50. Link's Awakening (2019)
Nintendo pulled off the rare feat of a surprise remake announcement that pleased even the most cynical and weathered of gaming critics when they unveiled back in April that their 1993 Game Boy title Link's Awakening would be receiving a full overhaul for the Switch later in the year. They rolled the dice on yet another art style for this series, and it really paid off.
Reimagining the world of Koholint Island as a childlike sandbox with toy figurines is simply perfect. The game is meant to look and feel (at first, anyway) like chantilly: Light, airy, and sweet. LA Link's (that's what I'm calling him) beady eyes and playful expressions really drive this home; he's less the hero of time and more a kid on an imaginary(?) adventure of (self-)discovery.
Every bit of this is cuteness overload. They even brought Dampe the gravedigger into this universe and somehow made him cute, and it WORKS!
The heavier message of the game still lands impactfully enough, though. The juxtaposition of these adorable characters and their existential reflections on their own lives is even more jarring played out in HD, and that's really the point of this game.
This meta metaphor is very much served by this remake, and I'm thrilled that it got the larger audience it's always deserved.
49. NES Remix
I never did get into the Wario Ware series, but when I found out about NES Remix, I snatched a copy immediately, and it did not disappoint.
The idea is similar: Micro-games in which you must perform actions very quickly, but this time, each small section is from an NES game that you've probably played 100 times. It's the ultimate test of the '90s kid's muscle memory.
Grab 50 rupees. Collect a 1-up from these 10 Koopa Troopas. Defeat Whispy Woods. Launch over these four dirt hills. Take out Mother Brain. Oh, and do it all in under 15 seconds to get rainbow stars!
There are also creative and exciting variants on the levels that you already know and love, such as having to leap over DK's barrels in almost total darkness.
The series began on Wii U and has been packaged in a (mostly) complete collection for both that system and the 3DS. I'd love to see another batch (or even just this one) come to the Switch, because this is the kind of thing you can turn on when you have 5-10 minutes to kill, and still rack up some serious progress in your save file!
48. The Typing Of The Dead: Overkill
The original The Typing Of The Dead was a mod of The House Of The Dead 2 that originally came out 20 years ago. Most who have heard of it are likely familiar with the Dreamcast version, in which the game's heroes wear modded Dreamcasts on their backs and have a keyboard in front of them that rests on a platform supported by their shoulders.
I didn't discover until years later that the first version was in fact in an actual arcade cabinet, complete with keyboards, which is just fantastic.
Our generation loves quirky "hey remember that thing" stuff from our childhoods, so this was a perfect candidate for a reboot, and hooooo boy did Sega lean into it. Calling this game "gross" is a gross understatement; this game is N-A-S-T-Y.
And it's not just the gore, either. The game makes you type cartoonishly profane things as you blast through zombies while your characters yell copious amounts of f-bombs themselves.
Normally I'm very anti the Rob Zombie school of "say fuck a lot and have prurient things happen for no reason," but it's just so perfectly suited to this game that I can't help but enjoy myself. The final boss is exceptionally gross: Your nemesis literally gives birth to new enemies during the battle.
Queasy and/or puritanical gamers, this one's not for you, but I'm cool hanging out in the slop this time. Hey, maybe just try the Shakespeare mod!
47. Doom (2016)
I would absolutely pick 2016's Doom as my biggest surprise of the decade, in that I ignored it for the first two years it was out, expecting for it not to really be my thing, then I bought it on sale and quickly realized how wrong I was.
Above all else, this game is FAST. You zip around bases on Mars with lightning speed, ripping away any hellish creatures that stand in your path, complete with satisfying bright visuals and crackling sound effects.
Most impressive of all, it maintained the apocalyptic, panicked feel of its predecessors, the sulfur backdrop of Mars amplifying your sense of impending...well, you know.
46. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
We all waited 12 years for a sequel to the brilliant GameCube launch title Luigi's Mansion, and Nintendo delivered in 2013 with this 3DS release, which sent Luigi back to E. Gadd's lab outside a complex of haunted hallways.
It was this lab, though, that was also the game's biggest problem: Having to return to it after each mission really dampered the pacing!
No matter, though, this game was great, and it introduced some really cool new mechanics to the series, such as the Dark-Light, which allowed for the hiding of (sometimes important) objects in plain sight!
Also new in this installment were more environmental things for Luigi to interact with to solve puzzles, rather than every single thing boiling down to vacuuming up a ghost (as was mostly the case in the original).
We also got Polterpup!!
Almost everything introduced here would be improved upon in the third installment, but that's a conversation for a later post. I loved this game and think it's a very welcome entry in this wonderful series.
(I hear the multiplayer mode is great too, but I've not had the fortune of finding another player with whom to try it!)
