Board 8 > CasanovaZelos's Top 100 Video Games

(+) Yeah! (+)

Also, I just played Disco Elysium last night - DMC5 still stands as my GOTY 2019, but this was still a fun and unique experience - the only problem is I feel like I stumbled into the ending before I really should have? Makes me really wanna try Planescape: Torment again. Classic PC gaming really is my big weak area. I also need to get around to RE2 remake and Control.

There are also a ton of games from 2020 I could be playing but kinda want to wait for price drops since I currently have such a big backlog...

Currently, 4 games from 2019 are in my top 250:
#89. Devil May Cry 5
#105. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
#127. Disco Elysium
#150. Outer Wilds


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#14. Final Fantasy X (2001)
Developed by Square Product Development Division 1

Starting with this tenth entry, the Final Fantasy series started pushing itself in increasingly different directions. Gone was the ATB system that defined the six previous entries. Even something as universal as levelling characters had a massive overhaul. For me, the systems which acted as replacements were outright improvements. No future game implemented these ideas at the same capacity, neither within the series nor outside. Yet Final Fantasy X can easily be lumped in with IV through IX as the classic era of Final Fantasy, largely thanks to its strong design and colorful cast of characters. There may be some hiccups with the voice acting, but if Final Fantasy VII fans can look past the in-game visuals, its kind of absurd that Final Fantasy X is endlessly criticized for a small handful of sound mixing issues.

The Conditional Turn-Based Battle system might be my favorite JRPG battle system. The ATB system the previous entries used has always hit me as odd. Having a bar slowly fill up does not change much compared to a traditional turn-based system, and having time continue as you choose adds an unnecessary source of stress. There were weird moments of downtime between actions. The CTB system in X captured the spirit (that some characters might have their bar fill up faster than others) while implementing a more traditional turn-based feeling. The trick here is that the turn order was displayed in the top right corner.

This could have been purely informational, but Final Fantasy X goes to great lengths to give the player control over turn order. Tidus operates somewhat as a time mage, and his abilities focus on getting more hits between enemy turns. The game also includes the option to switch out party members on a characters turn, which opens up a few possibilities. It can be good to keep white mage Yuna in the back until shes needed. But theres a balance here, in that the game relies a bit more on buffs than previous entries and someone switching into the party will be lacking. The common encounter doesnt take the greatest advantage of this system, but the bosses are some of the best in the series due to some extra strategic layers. Add in the late-game monster arena and the International Versions bonus bosses, and there are a lot of fights which show off the best aspects of this system. The worst part is, its so easy to see how this system could be refined further, but no future game has made a real attempt.

Adding to this being my favorite Final Fantasy purely on a gameplay level is the sphere grid. Instead of levelling up, the characters gain points which let them move around a grid. In the beginning, each character has a clearly defined path with a few off-shooting branches. The central draw is that each of these characters share the same grid but start at different points. There is a promise here that you will eventually be able to mix and match classes, ultimately reaching the point where everyone is maxed out. Kimahris role is intriguing, as he starts in the center and essentially exists as an early excuse to jump between sections while others stick to their path. Several of the small branches have locks blocking the stronger abilities, and it can become a question of waiting for the necessary sphere to break the lock or passing it by to keep levelling. Usually, levelling simply means watching a few numbers go up, but theres an extra feeling of control here.

Final Fantasy X showcased how big of a leap there was between the first two PlayStation consoles. Other than the aforementioned voice acting issue (which really isnt that bad outside of a few scenes the focus always being on a scene which is intentionally awkward should be telling), this was a great step forward in video game presentation. X felt cinematic in places where the PS1 games could only suggest.

Instead of an overworld map, this game is instead set inside large areas. Linear vs. open design will always be an endlessly tiring debate, but it really depends on the game. This linearity works because this is the story of a pilgrimage the goal is to get from point A to point B. Despite the lack of room to explore, everything still feels larger than life and magical. Additionally, despite one of the obvious complaints about linearity being an assumed lack of content, FFX might just be the longest game in the series for a completionist run. The secrets are simply mixed into these large areas.

Im also one of those weirdos who actually likes Tidus. This isnt to say he isnt annoying you will absolutely want to slap him across the face several times. But he grows into something greater. Despite so many games insisting on having teenage characters, Final Fantasy X feels like one of the few to actually tackle maturing into an adult. Im also fond of Yuna, the quiet, self-sacrificing summoner at the heart of this pilgrimage. The revelation of the pilgrimage being a suicide run for potentially negligible benefits hit me hard, especially with Tidus being kept in the dark just so he could be obliviously happy during the journey. Its somewhat embarrassing to admit, but this games themes of sacrifice have been a major influence on my own writing (in fact, the novel Ive been working on for the last year essentially started as a deconstruction of the fantasy stories I grew up with, with Final Fantasy X serving as the backbone). So, sure, some of these scenes might have been cheesy. But, as far as I can remember, this is the only game to make me cry. I was admittedly only twelve or thirteen when I first played this game, but still. Simply hearing To Zanarkand is enough to make me sadly nostalgic.

Final Fantasy has enough variants on a classic formula that several could easily be argued as the best. For me, that title has always belonged to Final Fantasy X. From the addicting and simple combat system to the wonderful presentation and setting, this game has stuck with me like few others. Everything works so well that I can almost overlook the fact that none of these characters know how to dress. Lulu, what are you doing with those belts? For Yevons sake, this freaking game made me cry over a dude who wears zip-off pants with only one leg removed.

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#13. Persona 5 (2016)
Developed by P-Studio

Persona 3 established a phenomenal structure for long-form narratives favoring day-to-day moments over a more unified epic struggle. The two games which followed expanded upon the concept by building complex narratives spread across the entire length of the game, all while diving deeper into the central theme of what it means to create a persona. Persona 5 comes off as a maximalist piece, eschewing the everyday presentation of the two previous entries for a stylish take on life in the big city.

Few if any games have such jaw-dropping visual design. Even navigating menus is a striking experience. Of the many games I have now written about, I dont think anything else has made me want to highlight the interface. These are screens which can be acceptably utilitarian, after all. Yet Persona 5, never wanting to drop its aesthetic for even a second, imbues these with motion and color. Most works have their own grand aesthetic goals, but few have ever been so all-consuming.

The Phantom Thieves is one of the coolest video game parties around. The Persona games typically tell the story of a covert group fighting comparatively minor evils under the cover of a mysterious world. The masquerade is a much larger element of this story, with the Phantom Thieves loudly announcing their operations to the world. This sense of public anonymity is a unique and tense structure. Additionally, their goals feel a lot more active. Many JRPGs games, including the other Persona games, revolve around the idea of fighting back against evil. Here, the Phantom Thieves are the instigators, fighting for what they think will cause a better world. This helps add an edge to their moral position which casts them in a complex light.

Persona 5 also makes the many stray elements all feel more strongly connected. Even the non-party social links have a more meaningful connection to the task at hand, giving benefits beyond stat increases for personas of the same type. Befriending someone like the doctor Tae Takemi can feel more beneficial than focusing on party members. Everyone from the protagonists to the antagonists to the bit players play a notable role, and its hard to find another game with this big of a cast with such consistently well-defined characters.

On a gameplay level, the biggest change is that the dungeons are now defined instead of randomly-generated. Thus, every section is more intricate. With the dungeons representing the inner workings of the games many villains, the defined structure can help to better symbolize their mental processes. This also allows more big events to occur midway through a dungeon. All of these palaces have a distinct atmosphere, from an art museum to a bank to a spaceport. Meanwhile, those who like the randomly-generated dungeon crawls still have Mementos, a journey through a twisted subway system representing the city at large.

Otherwise, Persona 5 is largely more of the same thing. But with such a strong structure and so few games attempting this general idea, more of this is a great thing. Balancing the daily life between forming bonds and tackling the monthly dungeon is as fun as always. The key part of Persona 5s stellar features is that they are largely a horizontal evolution. The three Persona games since the third are all clearly part of the same series, yet their atmospheres vary enough that none feel like a direct attempt to simply outdo what came before. Like Final Fantasy, the best Persona game comes down to taste; do you prefer the rural slice-of-life murder mystery of Persona 4 or the aggressively stylized urban heist narrative of Persona 5? Its easy to love both without either feeling like too much of the same experience.

Persona 5 is simply as cool as video games come. This is what Tetsuya Nomura wishes his nonsensical designs managed to pull off. Sure, the Phantom Thieves may look a bit silly running around in fox masks, but the performative nature of creating an outward persona gives a lot of leeway. The structure of the Persona series is simply phenomenal at incorporating a lot of concepts spread over an extended period. While I sometimes question the apparent need for video games to keep getting longer, every second of Persona 5s 100 hours feels earned.

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SNAKE EEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER! Still the only MG game that I've played, but what an unforgettable experience.

I love Final Fantasy X. I'm biased because it was one of my first experiences with console gaming, but what a game. Tidus can be annoying, but I also feel he is very realistically written for someone with his background, his lifestyle, and the situations he finds himself in during the game. All the characters are pretty great in their own ways, and as you say, the leadup to the central plot twist of the game is really well done and so impactful.

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Might be the best written (and my most agreed with) top games list in b8 history. Nice work thus far!

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Yeah he's such a good writer. I'll read any project you do!

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Unfortunately, I'll be back to focusing on my novel (and hopefully starting another one while I attempt to get this one published). I'd love to do a proper top 250 movie list again someday, but this has been seriously time consuming.

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Is this your first novel? Good luck, man! The publishing industry is a bitch from what I understand, but if you really believe in it you can always publish via Amazon (and write off any editorial/cover art/formatting expenses).

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I wrote a novel back during college and have also written a few screenplays since then. This is the first one I feel confident enough in to really go all in on trying to get published. I'm still editing, of course, but as I might have mentioned before, I'm working with an agent to at least get my query letter in top shape (since I have no idea how to write a proper query on my own and it can sink the project before an agent even looks at the actual pages...). But I feel like I've finally broken free of a lot of my negative writing habits with this manuscript.

And I wouldn't want to self-publish because I have no real internet presence and am not good at building one, and self-publishing and failing can also close the door on chances at mainstream publishing.

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Ive been quietly reading this topic. Excellent write-ups as others have said (and youre not the only weirdo who likes Tidus).

I was just wondering something about your efforts to get published, if you dont mind my asking, since I recently finished a novel of my own and dont have a clue where to begin to get it published. You mentioned youre working with an agent to hone your query letter, is that a different kind of agent than a literary agent? My understanding was an agent generally doesnt come into play until after youve sent the query letter.

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This is the agent's side project, so I'm not actually working with her as an agent (and she doesn't represent my genre anyway). But I trust her to know her stuff because she has run a popular blog critiquing queries for over a decade. So, this is a paid service, but I think it's worth the cost based on her specialties.

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CasanovaZelos posted...

This is the agent's side project, so I'm not actually working with her as an agent (and she doesn't represent my genre anyway). But I trust her to know her stuff because she has run a popular blog critiquing queries for over a decade. So, this is a paid service, but I think it's worth the cost based on her specialties.

I see. That sounds like a smart idea to get her advice. Good luck!

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CasanovaZelos posted...

I'd love to do a proper top 250 movie list again someday

I remember the last one. Was good.

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Note that the below write-up discusses the way in which Undertale handles morality. I don't really go into any story specifics, so I'm not sure any of this actually qualifies as spoilers, but I figured I should give a warning just in case

On an additional note, Undertale is my favorite game to not be my Game of the Year.



#12. Undertale (2015)
Developed by Toby Fox

Since its release, Undertale has become memetic to the point of oversaturation. It is difficult for me to assess how this experience hit others after this indie game had already blown up; can lines like Despite everything, its still you or Sanss endgame speech leave as much impact if you know theyre coming? I was one of the lucky few to play this before it took off, and playing Undertale almost completely blind (all I knew was the existence of a moral element, not even how it was implemented) was one of the best experiences of my life.

Before I dive into the gameplay and narrative elements, I want to start off by drawing attention to Undertales soundtrack. 8-bit video games had to develop a new sound to accommodate for the limitations of the hardware. These chiptunes have maintained a certain popularity, and Undertale is a phenomenal take on the genre. From the peaceful title theme to the boss battle bangers, this is one of gamings best soundtracks.

Morality in video games is a hot issue, and few games do this as well as Undertale. Many games give rather cheap options. From Mass Effect to the Walking Dead, moral choice is a button you click and then the protagonist performs those good or bad deeds for you. Undertale takes the Metal Gear Solid approach to find a peaceful solution, the player must work for it. And when the player finds a clean resolution, they fail to gain EXP, leaving them weaker for the next battle. In Undertale, being a little bit evil is the easy option. Being the better person in the face of adversity has always been a difficult task, and few games capture that feeling so honestly.

I recognized this idea immediately, so I went all in as a pacifist on my first playthrough. With its obvious inspirations including Earthbound, Undertale is an aesthetic oddity. But like Earthbound, there is emotional depth buried beneath its seemingly random design choices. Because the spare mechanic requires making peace with the enemy, even the minor enemies have some depth. People get so attached to these characters because they have to relate to them to win. Boss battles especially can be frustrating, but overcoming that frustration largely leads to deeper connection.

Undertale only works on this level due to its strong writing. Despite playing a silent protagonist, its clear how their presence is changing this world. The central bosses are all revealed to have hidden depths, with each having compelling scenes where you simply spend time together. This game gets quoted so much because the dialogue truly resonates. Sans especially stands out as an enigma despite being there from almost the beginning, his true role seems evasive. Yet this mysterious nature does not stop him from stealing every scene which features his presence.

Despite featuring the aesthetic of an old school RPG, the gameplay is essentially a hybrid between dating simulators and traditional shooters. To attack on the pacifist route, the player must choose between a handful of options until they find the right combination. Meanwhile, the enemy will counter by throwing the player into a micro-shooter level where they must simply avoid all objects for a few seconds. Toby Fox goes above and beyond in making each encounter unique, throwing out new concepts around every corner.

Even if one were to only play through the pacifist route, the mere knowledge of there being another option changes everything. Tons of games have cutesy characters bringing peace to a colorful world, and it was difficult for me to even imagine there being another way. Why would anyone choose to harm these characters, other than because they can?

What sets Undertale apart from other morality-based games is that there clearly is a correct path to take. Many similar games simply offer a protagonist in a few similar flavors; Commander Shepard gets the same general job done either way. To find a peaceful conclusion here takes effort, and that effort is rewarded with an additional act and a powerful ending. The emotions of this true ending are built upon your refusal to give in to violent temptation to have this proper ending work requires the option to falter, which necessitates alternatives. Most of these variants are mere reminders of how killing even a few people naturally devastates this world a nudge to do better next time.

But Undertale also allows a total fall into depravity. The player can literally wipe out everything they encounter. This doesnt simply involve choosing to fight in every battle, but going out of the way to kill every possible enemy in the location until they stop spawning. The narrative shifts gears entirely people begin fleeing, and even most bosses are felled in a single blow. None of this is enjoyable, like playing through the early stages of an RPG at max level. Yet many will keep pushing forward, simply because we can. This isnt like certain other games, where the veil is lifted and you realize the atrocities you have committed. Choosing to do this is entirely your own twisted decision to see what will happen (spoilers: a lot of lovely characters die because you are choosing to kill them). In the main path, fighting can sometimes be justified due to the enemies presenting a threat. After a certain point in the genocide route, it is the player who is being actively malicious. The player is rewarded with the two most challenging bosses the game has to offer, but even those come off as the game actively begging you to stop. The final boss doesnt feel so notoriously difficult because Toby Fox wants to challenge the player it instead feels like a last ditch effort to convince the player to turn back and start over before its too late.

Undertale succeeds where other moral-based games largely fail because it understands the battle between good and evil as something greater than a choice. Goodness takes effort, while evil is a temptation which will both destroy the weak and find massive resistance from the strong. Too many games try to tell the exact same story with either a good or bad character, but this largely descends into a nice vs. rude dichotomy. Here, the genocide ending is the void-like antithesis to the true experience. The two extremes feed off one another, even if the player only engages with one. Becoming pals with Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, and Sans carries so much more meaning by knowing this happy ending required steadfast determination.

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Undertale has the best music of any game that's not Smash Ultimate in the last decade. I might even get around to playing it some day.

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#11. The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask (2000)
Developed by Nintendo EAD

While writing about Ocarina of Time, I noted that the biggest sticking point for that game holding up despite its aged controls is the way each location feels intricately detailed. Instead of throwing in a new location every time the story needed to progress, Ocarina of Time would bring the player back to somewhere familiar under a new light.

In many ways, Majoras Mask is the black sheep of the 3D Zelda games. Where Nintendos major franchises traditionally aim toward simplicity, Majoras Mask is an intricately woven time puzzle spread across an entire game. This game was daring in a way Nintendo rarely attempts, and I found the experience surprisingly inaccessible in my younger days. The three day cycle at the heart of Majoras Mask creates an overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere like few others. As a follow-up to the epic adventure of Ocarina of Time, it feels jarring to have so much of this game cycle around a few days in a seemingly contained environment.

While Majoras Mask can feel like an inexplicable sequel, it actually takes Ocarina of Times best feature and builds an entire game around this one aspect. Instead of manually jumping between a seven year period, Termina slowly changes over the three-day structure. Locations become accessible, people disappear the game challenges the player to learn when to go where. The only other game I know which captures this same experience is 2019s Outer Wilds, but that doesnt get the benefit of also being a Zelda game.

Part of the success is that Nintendo fully embraces the inherent stress of a repeating cycle. This game is darkly apocalyptic, with an angry moon getting closer as the days pass. Theres enough mysteries around this town that something always feels a bit off. The majority of darker sequels go for the obvious, but Majoras Mask slips under the skin.

This is also the rare Zelda game to drop both Ganon and Zelda, surprisingly to its benefit. Skull Kid is the best sort of one-time villain, a largely sympathetic character who has clearly been corrupted. The mask itself has a suitably ominous design.

Speaking of masks, there are still several joyous moments to make up for the dread. One of my favorites is the various masks which allow Link to turn into other races. Playing as a Deku, Goron, or Zora open up new methods of navigation and attacking which change up the core Zelda gameplay just enough to be both fresh and familiar.

But again, the main draw here is seeing how this world slowly changes over the course of each cycle and learning how to overcome the many obstacles. The fun is that doing everything in one go is impossible, but there are certain points which remain forever changed. Gaining an item or a certain piece of information might permanently open a path, and the experience gets less and less oppressive the more you conquer these obstacles.

The magic of this experience is that, when you begin, you might reasonably convince yourself that this game is asking too much. But the further you get, the more manageable this journey begins to feel. In most games, completing a boss or dungeon feels like simple progress. For whatever reason, the added stress in Majoras Mask makes every success feel like conquering something much bigger. And while Majoras Mask has less dungeons than the average Zelda game, the world itself feels like one big dungeon waiting to be conquered.

The final of the four main temples is one of the greatest dungeons the Zelda series has ever produced. Stone Tower Temple requires using everything you have learned in the game so far, including the four forms Link can take. The aesthetic is suitably oppressive, while the central mechanic of flipping the temple adds some extra navigational depth.

Every Zelda game since Ocarina of Time has attempted to differentiate itself by including some sort of gimmick, but most are still straightforward adventures across a large world that world being flooded or Link being able to change into a Wolf does not actually change much. Majoras Mask, on the other hand, has stood as its own unique entity while still incorporating most core features. While not the most accessible game, actually managing to see this journey through to the end gave me a feeling of victory which is difficult to describe. In a medium which revolves around endless sequels, Majoras Mask is one of the finest examples of pushing beyond these firmly established expectations to create something singular in a familiar form.

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Finally reaching the top 10 of this project. Here are the remaining years:
1994
2001
2002
2005
2007
2008
2010
2011
2015
2018

I'll leave the remaining genres out of this now, since I think most of this is already easy to guess based on what has already appeared.

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jcgamer107 posted...

Undertale has the best music of any game that's not Smash Ultimate in the last decade. I might even get around to playing it some day.

terraria calamity, pso2, atelier ayesha + eschatology + shallie, zero + ao no kiseki, the legend of legacy, ffxiv, metal gear rising, ragnarok tactics, rhythm thief, steins;gate 0, ar nosurge, bravely default, crypt of the necrodancer, freedom planet, ginga force, killer instinct 2013, DOOM, doom eternal

undertale's is p good though


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oh hey my fav 3 games all made top 20
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#10. Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
Developed by SCE Japan Studio and Team Ico

Shadow of the Colossus is a maximalist minimalist work, a game built around pushing a single concept to its greatest form. This is an action-adventure game with no common enemies to slay, no towns to visit for upgrading your gear, no dungeons to trudge through. This is purely a gauntlet of sixteen magnificent boss fights of ever greater scale.

The story starts simply enough. Protagonist Wander has brought a dead girl to a shrine, where a mysterious voice has told him that she may be revived if he were to slay the sixteen colossi dotting this land. With little more than a sword and his trusty horse, Agro, Wander sets out. The rest of the story is told largely through implication. Something feels a bit off as Wander slays each colossus, as a strange darkness shoots from their body and enters his; what this could mean is never explicated in the moment.

Before I get into the details of the gameplay, this is another game where I need to stop and highlight the soundtrack. Every song perfectly captures the atmosphere of the moment, and the game effortlessly transitions between intimidating boss music and victorious fanfare as Wander finally closes in on a weak point. This is the sort of orchestral music which would fit perfectly in a classic kaiju film. Which, its important to note that, outside of cutscenes, fighting the colossi is the only time music plays.

While the game can be boiled down to a string of boss fights, large portions of the players time will involve travelling this barren land. Plenty of games with large maps can be criticized if their world is too empty, but Shadow of the Colossus makes an art out of nothingness. The lack of creatures outside of the colossi and a few scattered lizards does as much to suggest a forbidden land as any Soulsborne game with their endless gauntlet of tough enemies. The lack of music during exploration adds to this sense. Theres nothing there to comfort the player as they make the long journey from shrine to colossus. With the realization Wander is there purely to end the only creatures calling this land home, theres a pervasively melancholy atmosphere.

Wandering up the cliff-side and laying eyes on the first colossus was an experience like no other. Many of the best games work by capturing a sense of confronting what at first seems impossible. This fight in particular offers little challenge (it is essentially the tutorial, after all), yet it captures an undeniably intimidating atmosphere by having us look over and realizing we are being asked to fight something that big. While the game lacks dungeons, this battle makes it clear these colossi and their arenas operate as gigantic puzzles, with an extra sense of urgency since the puzzle is actively trying to kill the player. Yet these colossi are difficult to classify as monsters theres beauty in their presence, adding to the feeling that your actions in this game arent quite right.

The colossi keep getting bigger and the challenges more complex. It is the way Shadow of the Colossus mixes pure spectacle with truly engaging gameplay that makes it so compelling. The highest points of this experience are the two avian colossi. While most of the colossi present an initial sense of befuddlement, figuring out how to even get a flying enemy in range to jump atop adds another layer. This is where the fanfare really comes into play, as theres nothing quite like landing a perfectly-timed jump and then being lifted high into the air. This is a game all about climbing and clinging, and that clinging never feels more essential than in these moments.

Shadow of the Colossus succeeds in making each colossi a unique experience. While many are as simple as getting to the head, it is how these arenas allow access that makes each climb different. There are also plenty of colossi which operate in completely different capacities. A few of the colossi are small but quick, their battles more a navigational challenge around an arena. One particularly memorable battle requires Wander to flee atop Agro while turning back to shoot the pursuing colossus in the eye. Most of these colossi achieve a perfect balance of logic and skill, featuring puzzling designs which require great skill even once the player figures out what to do next.

Shadow of the Colossus seemingly strips out every feature but the boss fights but the truth of the matter is that it pulls off everything expected of an action-adventure game during the fights. This is a game without fluff, focused around one grand idea. Despite this surface simplicity, this is a game of phenomenal depth, hitting upon emotional strands few would expect from a mere boss rush. It says a lot that Sony spent the following decade and a half creating ever more cinematic action-adventure games and dont get me wrong, they have done this quite well yet it is this minimalist story of theirs told largely through subtle changes that hits me the hardest.

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Count me as a fan of the game.

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CasanovaZelos posted...

I wrote a novel back during college and have also written a few screenplays since then. This is the first one I feel confident enough in to really go all in on trying to get published. I'm still editing, of course, but as I might have mentioned before, I'm working with an agent to at least get my query letter in top shape (since I have no idea how to write a proper query on my own and it can sink the project before an agent even looks at the actual pages...). But I feel like I've finally broken free of a lot of my negative writing habits with this manuscript.

And I wouldn't want to self-publish because I have no real internet presence and am not good at building one, and self-publishing and failing can also close the door on chances at mainstream publishing.

Good luck. I haven't had any luck getting signed for mine. It could be that I'm writing in a dead genre, it could be my query letter isn't good, or it could be that I'm not setting myself up for success with how I'm querying -- or maybe all three -- but I hope you're more fortunate than I am.


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#9. Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
Developed by Lucas Pope

As video game development gets more complex, more and more people get involved in the creative process. This complexity mixed with bloated budgets has resulted in an industry where truly daring ideas never get off the ground. So called medium-defining works like The Last of Us Part II are only pushing the narrative envelope. When was the last time a major video game actually felt like a truly revolutionary experience? Ever since the era of the PlayStation 2 saw the last few genres finally figure out 3D gameplay, the industry has focused more on refining trusted formulas than attempting anything new. And, ultimately, what new ground is there left to tread? Its hard to actually imagine anything new, or else it likely would have already happened. It takes a true creative genius to figure out where to go next.

Return of the Obra Dinn is the rare game that truly feels like its own entity. It makes sense that such a work is essentially a lone mans passion project. After Papers, Please became a surprise hit, Lucas Pope spent five years working on this project. And its not that Return of the Obra Dinn completely defies categorization. As a narrative genre, this is purely a mystery. In regards to gameplay, this is easily comparable to something like Myst. But those new elements it mixes in transcends to what feels like the development of a new subgenre, though whether anyone will dare to follow in this games ambitious footsteps is yet to be seen.

Due to its relative obscurity, Return of the Obra Dinn is the rare game in this project that actually needs a proper introduction. The Obra Dinn is a trade ship that went missing in 1803 which suddenly drifted back to shore in 1807. Naturally, all the crew members have disappeared. You play as an insurance inspector armed with a magical pocket watch which can teleport you to the very moment of someones death when you find their body. Thus, the gameplay involves searching the ship for bodies and trying to make sense of what you find.

The goal is rather straightforward. You are given a list of the sixty people who were aboard the ship. Your job is to figure out what happened to whom. As you witness each death, the game asks you to fill out who they were, how they died, and who killed them if they were murdered. The trick to this game which sets it apart from other murder mysteries is that you literally see the second of their death; identifying the method tends to be the easy part. The challenge here is identifying these people based purely on their name, position aboard the ship, and nationality. You are additionally armed with a few pictures to keep track of familiar faces as you tour these brutal scenes; this game is a complex web where you will have to add up pieces from these many flashbacks to figure out who everyone might be.

The game is presented in a phenomenal 1-bit-inspired art style. The lack of too much detail makes it easy to identify what the game expects you to look at (while still having enough thrown in to mislead, as a good mystery should). Its also just impressive to see this style in a three-dimension game. This is a throwback to an era I never experienced, but even without that nostalgia, this game is simply gorgeous.

The set-up of the flashbacks is the real meat of the game. Before you witness the death, you are given a short snippet of the sounds leading up to the moment. People will cry out to one another, sometimes placing a specific name within a scene. Then, you enter the diorama, where you are immediately faced with the generally awful death frozen in time. You are then given the freedom to explore this frozen fragment to suss out other information you need as much information as you can to match names to faces. The game does nothing to hold your hand along the way, leaving it to the player to figure out what is actually important. Im not exaggerating when I say the only hint to a characters identity might be their shoes.

This, admittedly, can be frustrating. If this game only involved solving these connections, there might not be enough of a hook to solve the more esoteric cases. After all, why do you, the player, care about these people? Well, like many other great mysteries, theres a bigger picture which is not immediately evident. Your attention will likely be pulled away from the case at hand as you contemplate the events which transpired aboard the Obra Dinn. This particular case blew my mind, though its not a twist ending or anything similar this revelation happens immediately after what essentially serves as the tutorial and pervades throughout the experience, but I still dont want to casually ruin that reveal.

As I still want to discuss that moment, be warned that the next paragraph will contain spoilers.

The actual narrative of the ship is told largely in reverse order. The first few bodies are scattered around the captains quarters, and its clear the ships journey ended in a failed mutiny but what led to this turn is not immediately clear. Then, you find a womans body lying in a bed and jump back to her memory, where shes being hit over the head by the mast as the ship is being attacked by what appears to be a kraken. Immediately, the game jumps from a rather mundane investigation to an almost surreal horror story. While the gameplay is built around the mystery of identifying the people aboard the ship, the actual mystery at the heart of the experience is trying to figure out why these increasingly strange events transpired. Unfortunately, your view of this story is limited to a few moments frozen in time pieces are missing, but theres hope that figuring out who these people are might lead to further revelations.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a perfect example of a great video game narrative that simply could not be told in another medium one might be able to pick up the pieces and tell the same plot, but the experience would be entirely different. This is a story which needs to be played to have its full effect. Mystery is perhaps the best narrative genre for the video game medium. Where other great mystery games like the Ace Attorney and Danganronpa series rely on loads and loads of information expressed through dialogue, Return of the Obra Dinn excels by relying purely on the players perception and deduction.

This game will absolutely push your logical analysis to the breaking point you will likely need to bust out a pen and paper to make sense of everything and keep your thoughts straight. But like any other great mystery, as frustrating as certain moments can get, theres nothing quite as rewarding as finally putting the pieces together. Return of the Obra Dinn captures that sensation a few dozens of times over. You will be overwhelmed when you see that list of names, but there will come a point where you start pulling a thread and everything starts falling into place. This is one of those great games you will walk away from not with a sense of it having been beaten but conquered.

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#8. Silent Hill 2 (2001)
Developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo (Team Silent)

The original Silent Hill was one of the first big hits to match the cinematic possibilities of third-dimensional gaming with a truly mature narrative. Silent Hill 2 amplifies this experience. The story is better, the monsters scarier, the atmosphere denser. This is everything a survival horror game should aspire to be.

The biggest element which makes Silent Hill 2 stand above the other games in its franchise is how it conceptualizes the town. The dense fog and darker realms have always been intense, but this game adds a narrative aspect which casts a shadow over the entire experience. Silent Hill 2 presents the idea that the town is a reflection of any visitors inner psyche. Thus, every element of the experience can be analyzed as symbolic of James Sunderlands experience.

This means that the monsters are more than mere obstacles. Being two sets of feminine legs, the mannequins come off as obvious symbols of sexual frustration. But many other monsters are related to Jamess repressed memories, meaning their meanings are obscured through a lack of information. As with anything, fear of the unknown weighs heavily, made even worse by the expectation that nothing here is inexplicable. Visual design can only go so far, but knowing these come from within makes everything so much worse.

Pyramid Head has become an iconic villain not because he personally has depth but because he represents Jamess darkest parts. His abuse of the mannequins suggests something being very wrong before we find out why. In a game otherwise filled with feminine monstrosities, it is the masculine Pyramid Head who relentlessly pursues James throughout the town. In fact, his masculinity is so overdone that his obvious phallic symbol actually weighs him down - yet that hindrance never stops this symbol from being as terrifying as intended.

Video games rarely confront sexual themes. Additionally, many games which do largely take a juvenile approach. There will be sex jokes, there will be scantily clad women, and there might even be an embarrassing cutscene as a reward for romancing a party member. Buried within all the surface horror of Silent Hill 2 is one of the mediums greatest takes on human sexuality. In a game about people being eaten alive by their inner fears, the narrative never shies away from acknowledging this as an obvious source. Its rare for a video game to even have a meaningful opportunity to confront issues such as lust and sexual violence, and Silent Hill 2 dared to tackle these themes in an era where even the most narrative-rich contemporaries were still focused on supersoldiers and summoners. This game so easily gets under our skin because its horrors are both human and familiar.

Even without these themes, Silent Hill 2 is absolutely terrifying. The first encounter with Pyramid Head is one of my favorite moments in gaming. The scariest moment in a franchise like early Resident Evil is a zombie jumping through a mirror a literal jump scare. Here, the most intimidating sequence is Pyramid Head simply standing at the end of a hallway, cast in an eerie red light. Theres a grate between the two of you, giving only the slightest sense of protection. You must walk down this hall, toward the monster, to reach a room, and hes gone when you step back out. This establishes a lingering dread now you know what the monster looks like, but it felt so much better when you had a sense of where he stood. And, naturally, the game forces you to find your way to the other side of that grate. This is a work which understands that the expectation of a threat tends to be worse than the threat itself.

One of the worst feelings Silent Hill 2 gives is the sense that James is doing this all to himself. Other horror protagonists are typically trapped or at least pursuing a solid goal, but James made the trip to this town and keeps going even when things appear off. In a horror film, its easy to chide a character for making poor decisions. Having to make those poor decisions, on the other hand, can be a nauseating experience. The game keeps diving into deeper and darker places, and the dissonance between player and protagonist helps build the unease.

With ever more realistic graphics, video games have only grown better at providing scares. Yet this early PS2 game manages to be completely terrifying, even as someone who played it for the first time in the last few years. Theres an unease to this experience like few others, like you are doing something wrong by pursuing this course of action. Even as the Resident Evil characters dive deeper into secret labs, theres always the sense that theyre ultimately trying to get out - getting out is at the heart of nearly every horror story. Silent Hill 2 sticks with us because James Sunderland seems dead set on getting in, and were being dragged along for his self-destructive ride.

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I'd heard good things about obra Dinn but never much looked into it before. From your description it sounds like something I would be interested in. Gonna have to add this to the list

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#7. Metroid Prime (2002)
Developed by Retro Studios

Nintendo sometimes insists on certain terminology for their games. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an open-air game, whatever that means. Metroid Prime, meanwhile, is not a first-person shooter, despite being in the first person and involving shooting. No, no, Metroid Prime is a first-person adventure.

Genres themselves are nebulous when I began this project, I tried to classify each of my top 100 games by their main genre. Action-Adventure is a real doozy what is The Legend of Zelda series doing in the same general category as both Uncharted and Shadow of the Colossus? Several others pull from so many genres that any term becomes virtually useless. Metroid Prime is one such game, featuring elements from first-person shooters, platformers, action-adventures, and, perhaps most importantly, the Metroidvania.

The hesitance to call this a first-person shooter stems from an obvious source. The grand majority of games in the genre are about taking proper aim and attempting to outshoot the enemy. Here, Samus can use lock-on, so combat revolves more around strafing while having a continuous shot. Anyone coming for traditional FPS gameplay would have been disappointed. In many ways, this feels more like a variant on something like Zelda than an FPS. At the same time, it would have been nice for Nintendo to embrace the term Metroid Prime perfectly showcased how the first-person shooter genre could explore different ideas, and its clearly in line with later works like BioShock. The emphasis does not always have to be on the shooting itself.

But the core experience of Metroid Prime really is exploration in the Metroidvania fashion without the Prime trilogy, the Metroidvania might as well have remained a term exclusive to 2D platformers. Its actually surprising. Indie developers churn out a dozen 2D Metroidvania games a year, and Metroid Prime was one of the most critically acclaimed games ever upon release why has no one else made a successful attempt? The fact Metroid Prime still stands as the best 3D Metroidvania simply because it has no real competition after 18 years is mind-boggling the closest things are the Soulsborne games and Arkham Asylum, but neither of those games have this specific brand of exploration as the core focus.

What makes the Metroidvania genre so special is a feeling of interconnectedness. Even while something like Half-Life features one clear journey from point A to point B and thus remains connected, the idea of trekking through earlier territory remains rather unique. Open World games obviously allow revisiting locations, but they also lack the signature level design which makes going to the right place at the right time so key. The best Metroidvania games balance a line between partial openness and subtle guidance.

Metroid Prime would probably be a classic simply for existing in a space few other games have even attempted. But, clearly, it goes beyond that. Tallon IV is a beautiful world. Even the ice section is a classic, with a gently ambient theme thats hard to forget. Like the best Zelda games, every inch of the game world feels like it has purpose. Adding to the exploration is Samuss ability to scan for more information. The older Metroid games rarely gave direct exposition, and this is a nice way to include more without being as intrusive as a cutscene. The game maintains a heightened sense of isolation throughout, and there are moments which might even be described as scary. This game isnt afraid to drop the lights completely at certain points. Space is a big and empty place, and the Metroid series has always captured that atmosphere well.

Nintendo led the pack when it came to transitioning their classic series into 3D. Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time established several concepts which have become essential for the medium at large. With Metroid, Nintendo took an extra generation to figure things out, and they went in a surprising direction was anyone asking for the Metroid series to be converted into first-person? The insistent terminology seemed like something to worry over, suggesting Nintendo was desperately trying to appease the established fan base. Yet when the final product hit, it was clear they captured the magic of Super Metroid in a new form. Metroid Prime may not have redefined the industry like Mario and Zelda, but this was a top-notch take at what might be Nintendos most remarkable formula.

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i think going FPS is a great immersion decision for metroid prime - atmospheric; you see things from inside the helmet, which looks awesome... however, the game gave me a headache and samus felt like she moved too slowly. i didn't get more than like an hour into it, unfortunately.
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I agree with your statement in Obra Dinn about new games being a revolutionary experience. I think a lot of games have played it safe, really since the 360/PS3 era. You could argue that something like Breath of the Wild was revolutionary in the Zelda franchise, but I don't really feel that in regards to other games.

It's why I love everything I've seen from Half Life: Alyx. That feels like the first VR game that is more than a VR port or a tech demo. It's not perfect, but in a way it serves kind of a purpose that I feel HL2 did (which was a more refined/perfect experience): it gives everyone a kind of template of "Hey, look, do something like this, it works and it can be done".

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More and more people seem to be criticizing Metroid Prime 1 these days for having too much backtracking. I get it but I disagree - to me the world being so interconnected you end up knowing the whole place like the back of your hand is the charm!

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Metroid Prime may be the only game I've restarted 3+ times and failed to get into every time. One day, perhaps.

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I'm nearly finished with the RE2 remake B-side mission and have also started up the original Starcraft for some reason - RTS games stress me out so much...is there, like, a baby's first RTS game or are they all overwhelming? At least following a guide to wrap my head around the expected concepts is helping. I don't think I'd ever figure out these strategies myself...

For RE2, it's a fine remake that I'd probably put on about the same level as the original. I think there's a limit to how much I can enjoy the classic formula, even with new and improved features. I also expected Mr. X to be more terrifying? There was a moment where I had just saved, ran into him and assumed I was going to lose after a hit and let him kill me to avoid the health loss, and I realized he took about 6 hits to actually kill. I understand his real function is to make the normal enemies more dangerous, but that shattered the illusion.

So now I just need to get my hands on a copy of Control to feel like I've adequately explored 2019, which isn't on Amazon right now and I don't think my computer will be able to run it at this point...

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CasanovaZelos posted...

is there, like, a baby's first RTS game or are they all overwhelming?

Command and Conquer but that might just be my nostalgia

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#6. Dark Souls (2011)
Developed by FromSoftware

According to legend, Dark Souls is a relentlessly brutal video game experience that will punish the player for the slightest error. People shudder in fear at the thought of losing all their currency by dying once and failing to get back to the same spotalmost as if theyve forgotten that many other video games completely wipe your progress since the last save. While the future games by FromSoftware may have gone too far with skill-based gameplay, the true genius of the original Dark Souls is that it finds challenge through knowledge.

I need to start this with a controversial claim. Dark Souls has an awful gatekeeping community that has decided for whatever reason to shame people for using summons, telling them that doing anything other than solo play is robbing them of the true Dark Souls experience. This is a core element of the design which is actually quite revolutionary why would FromSoftware put in the effort to make this system if not to be used? Its like if the Pokemon fanbase developed the Nuzlocke challenge during Red and Blue and spent the next two decades chiding new players for not releasing their Pokemon upon fainting.

I say this because part of the ingenious design behind Dark Souls results in it being two games at once. Alone, this is a brutally challenging action RPG. With a summon or two, this transforms into an accessible dungeon crawl. Dark Souls gets away with not having difficulty options because the difficulty slider is built into the mechanics. As someone who believes the true genius of the game largely lies in its level design, these options are key in making this a truly universal masterpiece.

The other side of summoning is being summoned. The obvious reward for this is humanity if you assist in beating the boss, but the true benefit of the system is being able to safely get a sense of the level ahead without risking your own souls. The game also provides the option to invade another player, which can also go a few ways. Some want to be honorable duelists, while others want to ruin someone elses day. The fact you can only summon by also opening yourself up to invasions gives the mechanic a sense of risk a reasonably skilled player is more dangerous than any enemy, especially if they can trick you into an enemys aggro range. Despite the relatively straightforward narrative progression, this game offers tons of ways to play. The best option is to play the way which results in the most fun.

Lets cycle back to the game itself. The opening level is a work of art. You start down in a cell and work your way out, finding your first bonfire easily enough. You walk through the nearby door and suddenly the first boss leaps down. You have virtually nothing at this point. You might assume this is a trick, one of those annoying fights where youre expected to lose, only to have a cutscene play out of your inevitable defeat. If you stick to this, you find yourself back at the bonfire. Hopefully, youll eventually notice the open door in the back corner. This leads to the rest of this short area, where you will arm yourself with a proper weapon and shield. A dying man will give you the estus flask, which allows the player to heal a few times. Going up will lead to a ledge where you can attack the boss from above, dealing a significant chunk of damage but going down opens a locked door back to the bonfire.

This opening is a microcosm of the game at large, subtly teaching everything you need to know. That first encounter with the boss encourages spatial awareness. When the game starts hiding enemies behind corners, you need to maintain a sense of all possible openings. That next stretch is a proper tutorial, teaching the player how to fight a few common enemies while avoiding obvious traps. And then theres the fork in the road, which suggests heading straight into the boss chamber might not be the best idea. This game is loaded with shortcuts, encouraging the player to explore every inch of the level to make sure they cant reduce the length of the bonfire run.

The first main area of the game, Firelink Shrine, has a few possible exits. You will likely stumble into the graveyard and be slaughtered by some surprisingly strong skeletons. You might also stumble into a submerged city plagued by ghosts I imagine most of us turned back as soon as we saw this intimidating sight, but a brave player might stumble across an upgrade for their healing for their troubles. This introduces another often overlooked feature this is a game which encourages running as much as fighting. Though you lose souls upon death, you keep whatever item you find it can be worth it to make a mad dash through a high-level area to get a rare item.

Running is a consistently strong strategy in this game anyone who thinks theres too much time between bonfires and bosses is too caught up in the mindset of a traditional RPG, where you should fight every enemy for the experience. This is what I mean when I say this is a game based more on knowledge than skill once you learn an area and get stuck on the boss, you absolutely should be sprinting past the common enemies. You still need the skill to avoid their attacks, but this is typically a better strategy than forcing yourself to fight a dozen enemies before the boss. Yet the genius of the level design is that you cant really sprint the first time through these levels are filled with little alcoves, and one wrong turn might leave you surrounded by enemies.

Fighting, sprinting, summoning the game is loaded with options to overcome these challenges. In fact, during the first playthrough, I think the real challenge is learning all the possibilities even better than summoning a strong ally is finding a powerful sword and mastering the upgrade system. I absolutely tore through the back half of the game my first time through after making this investment.

(continued into next post)

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(continued from previous post)

There are two major reasons any of us bothered to stick with this despite the initial challenge. One, this world is beautiful. Every location has a striking sense of detail, from the visual design to the level layout this is one of those games where every inch of the world has a purpose. Though this is not a Metroidvania, there are several moments where you will take a shortcut and realize this seemingly distant location was right next to something familiar. This creates a feeling of containment, that you truly are exploring a single massive location. The lore also manages to be both richly-detailed and vague, which helps form the foreboding atmosphere.

Secondly, this is sword and shield gameplay at its finest, like if The Legend of Zelda was consistently challenging. While sprinting can be important in navigating an area, combat itself is methodical. Yet the game rarely allows the player to simply hold up their shield and wait for an opening. The stamina system punishes too much defensive play, and some enemies require a quick dispatch. This game is all about adapting to the current situation, making every new enemy a new experience. And a major reason I prefer this to the follow-ups is that these enemies never feel particularly cheap (except for one particular stretch in the back half; this probably would be my favorite video game without Lost Izalith and the Bed of Chaos) boss fights in Dark Souls III seem to involve relentless attacks with few obvious windows to strike back. The later games feel as though From really bought into the public perception of the series, and their focus on challenging combat has also let the world design slide.

The original Dark Souls stands as a rare game to be both challenging and accessible victory truly feels like overcoming the odds, yet the methodical design means most players can eventually adapt if they only have a little patience and pay attention. This is a game most of us will struggle through, but the genius is revealed if you ever start again that same opening which you spent hours conquering will likely go down without a fuss, all because you now understand the strange new language this game has laid down.

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for some reason i didn't expect dark souls here - maybe because DS3 and bloodborne had already appeared

how exactly does summoning work?! i also have no idea what this "summons" system you're talking about is, but it sounds pretty interesting. between the major WRPGs on switch, i feel maybe DS is the one i should go to before skyrim

taking a stab at the remaining games

1994: super metroid
feel really good about this one since FFVI is gone and you're not big on 2D platformers.

2007: bioshock
the first bioshock is the one that, like the first dark souls, set the world on fire and signaled one of the shifts toward western gaming.

2008: braid???
the writeups for SSBU and MGS3 and san andreas certainly suggested that they were the highest rankers of their respective series. there are a few "decently regarded" JRPGs this year as well but given the lower ranking of tales of vesperia, i'm not guessing those. list has def shown appetite for indie games, high up.

2010: mass effect 2
universally regarded as the best ME game, feel really good about this one

2015: ori and the blind forest
only other option that really stands out to me here (though i scanned wiki VERY quickly) is life is strange.
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#5. Super Metroid (1994)
Developed by Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems

While Metroid Prime was a nearly perfect transition into the third dimension, I have to give a slight edge to the previous entry. The Metroidvania genre has largely stuck within the 2D realm because its a perfect twist on the traditional platformer. Despite its quality, Metroid Prime can be a bit unwieldy Nintendo is at their best when they stick with simple mechanics surrounded by stellar level design. Thus, Super Metroid is Nintendos best game, with Samus being smooth to control yet the planet Zebes being among their most intricate designs.

To me, the Metroidvania is Nintendos greatest formula theres a reason it spawned a genre that includes it in the name. As a design, its easy to imitate but quite difficult to pull off. Even the franchise that paved the way has struggled to capture the magic each time no other entry in the Metroid series came all that close to my top 100, yet the two that did managed to land all the way within the top 10. Some games which fall under the Metroidvania umbrella dont really seem to fit they have a wide world to explore, but theyre light on the backtracking. Many of these are still great games, but that has more to do with them being great platformers than particularly notable Metroidvania games. Others go all in on the backtracking, but that sometimes gets tedious. It takes a certain balance to actually make backtracking feel fun. What I said about the other Metroidvania games featured in this project is true of Super Metroid the game is designed to let the player explore, yet theres always a sense of where to go next.

What separates a Metroidvania from an open world game is that many Metroidvania games are linear their massive world is more a puzzle to be solved. The player must explore to find the right sequence, keeping track of certain areas which are blocked off. This can be through doors locked behind items the player doesnt have, areas which require certain protective gear, or even a ledge which is just out of reach.

Even more than the 2D Mario games, Super Metroid is a hard game to praise with words. When I praise its best features, it sounds as though I am describing the Metroidvania genre in general. This is the danger of being so influential what were once unique traits become seemingly generic. But Nintendo has been at the forefront of a lot of genres and mechanical evolutions. And like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Metroid both serves as a revolution and a refinement. This paved the way for the Metroidvania yet is also one of the finest examples. Perhaps the most important evolution is the introduction of a map a Metroidvania without a map sounds ridiculous now, but the first two Metroid games did without. This little bit of navigational assistance went a long way toward complex yet reasonable designs.

What can make or break a Metroidvania game is the pacing go too long without giving the player a new upgrade which allows them to explore an old path and the linearity begins to show. Which, yes, this is admitting that the genre is built around a certain sense of illusion, but thats true of most art. The feeling of open exploration is more important than actual implementation. Super Metroid is bulky enough to feel significant yet paced where theres a constant sense of progress.

Another winning feature of Metroid is the setting. Super Metroid does little beyond setting the stage before dropping the player off on Zebes outside of the NES era, this is a rare Nintendo game to start the player off with little instruction. The bosses are fairly intimidating due to their alien design and lack of lore. Super Metroid is oozing with a sense of quiet isolation. Its not just being free to roam a big area that makes this a classic like the later Soulsborne games, every new region feels like stepping into forbidden territory.

Super Metroid is the perfect showcase of everything that has made Nintendo an important company: simple mechanics, stellar level design, quality of life innovations, minimal yet effective storytelling - this is 2D gaming at its finest.

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CasanovaZelos posted...

Super Metroid is oozing with a sense of quiet isolation.

This is probably what I love most about the game. The environments you explore are so interconnected with the gameplay. And its remarkable how much of a sense of atmosphere they were able to create with the graphics limitations of the era.

SeabassDebeste posted...

for some reason i didn't expect dark souls here - maybe because DS3 and bloodborne had already appeared

how exactly does summoning work?! i also have no idea what this "summons" system you're talking about is, but it sounds pretty interesting. between the major WRPGs on switch, i feel maybe DS is the one i should go to before skyrim

In Dark Souls, you play in one of two states; you are either hollow or unhollowed. To become unhollowed, you must spend an item called humanity. While unhollowed, summon signs will appear on the ground which you can interact with to summon up to three other players (note that this is only possible until you beat the area boss). However, being unhollowed also opens the game up to invaders, so it's sometimes safer to remain hollow. You also revert to hollow status whenever you die, and with humanity being a tiny bit hard to come by unless you know what you're doing, there is a bit of risk in entering this state.

The reason people get up in arms about this is that the enemies can only really target one player at a time. The bosses gain quite a bit of HP, but that does little to make up for this issue. But it makes the game manageable for people who might otherwise give up after getting stuck for too long.

Also note that Dark Souls isn't a WRPG. It's firmly an action RPG by a Japanese developer, just with a bit of a Western aesthetic.

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#4. Mass Effect 2 (2010)
Developed by BioWare

Being the middle episode of a planned trilogy can come with some issues. The first episode gets to capture our imaginations with whatever new world the story is introducing to us, while the third will hopefully be able to tie together all those concepts established in the earlier entries. The second entry is essentially the load-bearing beam, sometimes serving as an extended second act. In something like Mass Effect, this second episode has to build up the threat established in the first game while doing little to truly advance the resolution.

While carrying this burden, Mass Effect 2 manages to excel by focusing on a different part of its narrative. Where the other two are stories of the galaxy at large, Mass Effect 2 hones in on the personal. This is Seven Samurai in space, the story of Commander Shepard as he brings together the perfect team for an apparent suicide mission.

Part of the excellence of this series is the deeply intriguing species. In the first game, the alien party members could sometimes feel overly expository, like they were teaching courses in Quarian 101. The characters in Mass Effect 2 tend to come from extremes in their society, resulting in more specific viewpoints. Samara is a justicar, a force which upholds justice within asari society. Grunt is a krogan grown in a tube purely for combat purposes. Thane Krios introduces the drell species, who appear doomed to shortened life spans after the decline of their homeworld. Saved by the hanar, Thane was raised from his childhood to be an assassin for this other species. While introducing a new species and adding heavier lore to a minor species from the original, Thanes story is still focused on his personal struggle coping with his history and disease. Even Garrus has abandoned the disciplined nature of his species and gone rogue. This is a band of outsiders, only willing to join Shepard out of righteousness or recklessness.

Of course, plenty of other video games imitate the Seven Samurai narrative that is essentially the central formula of the JRPG. Unfortunately, many of these games feature little beyond a bit of back story and some dialogue. In something like Final Fantasy, only a few party member ever seem to get extended focus; party members operate more as a collective than individuals.

Its no coincidence that my two favorite RPG games are structured around learning about the party members. In Mass Effect 2, the central missions in the first half of the game involve gathering these people from their disparate locations. These episodes set the scene, establishing what makes this specific character special. In the second half, Shepard is also given the option to pursue loyalty missions, diving deeper into their personal concerns. Thus, most characters get not just one but two full segments dedicated to them specifically. Additionally, with all the inherent tension of the races and organizations involved, there are some moments where two party members come into conflict, requiring Shepard to talk them down. These are brief but necessary reminders about how this galactic civilization is barely holding itself together.

This also makes the finale more effective. On a suicide run where literally any character can die, having well-defined party members is essential. The structure of this finale is also exceptional. The game thankfully drops the good vs. bad system and instead relies on the player actually picking the right choices for each job, while also punishing the player for not investing into their ship and allies. This can obviously be negated by the save system, but much like Undertale, simply knowing the possibility for absolute failure actually exists changes the perspective. Unfortunately, the idiot Shepard I created in the first Mass Effect met an untimely end.

On a gameplay level, this is a total improvement over the original Mass Effect. This is the third-person shooter at its best, throwing in some fun extras; while Mass Effect 3 refined this further, its still excellent here. With the various loyalty missions requiring the participation of the relevant party member, theres also a reason to make a full tour of each members ability. The level design is also a major improvement in the original Mass Effect, side quests reused the same assets constantly. Here, each location has a unique design. Any story-rich video game I have played multiple times for the gameplay itself is an obvious winner.

Despite the middle episode of a trilogy traditionally serving as a bridge, Mass Effect 2 is the rare example which could stand on its own. The narrative dives deeper into lore beyond grand historical conflicts, the ending is perhaps the most explosive finale a game has ever pulled off, and this is all while featuring one of the strongest casts the medium has ever seen. With all of this being backed by an inventive and addictive action-RPG hybrid system, Mass Effect 2 is an unforgettable experience.

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never played ME2 and given my likely future PCs' strength, i doubt i ever will. however...

CasanovaZelos posted...

Being the middle episode of a planned trilogy can come with some issues. The first episode gets to capture our imaginations with whatever new world the story is introducing to us, while the third will hopefully be able to tie together all those concepts established in the earlier entries. The second entry is essentially the load-bearing beam, sometimes serving as an extended second act. In something like Mass Effect, this second episode has to build up the threat established in the first game while doing little to truly advance the resolution.

this is an interesting point! while i'm not sure which of the following are planned trilogies, i think that the second entry of many series is often considered excellent! here i'm thinking of empire strikes back, godfather part ii, the two towers, catching fire, dead man's chest (it's better than AWE for sure!), MGS2... like in theory, i agree with you, but i kind of feel like in practice there are lots of counterexamples?

(edit) and not that counterexamples make the rule wrong, but i almost feel like counterexamples are more common than the alleged (intuitive) rule!

(and yes i also just realized that i named only one game series, which clearly wasn't a trilogy)
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#3. Life is Strange (2015)
Developed by Dontnod Entertainment

Greatness does not mean without flaws. While most of my favorite games achieve this status by juggling several strong ideas without notable hiccups, Life is Strange has some obvious issues. Namely, this is a Telltale-style adventure game with some stilted dialogue. A narrative-focused video game with questionable writing should be a death knell. This is the story of two teenage American girls written by two middle-aged French men and it shows. I start with this because I dont want anyone thinking Im somehow blind to these flaws. Rather, I believe the positives of this experience greatly outweigh these negatives, to the point that these apparent flaws actually add an odd charm to the overall experience.

When The Walking Dead shot onto the scene, it promised a new era of video game storytelling. The magic wore off almost immediately once people recognized the limits. This was largely a case where that initial game was simply that good of a story and its formula couldnt really be repeated, at least not without some inventive thinking. The gameplay itself was largely tedious. The Walking Dead showed that games could act like television, but what did that experience add if the gameplay itself wasnt gripping and when weve all learned choice is largely an illusion?

There are a few things Life is Strange does differently which sets it above these similar titles. First, theres true justification for its gameplay style. Most of Telltales games could have been more involved. There are moments where something like The Walking Dead feels like its holding back despite the medium allowing more. But the Telltale formula is a perfect fit for a modern high school mystery. Life is Strange is using this formula to tell a story which otherwise wouldnt be told in this medium.

Secondly, Life is Strange is a game which outright acknowledges the inevitable several times over. A game like The Walking Dead carries a negative aftertaste when you look back and realize nothing you chose mattered. By giving glimpses of the future state, Life is Strange instead becomes a game where the central theme is fighting against fate. By narrowing the focus, its easier to accept these limits. This is a perfect example of not negating but embracing limits. While not hitting the player over the head with a golf club, this is ultimately a deconstruction in the same vein as Portal and BioShock.

I shouldnt bury that statement at the end of a paragraph. Life is Strange deconstructs the idea of choice-based video games while playing itself straight. Theres never a moment where it seems to get caught up in its own cleverness. Instead, theres a layer of utmost sincerity, which results in this being one of the most emotionally resonant works Ive experienced in any medium.

Lets cycle back to the beginning again; before we can discuss the deconstructive nature, we must first establish the surface tension which hooks us in the first place. The game begins with protagonist Max navigating her way through a violent storm before waking up in class. She heads to the bathroom, where she watches a violent confrontation resulting in an unknown girl getting shot. Max suddenly jumps back to waking up, where she is suddenly able to answer her teachers question due to the memory before heading straight to the bathroom and stopping the shooting. She soon realizes the girl was her now-distant childhood best friend, Chloe.

Life is Strange thus operates as a murder mystery where the murder never happens. But its clear from the set-up that something needs to be done about Nathan Prescott, the would-be killer. The narrative juggles a few major threads. Chloes best friend in the intervening years, Rachel Amber, has been missing for months. Max and Chloe themselves have a lot of catching up to do, especially for Maxs silence while Chloe was coping with the sudden loss of her father. Taking after Twin Peaks, there are a couple dozen minor characters with their own arcs. A lot of your opinion of this game will be shaped by how easily you can handle Chloes brash and impulsive nature. For me, I instantly adored her character.

All of these elements are reinforced by Maxs power to rewind time. The first major choice in the game involves deciding whether or not to tell the principal about Nathan having a gun. Naturally, Max can rewind time after making a choice. This also means most choices are designed where both options have some sort of negative element. By seeing the immediate outcome and being able to cycle back, Life is Strange isnt about making choices but learning to accept them. Most choice-based games have you make a decision and thats that; Life is Strange wants to paralyze you in the moment, forcing self-doubt and hesitance.

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Its at this point where I need to put up the necessary spoiler warning its difficult to argue the greatness of a narrative work without diving into the specifics.

From an interactive perspective, Life is Stranges strongest suit is its seamless ability to rewrite its own rules. The moment that really hits people occurs at the end of episode 2. While Max and Chloe spend the day trying to learn Maxs limits, theres a b-plot about a fellow student who had an embarrassing video posted online. As Max returns to the dorms, this student has climbed to the roof and is threatening to jump. Max is able to somehow freeze time and work her way up to the roof, but pushing her limits like this causes her powers to temporarily stop working. The player must now talk the girl down without the ability to correct mistakes. Theres a sense of powerlessness in this moment that Ive never experienced elsewhere, but I was lucky to have paid enough attention to her to find a peaceful resolution. A game has never left me feeling so relieved, while others had to face the despair.

Similarly, at the end of episode 3, Max discovers a new power which allows her to jump back to the time of a photograph. She naturally uses this to reverse the death of Chloes dad. By doing so, Max finds herself in a twisted world where Chloe has been paralyzed. This sequence telegraphs the ending, but this is also where the deconstruction really takes hold. You are given an outright meaningless choice here. Chloe asks for Max to end her misery. This alternate Chloe does not matter in the grand picture, as Max has already decided to reverse this change. Despite this apparent lack of weight, this moment is absolutely gut-wrenching. The game seems to be asking a very important question: does something have to canonically happen to carry weight? Or is it more important that both the protagonist and the audience has seen these alternatives, even if its something we can only share among ourselves?

Perhaps the most depressing moment comes at the end of episode 4, entirely independent of choice. Max and Chloe learn Rachel Amber had been murdered and buried just a few steps down from their hangout spot near the tracks. In a game where it feels like we have increasing power over fate, this is a striking reminder that certain things in life are beyond our control. Seeing Chloe break down as she digs is another powerful moment you rarely see in media, let alone in a video game.

This game makes a perfect pairing with Undertale because theres only one real path. Of course, there is a choice at the end of the game which gives two wildly different conclusions, but only one is satisfying and based around learning the message of this game. As I said earlier, this is a game about acceptance after every awful side effect youve witnessed, you have to accept that you cant actually save Chloe. To do anything besides turn back time and let her die in the bathroom would be selfish. The fact you have to be the one to hit the button is what makes this so heartbreaking.

Its easy to write this experience off to turn back time means literally erasing everything you have done over the course of this game. But you havent, for both you and Max have still gone through that experience. This is a game about grieving loss, and the story has stolen everything from you but the memories; but are our memories worth nothing?

To put it in another perspective, imagine your closest friend has died and you are given a chance to spend one more week with them; after that week, the events themselves will be wiped from the earth, but you will still remember. Would anyone reject this offer? Life is Strange is about that sort of purgatorial experience of wishing you had just a bit more time with someone you had taken for granted.

Life is Strange carves out its own unique niche, telling a story with heavy yet human themes in a setting few games explore. This is a tragic tale with a great cast. And, sure, maybe the characters overuse frankly bizarre lingo, but for a game trying to capture the spirit of Twin Peaks, these eccentricities fit perfectly. This is the one game to truly fulfill the promise laid out by Telltales The Walking Dead, featuring a story powerful enough to paralyze while including key moments of interactivity that could not meaningfully be pulled off in another medium.

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Oh hey, this is the first (and only) game I've beaten in the top 10!

I think there's a lot to LiS that works really well. This may be besides the point, but I didn't enjoy the gameplay of it much. It's not like a game needs a physics engine for me to like it - I love Phoenix Wright - but controlling Max felt often tedious. The dream section with Mr. Jefferson near the end is especially bad. As for the story, I guess my biggest nitpick was that I felt like the false illusion at the end of ep 3/start of ep 4 was a little too easy to see coming, and to me that took away from its impact.

I loved Chloe though, so she definitely carried the game. Loved the dialogue style, loved learning about the powers. The game's being relatively bite-sized and challenge-free also ensured I actually beat it! It's not really what I feel like "gaming is about," but neither arguably are games like Danganronpa, so I don't particularly hold that against it. I think LiS does succeed very well at most of what it does.

Also I saved Chloe and never regretted it for a second.

(edit) I don't know if this context would affect my opinion of the game overall, but I never played a Telltale game before this, so to me it wasn't playing with/subverting the format or anything. Maybe if I had, then your points about its format/tropes would hit home more to me.
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Despite having a lot of fun doing this project...I am so ready to be finished tomorrow!

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I will miss reading this thread every night :( your write-ups are very entertaining

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#2. Persona 4 (2008)
Developed by Atlus

Playing Persona 4 back in 2008 was a major revelation. Being my first Shin Megami Tensei game, it surprised me that a traditional turn-based RPG could be truly challenging from the very beginning. But the truly mind-blowing element was the unique formula with which the Persona series tells its stories and the story this specific entry chose to tell.

As I have already written about both Persona 3 and Persona 5, I dont want to waste too much time retreading the universal elements. The year-long visual novel/JRPG hybrid is phenomenal, and whichever did it best was destined to land a high spot. Instead, I will be comparing this directly to Persona 5 to argue why Persona 4 is the (slightly) better game, while hopefully making it clear why those unique elements add up to a truly masterful experience.

First, Persona 4 keeps things small-scale throughout most of the narrative. The protagonist has moved in with his uncle and niece in a middle of nowhere town named Inaba. An all-consuming Walmart-style entity named Junes has set up shop, so half the businesses on the central street are now closed. Few games bother with a rural setting, and its even rarer to find one exploring themes of modern economic hardship to use this as the setting for an 80-hour JRPG was truly inspired. Compare this to Persona 5, which takes place in the sprawling metropolis you might recognize as Tokyo. Persona 5 is bigger than life, but thats true of so many games.

Soon after arriving, an upperclassman named Saki Konishi is found hanging from power lines. The protagonist discovers a local rumor called the Midnight Channel, which supposedly shows a persons soulmate on a foggy night. Instead, he and his friends soon realize that the people who are shown have gone missing. They stumble upon a world inside the television, where people are eaten alive by their own negative self-perception. Thus, the grand stretch of the game revolves around rescuing the various victims while trying to figure out who is shoving them inside in the first place. The overarching story is one of the elements in which I think Persona 5 has the edge, but I also believe the individual moments are Persona 4s greatest advantage.

In Persona 5, the dungeons are typically built around the villain of the month. They are striking in the moment, but they have little lasting impact on the story; once you defeat the villain, theyre typically out of the picture. The ingenious idea behind Persona 4 is that most of the people being rescued are the future party members. Like Mass Effect 2, Persona 4 has a serious advantage over other RPGs due to treating the individual party members as the central focus for significant portions of the story. Persona 4 is especially interesting because its built around learning their deepest secrets before really getting to know them as people. The group coming together in this case also feels natural, as its a band of victims teaming up to rescue the next target.

In the context of the series at large, personas are the entities the party members summon to pull off their stronger attacks. At the same time, the series does dive into the Jungian psychology behind these terms. Persona 4 uses the concept of the shadow well, where the main bosses are the shadow selves the victims refuse to acknowledge as parts of themselves. By eventually confronting this part, the characters are better able to express themselves. This adds to the character dynamics; with these seemingly negative aspects out of the way, the party members come off as more open and honest with one another.

Despite the randomized nature, the actual atmosphere of the dungeons has always been striking. And while it might be easy to give Persona 5 the edge here because the main dungeons have a set design, that can actually be a hindrance the spaceport level is not very good and was enough for me to take an extended break from a game I had wanted to play ever since falling in love with the previous entry eight years earlier. Persona 4, meanwhile, has a reliable pace and feel. They may not be as flashy or intricate, but these dungeons work.

I also enjoy the structure of Persona 4s social links. In Persona 5, everything is explicitly connected back to the main case in some way. But I kind of like the idea that some random woman you meet at a part-time daycare job can have a serious influence on the protagonists psyche. It better captures the sense of not knowing who will be the most important people around you until making that connection while also building into the slice of life atmosphere that makes this game so unique within its genre.

Where most Japanese RPGs tell epic tales of fighting against evil, Persona 4 resists those urges to explore themes closer to earth. Despite all odds, it manages to capture the same tone, hooking the player with a phenomenal cast and intriguing mystery, all built around one of the best turn-based combat engines. Some might prefer the bombastic nature of Persona 5, but as someone who spent their teenage years questioning their identity in a small town, Persona 4 has always carried a special resonance. The fact I got to experience this story during those years simply seals its place as one of my all-time favorites.

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I like Mass Effect 2, but I'm the weird person that prefers the original (and never played ME3 because F origin.) I generally eschew media that narrow the scope of their predecessors, and ME2 is nothing but a big recruitment drive. The story felt stilted and implausible to me, because we have to perform this one super important mission, and the clock is supposedly ticking, but hey, can we detour across the galaxy to do a personal favor for every single member on the team? Anecdotally from memory, there's something like 30 missions in the game and only 4 of them are about the main story. The rest are about locating or "hardening" members of your crew. And I prefer games that don't have limited ammunition. Let's sneak that in there, too.

As for Life is Strange, I shouldn't be surprised to find it high on your list given your writing style and also why you liked ME2. Chloe is awesome, even if there are moments where you want to strangle her for her stupidity. (C'mon, let's go swimming!) The final choice in the game is terrible in how it doesn't allow for any middle ground. Even if the story isn't as fundamentally powerful or brutal, I enjoyed the experience of BTS more because Max is a supremely wishy-washy character, because I get to learn more about characters I already know, and maybe perhaps because without the trappings of time-bending mechanics, the permanence of your choices is more meaningful. Rachel is also a much better foil for Chloe, and it's amusing to see her have to play the straight man.

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#1. BioShock (2007)
Developed by 2K Boston (Irrational Games) and 2K Australia

Would you kindly give me a moment to reflect before diving into BioShock itself?

And so, I finally reach the end of this project. I dont think I realized what I was setting myself up to do when I established a goal of writing a minimum of 500 words for each game. With 100 games and 500 words being the equivalent of about 2 standard pages, I have essentially written something the size of a small novel, all for a project which was supposed to be a brief distraction as I took a break from editing my actual novel manuscript. Reaching this final moment is both relieving but also a bit of an anti-climax is BioShock really my favorite video game?

The truth is, BioShock briefly dethroned Final Fantasy X as my favorite game in the time between its release and Persona 4 all those years ago Persona 4 held my #1 spot until I played Life is Strange. While working on this list, I kept shifting these top six games around and nothing felt right sitting at the top. But the reason I wanted to write about all these experiences which have influenced me throughout my life was to reach a deeper understanding. One thing became perfectly clear when comparing many of these games to outside experiences, BioShock came up the most, to the point I had to actively stop myself from mentioning it. One might think such universal applicability might be a sign of something generic, yet BioShock has always stood as its own entity. As I wrote while discussing BioShock Infinite, that sequel felt more like a lament that nothing could ever quite capture the magic of the original.

When we talk about great works of art, there is a constant struggle between giving credit to the innovators or the refinements. BioShock falls strictly in the latter category, doing nothing particularly new within the medium. But BioShock feels like a work which draws inspiration from every corner of classic game design to create something exceptional. The influence from other first-person shooters is obvious, but I also see shades of Resident Evil and several principal Nintendo design philosophies.

On the surface, BioShock takes the set-piece design revolutionized by Resident Evil 4 and Half-Life 2 and really perfects it. Like Half-Life 2, this is a first-person shooter which largely refuses to feature cutscenes. Outside of the opening and ending, there are only three I can remember, and they have obvious explanations for having to be presented that way, all while maintaining a first-person perspective and thus a sense of total seamlessness. Yet Half-Life 2 would largely fall back on locking Gordon in a room while other characters spoke to him. BioShock has a similar approach, but two changes make it more effective. First, the characters in BioShock usually get to the point. Second, the characters trapping Jack tend to literally be trapping him; the doors are locked because they dont want you going forward. These moments are never tedious and tend to be full of tension, typically coming as a lead-in to a major confrontation.

As such, BioShock is one of the best examples of seamless narrative integration. But what if you want more? This is a world with some deep lore, and this is a game which rewards total exploration. While there is always an arrow pointed toward the next destination, the central areas are massive with several stray paths to explore. Rapture is littered with audio diaries, brief snippets from various residents as they reflect on the city. Its up to the player to learn as much about the city as they desire.

The character design is surprisingly effective, especially for a game which pushed realism all the way back in 2007. Despite this, the enemies are designed to appear intentionally uncanny, helping them age better than BioShocks contemporaries. Meanwhile, the Big Daddies and Little Sisters are two of the most striking creature designs in all of gaming. Nothing quite gets under my skin like a little girl laughing as she sees a dead body and saying that its dancing. Though the combat isnt BioShocks strongest point, fighting a Big Daddy is effective. Theres something about the animations of being knocked around that adds a visceral feeling which is lacking in most other FPS games that I have played.

The elements which truly push BioShock above so many other games is setting and atmosphere. Few worlds are as perfectly designed as Rapture, both as a conceptual place and through level design. The idea of Rapture is ingenious what if a bunch of objectivists attempted to create their own twisted utopia on the ocean floor? As one particularly poignant audio diary puts it, someone has to clean the toilets. This is a city full of nave opportunists too narcissistic to realize their position in the world was relative. With objectivism putting an emphasis on greedy upward mobility, this is a place where everyone wants to come out on top but those already on top have the power to put everyone else down. And far beneath the ocean where the man in charge wants to keep the city a secret, everyone is trapped upon entry. Where most sci-fi and fantasy stories rely on a few familiar tropes, Rapture felt like a fresh idea.

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The game design itself acknowledges this idea. There are health stations on every corner which seem capable of healing any damage, but of course they require payment. Even the security can be shut down as long as you have a few dollars the city doesnt care if youre sneaking around where you shouldnt be if youre loaded. Even the bathroom stalls require payment.

These levels all capture a specific brand of horror. The opening sequence shows a city in decay, suggesting the city will soon be flooded. Many of these stages revolve around a particular person going mad with power, and the Medical Pavilion is the perfect level to kick this off. Dr. Steinman has become obsessed with the idea of becoming the Picasso of surgery, which is exactly as horrifying as that sounds. Despite being surrounded by human beings, few games capture such an unsettling sense of isolation; the closest comparison is Metroid. And like Metroid Prime, this is a perfect example of an FPS where the emphasis is more on exploration than shooting.

The team behind BioShock went to great lengths to give each location its own feel. Theres a subtle color scheme that sets each of these stages apart, yet they all share the right features to feel like parts of the same city. Additionally, all of these stages are engaging. I used to be convinced there was a dip or two, but after replaying this game last week, they each serve a grand purpose.

While there are several great levels, Fort Frolic stands as one of the all-time best. While trying to jump from one passage to the next, Jack gets locked inside and is forced to do the bidding of Sander Cohen, a mad artist who has decided to hunt down his disciples to create his masterpiece. It might be hard to imagine the artist quarter being the most terrifying, but the area is filled with his other great works; namely, dozens of dead people cast in plaster. Even worse, some of them turn out to be living

Would you kindly accept my apology for needing to jump into spoilers for the next paragraph?

And then theres the big bad himself, Andrew Ryan. Can you talk about BioShock without mentioning that famous scene? You will head into Ryans area expecting some explosive confrontation. Instead, the moment is stolen from you; as mentioned before, there are only a handful of cutscenes, yet they choose to put the most important moment in this form. Andrew Ryan explains the truth of this experience, which you might have started piecing together if you paid enough attention to the various audio logs. Jack is Andrew Ryans son who has been aged rapidly, thus explaining your ability to use the vita-chambers despite them only recognizing Ryans genetics. He then points out that Jack has been trained to follow any command which uses the phrase would you kindly, revealing you have been used by the seemingly friendly Atlas from the very beginning, before forcing Jack to beat him to death with a golf club. All this while saying the famous line A man chooses, a slave obeys. BioShock and Portal made waves for outright acknowledging the idea that all video games must be programmed and are thus structured, no matter how many choices are offered but then they push the idea of breaking free, revealing the sense of freedom can work even while acknowledging these limits. This scene is perhaps the most important moment in video game storytelling, something which reshaped not just its own narrative but our perception of all others, and the fact it is pointedly a cutscene in a game which otherwise does without should not be overlooked.

It is difficult to call BioShock or any single video game the greatest ever. My own favorite game shifts constantly, and other games have held that title for a more consistent time. Yet its hard to overlook just how much this game does right. From the narrative to the atmosphere to the visual design to the sense of exploration, this is a game that does nearly everything right. Yet even this all-time great has one obvious flaw; as a first-person shooter, dozens of others have more engaging combat. My love of BioShock is actually a bit of an oddity I have never been the biggest fan of this genre. But like Psychonauts or Metroid Prime, BioShock works wonders when viewed more as an interactive adventure. Few experiences have hit me like exploring this underwater testament to humanitys greed.

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And here's the full list for the new page:
#100. Rock Band 3 (2010)
#99. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
#98. Paper Mario (2000)
#97. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
#96. Devil May Cry 3 (2005)
#95. The Walking Dead (2012)
#94. Ikaruga (2001)
#93. Shining Force II (1993)
#92. Batman: Arkham City (2011)
#91. Portal (2007)
#90. Into the Breach (2018)
#89. Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
#88. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
#87. Night in the Woods (2017)
#86. God of War (2018)
#85. We Love Katamari (2005)
#84. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (2003)
#83. Star Fox 64 (1997)
#82. Pokemon Black/White (2010)
#81. Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001)
#80. Shovel Knight (2014)
#79. Tales of Vesperia (2008)
#78. RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999)
#77. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009)
#76. EarthBound (1994)
#75. Left 4 Dead 2 (2009)
#74. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)
#73. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
#72. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009)
#71. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017)
#70. Dragon Quest VIII (2004)
#69. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)
#68. Mass Effect (2007)
#67. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
#66. Dragon Quest XI (2017)
#65. Final Fantasy XII (2006)
#64. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014)
#63. Mario Kart 8 (2014)
#62. Mass Effect 3 (2012)
#61. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
#60. Hollow Knight (2017)
#59. Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
#58. Bayonetta 2 (2014)
#57. Dark Souls III (2016)
#56. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (2006)
#55. Hotline Miami (2012)
#54. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002)
#53. Overwatch (2016)
#52. Red Dead Redemption (2010)
#51. Bioshock Infinite (2013)
#50. Inside (2016)
#49. Super Mario World (1990)
#48. Kingdom Hearts II (2006)
#47. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012)
#46. Gunstar Heroes (1993)
#45. Final Fantasy VII (1997)
#44. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (2004)
#43. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
#42. The World Ends With You (2008)
#41. Final Fantasy VI (1994)
#40. Half-Life 2 (2004)
#39. The Witcher III (2015)
#38. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
#37. Doom (2016)
#36. Metal Gear Solid (1998)
#35. Streets of Rage II (1992)
#34. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)
#33. Xenoblade Chronicles (2010)
#32. Silent Hill (1999)
#31. Final Fantasy IX (2000)
#30. Okami (2006)
#29. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)
#28. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010)
#28. Super Mario Galaxy (2007)
#27. What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)
#26. Super Mario Odyssey (2017)
#25. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
#24. Pokemon Gold/Silver (1999)
#23. Psychonauts (2005)
#22. The Last of Us (2013)
#21. Portal 2 (2011)
#20. Chrono Trigger (1995)
#19. Resident Evil 4 (2005)
#18. Nier: Automata (2017)
#17. Bloodborne (2015)
#16. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991)
#15. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)
#14. Final Fantasy X (2001)
#13. Persona 5 (2016)
#12. Undertale (2015)
#11. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000)
#10. Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
#9. Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
#8. Silent Hill 2 (2001)
#7. Metroid Prime (2002)
#6. Dark Souls (2011)
#5. Super Metroid (1994)
#4. Mass Effect 2 (2010)
#3. Life is Strange (2015)
#2. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (2008)
#1. Bioshock (2007)

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