The fab fours.
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00:00So a few weeks back, WhatCulture looked at the 10 best number 3s in gaming history.
00:05And it was a very fun video, and we all had at least 3 laughs.
00:08And it was so much fun, in fact, that we were inspired to write a follow-up.
00:12But the question is, how do you do that? Do you do 10 more best 3s? No, my friend,
00:17you fool! You go for the 10 best number 4s in gaming history, because somehow that makes sense.
00:23So let's take a look at them today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:26and these are the 10 best number 4s in gaming history.
00:3010. Saints Row 4
00:32Now just take a look at this photo of the boss giving the thumbs up as they fall through the
00:36air. That is showing you exactly why Saints Row 4 is awesome. Because this is just in the tutorial.
00:43Saints Row 4 starts where most things would finish, going full spinal tap in its desire
00:48to fit in absolutely every idea the developers had. Alien invasion? Check. Superpowers? Go for
00:54it, mate. Bismarky? You're damn right. Saints Row 4 is a glorious playground of a game,
00:59where the most fun to be had is simply exploring the world with your superpowers.
01:03If you've had a bad day, then leaping from skyscraper to skyscraper while Aerosmith's
01:07I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing plays in the background will definitely lift your mood.
01:11Saints Row 4's playground is further bolstered by some of the best playmates in gaming. It's
01:16a culmination of the bonds forged by the Third Street Saints over the course of the series,
01:20and features some brilliant character moments. Car singing with your besties,
01:24watching your friend move on from a toxic ex, and of course, the best romance in video game
01:29history. After the debacle of the 2022 reboot, why not treat yourself to a replay of Saints
01:34Row 4 and remember why you fell in love with the Third Street Saints in the first bloody place?
01:399. Gran Turismo 4
01:42Now, in our last video of the best number threes, one of the most common comments was,
01:46what, no Gran Turismo 3? Or words to that effect. But fret not, petrolheads, we didn't forget about
01:51PlayStation's greatest racing series, we just thought that GT3 was actually trumped by its
01:56sequel, which remains a triumph of the Fraser Crane philosophy of video game design. Which is,
02:01mhm, if less is more, just think how much more more would be.
02:04Gran Turismo 4 isn't so much a love letter to automotive racing as an epic saga. After setting
02:10the stage with Gran Turismo 3, the developers pushed the PS2 to its limits with the follow-up,
02:14with over 50 tracks to race on and more than 700 cars to drive, all powered by the best
02:20graphics seen on any of Sony's systems at the time. In short, GT4 is a game of astonishing depth.
02:26And you may never see the end of it, because even after 100 hours, your game completion
02:30percentage is still going to be under the halfway mark. But if you have even the slightest amount
02:34of petrol flowing through your veins, exploring Gran Turismo 4's raceways is time very well spent.
02:408. Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag
02:43You know a game mechanic is successful when it keeps cropping up in later installments of the
02:48series. Case in point, Black Flag's sailing, which has shown up in numerous Assassin's Creed sequels
02:53following its debut in 2013's pirate-themed adventure. But honestly though, none of the
02:58subsequent creeds have managed to match the high-water mark of the fourth entry in the series.
03:04Black Flag was the perfect marriage of theme and gameplay, with protagonist Edward Kenway's
03:10nautical lifestyle perfectly feeding into the game's systems of loot to upgrade to loot again.
03:14The game simply wouldn't have worked had Kenway been anything other than a pirate,
03:18so it's a good thing that Ubisoft made being a pirate so damn fun. Raiding other vessels,
03:23looking for sunken treasure, stabbing at sharks from Hell's Heart, all of these activities breathed
03:28life into the pirate fantasy that Black Flag was selling, and it was glorious.
03:33As the Assassin's Creed games have become ever more bloated, once again Frasier Crane's previously
03:38stated belief that more is more comes to mind. The good doctors Maxim may have worked wonders
03:43for Gran Turismo 4, but there are some games where less really is more. In Black Flag,
03:48Ubisoft found the happy medium between the two philosophies and delivered the best game
03:52in the series to date.
03:537. Metroid Fusion
03:56Now some of you may be raising an eyebrow at this entry, wondering how Metroid Fusion
04:00made it on a best-of list when Super Metroid, its much-vaunted predecessor, didn't. But the
04:05answer is painfully simple, and that is that Metroid Fusion is just a better game. Apologies
04:10for the slightly confrontational tone here, but Samus Aran's fourth adventure is a successful
04:15evolution of the Metroid formula, one that takes everything that made the previous game great,
04:20and then builds on it. The level design is tighter, the bosses are more memorable,
04:24and the plot, well, it actually exists.
04:26Samus' inner monologue gave gaming's most famous bounty hunter a welcome dash of personality,
04:32and the introduction of the Terminator-esque S.A.X., essentially a super-powered Samus clone,
04:37further humanised the formerly inscrutable protagonist. Watching Samus go from literally
04:42cowering in a ball to hide from her nemesis, to being able to fight it on equal footing and
04:46eventually overcome it, provided a strong narrative thread that had been missing from
04:50the previous entries in the series. Granted, Fusion's follow-up, the disastrous Metroid Other
04:55M, showed what happens when Metroid's designers spend too much time focusing on the plot,
04:59but that just makes Metroid Fusion's achievement in perfecting the balance between gameplay and
05:04story all the more impressive.
05:066. Final Fantasy IV
05:08The tale of how gaming's most inaccurately named franchise came to be is the stuff of
05:13industry legend. The original Final Fantasy was intended to be just that,
05:17one last hurrah from publishers Squaresoft before they went under after one too many failures.
05:22Except the game sold like gangbusters, Squaresoft was saved, and there was much rejoicing.
05:27Having said that, Square didn't exactly get everything right first try. The first Final
05:31Fantasy was a solid JRPG, but a bit light on plot. The second game was more narrative heavy,
05:36but with a wonky, game-breaking levelling system. And the third game offered entertaining combat,
05:41but a very dull story. Final Fantasy IV, though, well that was the game that finally nailed the
05:46Final Fantasy formula. This game contained many of the tropes that would come to define the series,
05:51a conflicted hero turning on his former masters, the death of a party member,
05:55and a villain with more shades of grey than a spinster's library.
05:58It also introduced the series' trademark ATB battle system, an elegant fusion of real-time
06:03and turn-based combat, and was arguably the game where composer Nobuo Uematsu announced himself to
06:09the world with a theme of love, and the game's pulse-pounding boss battle theme signifying his
06:14immense talent. Also, just putting it out there, You Spoony Bud is still the best insult ever
06:19written in a video game.
06:215. Persona 4
06:23Sticking with JRPGs, we come to Persona 4, the world's cheeriest murder mystery. Since Persona
06:293, each game in the series has cast a player as a high school student dragged into the world
06:33of supernatural intrigue. As such, it's kind of easy to visualise what each game would be
06:38if it were a real-life high schooler. The moody, downbeat Persona 3 is the class goth,
06:43the impeccably stylish Persona 5 is the school stud, and Persona 4 is just the one student that
06:48everybody likes, an irrepressibly cheerful, upbeat force of nature that is impossible not
06:53to be friends with. And really, friendship is the beating heart of what makes Persona 4 great.
06:58The cast of misfits, idols, and weirdos are hands-down the most entertaining group of party
07:03members yet seen in a video game. There are multiple 20-minute cutscenes where player
07:07interaction is limited to just pressing X to advance the dialogue, but the strength of the
07:11characters' personalities and the sheer quality of the writing will have you tapping away with
07:16delight, a contended spectator laughing alongside gaming's greatest circle of friends.
07:21Throw in some wonderfully compelling combat and one of the game's best soundtracks,
07:25arguably only surpassed by its sequel, and Persona 4 is a lovely 80-hour bubble bath of a game.
07:314. Doom 2016
07:33If Persona 4 was content to take agency away from the player in its service of its impeccable story,
07:38Doom's 2016 reboot takes very much the opposite approach. From the off, Doom makes its intentions
07:44clear. Grab guns, shoot monsters, and go. An ever-escalating carnival of shootery,
07:50the Doom reboot returned the seminal franchise to its roots after Doom 3's turgid foray into
07:55survival horror. Learning from its predecessors' mistakes, Doom makes the player the most powerful
07:59monster in the game and gleefully offers them the tools needed to carve their way through its
08:04iconic bestiary. Pinballing through Doom's many encounters as a whirling nightmare of guns,
08:09chainsaws, and sheer animal rage is satisfying as ever, even in the glut of boomer shooters that
08:15followed in its wake. Many have tried, but none have rivaled the sheer wow factor of this 2016
08:20remake. It may have taken id Software 22 years and one giant misstep to craft a worthy follow-up to
08:25Doom 2, but the end result was more than worth the wait. 3. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
08:32Speaking of monumentally important FPS games, Doom may have been a triumphant return to old
08:37school values, but Modern Warfare was the game that made those values fall out of fashion in
08:41the first place. The 4th Call of Duty's towering success spawned a host of imitators in the decade
08:47that followed, but none came close to Modern Warfare's imperious heights. To be fair,
08:52CoD 4 set a very high bar to reach. The perspective-hopping campaign felt genuinely
08:57revolutionary at the time, and led to some of gaming's most iconic moments. Levels such as
09:01All Ghillied Up, Death From Above, and Aftermath carried the same heady weight as a vintage wine
09:06label, and evoke much of the same sense of satisfaction, that of experiencing a perfect
09:11exemplar of the craft. Oft limited, but never battered, even by its own bloody sequels,
09:16Modern Warfare remains a staggering triumph for its campaign alone. The fact that it also
09:20contained a generation-defining multiplayer frankly feels like cheating from Infinity Ward here.
09:262. God of War 2018 Have you played the original God of War
09:30trilogy recently? If not, probably better keep it that way. You see, Kratos' odyssey through the
09:35Greek mythology has aged, well, pretty badly. From the simplistic combat to the embarrassing
09:40edgelord attitude, best highlighted by God of War 3's infamous segment where you kill an
09:44innocent woman and use her body to prop open a door, Kratos' Greek adventures are the gaming
09:49equivalent of the crappy poetry you wrote in high school. It's kind of an embarrassing relic of an
09:53immature mind. But that's what makes the stunning success of 2018's reboot all the more surprising.
09:59Kratos himself is the best symbol for why this reboot succeeds, and where the prequels kind of
10:04failed. The Kratos of this game is markedly different from the one-note psychopath of the
10:08original trilogy. Here, he's a world-weary father ashamed of his past mistakes, and desperate for his
10:14son not to follow in his blood-soaked footsteps. Neatly, the maturing of Kratos as a person mirrors
10:20the series' evolution as a game. The combat is given a much-needed overhaul, keeping the series'
10:25signature spectacle whilst also offering more depth to the player. And the linear levels of
10:30old are abandoned for a Metroidvania-styled world filled with upgrades and optional bosses
10:34for players to explore at their leisure. God of War is a triumphant reboot of a once-stale
10:39franchise, and arguably the second-best franchise reinvention in gaming history.
10:43Which begs the question, which is the first? Come on, you know the answer.
10:471. Resident Evil 4
10:49It couldn't have been anything else. I mean, I've talked a lot in this video about how these games
10:53influenced their franchises, but Resident Evil 4 influenced an entire console generation. Damn
10:59near every action game of the Xbox 360 and PS3 era paid homage to, or blatantly stole from,
11:04the Resident Evil 4 formula, copying everything from its revolutionary over-the-shoulder camera
11:09to the use of quick-time events that were actually good. Sadly, many of these same
11:13copycats failed to recapture Resident Evil 4's lightning in a bottle. QTEs, for example,
11:18are often derided as a deservedly forgotten video game mechanic because developers just
11:22shoved them haphazardly in misguided attempts at player engagement. But if any of those attempts
11:27had managed to come close to the nail-biting tension of Resident Evil 4's QTE-driven knife
11:32fight, well, they would be remembered a lot more fondly. Because let's face it,
11:35the original Resident Evil trilogy is good, but this is just better. Resident Evil 4's romp
11:41through possessed villages, creepy cults, and Napoleonic terrors is still a wildly entertaining
11:46ride, and even now you can see how an entire generation of developers were inspired by Capcom's
11:50greatest game. And there we go, my friends, those were the 10 Best Number Fours in Gaming History.
11:55I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the
11:58comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram
12:02where it's RetroJ but the O is a zero. Hope to see you over there. But before I go, I just want
12:06to say one thing. Even though we spoke today about the best number fours in gaming, you my friend,
12:10yes you listening to this video, are the greatest number one and should treat themselves as such,
12:15with love and respect. You deserve all the best things in life like love, happiness, and success,
12:20and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright? Don't let them treat you like
12:24a number two because you, like I've just said, are number one baby. As always, I've been Jules,
12:28you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.