Nicely, this matches up with the runner-up from yesterday.
Day 10: Best Gameplay
Super Metroid
Admittedly, there are some notable ones that I haven't played through, but for my money, Super Metroid is the best side-scroller ever made. I've never played another game that so completely immerses you in the world it creates even though it lacks a third dimension. Some of the Castlevania's come close, but I don't quite think they match it. There aren't many 2D environments as fully realized as Zebes is. The attention to deal is amazing. In the opening area, before you get the morphing ball and the planet seems to "wake up," you walk through the ruins of the Mother Brain machine from the original NES game. How many games of Super Metriod's era had callbacks like that? Lights glow rhythmically in the background, old ruins will look eroded, insects will be crawling along a wall and then dart away: all of these details give the world an sense of plausibility even though it's completely flat. Aiding this is the cool as hell, ethereal soundtrack that oft times seems less like actual instruments and more like rhythmic noises coming from some deep nether-regions, like the drums in the Mines of Moria scene of Fellowship of the Ring or something. Every area has so much character, from the Wrecked Ship, still haunted by the ghosts of its crew, to the abyssal depths of Marida, to the Dante's Inferno-esque Norfair. The bosses are some of the most creative you'll see in any game as well. Kraid, who was in the first game, but here takes up two screens worth of space, which was pretty unheard of at the time. There's also Phantoon, a flying one-eyed squid that lets out a very human-like shriek when you hit it that's pretty much nightmare fuel. Speaking of nightmare fuel, there's the Crocomire, which you kill by pushing into molton lava and then manages to come back and try and kill you one more time after that only to have all it's skin burned off. And of course, Mother Brain comes back, except this time sprouts gets out of nowhere when you think you've killed it.
This is best gameplay, though, and none of the above would matter if the game wasn't also fun to play. It is. First of all, when you're playing the game for the first time or two and you're not familiar with it, the path to take is not at all obvious. You have to bounce between areas a lot and do a lot of backtracking. The game manages to do this without frustrating you though. You never feel like it's making you backtrack just to be a dick, and when you eventually progress, the new area is always a cool experience to make the effort seem worth it. Then of course you want to play the game again knowing what you learned the first time and shave time off your playthrough. Missile and bomb upgrades are scattered all throughout the world in unlikely places that, (if you're not using a FAQ) are not at all trivial to find. The game is the perfect example of "easy to learn, difficult to master." Not only does knowing where you're going help, but there are various tricks, like wall jumping (and some glitches) that open up shortcuts for you that aren't at all obvious when you're just trudging through the first time. Amongst games that are single-player only and don't have a lot of customizable elements, there aren't many with the sort of playability that Super Metroid has.
The way you can upgrade Samus throughout the game is fantastic, not just the amount of upgrades, but the diversity of them. There's no "your level 2 gun is now a level 3 gun!" Every item is unique in what it does and can be anything from the iconic morphing ball, where you literally roll up like a pillbug (I had to Google that), to a weapon that freezes enemies in place, to the Space Jump, which creates some sort of cyclone thing that lets you jump indefinitely. All of these work like they're supposed to, with fluid and intuitive controls. You can scroll through your missle and bomb weapons with one button, and other than that, you don't have to go through menus to "activate" anything (you can turn abilities off it you want to), it's all built into the existing controls. There are some exploitable glitches, but none that you really run into on accident. It's a very polished game, and a very, very fun one. One of my all time favorites (gonna have to way until day 30 to see if it is my all-time favorite)
Next: Day 11 -- Game system of choice
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