapons are basically from Doom or Duke Nukem 3D and that's alright. The Super Shotgun is not exactly a highlight, though. It is cool that it lights enemies on fire, but that's about the best thing with it, even at its highest upgrade. The star of the show is more the Tommy Gun, or the "James Gun" as this game calls it. It does the best damage in the best amount of time with the most accuracy and it just feels good to use. The same cannot be said about the starting pistol. It's supposed to be a .44 magnum but plays and sounds more like a pop gun. It's handy in a fight and fine otherwise, but I feel like giving it more of a meaty sound with a better recoil could have made it a better weapon. The funny thing about the Devarnisher gun is that it uses turpentine as ammo, which is one of the ingredients for "dip" in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Nice little side note, if that was purposeful. 

The enemies are plentiful, and there are several variations of them both physically and by class. There's the regular enemies, regular enemies with guns, bigger guards with machine guns, snipers, big huge charging tough guys and tiny little guys that try to get close so they can pull a bomb and explode. They all have better ways to kill them with specific guns or even the shield guys who require more explosives to be efficiently killed. This mob of enemies can get rather plentiful but I feel like it never reaches too high of a levels repetitiveness. It's an old style FPS, if you weren't prepared for monster closets and high caliber ambushes, then you need to get with it. 

The boss fights are fun and challenging, aside from a few. I loved the ghost boss girl and the use of the flashlight, it gave the flashlight more to do than just random dark spaces you needed to explore. The disappearing opera phantom was annoying more than anything else. The worst of the bunch, though, is the cult leader. The fact that he can throw TNT and knock out any part of the floor around you became something of a terrible annoyance. That sort of breaking the game gets very tedious very quickly.

The soundtrack, the voice acting, the artwork and the fact that you can change up the film grain, all of this just screams that it was for the fans of the genre. It feels like Dick Tracy, all the way down to the fact that there is a lot of death and Tommy Guns. It gets to horror and scifi bits, but it stays in its film noir world through and through. It gets a little ridiculous in some parts, especially with a girl who is literally in pieces and can't put herself back together. The themes can get a little dark with the kidnapping that the implications of horrible things happening, but it never leans into the really terrible stuff. 

The platforming plays a small role in the whole experience. Through the game, you gain power ups such as the double jump, the wall jump and the helicopter tailspin. Thankfully, they don't fly off the rails with this. They do make it a bit more challenging, like the Indiana Jones mechanic where you use your tail as a whip to latch onto certain hooks and swing across obstacles. Sometimes, it can get a little frustrating with the toxic water, but it also becomes rather forgiving when there are sections where you fail the platform and it just teleports you back to where you were. It pretty tightly controlled and they don't weigh down the levels too badly. 

The gameplay is enhanced by the feel of an adult cartoon that still plays like a wacky 1930's flick. There are times it plays itself very seriously but also has all kinds of cartoon logic that is very refreshing. This game feels like it was meant to be enjoyed by Doomsters and people who want a more openly fun game. The characters can be wacky but also have real world problems, the main character is serious, aside from when he pulls one-liners and old references. It's not jarring because it's consistent throughout the game. You become absorbed in this game and you want to know how all of this is connected. The story, the gameplay, the themes and the art style always remain at the forefront and mold together so well, it feels like you got more than your money's worth and that is something to be celebrated in this industry that is treating its own customers like the enemy. This is a small indie project and that is also a reason to supply it with more so that they can keep this up and make more games like it. Virtua Cheese.

Top 160+ Favorite Games of All Time! (Pt 7)

 39 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The Castlevania that coined the term "Metroidvania" with how much it influenced both the series and the gaming culture itself. This is where they introduced stats, weapons and gaining new powers and characters throughout. The bosses are iconic, the gameplay is very fluid and visceral. Playing as Alucard is literally a game changer and they pulled out all of the stops. You have brand new creatures, as well as many returning monsters, like that jerk of a skeleton that throws femurs at you as you pass. The castle is a whirling maze that can get you lost until you find that one door that leads to a whole new environment with all new horrors to face. There are ways to play as a Belmont, but there are also plenty of other ways to change up the gameplay as you search for Dracula and end him!

38 Panzer Dragoon Saga

A change to the series that changed everything except how awesome your opponents are. The monsters are still unique, the blast from your Dragoon are still beautiful and the setting is vast and beautiful. Every single main boss has a quirk that forces you to change your strategy on how to kill them. Some of them need to be worn down with your smaller attacks before opening up for your ultimate attacks. Some of them force you to move around to avoid their attacks while taking advantage of their lowered defenses. It can get tense and you can find yourself frustrated with some of these flying horrors, but it makes you want to figure them out and destroy them! This is a beautiful RPG that came from a railshooter series, and they made it work in a big way! Panzer Dragoon reached a beautiful peak in awesomeness, and this isn't even my favorite in the series! That's just how awesome it is.

37 Sonic the Hedgehog CD

Arguably the greatest game on the Sega CD, which is not exactly glowing praise by comparison, but they made Sonic as beautiful in graphics as it is in gameplay. The levels can get long and whirling to the point where you get lost, but it's still an amazing Sonic game. With a sudden hike in play room, the devs took full advantage and brought you this master class in platforming. You're still fast, you're still awesome and it still has a Casino Night level, which is among the greatest praise. With the advent of Metal Sonic, this game brought about brand new Sonic lore that is still in the series to this very day. This is a milestone for the series and gave credence to Sega CD's existence, however small. 

36 Virtua Cop 

One of the most awesome railshooters and it came out in the greatest console! With sprawling criminal undergrounds needing some shooting to take down, this game brought you through warehouses, parking lots and skyscrapers in order to take down the big baddies that corrupt Virtua City. The shotgun, machine gun and even your starting pistol are all feel-good weapons that make you want to shoot and reload. Even when the criminals attack you from the bottom of the screen, it never feels overly cheap. You just need to pay attention and aim your crosshairs right between their eyes, or on their legs and limbs to get live arrests. They still disappear but at least they're still alive, right? Fight the big bosses with missile launchers and take down their empire of evil! Virtua Evil!

35 Quake III: Arena

An amazing way to impliment Deathmatching directly into your game. Could it have used a story or a deeper way to play? Maybe. However, going against your friends and fighting the computer to get to the top of the pyramid is still run and gun fun! Weapons introduced in this game have gone on to be staples in the Doom universe, including a Doomguy named Phobos! You'll recognize a lot of these characters from former ID Software titles, and you can even customize your own character to take them down. You need to learn where the good weapons are, including the BFG 10,000 that packs a nuclear punch, kicking like a mule. From the doublebarrel shotgun to the awesome plasmagun, this game has you covered on how to kill your opponents and get that ULTRAKILL!

34 Mortal Kombat 9

A return to form that put Mortal Kombat on the map after a very divisive plunge into 3D. Bringing the game back to its roots with 2D fighting in a 3D backdrop turned out to be the exact right move. The story mode kind of sucks but it still brings the fans the matchup they want. It acts out the first three Mortal Kombat titles with a new canon that was still destroyed in future titles, but the thought was there. Even with killing most of its main characters in an unspeakably terrible way, the gameplay and the combat on top of these awesome graphics brought this game to new heights! With character designs that will poke your eyes out and backdrops that give you a new look at the world they exist in, this game has the goods to keep you fighting and earning those Krypt goodies. Don't forget to get a look at Freddy Kruger and Kratos and make them crush each other!

33 Diablo II

The first Diablo was fun, but also pretty mediocre as games go. All of the problems I had with Diablo, the sequel fixed wholesale. Not only was Diablo more challengning as a main boss, but the game itself was just more fluid as a result. This game does have it downsides: Some of Episode 2 just looked like a desert or a sewer for the majority of it, and sometimes the travel gets rather monotonous. Other than that, grab a barbarian character or a necromancer character and introduce the demons to their entrails! The ability trees are vast and beautiful (after some of the abilities were a little broken before nerfing) and the hordes are nice and meaty with a good crunch with your axe cleaving into them. You fight Mephisto and thanks to the expansion, you also crush Baal between your fingers! This is a wild ride with a whole butt load of replayability. Fight Hell and have a ball!

32 Half-Life

Before this game came out, you really couldn't have known that an FPS game could have one of the best stories in all of gaming for years! This is all when your protagonist is silent and the scientists will not shut up! First, there are tons of creepy ass aliens that will jump out at you from the dark and scare the hell out of you! They even attach to the staff by the head and turn them into zombies with serious walking problems. They were never a threat, but they didn't need to be, because the military was right around the corner and adding all kinds of horrible challenge to the mix. Not only did the soldiers continuously shoot at you from every angle, but they also forced you into that HORRIBLE RAIL LEVEL. This game had one of the worst final levels, but that still did not tarnish its legacy because it was just that good. Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classics, Gary's Mod (original Sven Co-op) all have this game's DNA within it. That may sound uncomfortable, but it's true. This game's name is extremely ironic, unless you count the third game's nonexistence. Now I just made myself sad. 

31 Life Force

Sometimes, the original games from your childhood just stick out in your mind like a sore thumb. This game has the fluid gameplay of flying through space in a jet. That may be nonsensical, but all of the illogic flies out the window when you get a taste of that beautiful soundtrack. This game is HARD from beginning to end, but you keep wanting to play it because it's just that damn good. There is bullet hell all over the place, random aliens flying at you from off-screen and protrusions of tentacles coming out of every wall! If you are anywhere behind a building up brick wall, you have lost a life! Some call this Salamander and call it that if you wish, but this will always be a Force of Life.

30 Mario Kart 64

There are times when a game just gets it right early. This was the second game in the series and I will die on the hill that it is the greatest of the bunch. This game is lean, free of unneeded fatty features with Mario characters and karts with a battle mode and 3D graphics, the end. There are not too many maps, not too many characters and it really didn't need anything more than that. It runs like a dream and it controls even better! This was the original game that people remember, as great as the SNES title was, it was just a great precursor to the main show! There are plenty of other gimmicks from the later titles, but this is where they truly got it right. If you disagree, then we will lose our friendship next time we indulge in this masterpiece! It's happened more than once.

29  Super Mario Bros 3

The very first game that was advertised at the very end of an entire movie. The movie had nothing to do with this game until the climax and the movie was absolute garbage, but it is also when gaming started to break into the mainstream media. Super Mario 3 introduced so many new powerups that became staples of the entire series. The feather and the tanuki suit have become iconic since then. The game can be skipped with the flutes, and often is, but playing it through all of the levels is a much more fulfilling experience. Out of the Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 argument, this is the title I covet the most. Though, Yoshi was another great staple, so World definitely has its place.

28 Alice: Madness Returns

If a game needs to go out, this is a good way to do it. It's not the greatest game of all time, but it definitely one of the better 3D platformers. The dark themes and the shock value bogged it down to some degree, but if you're able to stomach the material, this is the game for you. The imagery is very macabre and the landscape of the haunted Wonderland was some of the best you could... imagine. Alice herself has become much more of a somber character, stripped of her childlike wonder from the death of her family and aiming to set her mental state right. With a freakish looking Cheshire cat and a horrific cast of monsters to fight through terrorizing levels, it's just a shining example of what can be done with some of our favorite fairytales. Now, where's the Peter Pan horror lore?!

27 Burning Rangers

Some of the best games come out of nowhere and are found in the most unlikely of spaces. Burning Rangers is a bit of a unicorn in terms of Sega Saturn games. It's extremely expensive to buy physically, so emulating it is pretty much your best bet if you want to get some gaming experience on this beauty. The freeroaming, the gameplay of fighting fires with water lasers, and the natural 32 bit graphics that pushed the system to its limits, all of it is just fun to play. It can get rather hard to complete, especially if you're trying to rescue everyone and get all of the gameplay down, but it's a labor of love. Along with Panzer Dragoon Saga, this is considered one of the greatest titles on the console. This is for very good reason.

26 The Legend of Zelda

The original has to truly great in order for its franchise to flourish. Nowhere is this more prominent than with Legend of Zelda. It may be cryptic in its progression, and there are some difficulty spikes with the amount of enemies you need to fight all at once, but it's just so much fun. The soundtrack itself is legendary, as are its dungeons that you need to traverse. You know, those dungeons with the puzzles and secret entrances. The triforce is now a staple in gaming, and Ganon continues to be one of the most recognizable villains in the culture. Just remember, his name is Link, not Zelda. Yes, this was a common miconception for a long, long time. 

25 Virtua Fighter 2

One of the greatest fighting games in my library and I will never give it up. Virtua Fighter was good, but the sequel was when the franchise peaked. They rose to heights of quality that is seldom seen in fighting games and it went hand to hand against Tekken on every single front. Even if it is not as popular, the game is still awesome. The characters are charming, even if the boss battle is less-so. You just can't help but love Jeffry's craziness and Shun's very unhealthy drinking habit. Either way, the fighting mechanics are solid and the 32 bit graphics are beautiful. 

24 Master of Magic

It is very hard to learn a game with extremely deep mechanics. Unlike some strategy games, Master of Magic is not quite as complex, but it is extremely fun to learn and play. The game can get a little frustrating, especially when it has monsters constantly attacking you early in the game when you're getting everything set up and building your armies. You need to learn as many spells as you can and produce as many armies as you can in order to get more and more cities to get more and more units, both magical and regular. The 5 type magical system and the weird A.I. of your allies and opponents just keeps things interesting and unique with every play through, especially with a map that is always unique to each new game. 

23 Nights into Dreams

Very few times have games truly met and exceeded expectations. When I first saw Nights on commercials, my dreams of it were very real. I wanted this game more than anything. When I got my Sega Saturn in Christmas of 1996, that was the game I bought immediately after, along with a second controller. This game blew my mind with its beauty and high flying gameplay. It pushed the system to its limits because Sonic Team knew how to use both platforms of 3D and 2D, using both to make the game's background and foreground without lag or drops in frames. It is HARD to meet expectations to get at least a C average in order to get to the last level, but it is well worth it. Nights became the Sega Saturn's most recognizable title for a very good reason.

22 TMNT

One of the greatest beat'em ups in gaming, bar none. This is just beautiful gaming that coencides with the hit TV show that was still going strong upon its release. Whichever turtle you play has slightly different play style, but everyone has their own favorite. These graphics were beautiful and even translated very well into TMNT 2 for the NES. The levels are vibrant and the different types of foot ninja are plentiful. The first fight with Rocksteady in the burning building is iconic, as was the sewer levels where you face the Killer Pizzas from one of the best episodes in the show. Fighting your way to Shredder and Krang cost you an entire week's allowance but it was money well spent for one of the Triforce of beat'em up awesomeness. Heroes in a Halfshell, indeed.

21 Castlevania

If you want dark, gothic horror in 8-bit beauty, this is your go-to. The graphics are simple, but the gameplay is HARD. When you get hit, you fall backward. This could make you fall into a death trap or just fall into another monster that does immense damage. The level designs play into this hardship amazingly, even if it can get rather frustrating. The music goes with all of it so well, and it's just so much fun to see what sort of castles and catacombs you're getting into next. With creatures flying into you and big hulking monsters coming out of the woodworks, you won't get bored, but you will most likely die. Die, you will, but with a cringing smile on your face.

20 Team Fortress Classics

Live service games were not always the pitfall many of them are now. Back when games were great and made with the Halflife engine, it was just as simple as logging in and choosing a character. Heavy Weapons Guys are the most fun, but they are also one of the cheaper and easiest to play. They are also the weakest against snipers with weak long range and slow running speeds. There's also pyros, spies, medics, demolition, all of them have their quirks and awesome mechanics that add to the experience. Engineers building turrets and ammo stations aid players in killing and protecting their flags. All of its culminates in an all out war with simple maps that keep you running into opponents to fight. It's just a lot of fun and you can still play it to this day as there are several dedicated servers, bots and people who will play it even when it has a perfectly good sequel. This is worth celebrating and checking out for yourself. Kill well and remember to drink water.

Resident Evil Extinction - Escape from Retcon City

This movie is a perfect poster child for why you need a future plan for a movie franchise. There are so many things that were changed for this movie to work, but then subsequent titles after this film act like its events never happen. Either that, or they quickly clean everything up and forget about all of it. Why? Because someone thought it would be a great idea to just destroy the entire world and turn it into Mad Max 2. That's not a joke, the filmmakers were very prominently inspired by the Mad Max series for this entire premise. These two elements could work, but only if they were willing to stick to their guns. Spoiler Alert: They didn't. 

That's not to say that this is a wholly bad movie. This is actually pretty entertaining, but it would have worked better as its own standalone film. The entire world is now destroyed. Entire bodies of water dried up and the T-Virus killed 90% of its entire population. Alice is now Mad Max on a motorcycle, going through the deserts and sticking to areas where Umbrella Corp cannot track her. We are also following an entire group of survivors led by Claire Redfield. They go through abandoned cities and ghost towns to gather resources with which to survive. LJ from the second movie is still here, as is Carlos. Both of them are on the convoy and helping them with a bit of muscle to help kill zombies and protect their group. 

We see a lot of stuff that doesn't exactly contribute to the main plot. Mostly, it's just them killing zombies and dying from random attacks, especially from that of the crows. Both Alice and the refugees are separate for the first part of the movie until this fight with the crows and she helps most of them escape their attack. There are plenty of deaths, though, and it's clear that they are losing hope until Alice tells them about a possible refuge in Alaska, which kindles a little bit of optimism. 

However, Umbrella Corp is still looking for Alice, even going so far as to frequently clone her in hopes of multiplying her blood, which can be synthesized for a cure. Dr. Alexander Isaacs is head of this project, but he answers to Albert Wesker, who is making his real character debut in this movie, for some reason. It's not that he's not part of the story, but he plays such a small part that his big first appearance could have been saved for a better contribution. In here, he's just sitting in a chair and telling Isaacs "no" when he wants to send a team to take Alice. Isaacs ignores this answer and manipulates Wesker's voice audio to command it be done anyway. 

Some things are done quite well in this movie. Isaacs is a great villain, manipulative and sinister with no conscience for human life. For him, the ends always justify the means, and he wants to create a cure so that they can use it to leverage what is left of the populace and gain control over them. There are all kinds of things wrong with this approach, because all of the cloning and all of the power they use for their facilities should be used for resources since the world is, you know, basically dead. 

They even go so far as to create super zombies that they have limited control over. These are far more vicious than normal zombies as well as physically stronger. In the end, it doesn't matter a whole lot, they are still just walking dead people, they can just run a little faster now. This attack kills all of the remaining prominent survivors in the convoy, aside from Claire. LJ was infected by the T-Virus in an earlier scene, so he was dying the whole time and turns into a zombie because he hid his injury from them. This is rather hypocrytical of him, because he gave Carlos a hard time for doing the same thing in the second film.

They almost get to Alice and nearly capture her, but they fail and Isaacs is bitten by one of the super zombies who also has a more aggressive form of the T-Virus. With their entire convoy aside from just a few survivors now dead, the plan to reach Alaska is now to take a helicopter from Umbrella Corp after getting through an entire legion of zombies. One very high point in this film is when Carlos decides to sacrifice his life to give them an entrance. The last zombie attack left him infected with the virus and so he drives a giant fuel truck through them, and causes it to explode. Before it does, though, he finds a nice little rolled smoke and uses it to light the fuel. He has a nice little puff before the end. Absolute boss way to go. Proper respects.

Once Dr. Isaacs gets back to the base, he takes the anti-virus in large doses and this turns him into a tentacle tyrant. The special effects in this movie is hit and miss. While the crows in the earlier scene look pretty decent, the Isaac tyrant looks awful, especially when he actually uses the tendrils. It also makes no sense at all that Isaacs has Alice's telekinesis powers. The fight they have isn't terrible, and it brings back a nice callback to the laser hallway that killed most of the special forces team in the first film. This would have been a lot better if they hadn't already done so in the earlier Alice clone scene at the beginning of the film, but it was pretty cool to see Isaacs get chopped to bits from the grid laser.

During all of this, one of the movie's greatest weaknesses pokes its head up. The clones. These clones could have been a pretty cool plot for the next movie, but as you will see from the next review, this cool little gimmick is whizzed down their legs. We are given the promise of a cool war between Umbrella and super powered (somehow) Alice clones led by the real Alice herself. It is teased at the end and they do next to nothing with it. The entire plot point of these clones is rendered completely useless as a result. They spent all of that effort into multiplying Milla Jovovich and all of it was wasted. 

Another very large brick wall that this movie faced was the plot device of Umbrella Corp's control over Alice via computer satellite. Not only does it help them track her, but it also gives them her off button. They use this in two parts of the movie, one was done so that they could find her and sic zombies on her. The other turned her off completely... for a few minutes. Then she literally destroys their control over her with her mind. Somehow, even though the satellite is in space, she gains back control from Earth. This was a very badly used plot point that really should have been retconned between movies 2 and 3. It's not as if they didn't retcon tons of other things.

As said before, this is a pretty decent addition to this series. It's far better than the second film because it takes itself more seriously. The problem, however, is that it is a Resident Evil movie and it does little to nothing for the entire movie franchise. This is a common problem from here on out and this is the last time that the movies ever reach the quality of "decent". Paul WS Anderson obviously had no idea what he was doing and was flying by the seat of his pants the entire time. He looked at the series, pulled a lot of the coolest elements but had no idea how to impliment them in a meaningful way. He thought he could put in cloning, the tyrant, Wesker, zombie crows and cool action scenes, and it would amount to Resident Evil. Well, it doesn't, and the series has suffered hard because of it. They made this movie pretty good on accident. They did not make that "mistake" again. If you have seen this series, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Virtua Bites.