11. Resident Evil: Code Veronica (Capcom)
People say
Resident Evil 4 is the best in the series but they're pretty wrong about that, the fools. Resi 4 is a great, occasionally tense, action game, but it's certainly not survival horror and feels, in retrospect, like the moment the series gave up its identity. It's an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter in which you play a man who can only fire his weapon when glued to the spot (fine in the slower paced games, but a real ball ache in number four). Code Veronica, on the other hand, got it right: the first in the series to have 3D rendered backgrounds, yet it wisely retained the static camera angles which allow for great moments of survival horror. You play as Claire Redfield - sister of the first game's protagonist Chris and co-lead of the second game - as she stumbles into another convoluted, labyrinthine Umbrella Corporation conspiracy plot that no one but the hardcore fans are supposed to fully understand. The save points are infrequent and the ammo is scarce (as are the health plants), making for one tense and challenging slog around zombie infested territory. I couldn't ever get beyond the monster at the end of the first disc, trapped forever on a plane, limping with some kind of lame grenade pistol my only company. I'll always wonder what's on that second disc. Originally a Dreamcast exclusive, the game did eventually come out on PS2 and Gamecube after "the fall" (that's what I'm now calling it) and is currently slated for a download release on PS3 and 360.
10. Phantasy Star Online (SEGA/Sonic Team)
RC: My very first online gaming experience, when I look back at it now I cant believe it worked so well with dial-up modems! I remember I had to have the longest possible cable that stretched right across the house from my bedroom all the way to the phone point in my parents room, how times have changed! Phantasy Star Online was the birth of my social media experience. The amount of hours spent in the evening annoying my parents by preventing anyone from calling the landline. The rivalry between my friends and I also began to heat up through the amount of play, to the point where I would pretend to be ill to miss school so that I could level up my character. Aside from that previously mentioned oddity Typing of the Dead (House of the Dead 2 re-tooled so that zombies were killed by quickly spelling words), this was the only compelling reason to own a Dreamcast keyboard. And aside from
Quake 3 Arena, this was the only game I spent any considerable amount of time playing online (dial-up being slow and expensive). SEGA's answer to
Final Fantasy, the Phantasy Star games of the Mega Drive era were standard, top-down JRPG games. However, the Dreamcast offering changed up the formula considerably. Phantasy Star Online was a loot-raiding, dungeon exploring game that today we'd call an MMO. You met friends in the lobby area - a citywhere you could buy, sell and trade weapons and armour - and then descended with them into the lairs of various assorted horrors who needed a good gunning (or a blow to the face from a non-copyright infringing lightsaber). The online chat was especially ingenious, with anything you typed on the keyboard peripheral coming up on-screen in a speech bubble above your fully-customisable character's head, whilst the real-time combat ensured it played like a neon-lit, sci-fi cousin of
Diablo. The only thing that held it back was the cost of going on the internet back in the day, which ensured I was only allowed to play it properly for a couple of hours a week. The offline mode was still fun, but paled in comparison to the social experience.