My Worst 25 Games of All-Time

So, since I went through my top 100 games of all-time, I thought it might be interesting to flip the script and see what my least-favourite games ever were! Important note: I’m only covering twenty-five games on this list. Put simply, it’s a lot harder to get through bad video games as opposed to other forms of media: you either know the sorts of games you’re into, or you are so put-off by a game that you drop it immediately before you can make any impressions. As a result, I don’t have a lot of games played that are truly awful (even the first few entries on the list aren’t all that bad). And, again, these are all very subjective opinions and are based on the games I personally have played. Got it? Let’s get into it.

25. The Simpsons: Road Rage (2001, PS2)

The Simpsons do not have a good track record with video games. There are a few gems, but Road Rage is not one of them. It’s literally Crazy Taxi, but with a Simpsons skin over it. As you might expect, the entire premise is extremely thin: pickup passengers, drive them to their destination as fast as possible, get money based on how quickly you get there. The one thing that makes Road Rage sort of worth it is the quippy writing, which should give you a few laughs. However, there’s not a whole lot to do here and you’re going to hear the same lines over and over again, so it’s an experience that is going to grow dull pretty fast.

24. The Incredibles (2004, PS2)

If you grew up in the PS1 and PS2 era, you probably went through a “licensed games” phase where you were too young to realize that these games sucked. I used to play through anything back then, having not developed any standards of what proper game design was like yet. The Incredibles is the first game where I can remember myself getting close to the end, getting killed over and over by the bullshit controls and balancing, and just deciding “I’m done, this game isn’t worth it.” It’s a very simple, but poorly balanced beat ’em up. Not a game I truly hate, but one that I can’t say I ever actually enjoyed myself playing.

23. Dead Space 3 (2013, PS3)

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit harsh here, but I really do hate Dead Space 3. It killed off one of my favourite franchises, and shit all over its story and gameplay on the way out. If you think I’m just being harsh, then feel free to ignore this entry and put Turning Point: Fall of Liberty on the list… I really couldn’t justify it myself though. Turning Point left me feeling indifferent. Dead Space 3 fills me with disappointment and anger which invalidate any of its positives. As I said in my Love/Hate analysis of the game, it’s a fundamentally compromised experience, one that is worse than its predecessors in every way, and not even good compared to Uncharted and Gears of War, which it’s trying so hard to be like. Perhaps it’s for the best that Dead Space died here, I’d hate to see what would have happened if they paraded its corpse out for a fourth entry.

Oh, by the way: the remake pisses me off too. EA shuts down Visceral and then gets a new studio involved and parades Visceral’s work out when there’s greater profit potential? Fuck you, EA.

22. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006, PS2)

This one makes it onto the list for a very specific reason. Back when Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter came out, the gaming magazines were singing its praises, calling it the best shooter on the market and a must-play. As a fan of the genre, with that kind of endorsement, I knew I had to check it out. I bought a copy for my PS2, fired it up… and I was bored shitless. The gunplay was so mediocre, the squad controls were a lot less in-depth than I had been led to believe, and there was no cover system… What were the game journalists thinking…? It’s like they were playing a completely different game.

Well… turns out that they were. At the time of the Xbox 360 and PS3’s release, Ubisoft had a fucking scummy policy where they would release completely different versions of games on last gen consoles. The differences between the current gen versions (which got all the coverage and accolades) and the last-gen versions were barely communicated, so I (and many others) got duped with low-effort junk after being told it was gold. The fact that the next-gen version was so good makes it sting even more, I am so annoyed that I got hyped up for this experience and then bought the “wrong” game.

21. Friday the 13th: The Game (2017, PS4)

I actually Kickstarted this game back in the day and, while I didn’t have particularly high hopes, I figured it would at least be interesting. Little did I know that Friday the 13th: The Game would play out pretty similarly to the movies themselves: pretty bad in its own right, but made all the worse due to legal battles over the rights. Friday the 13th was one of the earliest asymmetrical multiplayer horror games: one player plays as Jason against a group of survivors, who need to complete objectives and survive in order to win. While the core of the experience was kind of fun (whether that be sneaking around to find a way to escape the campground, or hacking up teens with a machete), the game was buggy beyond belief. It felt awful to play: the controls were janky, the graphics and animations were very poor (it would have looked dated even on last gen consoles), and the netcode was pretty bad. It was unique enough an experience that I did forgive a lot of this for a while, but I was never under any illusions about how badly made the game was.

That was all bad enough on its own, but what really sank Friday the 13th was that the franchise became embroiled in a rights legal battle, halting any further development of the game for years. There were more game modes, characters, and cosmetics planned, but they never got the chance to implement them, and the game basically withered away on the vine. As we have seen with Dead By Daylight, there was definitely a market for this kind of game, but it’s sad to see that Friday the 13th didn’t really get a fair shake to carve out a proper place for itself.

20. Resident Evil 6 (2017, PS4)

Resident Evil 6 is an exhausting game. There’s just too much stuffed into this bloated mess of a game. In trying to appeal to everyone, it leaves nobody satisfied. There’s so much here that much of it isn’t given enough attention, leaving half-baked mechanics and level designs. Of the four campaigns, the only one that I kind of liked was Jake & Sherry’s. However, I’ve heard just as many players say that Chris or Leon’s campaign were the only one they liked, so you can see how polarizing this campaign structure is. The four campaign structure also screws over the plot (which is easily the dumbest and most over-the-top in franchise history). Then spread this out over a twenty hour playthrough, and you can see why Resident Evil 6 just generates exhaustion even thinking about it.

19. Twisted Metal 4 (2017, PS4)

I loved Twisted Metal as a kid. We had a PS1 demo disc with Twisted Metal 2 on it and my brothers and I would play split screen matches against each other in that demo, it was awesome. Unfortunately, after Twisted Metal 2, the original developers moved onto other projects and the franchise was handed over to 989 Studios. Twisted Metal 3 and 4 are both pretty notorious for how badly they screwed up the franchise’s tone. For my part, I think 4 is worse (hence why it made the list): Twisted Metal 3 feels like the previous games, just… significantly dumber. Twisted Metal 4, on the other hand, turns the franchise into a cartoonish joke. Sweet Tooth pulls off a coup and takes control of the contest, which could be a really cool concept. Unfortunately, they’ve also interpreted Sweet Tooth by putting more emphasis on the clown part, so all of his scenes have him juggling in a circus while surrounded by goofy clowns… it’s something, alright. That’s not even taking into account the actual game itself. The cars look like toys and control like ass. The only cool things are that you can create a custom car (with, like, a grand total of nine options to pick from) and Calypso enters the contest with a goddamn nuclear rocket truck (which is dumb because it makes him by far the coolest driver in the game, why the hell would you play anyone else?).

18. Star Wars: Episode I – Jedi Power Battles (2000, PS1)

You really had to be there for Star Wars: Episode I. Lucasfilm were milking the shit out of it, licensing Star Wars all over the place. The film had 5 video game tie-ins just in that first year (which isn’t even counting all the handheld ports those games got). One of these was Jedi Power Battles. My brothers and I enjoyed it as kids, largely because it was the most “violent” game we were allowed to play at the time. I enjoyed the hack ‘n slash combat for the time, and the blaster deflection parry was really cool, but even back then we had one major complaint… See, Jedi Power Battles isn’t just a hack ‘n slash like it is advertised to be. Oh no, the game is also secretly a 3D platformer… and the absolute worst 3D platformer ever made, I may add. You spend an inordinate amount of time in this game jumping over bottomless pits to land on platforms. With this game’s slippery controls and isometric camera, it’s legitimately difficult to make some of these jumps. Making matters worse are that the game has some extremely precise jumps, to the point where there are jumps in the first goddamn level that you will not make unless you start jump after you’re already off of the platform. It’s fucking ridiculous, but it reaches a zenith during the Coruscant level. You spend 99% of this level jumping on platforms… oh, and it also happens to be the longest level of the entire game. You have a limited number of lives in this game: on more than one occasion, we had to restart the entire level, because we kept falling into bottomless pits over and over again.

By the way, this wasn’t just me being a scrub as a kid. I recently fired up Jedi Power Battles on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro and, as soon as I got to the platforming sections, I just kept dying. It was flabbergasting how much they were asking of you and how badly it controlled. It’s too bad, the game is pretty fun when it’s actually being a hack ‘n slash, but the platforming is such an inordinate problem that it sinks the entire experience.

17. Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6 (2002, PC)

Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6 is clearly a budget title. That is fine. You get a relatively large open world in which to go hunt animals (large enough that there’s an ATV you can drive), and there’s a pretty impressive number of real-life gear in the game that you can use. The problem is that the game is clearly trying to be a hunting simulation, and expects you to treat it like one: slowly, quietly sneaking up on your target to land the perfect shot.

Unfortunately, the illusion shatters as soon as you get bored. “Fuck these deer, I’ve got things to do,” you say and then you just start sprinting headlong at them. The game’s animal AI is too dumb to react appropriately to a screaming monkey with a gun blasting at them, and so they stand there dumbfounded as you close the distance with them in the blink of an eye. Then, when they do run, you’re supposed to track the blood and figure out where they went. Instead, you just sprint after them, continually blasting the poor deer in the ass with your Cabela’s-branded gun. I legitimately wish that they had put some mechanics in to prevent this from happening. A hunting sim could be pretty interesting as a unique, niche experience. However, if you have to force yourself not to play like a moron to actually get that unique experience, it kind of ruins the whole thing.

16. BloodRayne (2002, PS2)

I had always been kind of interested in BloodRayne. I was nothing if not an edgelord when this game came out and I thought that her character design was cool. Given my love for shit movies, I had also seen two of the Uwe Boll adaptations (honestly… BloodRayne 2 ain’t bad). I recently decided to try out the games to see how good they were…

This game left me infuriated. The graphics are terrible (at least, they are in the PS2 version that I played). The art design makes the whole game unpleasant to look at. The voice acting is bad. The level design sucks more than our half-vampire heroine does, especially when the game turns into a finnicky platformer. The melee combat is just the worst though. In order to make a melee attack, you have to press L1 to attack. This would be awkward enough, but there’s absolutely no tracking or enemy lock-on and the attack animations lack impact, so you might as well by attacking with a wet noodle for all the damage it’s doing to the enemy. Add this all up, and melee combat feels like you’re flailing around in thin air all over the place. This gets so much worse later in the game when enemies that are immune to your ranged weapons are everywhere, forcing you to engage with this shitty melee system.

It’s wild how far a great character design can get you. This game was shit, but it still got multiple sequels, films, and a Playboy spread, all because the main character looks fucking cool. Actually playing the game though? I forced myself to get through, but the bright spots were few and far between.

15. Shrek 2 (2004, PS2)

My youngest brother was really into Shrek as a kid. Naturally, he was given the Shrek 2 game as a gift, and it was up to my brothers and I to join him for some co-op, isometric beat ’em up… fun? Yeah… surprise, surprise, Shrek 2‘s one of those shitty licensed video games. The beat ’em up gameplay is extremely simple and tired. For a game with a fixed, third person camera, you’d think that they’d be able to keep all the players and enemies on-screen, but somehow this game struggles to even do that consistently. There’s also just too much slow, dull platforming, often tied to specific characters’ abilities (meaning that everyone else just sits around and waits until the other player does their chores).

14. Resident Evil Survivor (2000, PS1)

I hated Resident Evil Survivor when I first played it. Having played much worse Resident Evil games since (spoiler alert), my opinion has softened on it somewhat, mainly due to its ambitious branching pathways and its hilarious voice acting. However, that’s not to say that I’ve forgiven it. Survivor is still a shockingly bad game: terrible graphics, terrible gunplay, idiotic puzzles, and the lack of saves is fundamentally moronic, not to mention that it’s only like two hours long. Survivor is not this underrated, misunderstood hidden gem. It sucks. It has some cool ideas, but it fails to do them any justice. It just sucks.

13. Super Noah’s Ark 3D (1994, SNES)

Yes, this is a real game. It’s literally running on the Doom engine. It also was unlicensed, meaning that video game retailers were not allowed to stock it. It’s also just laughable on its face: you’re playing as Noah, firing sleep-inducing food at animals (mostly goats; suspiciously, there are way more than two goats on this boat). You then do the “classic” Doom thing of hunting around a maze for keys… it sucks. Like, the joke was funny, but actually having to play it for any length of time is just not worth it.

Also, while writing this entry, I found out that Super Noah’s Ark 3D spawned from a failed attempt to make a Hellraiser game!?! It’s a wild story, you legitimately need to check it out.

12. Dead or Alive Paradise (2010, PSP)

I recently covered my problems with Dead or Alive Paradise here on IC2S, but put simply: it’s the most inessential Dead or Alive game of all-time. The DOA Xtreme gameplay is severely lacking in things to do. The hardware is ill-suited to provide the sex appeal this kind of game is supposed to deliver. Worst of all though, the gameplay changes have turned this already content-thin game into a grindy slog that is just not worth the effort it asks of you. If you have to play a DOA Xtreme game, then make it literally any other one.

11. I Am Alive (2012, PS3)

This game was one of my biggest video game disappointments. I remember back when I Am Alive was first being teased, it sounded really unique: a stealth-survival game where you play a normal guy trying to make his way through a destroyed city after some sort of disaster. Having the environment be the primary antagonist rather than combat encounters was really intriguing and I waited eagerly for more info on it… Well, I was waiting a long time, because it took about four years for this game to re-emerge with a release date. I heard from the reviews that it wasn’t very good, but I had waited so long for this game that I had to try it out anyway.

Just by playing I Am Alive, you can feel the developmental struggles it faced. Everything looks and feels janky. The game was also very buggy, straight-up crashing on me on multiple occasions on PS3. It got to the point where I just had to admit it: the reviewers were right, after all the struggles that went on during development, the devs weren’t able to make the game they had wanted to. It’s too bad, I still think that the concept of I Am Alive is great, which makes what we got sting all the more.

10. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (2012, PS3)

If playing your new Resident Evil game makes me start saying nice things about Resident Evil 6, then you know that you fucked up. Slant Six Games made multiple SOCOM games, so why is the shooting in this game so bad? Guns either do piddly damage, or they do a normal amount of damage, but run out of ammo extremely fast. Gunplay is also frustratingly inaccurate, and predictably dull. Most frustratingly, enemies are absolute bullet sponges, taking a ridiculous amount of ammo to take down. It takes me three whole clips from the strongest assault rifle to down one hunter, does that not seem excessive? Don’t even get me started on Tyrants or Nemesis, who ran through max ammo at least three times for my weapon before he went down. It is just so badly designed that it is not fun to play in the slightest.

9. The Lord of the Rings: Conquest (2009, PS3)

Oh man, every time I think about my biggest gaming disappointments, I go back to this game. As you saw on my top one hundred games of all-time list, I loved the original Star Wars: Battlefront games. At the time, the only thing I loved more than Star Wars was The Lord of the Rings, so naturally I thought that The Lord of the Rings: Battlefront would be an awesome idea. Lo and behold, a couple years later they announced that this idea was actually going to happen, and that the original developers of Battlefront, Pandemic Studios, were going to be the ones to make it. This was incredible news, as Pandemic were renowned for making good games, so there was pretty much no way this could get screwed up. At this point in time, I was usually reading reviews before buying new games, but this game was such a slam-dunk that I ignored the nagging doubts and paid sixty dollars up-front for it.

So… turns out that I overlooked a key difference between Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings in video games: Star Wars: Battlefront is pretty easy to pull off as a large-scale shooter. Conquest, on the other hand, is mostly melee-based, with archers and mages there to provide some ranged attacks, while being annoying as fuck. Melee combat was not implemented well, making the entire core gameplay a slog. The game was also far buggier and unpolished than Battlefront, making it feel very last-gen. Not even the alternate history campaign, where you play as Sauron clubbing hobbits to death, was interesting enough to warrant a look. This game absolutely broke my faith in the games industry, and I am extremely judicious about buying games after doing some research about them now.

8. Godzilla (1990, GB)

If you buy a Godzilla video game, you have some pretty basic expectations for what that is going to entail: either something like Rampage where you smash a city, or a fighting game where you beat the shit out of other kaiju, like Primal Rage. What you do not expect is a cartoony puzzle game where you climb vines, push a bunch of rocks around a maze so that you can smash all of them against another solid object, while occasionally swatting away other cartoony kaiju that wander too close. Oh, and if you take too long, King Ghidorah shows up and will instantly kill you. This is a baffling game on so many levels, I am not sure what the hell they were thinking. Surely the Godzilla license was just slapped onto some random video game to make it sell more? This was such a weird game, it was one of the first games I had for our Gameboy (which my brothers and I traded some other kid at school for), and I distinctly remember playing it and getting to a point where I had to question what I was doing with my life.

7. Bible Adventures (1991, NES)

Oh look, another Wisdom Tree game! Growing up in an evangelical household which was pretty strict about the sorts of games were were allowed to play, I actually had a copy of this game back in the day. The game plays a lot like Super Mario Bros. 2, acting as a 2D side-scroller where you pickup objects and avoid enemies. The game consists of three parts, the first of which is Noah’s Ark, which tasks you with grabbing animals and bringing them back to the ark. This game is full of frustration due to the shit controls and how easy it is to get damaged, causing all the animals to get scattered and run off, forcing you to chase them back down. It’s mired in frustration, and that’s the best game in the collection. Baby Moses tasks you with babysitting the titular Moses, with controls which are just as bad and gameplay just as frustrating as in Noah’s Ark. While you will accidentally cause Moses to get killed over and over, you can choose to chuck him in the river if you want to, inadvertently making it one of the few games where you can straight-up murder a baby (Grant Theft Auto would never). Then there’s David and Goliath, which just fucking sucks.

6. Revolution X (1994, Arcade)

Revolution X has to be the cringiest game ever made. It’s an arcade light gun shooter, and in that regard it’s pretty bog-standard. What makes the game so bad though is that it takes place in a world where the New World Order has taken over and hate youth culture, so they ban music, movies, and games. The only way to fight back is through the power or rock ‘n roll! And, to make things even more cynical, it features the likenesses and music of Aerosmith. Yeah, this game is basically wearing the corpse of revolution in order to advertise for a rock band which sold-out decades earlier. While the game itself plays… fine, I guess, the entire premise is so lame that it ruins anything it might have been going for. The sort of game you only play for a joke or if there’s literally nothing else available.

5. Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation (2017, PC)

Writing the Love/Hate entry for this game literally made me angry. This game represents everything that I hate about the modern gaming industry (games designed to be addictive and predatory rather than fun), but it is so much worse due to how this game has supplanted the mainline Dead or Alive fighting games in Tecmo-Koei’s eyes. Worst of all? The predatory shit works. I hate the game and I have not picked it up since I finished the article, but goddamn if I do not see it in my Steam library and get that compulsion: “Oh, I am missing out on using some of my limited energy points for the day, it will only take a few minutes to use them all…” And, for what? To unlock some more worthless swimsuits in hopes of getting a low drop-rate swimsuit that doesn’t even look good? Nah, fuck this shitty fucking game.

4. The Simpsons Wrestling (2001, PS1)

The Simpsons Wrestling was a game I rented for a laugh back in the day. I was aware of its reputation, but I was a dumb kid and didn’t think it would be that bad. Hoo boy, was I wrong. For one thing, the game is wildly unbalanced, making the main Simpsons family get outshone in their own game by fucking Bumblebee Man of all characters. On top of that, Ned Flanders is apparently considered to be one of the most broken fighting game characters of all-time (although at least in his case I can understand it, stupid, sexy Flanders…). The controls feel like ass; you’re flailing around for the entire fight. The graphics and camera are awful, even by PS1 standards (the fact that this released late in the PS1 lifecycle makes this even more egregious, but it would have no better in 1995). The only nice thing I can say is that at least I didn’t buy the damn game myself, which is more than I can say for most of the games on this list.

3. NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 (2009, PS3)

Around the time I played this game, my brothers and I were really into paintball. We would take part in large-scale mil-sim events with hundreds of people on each side blasting away at each other. One of my brothers was also on a speedball team, so I was also fairly familiar with the more competitive side of the sport. NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 is based around the competitive speedball side of things, but it ultimately just seems kind of pointless. Paintball is cool, because it lets you simulate video game-like combat scenarios in real life (without having to worry about serious injury, death, or police response). However, when you turn this back around and translate paintball into a video game, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially when the translation is incredibly janky, cheap, and broken. Much like Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 6, the enemy AI is only programmed to deal with you playing the “right” way: if you just charge straight down the middle and shoot everyone you come across, you’ll end every match consistently in less than ten seconds, breaking the entire experience. I promise you, if you tried this in real-life paintball, you would be downed immediately, but here the enemy AI is so bad that they do not know how to deal with it. At that point, just play a competitive shooter, you’ll have a way better time.

2. Resident Evil Survivor 2 – CODE: Veronica (2001, PS2)

Resident Evil Survivor 2 left me shocked at how bad it was. I wasn’t expecting much after slogging through its predecessor, but Survivor 2 makes that game look like a masterpiece. It’s the cheapest, laziest game imaginable, made up of 99.9% reused assets. I mentioned this in my Love/Hate entry, but I really need to reiterate that this is a shooter whose maps and assets are literally ripped right from a survival-horror game. They’re completely different genres, so these maps make no sense for a run ‘n gun experience, and the graphics look really bad, because they weren’t supposed to be seen up close. Hell, even the “new” stuff in this game is just assets ripped from the Dreamcast ports of Resident Evil 2 and 3 (and you can tell, because they look worse than the CODE: Veronica assets). Add in that somehow this game is even shorter than its predecessor, and this isn’t even a dumpster fire: it’s just a travesty.

1. Umbrella Corps (2015, PS4)

Umbrella Corps is the worst game I’ve ever played, in part because it should know better. This game came out at the end of Capcom’s half-decade of bed-shitting, with one final shart as they tried, once again, to make Resident Evil into Call of Duty. The game has aspirations of being a highly-competitive, esports shooter, but it just plays like ass. The UI is cluttered to hell, with all sorts of messages and redundant notifications telling you that you can move into cover or do a melee attack, which make it hard to actually see what’s happening on-screen. Of course, this part of the game was dead within a week or two of release, and at this point, Umbrella Corps as it has existed for most of its awful life is an over-glorified series of spec ops missions chores. These missions are tedious, dull, and infuriating – easy to cheese, but if you do, they take forever to complete, so you risk losing just to not have to play this game anymore. I bought this game on sale for six dollars, and I still feel like I got ripped off. I don’t understand how a major publisher releases a game like Umbrella Corps in 2015. We had long figured out shooters by this point, which just makes it so much more egregious than anything else on this list.

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My Top 100 Games of All-Time (25-1)

25. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003, PC)

Knights of the Old Republic has some of the best writing in all of Star Wars. Back when Disney bought Star Wars and everyone was still excited about the possibilities of new movies, I had a pretty simple request: adapt Knights of the Old Republic to film. You could adapt this game’s script with little changes required and it would be a hit (assuming they didn’t screw up in the execution). The twists would be able to land too, because most mainstream Star Wars fans haven’t played it, so it would still have impact. Oh, and most importantly, adapting KOTOR would not ruin the ending of Return of the Jedi and piss off the fanbase.

KOTOR is just the ultimate union of Star Wars fantasy and Bioware RPG gameplay. Customizing your character and slowly developing their Force powers and lightsaber over the course of the game is awesome. The real-time with pause combat is simple, but flashy in-motion. Seeing what the Star Wars universe was like long before the original trilogy is fascinating. The way that your affinity towards the Dark and Light sides of the Force affects your character, your companions, and the way the story plays out. If you love Star Wars, then you owe it to yourself to give KOTOR a try.

24. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002, PS2)

Another one of those games that was bought for me as a gift and that I wasn’t too interested in until I started playing, Sly Cooper is a fantastic blend of 3D platforming and stealth gameplay. In order to emphasize stealth, Sly (and most enemies you face) will die in one hit. This might sound rough, but the game is balanced around it and it feels very fair – if you are being sneaky, then you should have the upper-hand in every encounter. In fact, I actually prefer this system over Sly‘s sequels, which give everyone health bars… presumably because it is more “expected”? I guess it makes combat have a bit more depth? Whatever the case, combat isn’t really the focus of these games and I much prefer the snappier system in place here.

Like many 3D platformers of the day, Sly Cooper features collect-a-thon elements, but they aren’t just here to give you something arbitrary to do. Levels are littered with coins to steal, which will net you lucky charms (which allow you to take up to two hits before dying) or extra lives. You also collect bottles containing pages of the titular Thievius Raccoonus, which will eventually unlock really useful new moves and abilities that you can use, such as slowing time or creating a decoy to distract enemies.

So the core gameplay of Sly Cooper is rock solid, but the game’s presentation, characters, and story really elevate it. The game has a cartoonish, 50s noir style which is complemented by its cel-shaded graphics which have aged very well. The characters aren’t revelatory, but they’re fun: Sly’s your charming rogue, Bentley’s the high-strung brains of the operation, Murray’s the dumb-but-eternally-loyal and eager getaway driver, and Carmelita is the cop who will stop at nothing to put Sly behind bars… but is her obsession purely professional…? The whole thing is wrapped around a plot which is just perfect for video games: Sly comes from a line of master thieves who have recorded the techniques they have developed in the Thievius Raccoonus, but the book is stolen and his family murdered by a group of rival thieves called the Fiendish Five. Sly and his friends then need to reclaim his family’s knowledge and get revenge on the Fiendish Five. It’s a fairly simple setup, but compelling. Sly Cooper is just an extremely well thought-out video game: everything has been carefully considered and maximized to make Sly Cooper the best it can be.

23. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (2005, PS2)

Sly 3 doesn’t evolve the formula of the franchise very much: gameplay-wise, it’s more of what was established in Sly 2 (basically: Bentley and Murray are new playable characters, the one-hit-kill system is gone, stealth is de-emphasized, and guards can be pickpocketed for easy cash for upgrades). What really makes Sly 3 stand out is its exemplary writing, which builds upon all the developments made over the course of the trilogy. In this game, Sly is putting together a team to pull off a heist against Dr. M, who has taken over the island housing the Cooper family vault. Dr. M has been attempting to break inside to steal the generations of hoarded treasure held within. It seems like a pretty simple setup, but there are some major revelations and developments which twist the way we view our characters and the Cooper family in surprising ways. We also get several returning characters from the previous two games, some of which have undergone major developments. Most notable of these is Panda King, one of the Fiendish Five who killed Sly’s parents. The gang finds themselves having to recruit Panda King in order to successfully pull off the heist, but the tension between Sly and him is so taut that feels like it could snap at any moment. It is great writing, daring to take the difficult route, and the game is so much more rewarding for it. Dr. M is also a surprisingly complex villain, who I’d argue is the best antagonist in the franchise. Building up the gang and then executing this final heist makes for one of the most enjoyable game stories in its own right, but when you combine that with the things this game is doing as a trilogy-ender, it is a monumental achievement.

22. Ninja Gaiden (2004, XB)

Ninja Gaiden is notorious for its difficulty, demanding precision and quick reflexes to survive on higher difficulties. The game’s hero, Ryu Hayabusa, is a demon-slaying ninja badass and one of the coolest game heroes around. The story is functional by video game standards: Ryu needs to get back the Dark Dragon Blade, which was stolen from the Hayabusa ninja clan by the Vigoor Empire, all while battling ninjas, Fiends, and the Black Spider Clan. That’s right… there’s actually a game in my top one hundred which is here purely because of the gameplay. Ninja Gaiden‘s harsh challenge is tough, but fair, demanding that you learn its systems if you want to succeed. When you do overcome a fight that has been challenging you, the feeling of satisfaction is palpable, and the the fight is all the more manageable for it. Something I like about this game in particular which makes it stand out from its sequels is the hub-based world. For most of the game, you explore the streets of Tairon, battling enemies as you gain access to new areas and uncover some cleverly-disguised secrets that only a true ninja could perceive. I know that it’s been said before about this game, but it really does bear saying: Ninja Gaiden makes you feel like a true ninja badass and is well worth experiencing if you can stomach the challenge.

21. Bioshock (2007, PS3)

Whenever I recount my time with Bioshock, I always go back to the very first thing that happened to me in the game. You have an extremely brief opening cutscene where your plane crashes into the ocean and your character rises to the surface of the water to see flames from the wreckage. I sat there a good twenty seconds or more, expecting some object to come into frame from off-screen. Then it hit me: No… these are the in-game graphics!? The reflection of the fire on the water looked so good that I literally thought it was a CGI cutscene. The game was that immersive at its very first second. Then you travel down into the undersea city of Rapture and your mind is in absolute awe of what you are seeing. An art deco, undersea, libertarian dystopia is such a unique setting. And then the horror elements creep in, as you see what has become of the city and its denizens. By that point, you are just fully invested in Bioshock‘s atmosphere: this is just the coolest world design in videogames. It also, quite famously, has some of the best writing in any game of the time, being philosophical while also keeping it entertaining. It also has one of the best twists in gaming, a mind-blowing revelation that makes you re-evaluate your sense of self. And then there’s the plasmid powers you collect and upgrade during your journey which shake up the gunplay in unique ways.

Oh, and who could ever forget the first time they saw a Big Daddy? How about the sheer terror the first time you had to kill one? This game is fantastic, full-stop.

20. Metal Gear Solid (1998, PS1)

Since release, Metal Gear Solid has rightly been praised for pushing the boundaries of cinematics and storytelling in videogames. It’s a staggering achievement for a PS1 game, boundlessly creative and quirky in equal measures. There’s so many legendary moments in this game, that I’m not even sure it makes sense for me to recount them: you either know about them already, or you need to experience them for yourself. So, instead, I’m gonna use this space to describe my introduction to Metal Gear Solid

This was a game that I had heard about while growing up. I was really into gaming magazines around 2001. One of the first gaming magazines I bought was the Metal Gear Solid 2 cover story for The Official US Playstation Magazine, which really hammered home to me that these games were must-plays (I can still remember their guide on how to fake being sick to get a whole extra-long weekend off to play it). They all sang the praises of the Metal Gear franchise, and they said that Metal Gear Solid was the best one. That said, I wasn’t able to play them at the time: I was eleven when MGS2 came out, I was not allowed to play any M-rated video games, and I didn’t have any money to get them myself.

Around 2005 or 2006, I had fallen in love with the stealth action genre after playing all of the Splinter Cell released to that point. I was itching for some more top-tier stealth games, so obviously Metal Gear Solid was at the front of my mind. I managed to get a ROM of Metal Gear Solid, which I played on an emulator on my PC. I’ll tell ya, over the course of the next few evenings, my mind was blown. I loved the over-the-top action and characters. I loved the equally philosophical and farcical narrative. The presentation was incredible. I loved the insane, fourth-wall breaking gameplay moments. The boss fights were incredibly unique. It was just such a good experience that I started checking out the other games in the franchise as well, and soon Metal Gear Solid was even more important to me than Splinter Cell itself.

19. Shadow of the Colossus (2005, PS2)

Another one of those “early, undeniable examples of games as art” games, Shadow of the Colossus is unrivalled in its atmosphere. The colossi are these majestic, sombre beasts who you have been tasked to slay in order to resurrect an mysterious woman. The resulting journey is nearly wordless, which just absolutely sucks you into this game’s world. Each colossi is not fought in the traditional sense: they are all have a fairly simple puzzle based around their movements which, once solved, will allow you to climb onto their body and stab a weak point until the beast dies. Each colossi is unique and memorable, and the minimalist story really packs an emotional wallop. It’s just such an impactful and artfully-crafted videogame, you just can’t help but be in awe of the talent on display here.

18. Nioh (2017, PS4)

Once again, Team Ninja have an entry that I love entirely for the gameplay. Nioh has the best combat system of any game I have played, bar none. It plays largely the same as any other Souls-like: a stamina bar, challenging difficulty, if you die you lose your souls, etc. The main differences are that Nioh has a loot-based item drop system and that the game is linear and mission-based, rather than having you seamlessly navigating an open world. However, Nioh introduces two mechanics that shake up the Souls formula in some genius ways:

  1. Weapon Stances – Each weapon you get has three stances for your attacks: high for a slow, powerful attack, mid for a standard attack, and low for a quick, weak attack. Right away, this wildly expands the options you have at your disposal for any given combat encounter, but certain enemies are also immune or vulnerable to specific stances.
  2. Ki-Pulse – Nioh has a sort of “active reload” system to instantly replenish your stamina bar if you time a button press correctly. You will quickly get to grips with this maneuver when you play, it makes for a really cool system where you encourage aggressive combat maneuvers in order to maximize your damage dealt.

The game also retains Team Ninja’s pedigree for difficulty. In that quality, Nioh definitely stands out compared to its peers, with a level of precision required that rivals Ninja Gaiden. And I just love the guardian spirits, a charming gang of adorable, magic spirit creatures that give you special powers if you become friends with them. Nioh is just a great game to play, constantly pushing your limit and forcing you to get better.

17. Halo 2 (2004, XB)

Halo holds a special place in my heart. Some of my fondest gaming memories are playing Halo and Halo 2 at a couple youth group LAN parties as a young teenager. I loved the first few Halo books. The writing and world-building was (and still is) top notch. Despite this, I didn’t have an Xbox or a decent PC growing up. So, when the LAN parties stopped happening, I never really got a chance to play them again. I did, briefly, have an Xbox 360 and I attempted to play through Combat Evolved a couple times, but found that I didn’t like the game’s design. As a result, I never made it to trying Halo 2.

Fast-forward to a earlier this year. The Master Chief Collection was on sale for cheap on Steam, and I finally have a PC capable of playing it. Fuckin’ sold, that was an awesome deal. Once again, I found myself growing tired of Combat Evolved‘s design, but I forced myself through. Even then, it took me a couple months to get through to the end.

But then I started Halo 2. MY GOD, the sheer leap forward in every single way is spectacular. The story presentation and writing are legitimately film-like. The level design is much clearer and more distinct. Gameplay is improved in every regard. Dual-wielding guns is such a power trip. Even the small changes to the shields system make you feel more like a badass than before. I would turn off Combat Evolved after one or two levels, but for Halo 2 I blitzed through three levels back-to-back without breaking a sweat, and the only reason I didn’t go any further was because I badly needed to sleep. I got through Halo 2 in about a week, and loved it the whole way through.

16. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007, PS3)

The release of Call of Duty 4 was a bomb-shell in the gaming industry. This one game effectively killed the World War II shooter, which had been a gaming staple for a decade. Suddenly, every shooter had to be a modern military game. Its set-piece moments were jaw-dropping and influenced countless imitators. Halo had been the top dog shooter up until that point, but then this game dropped and arena shooters were decimated. Given that we were still early in the Iraq War at the time, the game had an extra layer of relevance. At the time, this game felt kind of dangerous and daring for how much it invoked real-world politics. This also, of course, started the annual Call of Duty release schedule that we are all sick to death of now.

And, in spite of all that, Call of Duty 4 is still as incredible as ever. This game looked unbelievable back in 2007. The campaign was shockingly strong for a straight-forward shooter game, with memorable characters, cool set-pieces and some gut-wrenching moments. It’s the sort of game that demonstrates the effectiveness of a good, curated, linear campaign: the iconic “All Ghillied Up” is almost entirely scripted, but goddamn if it does not get your pulse pounding. You may be done with Call of Duty now, but anyone who was there for Call of Duty 4 knows that that game was (and still is) a singular experience.

15. Ape Escape (1999, PS1)

Of all the games that were bought for us as a gift that I didn’t have much interest in until I played it, Ape Escape is the best of them. My brothers and I got a PlayStation for Christmas in 2000 and Ape Escape was one of the games we got with it. We didn’t have a whole lot of interest at the time though: what, we’re trying to catch some monkeys? Eh, sounds boring. But then, being bored one day, I decided to try it out, and quickly got sucked in. Now, Ape Escape is my most-replayed game of all-time. I must have played through it at least seven times since I first bought it. Hell, one of the first things I did when I got my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro was to load Ape Escape onto it and then play through the whole thing again, which ultimately led to me writing the Ape Escape Love/Hate series.

The core 3D platforming gameplay of Ape Escape is solid, but what really makes it stand out is the innovative use of the (at the time) brand-new dual analog controller. The left stick controls movement and the right stick controls whatever gadget you currently have equipped, giving you a level of control and precision unseen in console games up to that point. The gadgets themselves are also really neat, with the stun baton to whack monkeys and enemies, the sling shooter to snipe distant targets, the sky flyer to launch yourself high into the air or extend a jump, and the RC car to access small spaces (and harass monkeys), just to name a few of them.

Also… chasing the monkeys is just a hell of a lot of fun. They have three levels of alertness, so approaching them strategically is incentivized, and each ape has its own level of aggression and speed, making each encounter feel fresh. The time-travelling structure is also inspired, shaking up the environments and gameplay after every three levels so that it never gets stale. I love this game so much and I can guarantee that there will be even more replays of it in the future.

14. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988, NES)

Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of those sequels that blows its predecessors out of the water. Super Mario Bros. was a monumental game for its day, but Super Mario Bros. 3 surpasses it in every single metric. Its graphics are some of the best on the NES, and it’s wild to see how much they have improved in only three years (or two years if you consider that the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 originally released in 1986 and had basically the same graphical fidelity as the first game). There are way more levels and you navigate through them using an overworld map. There are even more clever secrets than before. The power-ups are more varied and are super cool: leaves and tanooki tails to fly, the frog suit to swim easier, and the hammer suit to hurl hammers at enemies. The combination of ambitious innovation and flawless execution make Super Mario Bros. 3 a timeless classic and one of the few NES games that is just as enjoyable today as it was back then.

13. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016, PS4)

So, as you can see from my placement of Uncharted 2 on this list, I really loved that game. However, it’s follow-up, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, was pretty disappointing to me: sure, the set-piece moments were better than ever, and there were some fun new characters, but the story felt like it was an after-thought, which made it by far my least favourite game of the trilogy. I figured that Uncharted 2 would remain the best of the franchise and that would be the end of it, but then a fourth game was announced for PS4. I was optimistic, but I really did not expect to love Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End as much as I did. The writing is the best in the franchise, bar-none, giving us a satisfying and mature end for these characters we’ve grown to love so much over the course of the series. The set-pieces are grander than ever, which is aided immensely by the improved technology since the previous game. The game also takes a cue from the Tomb Raider reboot, introducing some hub areas where you can explore and pick your next mission to complete. The game is also just gorgeous, putting its predecessors to shame in this regard (and those games were no slouches in the graphical department either). For the most part, Uncharted 4 is more of the same, but executed at the absolute best this franchise has ever seen.

12. The Last of Us (2013, PS3)

The Last of Us is one of those games that is so good that it transcended the gaming industry and is just part of the wider culture. This sombre, contemplative, depressing, and tragic story of a man and a girl travelling across a post-apocalyptic wasteland is easily one of the best-told narratives in the medium. Its ending is legendary, one of the most iconic in modern pop culture, and one which has been heavily-debated since it released (for my part, Joel did not do the right thing, and the Left Behind DLC is meant to make this unmistakably clear to the audience).

On top of this, I think that the gameplay is also very underrated. As opposed to Uncharted‘s bombastic action, the gunplay of The Last of Us is slower, more visceral and dangerous. You’ll often spend significant chunks of gameplay using stealth, avoiding alerting enemies as much as possible until you have to engage them. The cordyceps zombies also present a significantly different threat to the human survivors you come across, giving the game a survival horror tone. The way that you scavenge for supplies to craft make-shift weapons and items was also quite innovative for the time, and would be replicated for years after release by other games. This system encourages careful exploration and is done in such a way that you never have enough supplies to do everything you may want to. The Last of Us is Naughty Dog at their peak, flexing their development muscles to create an unforgettable experience.

11. Dead Space 2 (2011, PS3)

Your mom may hate Dead Space 2, but I love it. The game comes out of the gate swinging, featuring one of the most horrific and pulse-pounding opening sequences of any video game. The original game was already great, but Dead Space 2 ups the ante by bringing in more Uncharted-style bombastic action set-pieces. Contributing to this is that Isaac Clarke is no longer a silent protagonist, which allows him to have a lot more personality. This also enables the game’s more personal story, which sees him grappling with crippling PTSD and mental illness due to the events of the first game. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about all this though is that the game does all this without compromising the survival horror tone – this game is every bit as scary as its predecessor, while also being an action thrill-ride at the same time. The franchise’s core gameplay is every bit as compelling as before, but is now more refined and has more variety of weapons and enemies to keep combat fresh and endlessly replayable. Of all the new additions, my favourite is the Stalker enemies. While most necromorphs will attack the moment they spot you, Stalkers mess with your head like a pack of wolves. They’ll surround you, peek at you to see if you’re distracted, fall back if you get too close, and then scream like a banshee as they charge in for the kill. The first time I fought these guys, I was absolutely terrified, it was such a special experience. The Tormentor is also one of the coolest and most intense boss fights I’ve ever experienced, despite basically being an interactive cutscene.

10. Pokémon HeartGold (2009, DS)

I played countless hours of Pokémon Gold and Silver back in the day, making them one of my favourite games in the franchise. I think that the fourth generation of Pokémon games were the peak of the franchise’s gameplay. Combine these two interests together and we have Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, remakes of the gen two games utilizing the engine and mechanics of the fourth generation games. These games are the ultimate Pokémon adventure, full-stop. The difficulty is legitimately challenging, even for series veterans. The Johto region feels lived-in and steeped in history. The post-game in Kanto is expanded further as well, making this meaty second chapter even more impressive. Your favourite Pokémon follows you around on the overworld. It’s just the best rendition of the classic Pokémon formula, I don’t know how else I can describe it.

9. God of War (2018, PS4)

I’ve dabbled in the God of War games, but I haven’t gotten a chance yet to play through them all. However, I decided to try out the 2018 God of War and was surprised by just how good it was. While I do think that the story of the Greek God of War games is underrated and a lot more interesting than people give it credit for, God of War‘s 2018 entry is unrivalled in its writing. Maybe it’s just the timing of the game for me: I got this right after the birth of my son, so the tale of Kratos and his son, Atreus, on a journey to spread the ashes of Atreus’ mother really resonated with me. Seeing a more matured Kratos lends him so much more depth and sympathy – you can see how he’s trying to direct Atreus to not make the same mistakes he made. And then there’s the primary antagonist, Baldur: he looks like a drunken weenie the first time you see him, but he quickly demonstrates that he is incredibly dangerous, unhinged, and a legitimate threat to Kratos.

The game is also just gorgeous. The environments are breath-taking and I love all the colourful particle effects which just make the game look magical as you go on your Norse journey. The way that the game plays out like one long, seamless take keeps you immersed in this world.

The game also just plays well. I wasn’t sure if I’d like an over-the-shoulder melee system, but it actually plays about as well as the more traditional action game camera in the previous God of War games. It plays like a nice middle-ground between a Souls-like and a more traditional character action game. Kratos’ axe is also just the coolest melee weapon ever, allowing you to throw it and then have it fly back into your hand with the press of a button (hitting any enemy it crosses paths with on the way there for bonus damage). Combat is bloody, visceral, and satisfying. I particularly like the optional Valkyrie bosses hidden around the game world, which really test your skills and are a stiff challenge.

I loved my time with God of War. I rarely bother to platinum games, but I knew pretty early in that I was going to see it through for God of War. I loved this game so much that I had to see everything it had available, including all the optional challenge areas.

8. Dark Souls (2011, PS3)

Another example of “gameplay isn’t everything”. I think that Nioh is superior to Dark Souls in terms of its combat. However, I think that Dark Souls is, without question, the better game overall due to its less-obvious qualities. Of these, the best is the looping, open-world structure. Each area is designed like a linear level, funneling you through encounters until you reach a boss or the next area. However, many of these areas will connect to other areas, giving a sense of interconnectedness and geography to the world. There are several moments where you will reach a gate or an elevator, use it, and then be shocked to see that you’re now in an area you’ve already explored. The sense of verticality is also very unique, as the world is designed as a bunch of regions stacked on top of each other: at the bottom are the ancient, forgotten dregs of this world, while the top is the isolated, gilded realms of the gods themselves. That’s right, FromSoft have mastered world design so well that it’s even thematic. The game’s story presentation is also very unique, choosing to communicate it through the environment and item descriptions rather than an overt narrative. This intentionally leaves much of the story up to interpretation.

Of course, then there’s the combat system, which still influencing the industry to this day. It is relatively slow and deliberate, forcing you to carefully consider every action you make while balancing your stamina bar and limited healing resources. The enemy designs are inspired. Creatures like the Gaping Dragon, Pinwheel, and The Four Kings are such unique concepts, but so evocative and mysterious in their design. The difficulty is tough but fair. Pretty much anyone is capable of overcoming its challenges with a little perseverance and, if that fails, level-grinding.

Dark Souls is a game which just feels like a myth brought to life. Exploring and battling through its forlorn world is haunting, like you’re trespassing in a place you were never meant to be. Its difficulty may have been long surpassed by its successors, but it is still a good challenge and as satisfying as ever to overcome.

7. Bloodborne (2015, PS4)

Bloodborne was my first Souls-like experience. Like Dead or Alive, this game came across my radar after completing the Ninja Gaiden games. I was looking for another game with challenging hack ‘n slash combat, and Bloodborne came highly recommended. With that in mind… I was not primed for the kind of experience that Bloodborne was offering. The combat was fast, but not as fast as Ninja Gaiden, and there was no way to block, so I kept getting destroyed by basic enemies. The gameplay wasn’t really “clicking” with me, but I decided to persevere. However, piece-by-piece, it started to click in place in my mind. The importance of shortcuts, parry and dodge timing, careful analysis of the area, and stamina management really started to settle in. Around two-thirds of the way in, I “got” it, but I still wasn’t blown away. However, this all changed in one moment: I bought the DLC, played through to Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower… and I was stuck. She absolutely destroyed me multiple times. I tried to summon a co-op helper, but no one was answering my bell. I distinctly remember sitting there, waiting for minutes for someone to respond, when I decided: “Fine, I guess I’m just gonna knuckle-down then and do this myself.”

I died, over and over again. I must have done so over twenty times, but I was slowly learning more and more of Lady Maria’s moveset, getting her health down lower and lower as I went. When I finally managed to overcome her, it was like a deadly ballet between the two of us, and I felt a satisfaction that I had never felt in the game up to that point. I was changed, and I resolved to try to beat every Souls-like boss thereafter without summoning, if I could reasonably do so. It was the true start of my love affair with these games.

Like Blasphemous, Bloodborne is a game which ticks all my boxes. Souls-combat, but faster and more aggressive? Gothic and eldritch horror aesthetic? Blood? Fanatics? Goddamn fuckin’ werewolves!? Bloodborne is what you get when you take a solid gameplay foundation and then commit to a particular vision and aesthetic, elevating the game well beyond the sum of its parts.

6. Civilization VI (2016, PC)

While I think I’d say that Civilization IV was the most fun I had with a single Civilization game, if I had to pick one of these games to play today, it’s Civ VI, without question. Starting with Civ V, Firaxis shook up the series’ formula in some pretty fundamental ways, moving from a grid to a hex-based map, and making cities far more specialized and customizable. While I wasn’t a big fan of Civ V, Civ VI plays like a more refined version of that game, but with several more features added. Shaping your nation and conquering the world through diplomacy, culture, religion, or good ol’ fashioned war is a lot of fun, and no two games will ever play out the same. There are also an overwhelming number of civilizations available to play, providing even more variety and incentives to play the game how you want. I also like how the game doesn’t really force you into picking one particular victory route early – it’s completely viable to wait until the modern era to really commit to a victory condition (unlike, say, Civilization: Beyond Earth, where you’re pretty much knee-capping yourself if you diversify your nation’s interests). The “just one more turn” gameplay is just as addictive as ever as you set goals for yourself and see them come to fruition over the course of the next few turns and there are lots of options to customize the game to your liking (including options for some pretty wild, alternative game modes).

5. Tetris (1989, NES)

Tetris is the definition of “simple, but addictive”. Drop shapes made up of four blocks, try to make lines with them to clear them out before they reach the top, you get more points if you clear more lines at once, and the game gets faster the more lines you clear. Good luck, and try to get the highest score possible.

There are lots of different versions of Tetris out there: they’re all great, and I really like the quality of life improvements that have been developed over the years, but the NES version was the one that first got me into the game. Whenever I start replaying Tetris, I can see the blocks falling in my mind where ever I go. I used to keep track of my scores in NES Tetris… I wanted to show off a bit, but I can’t find the text document anymore… As I recall, I used to be able to get to around level twenty-five when it starts getting too fast to react, and I’d get as many four-line-clears as possible up to that point.

4. Resident Evil 4 (2005, GC)

Resident Evil 4 is an incredible game. The ambition, innovation, and attention to detail on display is staggering. Resident Evil games had grown really stale at the time, so it came out at the perfect moment. What makes this more remarkable is that the game basically plays like a classic Resident Evil game, only with full 3D and manual aiming, but its changes make it feel like a wholly new thing. Its over-the-shoulder camera revolutionized third person videogames and resulted in numerous imitators for years thereafter. It established Leon Kennedy as an absolute badass. There are just so many things you can say about this game’s legacy, that you really can’t understate how important it was.

For my part, I owned a copy of Resident Evil 4 on PS2 back around 2008, but I hadn’t really gotten past the opening village battle. It wasn’t until 2021 when I started the Resident Evil Love/Hate series that I finally decided to commit to trying it out. While it took about an hour to get used to the controls, once I acclimated, I was stunned at just how refined this game was. The whole experience is so lovingly crafted and varied that it never gets boring, and the campy tone doesn’t diminish from the horror elements. Then there’s all the little, optional systems you can engage in: treasure-hunting to get extra currency, the gun range where you can win prizes for good shooting, and you can do tricks during the jet ski section. Hell, what other game makes inventory management fun!? There’s a reason why this game is still being re-released and remade twenty years later, it’s an essential pillar of the gaming landscape and a monument to fantastic design.

3. Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023, PC)

Back during the early-to-mid 2010s, video games liked to tell us that “your choices matter”. However, after scores of Telltale and Quantic Dream games, the Mass Effect trilogy, Fallout, etc, gamers came to realize the truth of the matter: making consequences matter in games is hard. If you give the player the ability to make a choice which could change the game world, it’s simply too much work to make that choice actually matter in the grand scheme of things. At most, you may create a short, branching path, but it will just lead back to the main path again. Have to choose to let one of two characters die? You can be sure that the one you saved with have basically no bearing on the plot, or they’ll do the exact same things the other character would have done anyway. Hell, Fallout will let you kill just about anyone, but if a character is actually important, you can shoot them as much as you want, but they’ll just fall unconscious and forget anything happened the next time you see them. Once you realize this, it really destroys the illusion and can make certain choices completely worthless when you encounter them. I remember distinctly feeling this in The Walking Dead: Season 2 when you had to choose which characters would live and die… effectively rending that character useless for the rest of the journey, since they could be dead in another player’s playthrough and it would be too much effort that half your player base will never see to give them a major role thereafter.

Baldur’s Gate 3 throws this conventional wisdom out the window. While the game’s narrative does move forward on a fairly linear track, the amount of influence you have over events is astounding. While it doesn’t offer nearly as much freedom as a proper, tabletop DND game, it comes unreasonably close to achieving that. Like, for the earliest example of this unprecedented amount of freedom: you come across a druid grove where tiefling refugees are staying. The relationship between the grove and the tieflings is extremely strained, but the tieflings can’t leave because the road to Baldur’s Gate is too dangerous due to raids by the Cult of the Absolute. As a result, they’re on the verge of committing violence to stay in the safely of the grove. Initially, you can pick a side to support, or you can choose to try to find a compromise. Or, later on, you come across the Cult of the Absolute, who are trying to kill both factions, and you can choose to side with them. The expectation is that you will find a peaceful solution, but if you want to side with the cult and massacre everyone, that is completely viable. In fact, an entire character and their unique storyline is locked behind this option. Hell, you can choose to kill everyone on all sides and the game will just continue to go along, locking off content as characters abandon your party and questlines become unachievable. Characters will even acknowledge all the unexpected little choices you make. And, if this isn’t ridiculous enough, the game is fully voice acted, meaning that the amount of work that has gone into planning for every eventuality players could make is mind-boggling. Most players will never see much of this content. Hell, there’s an entire world of animals and corpses you can talk to, but you will only ever see it if you cast “speak with animals” or “speak with dead”, respectively (and you really should, these interactions are amazing). Hell, when you do reach Baldur’s Gate, much of the populace are interactable, with dialog trees and fully voiced performances. Many of these characters are there for nothing more than flavour, and all it does is make the world more believable and lived-in. That is the scale of the work put into Baldur’s Gate 3, and the more you think about it, the more it defies comprehension.

That’s all well and good, but the game is also just really fun. Due to the level of freedom, you get to approach its turn-based combat system in whatever ways you see fit. You really come to love the characters here, customizing their abilities to suit your needs, and forming relationships with them as you advance their side-quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an unreasonably good game, the sort of experience that you simply cannot expect anyone else to one-up. It will be the sort of game that we point to even a decade from now as an unrivalled pinnacle of the industry and one that you can go back to over and over again and find new secrets each time.

2. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005, PS2)

As I said in the Metal Gear Solid entry, I became interested in those games because of my love for Splinter Cell. When I was in my early teens, I bought Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at a street fair, and it began my love affair with stealth games. I loved it and made sure to pickup a copy of the original game shortly thereafter. With those two completed, we came to the newest game at the time: Chaos Theory. I had loved the previous two games, so I was super excited to get it… but, I couldn’t. See, Chaos Theory was the first Splinter Cell game to be rated M. My parents had a “no M-rated games” policy for us kids. I was only sixteen, I couldn’t wait another year to be old enough to play them! No, I was going to have to put my own roguish skills to the test…

So, one day when we were at Wal-Mart, I headed to the electronics section to look at the games. There was Chaos Theory, locked behind the game cabinet. I asked the clerk to get it out of the cabinet and ring it up. I figured he was going to ask me to verify my age, which would dash my plans, but he didn’t bother. I snuck it home and kept the game hidden so that my parents would never know that I had bought an M-rated game. My brothers and I were very good kids, so intentionally disobeying them like this was exciting and dangerous. It’s kind of silly, but it felt like I was the one sneaking about and pulling off secret missions without getting caught.

Chaos Theory plays much like its predecessors, but with some tweaks. These include a new noise meter, an EMP device for your sidearm, improved graphics and animations, smarter enemies, and a choice of lethal and non-lethal melee attacks. The missions are also really well-designed. Most famous of these is the bank heist near the start of the game, which is just a flawless example of thrilling game design. The level mixes infiltration, exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving in such a glorious blend. The voice cast are on top form here, especially Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher. His performance in this game makes Sam Fisher downright terrifying at times. Chaos Theory was the absolute peak of Splinter Cell, before Ubisoft felt that the series needed to be shaken up. As a result, we’ve never really gotten another game quite like it, making it a game that is still worth playing to this day.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004, PS2)

Snake Eater is perfect.

I love the writing. The political philosophizing stands side-by-side with big, dumb action sequences, and juvenile humour. The journey that Naked Snake goes on in this game is genuinely moving.

I love the characters. Naked Snake is the best Metal Gear character, bar none. The Boss is just incredible, and her motherly relationship with Snake adds so much emotional weight to the plot. EVA is a great Bond girl; enticing, but one who you never really think you can trust. Ocelot is a lot of fun when he shows up, I love that they gave him a more immature personality to match his age. Volgin is such a fun villain to hate; joyously evil and sadistic.

I love the boss battles. The obvious highlight is The End. The first time I came across him, I knew his reputation. I got shot by him almost immediately without even seeing him and decided right there to chicken out on the fight. I knew about the clock-skip trick, where you can win the battle automatically by moving your system clock forward a week, which causes The End to die of old age. I did it, but I didn’t feel good about it. Some time later when I replayed the game in the Subsistence re-release, I decided to knuckle-down and do the fight for real this time. I can distinctly remember running around lost for the first part of the fight, trying to figure out where The End was hiding. However, I soon began to realize all the ways you could pin-point his location, and soon it was a game of hunter vs hunter. I think it took me an hour and a half, but I gunned him down and felt the rush of satisfaction for overcoming such a creative and unique challenge.

I love the setting. A jungle in Russia is a pretty wild setting, but it’s so evocative. The jungle is the realm of predators, so being able to hunt enemies here makes you feel so cool. The setting also takes Metal Gear from the hallways and corridors they had been in up to that point. Levels are open, with lots of room to maneuver and pick your approach. You have to hide in plain sight, which is so much more badass than hiding in a locker.

I love all the ways you can mess with guards. For example, you can blow up their food supplies to make them hungry and vulnerable to eating poisoned food that you’ve left around. You can also blow up their ammunition stores so they can’t shoot you if you’re spotted. You can also throw a pissed-off, poisonous animal at them to get it to bite them to death.

I love the new survival elements. Having to hunt for food to sustain yourself really hammers home the idea that you’re an operative deep in enemy territory. I love how the camouflage meter facilitates the more open level designs without sacrificing the stealth gameplay.

I love the ending. Snake Eater has my favourite ending of any piece of media. The first time I played this game, I was blown away by the final boss fight and cutscene. It re-contextualized the game’s events and really made me question what I had done to get to this point. It’s beautifully acted and emotional. It’s the cherry on top of a perfect sundae.

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My Top 100 Games of All-Time (50-26)

50. Demolition Racer (1999, PS1)

A childhood classic, Demolition Racer is what it sounds like: combine demolition derby destruction with a high-octane racing game. The results are, predictably, catastrophic, with cars slamming into each other at high speeds, vehicles sent flying everywhere, catching fire, and exploding. This isn’t just nostalgia talking either, I’ve gone back and replayed this game multiple times in the past few years and it is always a blast.

49. Gravity Rush 2 (2017, PS4)

Gravity Rush 2, and its predecessor, are joyous games. Their plots are uplifting, full of positivity in the face of danger. Their characters are charming and unique. Most importantly though, the central mechanic reminds you of the simple joy of play. Too many games have movement and traversal as a lengthy chore that you have to manage in order to get from point A to point B, and you spend more time bored and annoyed getting to your destination than you actually do enjoying yourself (looking at you Witcher 3…). Gravity Rush flips the script on this: being able to shift gravity at will to fall towards your chosen destination is as breath-taking at minute one as it is at hour fifteen. It matters less that combat is a bit finnicky when the moment-to-moment gameplay is this fun and the writing is this charming. Gravity Rush 2 is pure joy and the industry needs more games like this in it.

48. Twisted Metal: Black (2001, PS2)

While Twisted Metal 2 is probably the best-playing Twisted Metal game, I’ve reiterated over and over here that gameplay isn’t everything, and Twisted Metal: Black is one of the best examples of this. The game is bloody difficult, perhaps too much so at times and the game can feel downright unfair. However, where Black really stands out is in its presentation and story. Black is easily one of the darkest video games ever released. Its cast are a bunch of psychopaths let loose from an insane asylum, all doing battle with each other and tearing across the city of Midtown in order to be granted a wish of their choice. You’ve got such colourful figures as No-Face (a professional boxer who lost a fight, causing a doctor who had bet on him to remove his eyes and tongue and then stitch them shut), Mr. Grimm (a Vietnam vet and former POW who is wracked with PTSD and a craving for human flesh), Preacher (a delusional pastor who downed a goddamn baby because he thought it was possessed), Warthog (a serial killer whose wish is to remove the part of the brain that makes him feel remorse when he kills), and of course Sweet Tooth (an unrepentant, murder-obsessed serial killer who wears a clown mask). Each character has a very dark and disturbing story that plays out over the course of the game, and the game’s world is suitably gloomy and depressing. It’s so over-the-top grimdark that it’s cartoonish, but then loops right back around to being properly dark stuff due to how hard it commits to the whole thing.

47. Resident Evil 2 (2019, PS4)

Resident Evil 2 remake was a lightning rod moment for the gaming industry, kicking off the remake craze we find ourselves knee-deep in. The game is just a bloody good, tense thrill-ride. Zombies have not been this threatening in decades, taking tons of ammunition to put down for good, which incentivizes you to conserve your resources and avoid them where ever possible. The design of the RPD is also still one of the most memorable environments in gaming and it’s just as compelling here in full 3D as it was on PS1. While it does stumble a bit towards the latter-half and the story isn’t all that interesting, Resident Evil 2 is one of those games that you cannot stop thinking about once you pick it up.

46. The Movies (2005, PC)

Peter Molyneux is notorious for over-hyping his games, but the one time he actually struck pure gold has to be The Movies. As a business management sim, it’s pretty cool: you manage a movie studio, building sets, hiring star directors and actors (and keeping them happy), managing crew, and developing technology from the silent era up to the modern day. All this is decent enough for a game in its own right, but what catapults The Movies to the stratosphere is the in-game machinima tools that give you a lot of freedom to create your very own movies. I’m talking dozens and dozens of scenes (each with variants and customization options), systems to allow the characters to lip synch with any recorded audio, special effects, and a basic video editor. It’s a mind-blowing amount of freedom, to the point where I made a feature-length spy movie back in high school using The Movies.

45. Blasphemous (2019, Switch)

Sometimes a video game comes out which is just made for me. Blasphemous scratches so many of my itches: Metroidvania, Souls-inspirations, religious fanaticism, dark fantasy, blood, penitence… I picked it up in a sale a few years ago and I was glued to my Switch for a week straight, obsessed with journeying through this nightmarish civilization to prove my devotion to the faith. It isn’t doing much different than your average Metroidvania game, but it hits so many of my interests that I can’t help but adore it.

44. RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999, PC)

Like many other 90s kids, I got this game for free in a box of cereal. The game itself is the pinnacle of management sims, with a simple premise: build the amusement park of your dreams. Build attractions, setup decorations to make things more aesthetically pleasing, landscape to your liking, optimize your pathways, and design your very own rollercoasters (which, inevitably, will be too intense for the guests)! Each guest also has their own name, amount of money they’ll spend, and likes and dislikes which can help you tailor the park to maximize returns.

Of course, that’s all good if you’re playing the game as designed. You can easily turn RollerCoaster Tycoon into a psychopath simulation as well. Make vomit-inducing rides and then charge your guests to use the bathroom. Are guests mad that you charge them $5 to go for a piss? Grab ’em and throw them on punishment island, where they’ll angrily run in circles until you send the island into the ocean and drown everyone. Or, the classic option: build an unsafe rollercoaster and watch it crash and explode, killing everyone on board. You don’t have to be a dick in RollerCoaster Tycoon, but it’s a lot of fun that the game gives you the freedom to do so.

43. The Walking Dead (2012, PS3)

Telltale had been making narrative, episodic games since the mid-2000s, but they never really had any major hits, and their biggest swings (looking at you Jurassic Park) were considered fairly poor and did not make a splash. So, for a while, Quantic Dream’s games were the gold standard for narrative games, with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain being quite notable titles of their eras. However, even back then, the writing of those games was heavily criticized, but I (and many others) excused it, because we couldn’t really get these kinds of cinematic, narrative-based experiences elsewhere.

Then Telltale’s The Walking Dead came out, and Quantic Dream were obsolete overnight. The Walking Dead established a formula of narrative, choice-based games that Telltale would milk dry over the next few years, but The Walking Dead stands tall amongst them just due to the strength of the writing here. The tale of Lee and Clementine is unforgettable: an escaped convict stumbles across a little girl whose babysitter has been killed during a zombie apocalypse and takes her under his wing. The illusion of choice is very much a thing here, but it doesn’t really matter that much when the journey itself is so good. What makes it so good are not the big choices anyway, it’s the little ones – do you go all-out to protect Clementine, or do you try to preserve her innocence as best you can? No other video game has managed to make me cry like this one, and I imagine if I were to replay it now, after becoming a father, it would leave me absolutely devastated.

42. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004, PC)

I’ve been a Warhammer 40k fan for most of my life, and I can say with confidence that the original Dawn of War is still unsurpassed as far as 40k games go. An old-school RTS which innovated by putting the focus directly on getting you into combat, Dawn of War lets you engage in visceral, bloody, large-scale war with friends or AI opponents. Several factions were added in expansions, meaning that it is absolutely packed with content to try out. The game is still fully playable online to this day as well, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting together with friends recently to try to hold the line against high-level CPU teams hell-bent on annihilating us. It results in glorious carnage as your units rain gunfire and artillery down and chainswords rip through flesh. The modding community is also great, bringing in an entirely new, playable faction and removing the game’s unit cap for ultimate apocalypse mode.

41. Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires (2004, PS2)

I am not exaggerating when I say that I love Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires. I have poured countless hours into this game as I gleefully hack and slash my way through ancient China to reunite the land under my banner. Empires specifically is great, because it adds a level of grand strategy to Dynasty Warriors‘ usual formula, as each battle captures territory, makes new items available, allows you to recruit and capture officers, and gets you one step closer to conquering the nation. This change takes the rather repetitive combat of Dynasty Warriors and gives each battle a level of importance and resonance that it may otherwise lack, since each action you do is building towards a grander goal. The nature of the world map also means that no two campaigns will play out the same: you’re always going to have different enemy factions, different officers fighting with you, different territories to attack and defend at any given time, etc. I actually replayed the game on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro a few months ago, and it was like cuddling in a warm, familiar blanket again. Later games may have expanded the political gameplay, but this version of Empires will always have a special place in my heart.

40. Resident Evil 3 (2020, PS4)

My go-to answer for “most over-hated game of all-time”, I legitimately enjoy Resident Evil 3 remake more than Resident Evil 2 remake. This, once again, comes down to the non-gameplay aspects: the story in Resident Evil 3 is easily the best in the entire franchise. Jill is a fucking badass, Carlos is cool, Nikolai is a great secondary antagonist, and Nemesis is a terrifying, relentless monster. Resident Evil 3 plays like a PS3-era, cinematic action game in the vein of Dead Space 2, the sort of experience we rarely get these days when every game has to be open world and dozens of hours in length or it’s not worth gamers’ time. The runtime is fine for this sort of experience: the six-to-eight hours you spend are maximized for fun and spectacle, and I got significantly more enjoyment out of this than I did out of the bloated, two hundred hours spent toiling away in Fallout 4 (and I call bullshit on anyone who claims to have beat it in three hours unless they were specifically running through it as fast as possible). Plus it’s on sale all the time now, so price isn’t even a problem. Sure, it cuts some content from the original, but the original still exists: play ’em both, I say.

39. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (2015, PS4)

While the game has expanded in some wild directions since release, the core gameplay of Rainbow Six: Siege is one of the best multiplayer shooters I’ve ever experienced. I got in early, a few weeks after launch when the game was in a very rough state, and I was hooked due to how intense it was. As a defender, having to fortify your position while you can hear attackers breaching to get to you makes your heart beat fast and your palms sweat in anticipation of what’s to come. As an attacker, you have to watch every step you take as you try to get in as safely as possible. Each encounter is life-or-death, with instant kills coming frequently. The operators’ unique weapons and equipment fundamentally affect how this plays out and creates a mix-and-match system that makes every game unique. While I don’t really play competitive shooters much anymore and, as a result, I’ve effectively retired from Siege for good, my time with the game was easily some of the best experiences I’ve ever had in an online game.

38. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015, PS4)

With the glut of open world games we’ve gotten in the past decade, my opinions on The Phantom Pain have softened somewhat. Traversal quickly becomes a pain in the ass, as starting any mission will require you to get past multiple guard checkpoints, you always feel obligated to look for new soldiers to recruit for your base, and the side ops get extremely repetitive. That said, The Phantom Pain still stands out thanks to its fundamental gameplay systems. Stealth remains incredibly fun, all the wild and wacky gadgets at your disposal give you so many ways to mess with guards, and the guards actually learn and start to counter your tricks, forcing you to change things up regularly. In spite of its problems, it’s still a great sandbox experience and a solid send-off to the greatest saga in gaming.

37. Mass Effect 2 (2011, PS3)

While Mass Effect 3‘s ending soured the entire franchise, Mass Effect 2 at least remains one of the best action RPGs on consoles thanks to its fairly self-contained story. You’re basically tasked with putting together a team of specialists to go on a suicide mission. The first twenty or so hours are just you recruiting your team, getting to know them, preparing your ship and equipment, and (most importantly) growing emotional connections to your entire crew. We then get one of the best finales in gaming as your team plunges into the gauntlet and your decisions over the course of the game come to fruition. Depending on what you’ve done, one or more of your crew can die executing the mission, which is about as emotionally impactful as you would expect.

36. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999, PS1)

Shock! Horror! I liked both versions of Resident Evil 3! While I certainly have some issues with it compared to its predecessor, Nemesis is such a unique and ambitious game for its time period. Its scope is significantly wider than any previous Resident Evil game, allowing you to freely traverse an entire section of Raccoon City. The titular Nemesis is also downright scary here, barely operating within the limits of what you can reasonably deal with in Resident Evil‘s tank control scheme. The freedom and sense of risk/reward that this gives you is great – you can avoid fights with him if you want to, but if you choose to tough it out, you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your efforts. I remember when this game was considered the dark horse of the franchise, so seeing it get all the love after all this time is great to see.

35. Dead or Alive 2 (1999, PS2)

A couple months ago, I would have said that I liked Dead or Alive as a franchise, but I wouldn’t have had any of the games in my top fifty. Dead or Alive 2 changed that for me. The game is a massive improvement on its predecessor, adding in new characters, fun new mechanics, stage hazards and multi-level stages which wildly change how a battle looks and feels. The game is also simply packed to the brim with content, to a degree that we just do not get out of games anymore. It’s a simple enough game that anyone can pick it up, but deep enough that there’s a lot to learn and come to grips with if you really want to dedicate yourself to learning. Like I said in my recent Love/Hate series, I’m so glad that I decided to check the older games in this franchise out, because they were a real joy to get to experience.

34. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015, PS Vita)

Hotline Miami 2 is largely more of the same from its predecessor, but when that game had one of the most addictive and replayable gameplay loops of any game, that’s nothing to sniff at. Hotline Miami 2 is hypnotic: an acid trip of colour, blood, ultraviolence, synthwave, and pure focus. You will die over, and over, and over again as you try to perfect your killing spree and get through each area unscathed. This results in a ballet of bullets as you mow down enemy gangsters with dual SMGs, throw your empty gun to stun a guy, then slash their jugular open with a blade you picked up, then throw that blade into another guy’s head, grab another weapon to keep going, etc. All this coming as you die, hone your approach, die again, and so on until you have it down perfectly.

33. This War of Mine (2014, PC)

This War of Mine threads the extremely delicate line between entertainment and art with a serious message and, in my opinion, the results are poignant. Meant to act as a commentary on international conflicts and of the military shooters of the day, you play as a small group of survivors caught in an active warzone trying to survive to see peace return once more. You have to balance your survivors’ sleep, hunger, and morale, and developing your safehouse to be able to produce heating, supplies, and to be able to defend against looters. Then, at night time, it’s safe enough to sneak out and try to scavenge for supplies… but be careful, because you’re not the only one trying to survive…

Then there’s the heavy choices. Supplies are going to start drying up real quickly. Do you risk confronting other scavengers who may be hostile? Do you enter an area with ongoing exchanges of gunfire to risk getting to supplies that haven’t been picked over yet? Do you try to break into a gang’s well-stocked safehouse to steal their supplies? Or do you break into a defenseless old couple’s home and steal their supplies to keep yourself alive? If neighbours ask for help, will you give up some of your rations and medicine to help them? And, if you have children in your safehouse, how do you keep them safe and innocent in the face of all this? This War of Mine leaves these choices up to you, and only makes them harder as disease and winter set in, making you really test the limits of your morals. It’s a one-of-a-kind survival experience, and I implore you to check it out.

32. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (2001, PS2)

Shattered Skies is a special game for me. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a pilot instructor. One of my earliest memories was flying with my grandfather in his two seater airplane and looking down at the world below us. Probably due to this connection, my aunt bought me a copy of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies as a gift. I wasn’t particularly interested at the time, but eventually decided to give it a try, and quickly became mesmerized.

On the gameplay front, Shattered Skies is an arcadey military air combat game where you’ll be dogfighting, shooting and bombing ground targets, and sometimes flying dangerously low to avoid radar and airburst artillery. The gameplay is actually way more varied than you’d expect for this kind of game and makes for a game that never gets old. You also get access to dozens of airplanes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and customization options, which let you tailor them to each mission you find yourself in.

What really makes Shattered Skies so good though is its shockingly mature story – and I don’t mean that in the “rated M for mature” sense, I mean that this is some legitimately great stuff. The story is told from three perspectives: 1) the big picture, war room briefing perspective, which tells you about the progress of the war between ISAF and Erusea; 2) the in-game story of Mobius 1, who you control and turn into a legendary fighter ace over the course of the game; 3) the story of a grown man recounting his experience as a boy growing up in occupied San Salvacion. This third story is where the real emotional punch of Shattered Skies comes in, as we see his family killed as collateral damage in the war after the Erusean Yellow Squadron shoots down a plane, which crashes into their house. Despite hating the occupiers, he grows to have a strained relationship with some of the fighter aces in Yellow Squadron who are based in the city. While Yellow Squadron clearly have empathy for the boy and want to be seen as more than just occupiers, you get the sense that they are legitimately saddened when he has to stand up to them in order to protect a friend in the resistance. This more personal perspective of your enemies makes it a bittersweet moment when we have to face Yellow Squadron in battle as Mobius 1 and shoot them down one-by-one. It’s a shockingly clever and tragic way to lend emotional stakes to what would otherwise be standard air combat gameplay. This whole story makes Shattered Skies so much more than the sum of its parts, and is easily one of the best-written stories in video games.

31. Resident Evil 2 (1998, PS1)

I knew that Resident Evil 2 was celebrated back in the day, but I didn’t really realize just how good it was until I finally played it earlier this year. Given its placement here on the list, I also clearly liked it quite a bit more than its more polished and popular remake. I just love the way that Resident Evil 2 feels and plays: nearly everything good about the remake is intact here, and in some ways (such as the story and branching playthroughs) it’s even better. It’s incredibly impressive for a PS1 game and by far the most fun entry in the “classic” era of Resident Evil.

30. Resident Evil (2002, GC)

While Resident Evil 2 is the best of the classic era, the remake of the original Resident Evil is arguably the best distillation of the Resident Evil formula we’ve ever gotten, largely thanks to the changes and improvements it brought after six years of iteration. The original Resident Evil was a very rough and unrefined game: full of cool ideas, but lacking in the execution. REmake realizes that potential and then some, with graphics that still look fantastic today that help bring the oppressive atmosphere of the Spencer Mansion to life. The remake also makes several changes to the original game which keep things surprising to veterans and improve the overall layout of the mansion in the process. The Crimson Heads are the most notorious example of this, providing a nasty surprise to new players who are too liberal with their firearms usage, and adding a whole other layer of strategy as you have to figure out which bodies to burn before they reanimate as even more dangerous enemies.

29. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010, PS3)

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it may seem kind of weird to rank a Battlefield game so highly, because a Battlefield game is just another Battlefield, right? Bad Company 2 was special. Like Battlefield 3, this game was really designed for rush, and charging in with your teammates to take the MCOM stations was as intense as it was fun. Bad Company 2 also featured a level of destruction that no Battlefield game since has dared attempt to replicate: nearly every building can be blown apart or leveled entirely. While some argue that this makes the map kind of boring once all the buildings are gone, I call those people cowards: flushing defenders out of Arica Harbour with a series of tank shell strikes was a literal blast. The game also had some fantastic maps which, when they’ve shown up in subsequent Battlefield titles, have given me a rush of nostalgia that I’ve rarely felt for anything else. It’s a shame that the game was shut down for good last year, but the memories live on forever.

28. Dead Space (2008, PS3)

Dead Space is the best franchise to arise from the glut of Resident Evil 4 clones, and it’s not even close. A mixture of Event Horizon, The Thing, and Alien, this first game brings terror to the corridors of the Ishimura as you try to stay alive against hordes of necromorphs and find out what happened to your girlfriend, who was stationed on the ship. The core gameplay gimmick is inspired for a horror game of this nature: simply shooting a necromorph is insufficient to kill it, you need to blast their limbs off to immobilize them. Combined with limited resource survival gameplay, stasis blasts to slow enemies, kinesis to throw objects at your foes, and a good ol’ fashioned curb stomp when all else fails, the core gameplay of Dead Space is rock solid.

27. Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012, 3DS)

Fire Emblem: Awakening came out at a difficult time for the long-running franchise. Sales for the last couple entries had been underwhelming, so Intelligent Systems had one last chance to right the ship before the series went on ice for good. With this in mind, the developers threw the kitchen sink at Awakening, trying to make the biggest, best Fire Emblem of all-time, if only to give it a proper swan song. Luckily, their efforts paid off and Awakening gave the franchise a second life. While it largely plays like any other Fire Emblem game (turn-based tactics gameplay, RPG elements, perma-death, etc), Awakening‘s big new feature was an expansion of the relationship system to allow two of your soldiers to have children, who will inherit traits from both of them. This allows for some really fun and unique combinations, which work just as much for roleplayers as they do for min-maxers. While some fans have bemoaned this addition, claiming it turned Fire Emblem into a waifu simulator, I think that that opinion is fucking dumb. Awakening is a great game and, in my opinion, the most fun Fire Emblem I’ve played thus far.

26. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009, PS3)

I really enjoyed the original Uncharted when it came out, a lot more than most people who played it in fact. I loved the characters, the gameplay, and the story, so I was excited to see how Naughty Dog would up their game for the follow-up. What I was not expecting was for Uncharted 2 to absolutely blow everyone’s expectations out of the water and be widely considered the game of the year for 2009.

Uncharted 2 plays like its predecessor, but with some key refinements. The game is overall just bigger: more grand spectacle, bigger set-piece moments, more characters, more complex story. As much as I liked Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher in the first game, they really come into their own here, and I love that Naughty Dog didn’t take the easy route of having their pulp hero have a new love interest in every game.

And that’s it for part two. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then the final part will be up tomorrow!

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My Top 100 Games of All-Time (100-51)

Lately, I’ve been seeing people on social media posting Topsters lists of their favourite video games, which has gotten me thinking about the topic. It got to the point where I put together my own quick-and-dirty list on Bluesky, but that didn’t really leave me all that satisfied. You see, for about twenty years now I’ve been using IMDb to track and rate every movie I’ve seen in that time. It’s actually been pretty useful for me, and I can easily look back and get a rough idea of what movies I’ve seen and what my thoughts were on them. This put me on a journey to try to do the same for every video game I’ve ever owned and/or played, which led me to a site called Backloggd. Having spent a couple weeks recounting every game I can remember playing, I’ve now got a big list of nearly four hundred games I’ve played (four hundred!? GOOD GOD). That’s a big enough library that I can legitimately put together a top one hundred games of all time list… so why not do just that?

A few notes before we start: first, I’m not going to include compilations here (so no Master Chief Collection, Tetris & Dr. Mario, Super Mario All-Stars, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, etc). The upper-echelons of the list would probably be dominated by compilations, and that just doesn’t feel fair to the legacies of the individual games. Secondly, I’m not going to make this “one game per franchise” like I would if this were, say, a top twenty-five. If your franchise is good enough to get multiple entries, then you’ll get that representation (although a sequel that basically invalidates its predecessor’s existence will likely push prior entries off the list entirely). Thirdly, this is wildly subjective and, by its nature, only based on the games that I’ve actually played. As a result, I guarantee you that I have not played some all-time classic that you love. Please tell me how much you hate me for not including it down in the comments below.

Got it? Let’s get onto the list then…

100. Echochrome (2008, PSP)

A fun, quirky, minimalist little puzzle game on PSP where you have to rotate a 3D maze in order to change perspectives and allow a mannequin to reach the exit. Can be a bit finnicky with its controls, but it’s such a unique and striking premise that I can’t help but love it.

99. Theme Hospital (1997, PC)

This business simulation game was a blast back in the day, but what really made it stand out from the crowd was the various wacky ailments your hospital would have to treat.

98. Peter Jackon’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (2005, PS2)

In the annals of licensed video games, King Kong was easily one of the best. 90% of the time it’s a tense, immersive first person shooter where you struggle to survive against the monsters of Skull Island. For a glorious 10% of the time, you turn the tables and become Kong, beating the ever-living crap out of every monster that had been harassing you up to that point. The game was also just legitimately revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of immersion, with no HUD to speak of and direct involvement from Peter Jackson himself.

97. Guacamelee! (2013, PS Vita)

A joyous, lucha libre-themed Metroidvania. I remember trying a demo of the game when I was on a vacation in Atlanta and immediately deciding that I was going to buy this game when I got back.

96. Pokémon Diamond (2006, DS)

The fourth generation of Pokemon is probably my favourite of them all (and I say this as someone who stopped at gen two and came back for gen six, so this isn’t nostalgia speaking). The physical/special split was revolutionary for the gameplay and the difficulty was legitimately challenging. Granted, Diamond makes the list largely because I have not gotten around to playing Pokemon Platinum yet. When that happens, I expect Diamond to drop off and Platinum to move higher up, as it’s generally considered vastly superior to the other two Sinnoh games.

95. Vigilante 8: Second Offense (1999, PS1)

Car combat is one of those genres which are dominated by one big franchise (Twisted Metal), and the rest are a bunch of forgettable rip-offs. Vigilante 8: Second Offense is the closest anyone ever came to stealing the crown, with its significantly better graphics and interesting innovations. Who cares about any of that though: on the Arizona stage, you can cause a meteor to strike the arena, which will send any nearby cars flying and then a giant ant comes out which attacks everyone on sight. Entire evenings were spent in our household on this one level as we blasted each other and this giant, fuck-off ant over and over again.

94. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, PS2)

Another Peter Jackson licensed game makes my top one hundred! The Return of the King game is a fairly simple hack ‘n slash by modern standards, but it sure is fun and miles better than it had any right being.

93. Assassin’s Creed 2 (2009, PS3)

At the time of its release, Assassin’s Creed 2 was a revolutionary experience, perfecting the half-baked formula of its predecessor, and featuring an interesting narrative with a protagonist who was surprisingly endearing. At the time, I would have easily put Assassin’s Creed 2 much higher on this list. However, only one game later, I was halfway through Brotherhood, when I suddenly found myself completely done with this series’ structure of “travel halfway across the city to your mission, then travel halfway across the city to complete the objective”. I still think Assassin’s Creed 2 is good enough to warrant a spot in the list, but oh how the mighty have fallen.

92. Freedom Fighters (2003, PS2)

Freedom Fighters is a legitimately revolutionary game for its time. It starts out as a pretty terrible third person shooter due to its wildly inaccurate weapons. However, it soon evolves into something special, as you start being able to command an ever-growing number of squadmates, until you’re eventually commanding a dozen guys into massive battles against tanks and helicopters as you attempt to liberate an occupied USA.

91. The Sims 3 (2009, PC)

I wasted way too many hours in university playing The Sims 3 that I should have been spending on homework and socializing. Oh well, it’s not like I wasn’t enjoying myself.

90. Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015, PS4)

I reviewed the first Tomb Raider reboot game back when it came out and, as much as I enjoyed it, it clearly was a bit rough around the edges. Rise of the Tomb Raider largely smoothed off the rough edges and made for a much more refined and enjoyable experience overall.

89. Bioshock Infinite (2013, PS3)

Another one of those games that probably would have ranked a lot higher at one point, Bioshock Infinite still impresses due to its amazingly-realized world and mind-bending story. Hell, the game spends a lot of time just being a walking simulator and, honestly, that’s when it’s at its best. The shooting gameplay’s pretty rough, which does lower its overall quality somewhat, but Booker and Elizabeth’s adventure remains as unforgettable as ever.

88. James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004, PS2)

Everyone’s got a favourite James Bond video game, but for my money, Everything or Nothing is the GOAT. An early third-person cover shooter, this game was hard as nails back in the day. Its plot was pretty over-the-top, but considering it was coming out after Die Another Day, I guess that was just par for the course for Pierce Brosnan’s Bond. Honestly, the craziest thing about it was probably that Shannon Elizabeth was a Bond girl, but then again, so was Denise Richards during the Brosnan era, so what do I know?

87. Future Cop: LAPD (1998, PS1)

Future Cop‘s single-player gameplay is fun enough – blast away violent criminals, gangs, and cultists from the comfort of your transforming mech. However, what really pushes it over the top is its multiplayer mode, Precinct Assault, which is basically a proto-MOBA: get points for killing enemies and capturing neutral territory, use these points to buy bases, defensive units, and offensive units, which will attempt to enter your opponent’s home base. First side to get an offensive unit inside the enemy’s home base wins. It makes for an endlessly addicting, back-and-forth struggle to come out on top.

86. EarthBound (1994, SNES)

This cult classic is largely memorable for its quirky humour and writing, which does away with the JRPG conventions of the time, instead featuring a bunch of psychic children fighting gangs of weirdos in the 1990s.

85. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999, PC)

Man, you had to be there back in 1999, chopping down trees, mining stone and iron, and then marching out your massive armies to go obliterate your opponents’ base while the horns of war sound.

84. Total War: Warhammer III (2022, PC)

…and then we have the ultimate evolution of the epic RTS, Total War: Warhammer III. Total War has been producing jaw-dropping battles for decades, but the Warhammer games unshackled that formula from the limits of history and into glorious dark fantasy. Warhammer III gets the placement here by default since it allows you to bring in all previous factions and DLCs into one enormous world map to conquer. It’s a staggering amount of content on offer and makes for an overwhelmingly massive sandbox to play in.

83. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018, Switch)

And speaking of overwhelmingly massive, Smash Ultimate is probably never going to be surpassed in the fighting genre in terms of sheer roster size and content on offer. The core gameplay is as simple and fun as ever, making for a great pick-up and play experience with your friends and enemies.

82. XCOM 2 (2016, PC)

Confession: I kind of hated XCOM 2 on launch. I had loved XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but the guerilla ops of vanilla XCOM 2 just didn’t jive with me and the RNG felt way off. However, after War of the Chosen released, I decided to give it another look, and it sank its hooks into me deep, to the point where I can’t really see myself going back to the original game anymore. The modding scene is also pretty incredible, allowing you to deck out your soldiers as Space Marines, Solid Snake, and even Helena Douglas and Hitomi from Dead or Alive.

81. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001, PS2)

I have my issues with Metal Gear Solid 2, but in the eight years since I wrote about it, the game has only managed to become even more relevant. Even if it’s not a game I’d particularly want to go back and play at a moment’s notice, I find myself thinking about it all the time, which is a level of longevity you really can’t say about a lot of media two decades from release.

80. Bully (2006, PS2)

Billed as “Grand Theft Auto in a school” at a time when anti-bullying campaigns and the Grant Theft Auto moral panic were at their height, Bully is nowhere near as controversial as it may sound. In fact, you’re the one bringing down the bullies (although you can wedgie the nerds if you want to be a dick).

79. Death Road to Canada (2016, Switch)

A hilarious and addictive zombie survival roguelike, Death Road to Canada is the definition of a “just one more run” game.

78. Journey (2012, PS3)

One of the early, undeniable examples of “games as art”, Journey is a short, thoughtful, gorgeous experience.

77. Super Mario Bros. (1985, NES)

The quintessential 2D platformer, Super Mario Bros. is still a great game even today. Hell, its plethora of secrets are so well-ingrained in the collective conscious, that it’s easy to forget how truly mind-blowing all the hidden blocks and warp pipes really are for a forty year old game.

76. Dead or Alive 3 (2001, XB)

Oh hai, Ayane! Dead or Alive 3 is a gorgeous, spectacular, and downright fun fighting game, which really stands out due to its awesome stage designs.

75. Minecraft (2011, PC)

You don’t need me to explain what Minecraft is, right? I actually only started playing it this year as a bonding activity with my son. As cool as it is to see our world get built piece-by-piece, it’s even more exciting getting to see him learn and get to grips with how to play games in the process.

74. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009, PS3)

Very few games reach the level of blockbuster hype that Modern Warfare 2 achieved, and it lived up to that hype and then some. The campaign is explosive and exciting. The notorious “No Russian” mission is still referenced today, fifteen years later. The multiplayer was also a massive evolution, bringing in dual-wielding and even faster gameplay than its predecessor.

73. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998, N64)

Whenever we’d visit my cousins, the first thing we’d do is fire up their N64 and play a few levels of Rogue Squadron. Flying around in various Star Wars vehicles and dogfighting Tie Fighters is a joy, and it’s still just as fun today.

72. Lollipop Chainsaw (2012, PS3)

A perfect example of how gameplay isn’t everything, Lollipop Chainsaw demonstrates the power of leaning into style. The combat is kind of janky and overly-simplistic, and the enemies are downright rude, but when you’re bopping to pop hits while chopping zombies to bits and the entire screen is turning rainbow, it’s hard to not have a great time.

71. Among Us (2018, PC)

It can be easy to forget due to all the memes and merch which have flooded the public conscious, but at its core, Among Us is a fun social deduction game. Seeing how your friends react under pressure is fascinating, and trying to off them as an imposter gets you sweating like no other game can when your friends are trying to figure out who did it.

70. Life Is Strange (2015, PS4)

At a time when the market was saturated with Telltale narrative games, Life Is Strange stood out with its unique time travel powers and bold writing choices.

69. Pokémon Black Version 2 (2012, DS)

I maintain that the fifth generation of Pokémon was a fairly messy one, but they got the balance between fresh experiences and wild ambition far better for Black 2 and White 2. It largely continues the gameplay improvements from gen four, but adds a ridiculous amount of content, while providing a completely remixed map from Black and White and brand new story.

68. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990, MSX2)

I will never stop banging the drum that Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an underrated masterpiece. Many of the things Metal Gear Solid was hailed for were present here in their infancy eight years earlier.

67. Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005, PS2)

Star Wars: Battlefront II was a wild game, especially considering it came out only a year after its predecessor. It adds more maps. It has a progression system to upgrade your weapons. It makes heroes playable, and adds significantly more. It completely overhauls the flight system from the previous game, adding full-on space battles where you can dogfight, blow up critical ship systems, or board the enemy ship and cripple it from the inside. It was just a massive game with a scope and scale beyond many modern games that I sank countless hours into back in the day.

66. Pokémon Crystal (2001, GBC)

Back when I was a kid, gen two was the pinnacle of Pokémon, a massive improvement upon its predecessors and a shockingly expansive game for a tiny little Game Boy cartridge. Of the gen two games, Crystal was easily the definitive version, hence its placement on the list.

65. Left 4 Dead 2 (2009, PC)

Left 4 Dead 2 was controversial prior to launch, due to releasing only a year after its predecessor. However, as soon as it arrived, all complaints were washed away in a sea of undead. Left 4 Dead 2 is a fun co-op action experience, made all the better due to its AI director who makes every playthrough unique and tense.

64. Halo 3 (2007, XB360)

Halo 3 is a damn good time, with the best gunplay of the original trilogy. If not for some personal gripes about the story, I’d probably rank this significantly higher.

63. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (2002, GBA)

The last Fire Emblem game to not get an international release, The Binding Blade has some fan translations which are easily accessible and which help make the game playable for English-speakers. Its sequel would be fairly dumbed-down for the western audience who weren’t used to the series’ gameplay, but for those itching for a larger, more challenging experience, The Binding Blade is just what you asked for.

62. Civilization IV (2005, PC)

The last Civilization to retain the series’ “classic” structure, Civilization IV is possibly my favourite single entry in the franchise. However, its successors have taken the overall experience so far that I am not sure if I could ever actually go back to this game. This made it a bit hard to rank for me as a result, but I think that its more classic Civ gameplay gives it a somewhat unique place and its legacy deserves some recognition.

61. Battlefield 3 (2011, PS3)

While there’s a palpable sense that Battlefield 3 was taking a bit too much influence from Call of Duty, this game was an incredible experience back in the day. This was also the last time that DICE prioritized my favourite game mode, rush, and some of the rush maps here were incredible.

60. Dead Space: Extraction (2009, Wii)

Extraction is leagues better than it has any right to be. A rail shooter spin-off for the Wii of all things, Extraction tells an entertaining and surprisingly well-paced story about the fall of Aegis VII and the Ishimura.

59. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey (2019, PS4)

Whenever I bring up memorable video games, I always go back to Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. To some degree, this game is kind of crappy… there’s basically no explanation of its mechanics, extremely repetitive gameplay, and very simple combat. You will struggle to make it more than a few hundred meters from your home without your ape having a panic attack (oh hey, just like real life!). You will be killed by predators out of nowhere and you will miss multiple jumps and fall to your death. These deaths are permanent, mean one less ape in your colony, which is already teetering on the edge of extinction.

However, you will eventually begin to get to grips with the mechanics. You’ll learn how to move around so as to avoid danger. You’ll learn how to make tools to make things easier for yourself and to fight back against the predators. You’ll start trekking out further and further from your home. You’ll learn to communicate with your troupe and start forming armed, roving gangs for safety. Soon, this massive jungle you’ve been exploring won’t seem so massive.

What really cemented the game for me was when I decided to climb the father tree, the largest tree in the jungle. I was carefully making my way up this massive trunk, climbing into the clouds, giving myself literal vertigo due to the sheer height. I reached the top and the entire world stretched out before me. There were so many more places left to explore, and I’d barely scratched the surface of it all…

…oh, and then I had to figure out how to climb back down. Truly an unforgettable game, far more than the sum of its parts, even if it takes a lot of patience to find the gold within.

58. Battlefield 4 (2013, PS4)

While the first six months were unacceptably bad, Battlefield 4 is now arguably the best Battlefield game on the market. Packed with tons of weapons and maps to engage in large-scale war on, I poured hundreds of hours into this game at the peak of my obsession with online shooters.

57. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (1991, SNES)

Turtles in Time is a great beat ’em up, but it’s one of those games that cements its legacy with one simple mechanic: you can grab enemy Foot soldiers and throw them at the camera. This would be cool enough as-is, but the cherry on top is that this is how you have to damage multiple bosses. Fuck yeah.

56. Fallout 3 (2008, PS3)

Fallout 3 came out at the perfect time, back when the open world game was still special, and when the Fallout universe hadn’t been explored in a decade. It made for a really evocative and unique experience that can’t really be recaptured now that everyone knows what Fallout looks and sounds like.

55. Twisted Metal 2 (1996, PS1)

In terms of pure gameplay, Twisted Metal 2 may just be the pinnacle of the series, with some iconic maps, lots of fun characters to play, and entertaining weapons to blast your friends to smithereens.

54. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017, PS4)

I really love RE7. I love how it mixes the long-forgotten, classic Resident Evil gameplay with modern horror conventions to create a truly fresh, terrifying experience. This is easily the scariest Resident Evil has ever been.

53. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004, PS2)

Pandora Tomorrow was my first Splinter Cell game and it immediately cemented my love for this franchise and stealth games in general. Shooting out lights, hiding in shadows, using gadgets, and generally just fucking around with your enemies is as fun as ever.

52. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (2002, PS2)

Oh hey, remember how I said we’d get multiple games from the same franchises on this list? Well, I had a really hard time picking between Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow, but I had to give the original game the slight edge, due to preferring its story campaign just a tad more (sadly, I never got to play the multiplayer in Pandora Tomorrow, so I can’t comment on that).

51. Hitman 2 (2018, PS4)

IO Interactive’s modern Hitman trilogy is a stunning accomplishment. Create a vibrant, expansive, multi-level open sandbox, throw at least two targets into it, then set you loose to figure out how to kill them in a manner that suits you best. The sheer level of freedom is jaw-dropping and the ways that the world will react to your actions is remarkable to see. I’ve only played the first two of these games, but Hitman 2 gets the edge for me due to its more creative scenarios.

And that’s it for part one. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then part two will be up tomorrow!

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