[General Discussion] Top Developers

Level-5 has always shown a knack for how to do RPGs in a way that tickles my old-school bone without feeling dated. Dragon Quest VIII was a Dragon Quest game, for sure, but was done with enough style and *oomph* that it didn't bore me to tears the way the others do. Dark Cloud 1 was a rough start, but Dark Cloud 2 is still one of the most fantastic games for the PS2, and the lack of a third is damn criminal.

Twisted Pixel is a newer developer that deserves a lot of credit. Their first two games that they themselves worked on start to finish (They did bits and pieces of Blitz II: The League and NBA Ballers Primetime, but those were essentially Midway projects), Splosion Man and The Maw, are great examples of how to make family-friendly fun games that play well, look great, and are just downright fun to play. The Maw's gameplay was an interesting... thing, I can't figure out how to describe it, and its humor was right on the money most of the time. Splosion Man is seriously one of the best platformers I've played in recent years. They managed to design levels that sit right on the line between challenging and unfairly hard while still allowing for flights of whimsy like flying 500 yards back and forth across a room. Could the room have been 50 yards across? Sure, but 500 yards looks cooler.

Those games are on the XBLA and stand out as examples of what can happen on the XBLA when you develop a game specifically for it. Neither of those games are particularly long, but they're just the right length for their price (You could argue Maw could've stood to be $5 less, I guess, but Splosion Man is great) and worlds better than the ports that are still getting shoved onto XBLA.

Speaking of, PopCap would be my third choice. Say what you will about casual gaming and whether it's the worst thing ever or the worstest thing ever, but fact of the matter is PopCap is the goddamn prototypical casual game developer. What they do, other games follow on, and yet they still manage to get it right the first time more often than not. Their games may usually be short, or light on content, but dammit if they aren't some of the most addictive sons of bitches. Peggle kept me playing for days just because I *had* to get my score into the top 50, and Puzzle Quest was addictive as hell. Hell, they helped Square-Enix with Gyromancer, and that was actually a really good marriage of S-E's RPG experience with PopCap's... well, all they did really was give them the ability to use Bejeweled Twist, but Bejeweled Twist somehow works after all the abuse the original Bejeweled got in terms of ripoffs.

I have to agree with Taco's Q Entertainment choice. Anybody who integrates music into ANY kind of game gets props from me, and Q does it the right way every time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.