Gross Football Lunch – Week 7, 2025 NFL Season

Rob’s 12 Favorite Video Games of All Time

It’s been another crazy week on the home front, which means that I have no time for research or critical thinking. Instead, here is a list of my twelve favorite video games of all time (I could not bring myself to make one final cut down to ten), with brief but concise explanations of why each game is a personal favorite. This is a purely subjective list – fucking obviously – reflecting my opinions and my opinions alone. I am not trying to tap into any broader consensus or curate a list that reflects the history of gaming or further any other discourse. If any part of this makes you mad, call your mom.

This is not a ranked list. Quantifying one’s love of any piece of art in any medium through the use of ham-fisted integers is a waste of time and energy, and I refuse to treat my own feelings this way, even for entertainment purposes. That said, the order of games on this list reflects the order in which I thought to include each game on the list, so make of that what you will. You will also note that this list skews towards older games; this is not meant as any sort of indictment of the current state of gaming. It merely reflects my age, and the games I was playing in my more impressionable years. The only methodology is that there is no methodology.

Perfunctory segue!

Ninja Gaiden (1989, NES)
As I said a few weeks ago, Ninja Gaiden is damn near perfect. The controls are perfect, the pacing is perfect, the level design is perfect, and yes, the way it sends you all the way to the beginning of level 6 if you die to any one of the three final bosses is perfect. You could use the practice.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990, NES)
Variety is what sets SMB3 apart. Each and every one of the eight worlds is gorgeous and memorable, and the purposefully short levels paradoxically allow the level designs to stretch out and provide intensive tests on a specific aspect of gameplay. The sheer amount of available powerups is a revelation, and all of them are fun to use in the right situation. Weird and fun wrinkles abound; hell, even the mini-games are fun. SMB3 would be a crowning achievement of game design in any era, and I’m in awe that a game can be so varied and stuffed to the gills, with such supreme care given to each and every element.

Mega Man 2 (1989, NES)
The Mega Man series is to video games as AC/DC is to music. To the untrained eye, every Mega Man game looks exactly the same as all of the others, just as all of AC/DC’s albums sound exactly the same to their detractors. But, to the refined sophisticate who is savvy enough to know that simple does not mean stupid, Mega Man is a triumph of fundamentals and a testament to the power of a great formula, just as the music of AC/DC is. What sets Mega Man 2 apart is that it simultaneously codifies the Mega Man formula while also stretching out towards its very furthest fringes, with results so clever the series has scarce attempted to copy the game’s finest moments since. Bring back the Boobeam Trap, cowards!

Contra 3: The Alien Wars (1992, SNES)
SNES Drunk had the right of it when he reviewed Contra 3 over a decade ago. Talking about what makes Contra 3 amazing is pointless. Just look at this game. Look at it! Holy shit! Fuck yes! I am so fucking jacked right now! Let’s attack aggressively! (Gunfire, unintelligible screaming)

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997, PSX)
I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but the reason I prefer Symphony of the Night to its even more celebrated predecessor Super Metroid is because getting the best ending in Symphony is not time-sensitive. This makes exploring Dracula’s Castle to its fullest a much more inviting proposition, as it allows overly sensitive players like me to poke around in search of everything the game has to offer without feeling stupid for letting the clock run too much. It’s a little easy for a Castlevania game and gives the player a few too many abilities, but Symphony of the Night regains more than enough extra merits for being one of the most gorgeous games ever made, with a stunning soundtrack to boot.

Mass Effect 3 (2012)
Terrible ending aside, Mass Effect 3 strikes a perfect balance of third-person cover shooter action and RPG trappings. Whereas consensus series favorite Mass Effect 2 suffers from excessive linearity and lifeless sidequests, ME3 adds enough new wrinkles to freshen up its optional missions and transcend the limitations of the cover shooter, a genre that was already on creative life support by the time ME3 came along. Also, when I picked up Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and reran the entire trilogy, I was reminded that most of my favorite character-establishing moments were in ME3. I thought they were a bit more evenly distributed throughout, but nope.

Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)
I went long-ish on Baldur’s Gate 3 last spring, and I don’t think I have anything to add to those thoughts; all I can do is summarize them. Party-based, story-driven CRPGs are my single favorite type of game, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is the finest exemplar of the form seen yet. I spent four years hyping myself up for this game, and my expectations were exceeded.

Final Fantasy VI (1994, SNES)
Of course, a life-long love of party-based, story-driven RPGs has to start somewhere, and I’m lucky to have started with the best entry in the Final Fantasy series. Boasting an awesome story and the best villian in video game history, bar none, FFVI is propped up further with gameplay mechanics that are incredibly simple to pick up, yet complex enough to give the player freedom to experiment. In the latter half, the game tries a few more ideas than it can pull off, but as with a great double album, even these parts of the game are subsumed into the rest of this beautiful, sprawling masterpiece.

Tecmo Super Bowl (1991, NES)
There are much (much, much) more advanced football simulations, and there are much purer pick-up-and-play arcade style football games too, but no football video game has ever merged the two as seamlessly as Tecmo Super Bowl. TSB leans much more towards arcade style football than simulation, to be sure, but it captures the sport of football with just enough verisimilitude to feel realistic. It is also dead easy to pick up, endlessly replayable, and fun for players of all skill levels. I know I said this list wasn’t a history lesson, but I can’t help but point out that it’s a miracle they managed to make a playable 11-on-11 football game on the NES at all, let alone one this good.

Resident Evil 4 (2005, NGC/PS2)
I am not a survival horror guy. Conventional survival horror games are almost always built around puzzles, and I’m enough of a dullard that I’m stumped by most adventure game puzzles, further fueling my bottomless insecurities. Needless to say, adding the potential for disembowelment to the mix does not alleviate my feelings of inadequacy. Resident Evil 4 doesn’t do away with these trappings entirely, but it does shift the focus away from puzzle solving and towards moving down waves upon waves of monsters and cultists with a briefcase full of guns and ammo. That’s too much fun on its own, but the real genius is that Resident Evil 4 maintains the tension of true horror throughout. Jump scares abound, the level design is superb, the enemies become progressively weirder and scarier over the course of the game, and a delightfully gruesome death is waiting just around the corner at all times.

Metal Gear Solid (1998, PSX)
Even having played the NES port of the original Metal Gear extensively beforehand, my first playthrough of Metal Gear Solid was a revelation. The stealth-based gameplay of Metal Gear Solid is eons more advanced than that of its predecessor, of course, but what I will always remember about MGS is the bountiful surplus of spectacular boss fights, set pieces, and boss fights that also serve as set pieces. Here, have a sniper duel in the forest at night during a gentle snowfall! Have a pistol duel in a room rigged with explosives! Rappel down the side of a radio tower while a helicopter is firing a machine gun at you! See if you can figure out what you’re supposed to do against the evil psychic who knows what you’re going to do before you do it! Have all of this to go along with immaculately crafted levels, immaculately crafted quieter segments, and an immaculately crafted story from brilliant mad bastard Hideo Kojima, who filled every nook and cranny of the game with the weirdness we love him for without going overboard into total nonsense.

Half-Life (1998, PC)
Finally, there’s Half-Life, a first-person shooter so sophisticated, refined, and surprising in every aspect of gameplay that the only time anyone dared to even attempt to copy it was when the same team made Half-Life 2 six years later. Most people prefer the sequel, and while it is outstanding I still prefer the original. Chalk it up to impressionability or sentimentality if you must, but Half-Life expanded my sense of what video games could do, while Half-Life 2 was merely another excellent thinking gamer’s FPS. Also, I have yet to hear an argument against the original Half-Life‘s much-maligned endgame that does not demonstrate its necessity and its artistic success.

NFL Confidence Pool – Week 7

Week 6 Correct Picks: 10/15 (0.667)
Season Total Correct Picks: 60/92 (0.652)

Week 6 Points: 80/120 (0.667)
Season Total Points: 502/753 (0.667)

Bye: Bills, Ravens

I resent the fact that this is the best I can do this week. The fact that these are the picks I’m entrusting with my double digits is giving me the gravy guts as I type this. But if you think these assignments are evidence of extreme unwellness, you should’ve seen what they looked like initially. I had 14 points on the Patriots. 14! On a team that has looked legit two times this season! On a team that lost to the Raiders! Better to put the Chiefs in there, even though the Chiefs/Raiders rivalry has been the AFC’s answer to Eagles/Giants, where the reigning conference power has a horrifying knack for blowing the occasional game to their historic but woebegone rival when you least expect it. Still, If I must put 14 points on someone, better to do it on the team that hasn’t lost to the 2025 Raiders…yet.

The Broncos cannot be trusted with max points, but they’re one of the few teams I still trust to handle business in mismatches. Beating the Jets by 2 points still counts. The path to beating the Rams involves exploiting their not-so-great secondary, which is not something I trust Trevor Lawrence (inaccuracy) or the Jaguars’ receivers (drops) to do. I will consider taking the Chargers seriously again when Joe Alt is back on the field, and not before. And really, once Alt does return my enthusiasm will be tempered. Just because a player has recovered well enough to play doesn’t mean they’re 100%, you know what I’m saying?

It would be really nice if the Bucs were facing a bad team this week; instead, they are facing the Lions, who are good enough to keep things interesting but not good enough to stop actual no shit MVP candidate Baker Mayfield, who views the ongoing dissolution of his receivers’ health as a challenge to throw more bombs. I expect the Lions to hang in there until the secondary breaks from the strain of constant shelling. The Cardinals are bad, but unfortunately they’re not the kind of bad that gets blown out. They’re the kind that plays their games close, then finds a way to eat it down the stretch. The Packers are the exact sort of baffling should-be-contender that is in extreme danger against this level of opposition, but I can hardly pick Arizona here. Better to assign points with preemptive damage control in mind.

The secret to my lack of success is that some weeks, I don’t actually have time to watch the fucking games, and boy oh boy that sure makes it hard to know what I’m talking about when picking the next week’s games. Fortunately, I did manage to not only see but also pay attention to a goodly portion of Week 6, including most of the second half of Commanders/Bears. The Bears spent most of this portion of the game playing gallingly stupid football and won because the Commanders made one extremely gallingly stupid mistake as the clock wound down. I remain suspicious that the Bears are putting it together, but they have still have a long way to go before I can be sure they won’t trip over their own dicks against the Saints and other cellar dwellers.

While I’m on the subject of last Monday night, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to give the Falcons this many primetime games!? I don’t care if they might be good all of a sudden; this team hasn’t made the playoffs in eight years and with Tampa playing lights-out their prospects for the season remain middling. This is Atlanta’s third primetime game so far this year, and their second is as many weeks. They better win this week, and not just because the 49ers’ injury report looks like a French casualty report from Verdun.

In case the assignment didn’t make this clear, I am picking the Vikings for my own broken emotional reasons and not because I think they’ll win. However, I can see a vague and fuzzy outline of a rational case for the Vikings through the purple haze of my discontent. I can’t express this case coherently, exactly, but I will point out that the Eagles’ offense is struggling and they’re playing in Minneapolis. Pick the Eagles if you must, but be wary of going big. Picking the Jets is unjustifiable for any plural amount of points, which is why I’m one giving them a singular point. They’re playing at home and are completely desperate, and the Panthers still qualify as lesser opposition until they prove otherwise.

Enjoy the games, everyone!