Too funny! This is one of the best top 10 lists I've ever read!

Very funny list. My pick for the best Top Ten List.

How about the chesticles on the end boss of Dead Space for rule #6? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R7hgU0CVyc

(Spoilers, duh.)

Glad you guys liked it

Alex, thank you, YOU RUINED DEAD SPACE FOR ME! How am I supposed to be afraid of something if I can't stop laughing at it. Seriously though, chesticles are funny.

But if we got rid of ridiculous titles, I wouldn't be in the position of being able to say I've played Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram!

The game title rule cracked me up!

Wow, Persona 4 doesn't even try to hide it. That is a dick, plain and simple.

DOMINATRIX BANANAHEAD!!!! 

But anyway, the way that the Japanese call Monster Hunter Tri is Monster Hunter 3(tri)...... or if you're basing it on the kana, Monsta Hanta 3 (torai). Make of that what you will. XD

Oh god, I'd just finished part of a review of FF13. Don't ruin all the bad parts of my game. Lol.

I mean, there's no reason for Lightning to have a gunblade, but come on. It's cooler to have a gun on your sword. It's like, two in one.

The funny thing with Zone of the Enders pertaining to number 5, in an interview, Hideo Kojima said the pun was exactly what he was going for with that.

And btw, I still like using Mara in Persona 3 and 4. I mean, I'm not ashamed to admit that I played with the NESticle emulator and I don't consider that mastur--

--oh forget it.

I almost completely disagree with number 2. As both MGS2 and Halo 2 worked for me just fine. They told a story the game wanted to tell and having characters jump into the lead aside from the main character of the series helped that story develop. It was only a problem because gamers have waaaaaay too much of a bromance for master chief and solid snake.  Devil may cry was underwhelming though. Nero lacked any real character or purpose.

I disagree with a couple of these. On guns, if guns were always the weapon of choice that always work better than blades, why did military weapons have bayonettes? When they work, and when they're sufficiently technologically advanced, they will beat a plain old steel sword, but we're often not talking about plain old steel swords in these games, nor a sufficiently advanced gun. There's numerous series of Scifi, not the least of which was Dune, which came up with ways that projectile weapons fall out of favor due to other defensive technology or improved melee technology. 

Though, Disgaea 1 and Final Fantasy Tactics have both handled firearms in a very appropriate way. Firearms are as powerful as any other weapon in Disgaea 1, and have a much wider range. The strength of the character is irrelevant, and it's primarily up to their HIT stat (accuracy) to determine damage, as you would expect from a firearm. In FFT, the only guns are relatively underpowered muskets, but they have a very wide range and direct line of sight limitation. They're slow to reload and have other technologically-appropriate limitations.

On 3, Z.H.P.: Unloosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman is a perfect title for the game, and lets you  know right up front exactly how serious the game is. (Not at all.) The Devil Summoner one is a title I like as well. You're right about Square Enix numeric titles getting a bit absurd though. It's a bit like the Dragon Slayer series from Falcom though. It's denoting a sub-series. Falcom's method was much better though.

(Dragon Slayer 6: Legend of Heroes was followed up by a series of Legend of Heroes games where they dropped the Dragon Slayer label.)

And for 2, I think it's legitimate for the star to change part way through, if it fits the narrative. Take Gurran Lagann for example. Kamina is assuredly the star of the show, with Simon playing a backup character for the first half. Half-way through, the show suddenly switches to Simon as the star of the show. Kamina is still influencing the show and Simon significantly, but he's no longer the one the show centers around. It made perfect sense for the show to progress that way, it had way more impact.

hehe...NESticle. Anyway, on to the responses!

@Jeffrey,

I can understand that sentiment. When I first played MGS2, I had no problem with Raiden. Then again, I was playing with the hopes of getting my hands on Snake again. 10 years later, we still haven't been able to play as Solid Snake. Sure, Naked Snake (aka Big Boss) looked, acted, and sounded just like Solid Snake, and Old Snake was Solid Snake, just prematurley old, but it's not the same. It's almost like Kojima said, "Want to continue the adventure of Solid Snake? Play MGS2:SOL."

As for Halo 2, I didn't really care too much that I played as the Arbiter, but alot of people were pissed about it, and IMO, Halo 2 was the weakest in the franchise. Was it because of the Arbiter? Probably not, but I still have to question the decision to switch to a different main character, especially after the fervent fan outcry from playing as Raiden.

The main problem with both MGS2 and Halo 2 was that no one knew that the main star would take a back seat in favor of a new character. Hell, Kojima even went as far as altering footage to keep the existence of Raiden hidden. That was not cool.

After all, would you want a God of War 4 in which you played as Kratos for the first hour, only to be replaced by some guy that his sister's mother's cousin's great-grandson met at a bar once?

@EK

Sure, swords are cooler than guns, and they can even cut a bullet in half. But guns will make you dead-er faster. When someone can hit something with a sword at the same velocity and impact as a bullet shot from a gun, I will recant.

I do understand the appeal of swords, especially in stat driven games like RPGs. After all, stats like strength and defense only really apply to melee combat. However, when games are set in a relatively futuristic world (like FF7, 8, and 13), and almost every enemy soldier has a rapid fire weapon, it doesn't make much sense that the protagonists would use swords against them. Sure, there is usually a party member who does use guns (and in 2/3 of the games I just mentioned, it's the black guy), but if guns are readily available, why not use them? You can do all of the flipping and kung-fu moves in the world, but a moderately trained soldier with a sub machine gun would still shoot you ten times before you got close enough to swing your sword. Now, if those games presented a situation in which guns had no effect (like with Star Wars and Jedi) then it would be a completely diffrent story.

@matthew

If you take yourself out of the equation and look at why Kojima did what he did for the game and for the series then it makes much more sense. Kojima's lieing and misinformation machine to fool players into thinking snake was the lead of MGS2 was designed as a tie in to the actual experience of playing the game. This is underlined by actual scenes of the doctored footage showing up at the climax as Raiden is wading through the misinformation surrounding the S3 program.  He showed you how much being the providor of information provides control over people by fooling his fanbase. He did this to make a point about how the information age can be exploited. This is the person who created psycho mantis, he crafts his games to the experience he wants to give the player, not the experience the player asked for.

He goes even further with Old snake, outright denying the return to form that the fans wanted to underline the themes of MGS4. By having the player thinking about the good old days from MGS1 constantly but not getting the same experience and being outright told the old days were gone he actually mirrored in the player Snake's feelings about growing old and facing death. I personally don't care if this is neccisarily fair to the fans it's brilliant storytelling and I wouldn't trade it for some cheap thrill of fanservice.

As for halo 2, I don't think that was nearly as well thought out, but I thought the arbiter was a strong character, and the contrast between him and the master chief helped both characters define themselves. Also the master chief is too bland and one note outside of the book series to be worth clamoring for as much as fans do anyway. When people clamor for the master chief as a character they are really just clamoring for the sense of power that the first game invested in the player IMO. The concept of being an unstoppable cyborg badass is interesting to them. Something I would argue is missing from the later games in the series even when the master chief is the main character. Master chief from halo 2 onward has the health of a scarecrow and can't play nearly as agressively as in halo 1.

@ Jeffrey

MGS4 was good, and I did like the portrayal of Snake and the throwback to MGS1. The return to Shadow Moses was a nice touch.

On the other hand, MGS2 amounted to a simple bait and switch (a practice that I'm fairly certain is illegal). By advertising the game as Snake's adventure, and switching it to Raiden's without telling anyone before hand, Kojima alienated a large portion of fans. While fan expectations need to be tempered by a creator's artistic expression, deception at the level Kojima took it (doctoring footage and giving no indication that Raiden even existed prior to the game's release) doesn't make him deep, it just kind of makes him a douche. Konami and Kojima sold their game under false pretenses, and there is no metaphoric explanation that will make up for it.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel this wouldn't be an issue if Raiden were simply a better character.

@Matt I'm not going to get into an argument as to how good a character Raiden is because that's a fairly subjective concept, but I'm going to completely stand by my saying that Kojima had every right to do what he did, it made sense for the game and gave some real extra depth to the storytelling engine for those willing to look past the initial offense.(When the game tells you that raiden is a proxy for solid snake in a proxy shadow moses, that sort of adds new layers to the bait and switch. Kojima knew that some fans wanted MGS2 to be JUST LIKE MGS1 as many video game fans feel about sequels and he essentially corrupted that wish and turned it on it's head for sport)

Not to mention that i'm pretty sure that fiction is exempt from having it's content regulated to meet fan expectations or it's advertising forced to say EXACTLY what happens even if it may piss people off when ads and the product don't match up or when a game does everything but outright say that a game is starring a character and then switches main characters for the latter 3 4ths of the game. If you forced any sort of regulation on that kind of thing it would be a violation of creative freedom. Imagine if no game could suprise the audience in a way that wasn't guaranteed to please 100 percent of the fans. It would be DULL.

The fact of the matter is Kojima treated the advertisements and preview hype buildup for MGS2 as an extension of the experience of the game itself, and the experience of MGS2 just happens to be about being lied to by everyone and forced to decide for yourself what truth means when no one else knows or cares. Up until MGS2 came out all speculation about how it would play out was guaranteed to be wrong because no one knew about Raiden. He essentially robbed the fanbase of the truth and played the bad guy so they would know first hand how it feels to be lied to by a trusted person and have that fresh in their minds as emotional weight to the 'what the hell is going on and why are these people acting so strange' tension that MGS2 was trying to create. When Raiden comes into play he has officially told the fan base 'you all have no idea what to expect. Deal with it'

In the end I think the game was better for it, and I think you werent' missing any part of the MGS experience playing it.

Gameplay wise Raiden plays almost exactly the same as Snake so gameplay wasn't effected.  Snake was still in the game a very great deal of the time as a supporting character and gave snake fans plenty of badass and fun moments to enjoy (Kojima stated he wanted to give players a new respect of and awe for snake by viewing him from the outside, I like to think it worked, and the certainly coveted him more knowing he wasn't a guarantee.)  On top of all this Raiden worked for his role in the story and the game. Raiden was NOT meant to be a badass character in MGS2. He was meant to be Naive and foolish and under the thumb of his superiors so that as he found out he was being lied to and fought back and learned to accept his past he went through an arc and improved as a character. I even like to think some of the fouth wall breaking with the 'S3' system glitching near the end of the game beat Bioshock to the punch of paralelling game designer control to in game storyline control...Hell Kojima went one step further and played one of the bad guys in his own game practically by lieing to his fans about snake.

You can not like it all you want but the fact of the matter is that Kojima was allowed to do what he did, he did it, and a lot of the good parts of every metal gear game since 2 hinge on the story that was told through Raiden's eyes. I also personally feel as if I was improved as a human being and given plenty of food for thought by this game's message and it's brilliant manipulations.

Many MGS fans complain about the raiden switch and many MGS fans also complain about the games having too many cutscenes or being too confusing/stupid/goofy. That's fine but those fans need to stop acting like every MGS fan complains about this stuff and treat it as gospel failings because many less vocal fans LOVE everything you hate.

Hee. I love talking shop about metal gear in case you haven't noticed. Sorry to be belabor the point a little too much but it's interesting stuff to discuss.

@Matt: I've always had odd feelings about the MGS2 controversy. The first time I played it, I really thought Kojima screwed me over. However, I didn't feel terrible, because that was the point of the storyline.

Even today, I think the game really accomplished a lot of cool ideas. The S3 glitches were really fun to watch. The Shadow Moses simulation cracked me up in a good way. It really proved that the Metal Gear Solid series could afford to have a sense of humor about anything and everything.

And for the record, I want to pull off the Snake/Otacon secret handshake someday. Lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJBhDCqqBc

@ Jeff

I also find this incredibly interesting. And that thing I said about bait and switch being illegal was supposed to be a joke, which, evidently, was a terrible one. I never meant to say that Kojima actually did anything illegal, I just meant that I feel swindled.

I do remember a post-release interview with Kojima (or maybe it was someone else at Konami) that compared MGS2 to Sherlock Holmes, because all (or most) Sherlock Holmes stories are written from the perspective of Watson, and that was sort of what Kojima was aiming for with the perspective shift from Snake to Raiden. So instead of actually seeing Snake do awesom stuff, we just see him run off and assume that awesome-ness occurred, which in my opinion, doesn't work. In a game that has already established dual protagonists, I see no reason why Raiden and Snake simply couldn't switch again.I understand the theme of misinformation and deception, but I also believe that the same story could have been told through Snake's perspective, and (since Raiden played just like Snake) with Snake as the main playable character. Sure, some things would have to be moved around a bit, but I don't think the story warranted a completely new character to take the reigns. Its possible to tell a story about deceit without alienating most of the people who want to experience that story.

On the other hand, breaking the fourth wall is always fun, I did like MGS2s approach to it, especially the nod to Snake's bandana, which gave him infinite ammo (and clued us in as to the cannonical ending of MGS1).And yes, MGS2 did beat Bioshock to the game designer control point, but in MGS2 it was a subtler approach, whereas Bioshock threw it in your face. Not the subtlest approach, but, in my opinion, the more impactful of the two.

MGS2 wasn't a bad game, its just that my enjoyment of it was hampered by the removal of Snake (and yes, I do think that Snake was a better character than Raiden). But its funny how a lot of people, myself included, didn't like Raiden much in MGS2, but really wanted to play with him in MGS4 , which is sort of similar to what happened with Leo Stenbuck in Zone of the Enders. People complained, so Kojima made them awesome in the next game and said, "you can't have them." At least, in Raiden's case, there is MGS: Rising. Still waiting on ZOE3 and the return of Stenbuck.

@Jon

I kind of wish I could do that handshake too, just without the dude-bro hug at the end. I also wish I could do the jazz hands of death.

I just hope I never meet the president like this.

@Matthew: I haven't played MGS4, because I have an Xbox. Those jazz hands were freaking awesome though. Lol.

Yeah, that presidential meeting was awkward. I though the Volgin meeting was funnier though. And even more random.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Df6uoPrs0

I don't really think you could tell a story about a naive person falling for governmental manipulation to be part of a suspicious test for a platform for worldwide information control with Solid snake as the main character. If you like anything about what MGS2 did as a story or as an experience you kind of have to admit that the good parts of it could not have existed without Raiden.

That said I would still like to see a MGS:Rising-esque side game where you play as snake during the big shell incident. It wouldn't be MGS2 and wouldn't be good for the same reasons MGS2 was good, but it would definately be a fun and interesting story to look at the same events from the perspective of the guy who you 'just assumed awesomeness occured' to.

As for Raiden's worth as a character and MGS2's events being interesting: Raiden went through a lot in that game and in my opinion it was just as harrowing, full of intrigue, and entertaining as MGS1. The only real thing that dragged the game down compared to MGS1 would probably be his relationship with rose being a bit ham fisted. Don't let your bitterness about not playing as snake blind you to a well constructed game with countless memorable moments. You know you were just as drawn in and amused when 'campbell' started talking about the purple stuffed web worm with the tuning fork. Also you can't honestly say that fighting alongside snake in a running firefight wasn't wicked awesome.

Oh...and I liked raiden better in MGS2 then he is in MGS4. In metal Gear solid 4 he's an irrational punk who's trying too hard and can't see the forest for the trees. That to me is more annoying then in MGS2 where he was a naive but well meaning greenhorn. Especially since MGS4 Raiden discards a great deal of the life lessons he learned from MGS2.

Actually, I think you could tell a story about a "person falling for governmental manipulation to be part of a suspicious test for a platform for worldwide information control with Solid snake as the main character." See, just take out the "naive" part, and you got yourself a game :)

i will say that MGS2 was well constructed, after all, I wouldn't be so bitter if it wasn't. Then again, my most memorable moments from MGS2 are Otacon banging his step-mom while his father and sister drowned, Raiden being afraid of the dark, Vamp doing ballet, Raiden being afraid of the dark and eating gun powder, and the big shell crashing into NYC, and leaving the body of a former president lying in the middle of the street in a suit of super armor with tenticles and two katanas.

As for that running firefight with Snake, I remember being stuck with a sword for that...

You could switch to a gun in that fight. I know, I did a bunch of the times. As for talking about all the silly stuff that happens in MGS2, if you are really looking for a game where weird things don't happen then don't go looking into a series that's most prominent game has a plot based around cloning, has boss fights against a psychic, a shaman, a cyborg super ninja, your clone, a guy who's so good at shooting revolvers that his guns bend the laws of time and space, and a mech named after a dinosaur with a gigantic phallic rail gun.

Also the 'naive' part is the most important part. Because snake would never have gotten drawn into things as much as Raiden was. The last time he was under the thumb of someone he didn't trust it was because he was kidnapped and extorted (oh yeah, snake DIDN'T want to be in shadow moses. Remember?) and after the betrayals he suffered from that incident he became notably more paranoid and careful, something that doesn't mix with being a puppet of the patriots. If snake was the main character then it just wouldn't have been MGS2. Might have still been a good game but that wasn't the story Kojima wanted to tell, and I personally respect that decision and enjoyed the result.

But of course a lot of this is just restating things we've said previously. Feel free to continue arguing specific points as I love arguing back but the long and short of it is mostly a matter of personal taste and I don't begrudge you not liking it, that's your own bidness. I just have plenty of explainations for why I like it and why things happened that way worked out in my head that I like talking about.