The Gaming Lists Thread

[sambo]

Moved to all formats chart...D'oh

[nCogNeato]

Gaming's 20 biggest myths busted

Interesting read.  I'm printing it out for bathroom reading.   

[GamerMan316]

From bloody-disgusting.com

The 10 Most Unappreciated Video Game Monsters

Screw villains, they get all the glory.  What about the grunts?  You know, the hundreds of generic bad guys you have to shoot/frag/slice/photograph/dialog with between boss battles?  Being a grunt has to be the toughest job in a videogame, yet their faces so rarely lead a marketing campaign. It's a pity really.



This article is dedicated to them, but I'm not just talking about every faceless grunt you've fought over your gaming career, because that would take a very long time. This is for more than the plethora of featureless baddies that do little more than stand between you and the evil dude you spent a majority of the game trying to reach. That's just not enough to make this list, instead you'll find the grunts that actually managed to frustrate, or worse, embarrass gamers by killing us when we make the deadly mistake of underestimating them. This is for the little guys that caused big problems.

Grunts (Halo)


Now you're probably asking yourself why these guys make the list since they're really aliens  and not necessarily monsters, to which I'll reply, I write the article so I make the rules. Aptly named, when it came to warfare the Covenant's strategy usually involves sending wave after fucking wave of these little bastards to whittle away our health and ammo until the real threat arrived. Then, once we've decided these things are little more than shiny, annoying gnomes they come armed with Fuel Rod Cannons to really ruin our day. Apparently, the lack of attention has taken its toll on the little guys as I'm sure you've seen, on more than one occasion I might add, a grunt take two plasma grenades and proceed to blow his tiny ass sky high. Stop the suicides people, give the grunts some love.

Ghosts (Silent Hill 4: The Room)


Silent Hill has introduced us to a plethora of annoying enemies but the Ghosts that we had a pleasure of meeting in the fourth game take the cake for a few reasons. Like pretty much every thing that made the list there's usually more than one of these guys coming at us at once. Second, they only have to get near us to start sapping our health (and your very will to continue playing that damn game). And finally, they can't be killed. Yeah, the designers at Konami are some sick, masochistic bastards.

Swarmers (Dead Space)


The Swarmer, or what many affectionately refer to as Giblets, are exactly what their second nickname implies. They're reanimated bits of flesh that have somehow managed to learn how to hunt humans and travel in packs. Let's say that again: they're intelligent bits of man meat that are more talented than the average toddler. That's pretty damn scary.

Lambent Wretches (Gears of War)


We already looked at wretches as if they were horny alien dogs that enjoyed dry humping our bulky man legs until we were incapped so having to fight this same creature with the added feature of a ticking time bomb that makes them go boom after their demise makes these little dudes some of the more annoying enemies in Gears of War's vast arsenal of badass creatures. Honestly, like many of the enemies on this list they wouldn't be all that bad, manageable even, if they didn't come in packs that tend to swarm us before consuming us alive.

Baby Dolls (Condemned 2: Bloodshot)


Dolls are scary. Maybe it's the way their soulless eyes follow us around a room or the fact that I'm positive  they come to life while we're sleeping to waddle their chubby plastic legs to our bed where they consider whether or not tonight's the night they'll decide to finally eat us alive. And I'm not sure about you but I think bombs are pretty scary too, so I'm thinking it's pure genius that the clever buggers at Monolith decided to combine the two into some twisted baby doll bomb that totters creepily toward us until we're safely inside its blast radius where it then proceeds to pull it's string and go BOOM.

Cherub (Doom 3)


Doom 3 might not have been the revolutionary horror game some of us hoped it would be but that certainly doesn't mean it didn't have its fair share of terror, much of which that came from the Cherub. If you're like me when you hear Cherub you immediately think of chubby flying babies armed with bow and arrows. Now I'm going to ask you to replace that thought with a monster that's half infant and half insect, armed with serrated claws that you know is about to tear your sh*t up when you hear its twisted, distorted baby babble. Oh yeah, and like everything else these little brats come in groups.

Headcrabs (Half-Life)


Besides sounding fucking nasty, these things look like massive spiders. Nothing is worse than a spider larger than a quarter and Headcrabs are roughly twice the size of a dinner plate. Headcrabs come in a variety of flavors including original (which doubles as the easiest to deal with), a faster and more agile version of the original and my personal favorite, the poisonous Headcrab. That last guy can do much of what its ugly siblings can and it can also bring your health down to nothing with a single hit.

All that is more than enough to keep these guys nestled safely in the back of my mind where it can haunt my dreams but these guys have yet another reason for us to hate them. Just ask any of the once human zombie-like creatures roaming about any of the games though I don't think they can hear you since they have a frakking Headcrab hugging their face.

Remnants (F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin)


One of the game's more interesting additions are the Remnants that reanimate the dead and control them to do their bidding. The only way to stop the onslaught of guys they throw at you is to kill the Remnant that controls them. Unfortunately, these guys are incredibly tough so they can take a lot of damage and have a few attacks to keep you from getting too close. But really, the most disturbing thing about them is their ability to control corpses, I mean, if I could do that the first thing I'd do is set up a sweet dance troupe where I would travel the world and make my corpse puppets dance. Yeah, that's the life.

Machine Gun Toting Non-Zombie (Resident Evil 4 & 5)


I've said it time and time again that zombies should not be able to use guns, but that's not necessarily the main reason these guys make the list. Really, my issue with these well-armed pseduo-undead is the fact that their presence makes the final couple chapters of the last two Resident Evil games incredibly difficult. Resident Evil 4 rocked my socks until it started to tread into bad action movie territory and the fifth game took what its predecessor did and ran with it. I have a love/hate relationship with these dudes, I respect their ability to use complex machinery to kick my ass and I hate them to no end because of all the times they managed to, well, kick my ass.

Puppets (Thief: Deadly Shadows)


Psychiatric hospitals (and honestly, hospitals in general) freak me out a bit, so the Puppets that silently roam the Cradle are some of the more unsettling creatures I've come across in a game. What are essentially zombies, one of the creepiest things about them is how they spend their days. Not only have these poor lost souls been transformed into mindless meatbags, they've also had to spend a very long time in a broken down asylum. I don't know whether to fear or pity them, though I'll admit I lean toward the former.

[GamerMan316]

Top 10 Cinematic Openings on the 360

[Lukehi]

Top 10 Cinematic Openings on the 360

Glad to see Lost Odessey was on the list, although it should have been number one...truely awesome start to the game.

[GamerMan316]

Top 10 Cinematic Openings on the 360

Glad to see Lost Odessey was on the list, although it should have been number one...truely awesome start to the game.

It is a great intro, i'm happy with No. 1 but that's because I like the game so damn much.   

[Windedprism]

What, outrage no Fallout 3!! Being born and then playing the first few minutes as a wee-un ,priceless.

[Failed]

What, outrage no Fallout 3!! Being born and then playing the first few minutes as a wee-un ,priceless.

i think it's 50/50 with people you either love the opening or think it's shíte

[Windedprism]

True Mass Effect 2 has a great intro SFX wise ,dragon age origins has a cool one too.Deffo 50/50 thing.But Fallout 3 was one of the more  unique examples.

[Failed]

FF10 is win. Sin tearing your city apart is mint

not 360 though

[Windedprism]

not 360? edit edit ok I get ya.

[nCogNeato]

8 of the Strangest Boss Fights in Videogame History

Boss fights are a staple of video games these days, but they're kind of a pain. You can't step ten feet into an ancient sunken city without some mechano-magick guardian spoiling your adventure. Buzzkill, right? Well, remember that bosses are people too (and monsters, and robots, and aliens, etc.) so they're just like us. And, just like us, sometimes they happen to be freaking weirdos who frankly stand waaaay too close while talking to you. These are their stories.

For brevity's sake, we're only discussing stateside releases here. The Internet's tubes aren't long enough to list every bishojo game where the only "boss" to speak of is decency and respect.


8.  Ray vs. Rex – Metal Gear Solid 4

Okay, let's all step back from our love of this game and the series in general, and try to see this fight for what it is: A giant robot dinosaur armed with missiles and lasers fighting another giant robot dino... duck... thing... with missiles and a Super Soaker in its mouth. Sure it's cool and refreshing to have some completely new gameplay that allowed us to take control of the franchise's iconic weapons of war, but in the end, the only thing I was personally inspired to do was dig up the old VHS tapes of "Godzilla vs. King Ghidora." Don't even act like he wasn't your favorite kaiju.


7.  Sticks And Stones, And Now Words Too – Psychonauts

Psychonauts was an under-loved creation from Tim Schafer, creator of cult classics like Grim Fandango _and franken-genre titles like _Brütal Legend. It starred children that could've easily been cast members from a Tim Burton-reimagined "Muppet Show," with main character Raz delving into others' minds to solve puzzles and progress through the game. Here, traumatic memories and psychoses took on physical forms, such as that of the theatre critic, Jasper. This bubble-bodied thesbian hater (and really, who hates on thesbians?) literally hurled insults at you from his ink pen cannons. Constructive, Jasper! We always want our criticism to be constructive!


6.  The Power Of Positive Thinking – Space Channel 5

See girl report on alien invasion. See invading aliens force humanity to dance. See incredibly catchy game with underused character Ulala surface on SEGA Dreamcast. So what if it was just PaRappa re-skinned with groovy graphics and a hot chick in a spacesuit mini skirt? Space Channel 5 was an upbeat, just-plain-fun game, which was never more evident than during the final boss battle. It had you battling your insane boss who brainwashed the masses for a TV ratings boost, travelling to his own personal dimension, and shooting beams of positive energy at the five televisions that comprised his body. But in the end, you couldn't do it alone. Nope, every soul had to raise up its voice and chant along, and when evil was finally vanquished, they all walked happily ever after on a trail of stardust to the edge of the universe. C'est la vie, Ulala.


5.  They Spared No Expense – Deathsmiles

Spaceships and other vehicle-based shooters are soooo '90s; why not make a side-scroller bullet hell game starring gothic lolita witches? Eh? Eh? Anyone? Well that's what Deathsmiles was, and the barely-comprehensible plot concludes with a man named Jitterbug either accidentally or purposefully opening a gate to Hell while trying to go back to his own dimension. And what comes out of this vile portal? None other than... no, no wait, "Satan" isn't scary enough... I know! Let's put "Tyranno-" in front of his name but make him look nothing like a dinosaur. Instead, let's aim for Geena Davis from that one scene in Beetlejuice. Damn you, Jitterbug! The hubris! You never should've played God!


4.  What A Piece Of $#&% – Conker's Bad Fur Day

Yes, yes, you all saw this coming. The Great Mighty Poo is too well-known to not be included, but his appearance has been so played-out that it's hardly even fun anymore to count the guy. But, credit where credit's due: a giant singing turd is pretty original, and shocking to say the least. Still, it might actually be our foul-mouthed, furry protagonist who ought to take the cake, seeing as prior to his drunken rampage in Bad Fur Day, he was kart-racing with other doe-eyed cartoon characters like Diddy Kong and Banjo. Pfft, child actors, man.


3.  From The Inside Out – Ecco: Defender of the Future

After games like Devil May Cry 3 and Gears of War 2, a boss fight where the battle takes place inside the beast itself is no longer that "strange." Still, let's add in the other factors and multiply it by crazy to see what we get: One dolphin, plus alien invasion, plus time travel, times all-underwater gameplay, divided by the square root of naked humans leaving earth via gooey bubbles of space flight, instituting dolphins as caretakers of the planet. Now, knowing that, when I tell you the final fight involves a giant alien queen's heart chamber filling with acid (look, I don't know how it works) while you bounce antibodies into it with your sonar, do you feel weirded out yet?


2.  The Third Reich Meets The Third Wrench – Wolfenstein 3D

I'm so glad my brothers could get me into video games before I first strolled into Social Studies class. Oh, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker? Is that so, Mr. Miller? No no, I know the real story. See, the D in Wolfenstein 3D stands for "documentary." Steve Rogers blew the hell out of an entire army of Nazis, only to find that Hitler had assembled a damn robot suit with four – yes, four – gatling guns! Thank God Abraham Lincoln travelled through time to leave those health packs lying around for good ol' Cap and taught him the magical shutdown phrase, "Klatu barada nicto." Yesiree, World War II sure was something. And Mom says all this nerd stuff never taught me anything.


1.  And This Is Why I'll Never Have Kids – Silent Hill 3

Don't be afraid to take a few parenting tips from the Silent Hill series. First one being the adoption of a demonspawn daughter, second one being to always plan ahead. See, when cult leader Claudia induces magical labor in protagonist Heather (did I mention she's pregnant with God?) our heroine somehow has the presence of mind to finally discover what the mysterious locket given to her by dear Daddy so many years ago really is: Divine Plan B. After scarfing down the little red pill, she scarfs up a fetus. Sorry, hang on, I know I might've lost some of you there, so let me reiterate:

She vomits up a f***ing god fetus. Right there on the floor. And yes, the game shows it. But we're not done yet -Claudia isn't one to give up so easily. If Heather won't give birth to God, then goldarnit, Claudia's just gonna pull up her bootstraps and do it herself. So naturally she scoops it up and eats the damn thing. She then waddles over to a metal hole in the ground meant to symbolize a vagina and is yanked inside by (apparently) Pillow Pants the p**** troll. Heather then follows her in to do battle with a 10-foot tall, emaciated monster wearing her face.

So! Who's hungry?

[Dorkly]

[GamerMan316]

Six game franchises Rocksteady should revive next

[GamerMan316]

Not a gaming list but still a good read, though you'll all already know my answer!   

What Makes Horror Games Scary?

[GamerMan316]

5 reasons why gaming is going downhill