1up made this list of the top 5 games to play when you’re drunk in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

5. Breakout - Atari 2600

For some, the average Atari 2600 game loses its luster within the first 15 seconds. And while 2600 graphics are, to the sober mind, dated and blocky, to the sloshing brain the graphics are alive, immediate, and contemporary. I know for a fact that you can play Breakout boozily, because I’ve witnessed it. Once, I walked out of my living room just as a friend hit the reset switch on my 2600. When I walked back in, there he was, sitting on the floor with his eyes kind of misty, the paddle control in front of him. He’d beaten Breakout. “I’m a genius!” he told me. Breakout is a very twitchy game that requires fine, precise movements and astute snap decision-making. In that regard it’s practically a sobriety test. Of course alcohol hadn’t improved my friend’s hand-eye coordination (but don’t tell him that). However, he was in the Zone, in that Zen mindset where patterns and trajectories begin to make a strange cosmic sense. Also, a PBR had temporarily turned my friend into a struttin’ cock of the walk, which surely helped his game. If you don’t have Breakout at hand (and if you aren’t yet in your 30s, I can’t fault you), challenge your friends to Arkanoid. If you’re feeling really competitive, do Pong.

4. Rez HD - 360

Perhaps games like Breakout benefit from alcohol consumption because they do rely on visual abstraction. Modern shoot-em-ups like Rez also seem to benefit from beer buzz: The half-awake, primal brain focuses on nothing in particular, and yet, as if automagically, you manage to rack up a phenomenal score. “Have you ever experienced shooter Zen?” Scott Sharkey once asked. “It’s that trancelike state you slip into, where your mind merges with the game and no matter what it throws at you, you’re going to survive because you’re freaking Superman.” Mike Bracken of GameCritics elaborates: “To become a true shmup master, one must enter a Zen-like state wherein the gamer becomes one with the controller and his onscreen avatar.” Now they call trance music “trance” for a reason, and Rez is one of the few games that inexplicably combines lightning-fast action with vegetativeness (which is a real word; I checked). We’re not telling you to booze yourself into Buddha — but if you’re of age, gellin’ like Magellan can make Rez even more engaging and rhythmic. Just ask Mizuguchi. If you hate electronica music, we recommend Geometry Wars.

3. Guitar Hero - PS2, 360, Wii, Mac

With “beatmatching” rhythm games and alcohol, there’s a dramatic bell curve. You’re invincible after a beer, but after one too many, you’re so kicked out of the band. The reason you can play games after a whiskey is actually the same reason you don’t drive after a whiskey: Slightly impaired judgment means you’re more confident, more daring. Your score in Guitar Hero may markedly improve after a drink if only because, for instance, you wouldn’t ordinarily attempt that really difficult solo. There’s a fine line between taking risks and getting stupid, though, and it generally coincides with getting your toy guitar taken away. Waning, boozy attention spans might tire of Guitar Hero’s music catalog; in that case, we recommend Audiosurf as a viable alternative.

2. WarioWare: Smooth Moves - Wii

With alcohol, it’s easy to coerce your friends into doing things they would never ordinarily do. Turn that negative into a positive! Nothing feels quite so right as finding four of the burliest, manliest dudes you can, moving the Hummel figurines out of arm’s reach, and bringing out the Wii Remotes. In an event like this, many partygoers prefer WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Your friends will look silly playing any movement game, irrespective of whether it stars Wario, but WarioWare includes a lot more hopping, ducking, and flapping than tennis does. And if booze is good for anything it’s making you unafraid to look like an ass. Don’t forget the camcorder! In a pinch, you could make your friends play Wii Sports, but if coordination becomes a problem, why not bring out SingStar or Karaoke Revolution instead?

1. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - DS

So, you’re drinking alone. No, no, don’t explain. I am loath to admit I completed Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney with, literally, one eye open. And while you might not think booze and detective work go together (although, come to think of it, there is a certain Sam Spade appeal there), the truth is, point-and-click adventure puzzles seem to go down a little easier with a glass of wine. Especially when they’re mysterious. But why is that? Alcohol doesn’t necessarily improve your acuity or powers of deduction — not by any stretch! — but it does make you more brash, more determined. With point-and-click adventures, in which the only real adversary is your own sense of frustration, brash tenacity is a virtue worth rewarding. If courtroom battles aren’t your thing, settle into your easy chair with a pipe and a decanter and check out Professor Layton and the Curious Village to see how the juice affects your holmesian intellect.

[source]

Raychul over at GameGirl made the following list of her top 7 scariest video games:

It’s Halloween season (my favorite season!) and to celebrate I decided to kick off our Top 7 List section with the 7 scariest games. Now remember, these lists are only my opinion, they are in no way an official lists or have anything to do with sales numbers and charts. So let’s begin!

1. Doom 3

Everyone remembers Doom, the game that you played in the dark. Doom was creepy for it atmosphere, it’s “end of the world” feeling with such darkness and it’s unnerving soundtrack. Monsters seemed to come out of nowhere, you only caught a glimpse as you frantically looked around with your flashlight. Doom didn’t play with your head like some of the other games I will mention, but it definitely mastered the loud noise that made you jump effect.

2. Ill Bleed

Ill Bleed was one of my all time favorite games on the Sega Dreamcast, I can only hope and pray for a sequel. Ill Bleed was a great game because it played with all of your senses, and you had to use your senses to make it through each story. The game was that of a cheesy 70’s flick, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play. Scary monsters, creepy soundtrack, and armed with little or no weapons makes for an awesomely scary game.

3. Eternal Darkness

Eternal Darkness is one of my favorite games on the Gamecube. Eternal Darkness didn’t scare you with monsters and zombies, instead they used the psychological thriller approach. Strange sounds, someone knocking on your door but no ones there, footsteps upstairs, and the fact that at any point you could lose grip on sanity and the game will literally go crazy. I absolutely love the dark and foreboding feeling of this game, makes you wonder if it’s just the game or are you actually losing your head.

4. Resident Evil

Ah, Resident Evil, most gamers first love in the survival horror genre. I liked the first Resident Evil because it was so new, I mean how many of you still remember throwing your controller in fright the first time one of those zombie dogs jumped through the window?! I still remember the moment like it was yesterday, I love the other Resident Evil titles, but none of them got me the way the first one did, you always remember your first right? :)

5. Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 was a great game and great next step for the scary game enthusiasts. The storyline was a little better than the first one and monsters seemed to be smarter. Not to mention Pyramid Head, just the size of his blade and the sound of it on the concrete. It will be hard to top this Silent Hill in the newer installments to come.

6. Silent Hill

The first Silent Hill holds a special place in my heart, it had everything a scary games needs, it had the jump in your seat moments like Resident Evil, it had the creepy environments like I had never seen before and it had some of the most unnerving sound effects and music I have ever heard. To this day, hearing the static from the Silent Hill radio still gives me the creepy crawlies. There were moments in the game while searching for more ammo or health that I would ask myself if it was really worth it to go through that next door because what could be on the other side would scare the hell out of me. Silent Hill was scary and uncomfortable to play, but one hell of a game, easily one of my all time favorites.

7. Fatal Frame

Lastly, at the top of my Scariest Games list comes Fatal Frame. Nothing has ever made me as uncomfortable and actually given me nightmares like Fatal Frame did. When you give me a game that puts me in an abandoned old house full of ghosts with no eyes, or ropes marks around their necks, or even broken necks hanging oddly to the side, a damn scary soundtrack that involves giggling children, and to top it all off I am only given a camera to defend myself with, then you have a terrifying mixture for pure scary fun! But you don’t have time to be scared in Fatal Frame, you are expected to keep calm because at any moment a ghost could pop out in front of you and you have seconds to capture their image, so no throwing your controller in this game. Also the cut scenes were gruesome; one cut scene you see a girl blinded when her elders shove a mask onto her face with spikes through the eyeholes, or another cut scene when you see a girl quartered when she is tied to a rock bed and ropes are wrapped around her ankles, wrists and even her neck. Oh the blood, the blood! I love this game!

Experts pick the games most worthy of preserving.

SAN FRANCISCO — Who makes a list of 10 all-time great games and leaves “Pac-Man” off the list? Henry Lowood and four of his friends did.

Lowood is the curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections for Stanford University. More relevant to gamers, though, is the fact that Lowood recently got together with another game researcher, a blogger and two highly respected developers to come up with a list of games they feel should go in a museum.

“The video game canon is a list of 10 games that are important for history and all of game culture,” he said when the five-person panel sat down with MTV News at the Game Developers Conference earlier this month in San Francisco. “The reason we wanted to put a canon together was to jump-start efforts to preserve the history of digital gaming.”

Last July, the Library of Congress put out a call for suggestions on how the institution could preserve digital content, including “interactive games.” The Library collects important cultural and literary works from throughout the world, but so far hasn’t archived games. “I believe that was the first time a major American cultural institution said, ‘Games belong on that list,’ ” Lowood said. He decided to make a list, a suggested starting point of what should be saved.

A few months ago he roped in game designers Warren Spector (“Deux Ex”) and Steve Meretzky (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) along with fellow academic Matteo Bittanti and gaming blogger Christopher Grant of Joystiq.com. Their mission, at first just by e-mail, was to submit two games apiece for the proposed museum list. Then they argued. Then they presented at GDC.

The list:

“Civilization” (series)

“Doom”

“Sensible World of Soccer”

“SimCity” (series)

“Spacewar!”

“Star Raiders”

“Super Mario Bros. 3”

“Tetris”

“Warcraft” (series)

“Zork”

Read the rest of this page »