So after last week’s exercise in compiled statistics, I decided I wanted to build my own top 30 Video Games list. As you may have gathered from the commentary on the other list, I’ve played a lot of video games in my life. However, no one can play them all so there will be gaps where games you think were slighted off my list are nowhere to be found. That’s why it’s my list. You want your own list, we gots a comments section where you can do just that. Oooh. Technology.
The List
We’ll have to do these in reverse order… because that’s how everyone else does it. I guess it increases suspense? Anyway, from the bottom up…
30. Gauntlet – The first four-player arcade game I remember seeing… selectable characters in the most moster-packed dungeon crawl ever. If you didn’t scream like a little girl if you were the Fighter and you saw Death coming… you weren’t playing it right. “Someone join as the magic user! Someone join as the magic user! Aagh!”
29. God of War – Platform/brawlers have been around for a long time. After the 16-bit era when 3D graphics became the norm they kind of faded because developers struggled to figure out how to make it work in three dimensions. Finally someone got it right with God of War. Relentlessly violent and darkly comic, scratching past the surface reveals that indeed platforming/jumping and fighting can be done with modern consoles and done very well.
28. Goldeneye 007 – Before Halo perfected first person shooters with console controllers, Goldeneye came as close as you could come. The one-player mode was deep and engaging, the multiplayer was inspired and the total package made for something that was a system seller. It hasn’t aged too well, there has been a lot of improvement with FPS on consoles and four-player spilt screen has been usurped by online multiplayer with four times that many players simultaneously (or more), but it still stands out as a classic.
27. Mario Kart DS – Mario Kart games are staples. The fun, addictive gameplay is better than the most realistic Gran Turismo or Project Gotham Racing and the controls are simple enough for kids but deep enough for more experienced gamers to find challenge as well which makes it a great family game. I chose the DS version only because it is the only one with online multiplayer (wonderful fun) and retro courses from previous iterations. Could easily be replaced by DoubleDash on the GameCube which is just as fun but lacks online multiplayer.
26. Contra – Few games impacted my formative years like Contra. Being good at Contra was being king with my peer group: If you could beat the game without using the famous Konami code, you ruled, plain and simple. Even now the game offers a solid level of challenge and a decent variety plus it’s one of the best games to play co-op, ever. All games should be easier when you have two players. Except, of course, when they jump-scrolled you to death in the Waterfall level.
25. Star Wars: TIE Fighter – X-Wing brought awesome action flight sim goodness but TIE Fighter made the requisite improvements and took the extra step of letting you play as the bad guys in a remarkable story-driven campaign. Why this game hasn’t been remade recently completely escapes me.
24. Silent Hill – I’m a sucker for scary games, and they don’t get much more terrifying than Silent Hill. While Resident Evil went for the obvious startle-shocks, Silent Hill ground into your psyche with atmosphere and tension that ratcheted up and stayed taut leaving players with the ultimate question: Keep playing into the night or go to bed while you still might be able to fall asleep?
23. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem – Good games are memorable games. Ones that stay with you… like Eternal Darkness. The game’s sanity effects that show blood running down walls, distorted perspectives, simulated program glitches and a whole assortment of freaky occurrences that suggest the game is playing you as much as you are playing it results in a game that sticks in your mind long after the credits have rolled. Multiple endings, a deep and engaging story inspired by Lovecraft’s mythos and strong gameplay round out the checklist of one of the best “adult” titles on the GameCube.
22. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance – I admit to a weakness when it comes to turn-based strategy games. Standing tall among them is this gem for the GameBoy Advance: As deep as any disc-based game with a stellar combat system (with just enough randomness built in due to the Judge system) and a near-perfect class system that encourages all those OCD-inspired traits borne by role-playing gamers and strategy hounds. Any criticisms that could be leveled at this game stem from the so-so storyline and relatively bland characterizations. Still, among the best Final Fantasy games released in the last five or six years.
21. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings – The second-best Real-Time Strategy game ever isn’t the most perfectly balanced game in the world but it offers depth galore with scores of available units and upgrades across a huge selection of civilizations. It’s got surprisingly good multiplayer, timeless graphics and a clean interface (a must in the RTS genre).
20. Counter-Strike – Who knew a side project based on a second generation game engine could conquer the world of online multiplayer? Well, when you work in such subtle innovations as real penalty for death, team-based modern combat that actually encouraged teamwork, reward for skill and a development model that lent itself perfectly to being adaptable maybe it shouldn’t have been such a shocker.
19. Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man – From the opening theme diddy to the simple but addicting play and the iconic characters, Pac-Man may not have the claims to fame that Pong or Adventure carry, but it was the first video game that people remember actually enjoying. It’s kind of curious that the game is really no more than those little mazes you followed with your pencil in Kindergarten, but to this day it’s one of the few arcade machines I have a hard time passing up when I see it.
18. Castlevania III – Previous Castlevania games were very good: Creepy and atmospheric (for their time) with cool weapon upgrades and lengthy, tough adventures. CV3 added additional characters, much higher production values and just the right amount of maddening challenge that kept me occupied for months. Besides, who doesn’t want to be a whip-wielding vampire hunter?
17. Metroid Prime – To say I was skeptical about this game that took a beloved side-scrolling action/adventure franchise and dared to make it not just 3D but first person is putting it mildly. But Retro Studios captured the essence of those original games precisely and made first-person platforming viable for the first time that I can recall. The sense of solitude and wonder that permeates the game is uncanny and the little touches like Samus’ face reflecting in her face shield when a bright light flashes or the droplets of moisture that mist up the screen when walking through waterfalls are just tiny examples of a game that was very good to begin with but elevated to brilliance through attention to detail. Plus it boasts one of the most challenging but satisfying final boss encounters I’ve ever played.
16. Final Fantasy VII – Okay so the graphics in the non-cutscene segments are kind of hokey and the final chapter is an aggravating epic. That doesn’t change the fact that this game defined next-gen role-playing games (for better or for worse) and perhaps for the first time showcased really what could be done with disc-based media on consoles (similar to what Myst did for PCs). The quest is perfectly legendary, the characters are mostly memorable and the plot is actually intriguing enough that a novelization of the game wouldn’t be out of the question. Not the best Final Fantasy game ever, but pretty close.
15. StarCraft – What Age of Empires II offers in depth and sophistication, StarCraft trumps with perfect balance and a truly engrossing single-player campaign. StarCraft also offers a healthy dose of the coolness factor with some quality Science Fiction-y units (including a Human faction that is actually as fun to play as the less mundane alternate choices, Protoss and Zerg) that seem to have drawn some inspiration from Warhammer 40K. Not many games boast opportunities as impishly satisfying as rushing an opponent’s base with dozens of Zerglings followed by a swarm of Hydralisks spitting acid.
14. Eye of the Beholder – Classic PC role-playing with the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons license. Dr. Mac, Scott and I spent practically an entire summer listening to Metallica’s black album and fighting our way through swarms of giant spiders and kobolds trying to unlock the game’s secrets. The first-person perspective added some much-needed immersion to the D&D licensed games and the old-school dungeon crawl setting was perfect for passing a slow summer afternoon—provided you’re a pasty geek like me.
13. Galaga – This is the the game I can’t pass up in an arcade. Perpetually 25 cents to play, it’s like Space Invaders without all those sissy shields. Oh, and the aliens dive-bomb you and don’t just drop weak little slow-moving bombs on you. Plus the Galaga spaceship is roughly 400 times cooler looking than the boxy little turret thing from SI. It’s one of those games that has to be experienced in a dark pizza parlor game room (square footage: 4) with a pocketful of quarters and a determination to nab the high score spot. Initials put in when you achieve the goal? P-O-O, of course.
12. Planescape: Torment – The crazed, surreal role-playing game that everyone harkens as among the best of the isometric D&D licensed family is one I picked up on a lark: It was like $10 at Fry’s and had an interesting cover. Plus it said Dungeons and Dragons on the cover so I figured, “Why not?” But this isn’t some Thief/Mage/Fighter/Cleric dungeon romp: This is an intricate and dark tale of an immortal main character with no memory and a cast of increasingly bizarre traveling companions (including a floating skull and a burning corpse) trying to figure out nothing more than what the heck is going on. If not for the sometimes frustrating combat, it would be a role-playing masterpiece.
11. Baseball Stars – If only—if only—they made baseball games this simply fun and ceaselessly entertaining as Baseball Stars these days. The semi-role-playing elements of stat boosting and team tweaking was ideally balanced. The lack of any kind of license actually worked in Baseball Stars’ favor. If only the battery save feature hadn’t been quite as cantakerous I might still be playing this game. Oh, and did I mention that the actual baseball game was incredibly fun as well? Modern baseball sims might get closer to the real game, but none touch Baseball Stars with a ten-foot pole in terms of raw enjoyment.
10. Twisted Metal II – Ah, Twisted Metal: The fighting game for people who don’t like memorizing hundreds of obscure moves. Nevermind all that boring fisticuffs hooey: How about getting into a heavily armored car and racing around virtual cities, lobbing homing rockets and power missiles at your unsuspecting foes? Semi-destructible environments, crazy deep gameplay and the best split-screen multiplayer in any game makes for a game that has yet to be matched in terms of time consumption. Nothing brought more band practices to a grinding halt than someone firing up Twisted Metal II: And no one really complained. No wonder we didn’t get signed.
9. Bionic Commando – “What do you mean, ‘I can’t jump’? Look at all those platforms! How else am I supposed to get up there!?” This is the brilliance of Bionic Commando: With nothing more than a funky physics scheme that made a grappling hook seem like an appropriate replacement for the genre-standard jump button, Capcom created a game that stood head and shoulders above it’s copy-cat relatives (Strider, anyone? Anyone?). A long, challenging quest with hints of open-ended play, varied gameplay, a great item system and the second-most memorable boss fight (“Dude! It’s Hitler! And his face just exploded! Sick, dude!”) ever: It’s a certified classic.
8. Metal Gear Solid – I suspect that the old Metal Gear games from the 8-bit era were ahead of their time. They encouraged sneaking past enemies rather than killing everyone in sight (“Whaa?”) and offered so many power ups and weapon choices that most people just kind of scratched their heads when they tried to play the game. But the Playstation allowed the game to work in a way that made sense for what the Metal Gear series was trying to accomplish. The stealth-based gameplay was new and, surprisingly, exciting. But what made MGS so great was the subtle touches: Snake’s laser scope filtering through the fog; footprints left in the snow that alerted guards to your presence; the Sniper Wolf battle; the frequency key on “the back of the CD case” and, of course, the Psycho Mantis fight. As I played it I kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”
7. Resident Evil 4 – For all the things that Resident Evil did for gaming, it always had a little something holding it back. Whether it was the control scheme (pretty bad for most of them), the unlikely puzzles (RE:CV), terrible voice acting (I’m looking at you, Resident Evil 1), pointless story (ahem RE3) or unconvincing characters (RE0), it was usually very much worth the playthrough, but never a spectacular experience. RE4 fixed all that and added a healthy dose of extra gore, a strong story, engaging (and involving!) cutscenes, phenomenal graphics, sharp puzzles that never got too puzzle-y and plenty of extras to make it not just a great play but a great buy.
6. Final Fantasy VI – If you thought FFVII was epic, you missed out on FFVI/FFIII. I mean, what other game has an apocalyptic, literally world-altering event happen halfway through the game? This is the fantasy role-playing game that made people realize what was possible on consoles. The only bad thing about this game is the fact that its epic story was so popular that later Final Fantasy games (and actually later console RPGs in general) began to think that story could trump gameplay and we ended up with stuff like Final Fantasy VIII and X. Still, you can’t hold that against FFVI which did everything that it possibly could just right and did so without the aid of fancy 3D graphics or even non-game engine cut scenes. The impact of this game can be summarized with Kefka’s mocking, braying laughter.
5. Super Metroid – Everything that was good about the original NES Metroid remained in the Super Nintendo update. In fact, if they had only bothered to remake the original game with the new 16-bit graphics, plenty of fans (probably myself included) would have been perfectly content. Instead they expanded the game, added new power-ups, introduced a more complete storyline and laid out the game in such a way that 2D platforming/adventure reached its pinnacle early. This game stands testament to how to do a sequel right (stick with what worked the first time, know when to tweak or refine and give ’em more of what they want) and even without the pressure attached from two previous, popular 8-bit adventures (Metroid II came out for the original black and white GameBoy) Super Metroid would have been a brilliant game.
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Like a lot of people, I was disappointed by the recent Star Wars prequels. I didn’t hate them, but they left me wondering, “Was my delight in the world of Star Wars merely a product of my young memory applying a sense of wonder that eventually became nothing more than simple nostalgia?” Playing through KotOR is direct evidience that there actually was something to Star Wars to begin with: It wasn’t just nostalgia. That Lucas lost track of what made Star Wars good to begin with is a topic for another time but fortunately the team at BioWare tapped into that sense of awe with a prequel to the prequels which draws the player into the world of Star Wars like no other Star Wars licensed property since Timothy Zahn’s novelized adaptations of what would have been episodes VII, VIII and IX. KotOR gets Star Wars perfect, blending enough new with the familiar and incorporating a wonderfully engaging and open-ended story into a huge experience. There is so much here to praise: The Light/Dark paths through the game that make it one of the few role-playing video games that is actually re-playable; PC-style dialogue trees and detailed character interaction—on a console!; a smooth, good-looking combat system based on d20; really stellar character progression including Jedi powers that are introduced at just the right moment. I could go on. The bottom line is that if you like role-playing games or if you like Star Wars or if you like games that make good purchases (value-wise) and you haven’t played this game, it’s worth the price of the XBox alone.
3. The Legend of Zelda – Other than the classic sound effect you get for iscovering a secret door, the other thing that will always stand out in my mind about the original Zelda game is that surreal TV commercial they put out for it that featured a freakish guy looking paranoid and shouting out the names of some of the game’s enemies. “Octoroks!” But the game itself had so much to offer: From the gold colored cartridge to the battery save feature to the detailed quest that was the first I’d ever heard of that didn’t actually require going through entirely the way the designer intended. People would talk about beating Ganon with just the wooden sword. “Insanity!” I thought, but it was certainly possible. Like Metroid, Zelda offered not just places to go but things to acquire: The “collector” gamer was born with these types of games where your avatar increased in ability as the game progressed rather than remaining more or less static and simply offering new ways to use the same basic abilities available at the beginning of the game. That so much game was crammed between two buttons, a directional pad and the questionably useful “Start” and “Select” buttons is still amazing to this day, as is the fact that this game remains nearly as playable 20 years after its release as it was back in the day.
2. Super Mario Bros. 3 – There was a time when all the cell phone stores you see anywhere that could even be remotely referred to as a shopping center weren’t peddling cell phones. The ubiquitous storefront venture of the late eighties was the Mom and Pop video rental store. This was before the big corporate chains crushed everyone out of business, and they were everywhere. In the little shopping center down the street from our house when I was kid there was one of these stores and they were renting something else: Nintendo carts. Someone who worked there must have either been a gamer or was just really ahead of their time because they not only carried video games for rent before most other people were even considering such a wacky notion but they also had a handful of imported titles from Japan. Among them was this insanely anticipated forthcoming title named Super Mario Bros. 3. Following up the fun but unusual SMB2 (which was actually a Mario-ized facelift of an unrelated Japanese game), SMB3 was hyped everywhere, including getting feature billing in a feature film so having a chance to play with it (albeit the text was in Japanese) ahead of its release was spectacular. The game was everything players wanted back then: Reminicent of the original console-bundled classic, offering plenty of new challenges, loads of secrets to find and perfectly tuned platforming gameplay. I rushed out and bought the game when it was finally released in the US and I’ve played through it probably ten times including several times after getting the facelift for Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES. It’s a timeless classic and deserves all the praise it gets.
1. Half-Life – Ever since games started, timidly at first, trying to tell stories along with providing opportunities for play they have struggled with how to do this effectively. If you stop the game and show the story you interrupt the real reason for turning it on in the first place: Essentially you inject a bit of movie into the game. For most designers this was an acceptable compromise. Reward the players with a bit of a break as we throw some exposition at them between boss battles (or whatever). This wasn’t much of a problem with older games which were always third person and whose graphics were generally anything but lifelike. Then came first person games with Wolfenstein (and others) putting players into the protagonist’s shoes. 3D graphics from Quake and a steadily improving market for video accelerator cards started making things look semi-realistic and this presented a problem for the story-in-game people: Players live through the action in this character’s shoes, do we pull them out of that state to show our movies? Half-Life solved the problem like no game before or, really, since: Don’t pull the player out of the character’s shoes. Somehow the writers of Half-Life managed to present a silent protagonist that didn’t strain the suspension of disbelief and using scripted events and a few load-time tricks they delivered the most immersive, emotional and enjoyable experience of any game I’ve ever played. I was literally frightened at times while playing this game… wandering through dark corridors with nothing but a flashlight to guide my way made my palms sweat. Each time I fell into any water my phobia welled up, rationalized by the inevitable Ichthyosaur attack. The conspiratorial tone led by the G-Man’s creepy presence was timed perfectly with the X-Files craze and the attention to detail was such that even later expansions like Blue Shift and Opposing Force fit perfectly within the game’s story and carefully crafted world. When the game was over there was always Counter-Strike which made this game the only real must-purchase PC game for a period of almost ten years. Half-Life stands alone as a game that does what so many others attempt to do but fail and in doing so didn’t forget that above all else it was still supposed to be fun to play.
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