- 2 years ago
The fab fours.
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00:00 So a few weeks back, WhatCulture looked at the 10 best number 3s in gaming history.
00:04 And it was a very fun video, and we all had at least 3 laughs.
00:08 And it was so much fun, in fact, that we were inspired to write a follow-up.
00:12 But the question is, how do you do that?
00:14 Do you do 10 more best 3s?
00:16 No my friend, you fool.
00:18 You go for the 10 best number 4s in gaming history, because somehow that makes sense.
00:23 So let's take a look at them today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these
00:26 are the 10 best number 4s in gaming history.
00:30 10.
00:31 Saints Row IV
00:32 Now just take a look at this photo of the boss giving the thumbs up as they fall through
00:36 the air.
00:37 That is showing you exactly why Saints Row IV is awesome.
00:41 Because this is just in the tutorial.
00:43 Now Saints Row IV starts where most things would finish, going full spinal tap in its
00:47 desire to fit in absolutely every idea the developers had.
00:51 Alien invasion?
00:52 Check.
00:53 Superpowers?
00:54 Go for it, mate.
00:55 Biz Markie?
00:56 Go for it.
00:57 Saints Row IV is a glorious playground of a game, where the most fun to be had is simply
01:00 exploring the world with your superpowers.
01:03 If you've had a bad day, then leaping from skyscraper to skyscraper while Aerosmith's
01:07 I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing plays in the background will definitely lift your mood.
01:11 Saints Row IV's playground is further bolstered by some of the best playmates in gaming.
01:15 It's a culmination of the bonds forged by the Third Street Saints over the course of
01:19 the series, and features some brilliant character moments.
01:22 Car singing with your besties, watching your friend move on from a toxic ex, and of course
01:27 the best romance in video game history.
01:30 After the debacle of the 2022 reboot, why not treat yourself to a replay of Saints Row
01:34 IV and remember why you fell in love with the Third Street Saints in the first bloody
01:38 place.
01:39 9.
01:40 Gran Turismo 4
01:41 Now, in our last video of the best number threes, one of the most common comments was
01:45 "What?
01:46 No Gran Turismo 3?" or words to that effect.
01:49 But fret not, petrolheads, we didn't forget about PlayStation's greatest racing series,
01:53 we just thought that GT3 was actually trumped by its sequel, which remains a triumph of
01:57 the Fraser Crane philosophy of video game design, which is "If less is more, just
02:02 think how much more more would be".
02:05 Gran Turismo 4 isn't so much a love letter to automotive racing as an epic saga.
02:09 After setting the stage with Gran Turismo 3, the developers pushed the PS2 to its limits
02:14 with the follow-up, with over 50 tracks to race on and more than 700 cars to drive, all
02:19 powered by the best graphics seen on any of Sony's systems at the time.
02:23 In short, GT4 is a game of astonishing depth.
02:26 And you may never see the end of it, because even after 100 hours your game completion
02:29 percentage is still going to be under the halfway mark, but if you have even the slightest
02:34 amount of petrol flowing through your veins, exploring Gran Turismo 4's raceways is time
02:39 very well spent.
02:40 8.
02:41 Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag
02:43 You know a game mechanic is successful when it keeps cropping up in later instalments
02:47 of the series.
02:48 Case in point, Black Flag's sailing, which has shown up in numerous Assassin's Creed
02:53 sequels following its debut in 2013's pirate-themed adventure.
02:57 But honestly though, none of the subsequent creeds have managed to match the high-water
03:01 mark of the fourth entry in the series.
03:04 Black Flag was the perfect marriage of theme and gameplay, with protagonist Edward Kenway's
03:09 nautical lifestyle perfectly feeding into the game's systems of loot to upgrade to
03:13 loot again.
03:14 The game simply wouldn't have worked had Kenway been anything other than a pirate,
03:18 so it's a good thing Ubisoft made being a pirate so damn fun.
03:22 Raiding other vessels, looking for sunken treasure, stabbing at sharks from Hell's
03:26 Heart, all of these activities breathed life into the pirate fantasy that Black Flag was
03:30 selling, and it was glorious.
03:33 As the Assassin's Creed games have become ever more bloated, once again Frasier Crane's
03:37 previously stated belief that "more is more" comes to mind.
03:40 The good doctors Maxim may have worked wonders for Gran Turismo 4, but there are some games
03:45 where less really is more.
03:47 In Black Flag, Ubisoft found the happy medium between the two philosophies, and delivered
03:51 the best game in the series to date.
03:54 7.
03:55 Metroid Fusion
03:56 Now some of you may be raising an eyebrow at this entry, wondering how Metroid Fusion
04:00 made it on a 'best of' list when Super Metroid, its much-vaunted predecessor, didn't.
04:05 But the answer is painfully simple, and that is that Metroid Fusion is just a better game.
04:09 Apologies for the slightly confrontational tone here, but Samus Aran's fourth adventure
04:14 is a successful evolution of the Metroid formula, one that takes everything that made the previous
04:19 game great, and then builds on it.
04:21 The level design is tighter, the bosses are more memorable, and the plot, well, it actually
04:25 exists.
04:26 Samus' inner monologue gave gaming's most famous bounty hunter a welcome dash of personality,
04:32 and the introduction of the Terminator-esque SA-X, essentially a super-powered Samus clone,
04:36 further humanised the formerly inscrutable protagonist.
04:40 Watching Samus go from literally cowering in a ball to hide from her nemesis, to being
04:44 able to fight it on equal footing and eventually overcome it, provided a strong narrative thread
04:49 that had been missing from the previous entries in the series.
04:51 Granted, Fusion's follow-up, the disastrous Metroid Other M, showed what happens when
04:56 Metroid's designers spend too much time focusing on the plot, but that just makes
05:00 Metroid Fusion's achievement in perfecting the balance between gameplay and story all
05:05 the more impressive.
05:06 6. Final Fantasy IV
05:08 The tale of how gaming's most inaccurately named franchise came to be is the stuff of
05:13 industry legend.
05:14 The original Final Fantasy was intended to be just that, one last hurrah from publishers
05:19 Squaresoft before they went under after one too many failures.
05:22 Except the game sold like gangbusters, Squaresoft was saved, and there was much rejoicing.
05:27 Having said that, Square didn't exactly get everything right first try.
05:30 The first Final Fantasy was a solid JRPG, but a bit light on plot.
05:35 The second game was more narrative heavy, but with a wonky, game-breaking levelling
05:39 system.
05:40 And the third game offered entertaining combat, but a very dull story.
05:43 Final Fantasy IV, though, well that was the game that finally nailed the Final Fantasy
05:47 formula.
05:48 This game contained many of the tropes that would come to define the series; a conflicted
05:51 hero turning on his former masters, the death of a party member, and a villain with more
05:55 shades of grey than a spinster's library.
05:58 It also introduced the series' trademark ATB battle system, an elegant fusion of real-time
06:03 and turn-based combat, and was arguably the game where composer Nobuo Uematsu announced
06:08 himself to the world with a theme of love, and the game's pulse-pounding boss battle
06:13 theme signifying his immense talent.
06:15 Also, just putting it out there, you spoony bud is still the best insult ever written
06:19 in a video game.
06:21 5.
06:22 Persona 4
06:23 Sticking with JRPGs, we come to Persona 4, the world's cheeriest murder mystery.
06:28 Since Persona 3, each game in the series has cast a player as a high school student dragged
06:32 into the world of supernatural intrigue.
06:35 As such, it's kind of easy to visualise what each game would be if it were a real-life
06:39 high schooler.
06:40 The moody, downbeat Persona 3 is the class goth, the impeccably stylish Persona 5 is
06:45 the school stud, and Persona 4 is just the one student that everybody likes, an irrepressibly
06:50 cheerful, upbeat force of nature that is impossible not to be friends with.
06:54 And really, friendship is the beating heart of what makes Persona 4 great.
06:58 The cast of misfits, idols, and weirdos are hands down the most entertaining group of
07:03 party members yet seen in a video game.
07:05 There are multiple 20-minute cutscenes where player interaction is limited to just pressing
07:09 X to advance the dialogue, but the strength of the characters' personalities and the
07:13 sheer quality of the writing will have you tapping away with delight, a contended spectator
07:17 laughing alongside gaming's greatest circle of friends.
07:21 There are some wonderfully compelling combat and one of the game's best soundtracks,
07:25 arguably only surpassed by its sequel, and Persona 4 is a lovely 80-hour bubble bath
07:30 of a game.
07:31 4.
07:32 Doom (2016)
07:33 If Persona 4 was content to take agency away from the player in its service of its impeccable
07:38 story, Doom's 2016 reboot takes very much the opposite approach.
07:42 From the off, Doom makes its intentions clear; grab guns, shoot monsters, and go.
07:47 An ever-escalating carnival of shootery, the Doom reboot returned the seminal franchise
07:52 to its roots after Doom 3's turgid foray into survival horror.
07:56 Learning from its predecessor's mistakes, Doom makes the player the most powerful monster
08:00 in the game and gleefully offers them the tools needed to carve their way through its
08:04 iconic bestiary.
08:05 Pinballing through Doom's many encounters as a whirling nightmare of guns, chainsaws,
08:09 and sheer animal rage is satisfying as ever, even in the glut of boomer shooters that followed
08:15 in its wake.
08:16 We've tried, but none have rivaled the sheer wow factor of this 2016 remake.
08:20 It may have taken id Software 22 years and one giant misstep to craft a worthy follow-up
08:25 to Doom 2, but the end result was more than worth the wait.
08:29 3.
08:30 Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare
08:32 Speaking of monumentally important FPS games, Doom may have been a triumphant return to
08:36 old-school values, but Modern Warfare was the game that made those values fall out of
08:41 fashion in the first place.
08:42 The fourth Call of Duty's towering success spawned a host of imitators in the decade
08:47 that followed, but none came close to Modern Warfare's imperious heights.
08:51 To be fair, CoD 4 set a very high bar to reach.
08:54 The perspective-hopping campaign felt genuinely revolutionary at the time, and led to some
08:58 of gaming's most iconic moments.
09:01 Levels such as 'All Ghillied Up', 'Death From Above', and 'Aftermath' carry the
09:04 same heady weight as a vintage wine label, and evoke much of the same sense of satisfaction
09:08 - that of experiencing a perfect exemplar of the craft.
09:13 Oft-limited but never bettered, even by its own bloody sequels, Modern Warfare remains
09:17 a staggering triumph for its campaign alone.
09:20 The fact that it also contained a generation-defining multiplayer frankly feels like cheating from
09:24 Infinity Ward here.
09:26 2.
09:27 God of War 2018
09:28 Have you played the original God of War trilogy recently?
09:31 If not, probably better keep it that way.
09:33 You see, Kratos' odyssey through the Greek mythology has aged pretty badly, from the
09:38 simplistic comeback to the embarrassing 'Edgelord' attitude - best highlighted by God of War
09:43 3's infamous segment where you kill an innocent woman and use her body to prop open a door
09:47 - Kratos' Greek adventures are the gaming equivalent of the crappy poetry you wrote
09:51 in high school.
09:52 It's kind of an embarrassing relic of an immature mind.
09:54 But that's what makes the stunning success of 2018's reboot all the more surprising.
09:59 Kratos himself is the best symbol for why this reboot succeeds, and where the prequels
10:03 kind of failed.
10:04 The Kratos of this game is markedly different from the one-note psychopath of the original
10:08 trilogy.
10:09 Here, he's a world-weary father, ashamed of his past mistakes, and desperate for his
10:14 son not to follow in his blood-soaked footsteps.
10:16 Neatly, the maturing of Kratos as a person mirrors the series' evolution as a game.
10:22 The combat is given a much-needed overhaul, keeping the series' signature spectacle
10:26 whilst also offering more depth to the player.
10:29 And the linear levels of old are abandoned for a Metroidvania-styled world, filled with
10:33 upgrades and optional bosses for players to explore at their leisure.
10:36 God of War is a triumphant reboot of a once-stale franchise, and arguably the second-best franchise
10:41 reinvention in gaming history.
10:43 Which begs the question, which is the first?
10:46 I'll bet you know the answer.
10:47 1.
10:48 Resident Evil 4
10:49 It couldn't have been anything else.
10:51 I've talked a lot in this video about how these games influenced their franchises, but
10:55 Resident Evil 4 influenced an entire console generation.
10:58 From near every action game of the Xbox 360 and PS3 era paid homage to, or blatantly stole
11:04 from, the Resident Evil 4 formula, copying everything from its revolutionary over-the-shoulder
11:09 camera to the use of quick-time events that were actually good.
11:12 Sadly, many of these same copycats failed to recapture Resident Evil 4's lightning
11:16 in a bottle.
11:17 QTEs, for example, are often derided as a deservedly forgotten video game mechanic because
11:21 developers just shoved them haphazardly in misguided attempts at player engagement.
11:26 But if any of those attempts had managed to come close to the nail-biting tension of Resident
11:30 Evil 4's QTE-driven night fight, they would be remembered a lot more fondly.
11:35 Because let's face it, the original Resident Evil trilogy is good, but this is just better.
11:39 Resident Evil 4's romp through possessed villages, creepy cults, and Napoleonic terrors
11:44 is still a wildly entertaining ride, and even now you can see how an entire generation of
11:48 developers were inspired by Capcom's greatest game.
11:51 And there we go, my friends.
11:52 Those were the 10 Best Number Fours in Gaming History.
11:55 I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
11:58 the comments section below.
11:59 As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram where it's RetroJ but
12:03 the O is a zero.
12:05 Hope to see you over there.
12:06 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
12:07 Even though we spoke today about the best number fours in gaming, you my friend, yes
12:10 you listening to this video, are the greatest number one and should treat themselves as
12:14 such with love and respect.
12:16 You deserve all the best things in life like love, happiness, and success, and do not let
12:20 anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright?
12:23 Don't let them treat you like a number two because you, like I've just said, are number
12:26 one baby.
12:27 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
12:31 to you soon.
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