Board 8 > The Board 8 Discord Sports Chat Rank Their Top 100 Respective Video Games part 3

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Which will totally happen this weekend
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16. Ori and the Blind Forest (Xbox One, 2015)
15. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox One, 2020)



This criminally-underplayed series on B8 was the catalyst to me buying an Xbox One in 2015. I was always going to get one, but once Blind Forest came out, I decided it was time to take the plunge. It was everything that I hoped it would be and more.

When Blind Forest was in development, Moon Studios spent their first year almost exclusively on the art and controls, and both are apparent and outstanding from the start, well, at least the latter when given the opportunity. A game taking place entirely within a fictional, naturalistic environment was something completely up my alley, but the final product almost seems impossible. Whether it is night or day, in a marsh or grotto, you will be met with a painstakingly vibrant and richly-detailed blend of foregrounds and backgrounds that are sublime, perfect even. It is impossible not to stop and take it all in an overwhelming sense of wonder. It is mind boggling that a handful of people, mostly corresponding over the internet at that, were able to come up with this.

In an exploration action game such as these two, movement is something that is very important to me, and I would assume just about everyone else. Ori rises above the rest in this department with not only its responsiveness and high degree of control, but the way it fits into level and combat design make it one of the more exhilarating experiences out there. Like many games in that genre, your traversal options start out limited but expand during the course of the game. In Blind Forest, you will eventually just be able to zip along virtually the entire world in such a breathtakingly seamless fashion. Movement in this game might be my favorite in any video game, and even though it has been a couple years since I last replayed it, I still think about it every so often.

Now this isnt to say that Will of the Wisps screwed anything up. Ori still has virtually all the same tools and then some as they maneuver around the world. Its just that the game and its world are structured differently. Blind Forest was a more uniform experience that emphasized momentum and dancing through the air, so to speak, to get around the world and even fight. Will of the Wisps is a relatively slower and more methodical game with more dangerous, restrictive areas with set pieces and lengthy locked-in segments. Theres also a different combat system that has you wielding spirit weapons as opposed to the projectile-based combat from Blind Forest. Will of the Wisps completely changed things up from Blind Forest, but they did an amazing job with all the major shifts and additions.

Honestly, Will of the Wisps is the clear superior game of the two, but Im ranking them back-to-back for a reason that I dont typically value much in video games, and that is story. Neither game is story-centric per se, but due to the heavy emotional attachment to them, the few story moments do stick with you. Both feature plenty of somber themes and plot points, but I found Blind Forest to ultimately be a hopeful journey for everyone involved. Will of the Wisps, on the other hand, is an absolute fucking downer from start to finish. Some might personally interpret its ending to be hopeful. I really understand why someone would have that takeaway, but I found it to be depressingly blase, making all the sorrowful stuff from before hit even harder. Because I dont believe you can skip cutscenes, I cant see myself replaying this game for a long time, if ever, but I could easily play Blind Forest every year.

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14. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2, 2004)


Starting with GTA III, Rockstars flagship series was outstanding with its flexible, sandbox-y world and gameplay and the marriage of crafty and dark humor wrapped up in a compelling period-piece crime tale full of biting social commentary. Coming off of two entries that I included in my Top 100, expectations were sky-high for San Andreas, and boy did they deliver.

Mission structure took a big step forward with more complex objectives, additional layers, and milking the limited capabilities of what the player can do to provide a relatively robust and varied collection of missions. Aiding in that was a different approach to its world than the series had been known for. While still primarily an urban game, they introduced forested and desert environments that were honestly refreshing even if they werent as detailed as their city counterpart. Even the cities had a lot more elevation and twists and turns given the real-world environments these were loosely based on. I still have fond memories of driving through Vinewood (based on Hollywood).

Because of the expanded efforts to the setting, the world is significantly larger than earlier entries. In a lesser game/series, that would be to its detriment due to the sheer time it can take to get from Point A to Point B and the lack of checkpoints if something goes wrong. Given the wide array of radio options full of hilarious talk radio and licensed period-accurate genre-based stations, the tangible differences and little secrets of the environment types, and the sheer joy of inciting or simply witnessing impromptu chaos makes any lengthy drive more than worth the time.

They threw a lot of things at the wall in this game, both novel and of substance. Most of it stuck, but stuff like meaningful skill progression, atrophy-based regression included, were misfires. Still, this might be the crowning achievement on one of gamings greatest series. I really need to play V more and beat it.

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13. Halo 2 (Xbox, 2004)


For the longest time, it felt like the majority of FPSs specialized in either single player or multiplayer, and the ones that attempted to do both stumbled in one or even both endeavors. Then in November of 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved came out and delivered on both ends, and the series has largely upheld that standard for nearly 20 years. I could have easily included 3, 3:ODST, and Combat Evolved on my list, but 2 and 4 are to me the clear best from one of gamings finest franchises.

I always felt that Halo 2 is what kick-started online console gaming to what it is today. It may have started with the Dreamcast several years earlier, but it wasnt until a centralized service like Xbox Live in 2002 that it became more prevalent and utilized, with Halo 2 causing an explosion of more than a million account creations around the time that it launched. I was one of them, and Halo 2 was the definitive game of my high school years.

There was a tight knit group of five of us in high school who would play Halo 2 together almost daily. They all lived close to our high school, but I lived 15 minutes out or so. Still, that didnt stop us from hanging out for a weekend seemingly every month where one night we would basically play Halo 2 LAN and pull an all-nighter on Friday or Saturday. It was pretty chaotic since usually these included somewhere between 10-20 people playing, and a few moms/sisters/girlfriends that I feel bad were subjected to our nonsense. There was little structure to what we did, and we constantly had people leaving one room to speak to people in other rooms. Room and controller swapping happened dozens of times in a single day. Im pretty sure that most of my Xbox controllers werent originally mine. The core of our group was excellent. I jokingly created a clan called the Sexy Kyle Clan as a freshman. They reluctantly joined, and I remember that we once held a matching winning streak in the upper 20s one weekend.

Back then, custom games were so prevalent and everyone had a mic. I dont even know how all these random people became acquainted with each other, but I cant remember a single time where these mega 16-player custom games where we didnt all laugh and get along. For having played this for more than 1000 hours and the technical issues that Halo 2 online was prone to having, thats quite the miracle. Thinking about this game just makes me extremely nostalgic about the memories that I shared with strangers and friends, and for the period in my life that this occurred.

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12. Halo 4 (Xbox 360, 2012)


I had previously played Halo: CE, 2, 3, 3:ODST, and Reachs campaigns in co-op and some solo, but 4 was the first game in the series that I began and have still only played solo. Its quite a different experience, and honestly, I think that 4 is perfect for playing solo. Im not basing that around level or firefight design but the core of the campaign was an intimate tale about Cortana and Master Chief, one that I was personally invested in, which I am better able to appreciate alone.

Still, I keep coming back to the series for its online component, and I guess I am in the vast minority that thinks 4 was the best (MCC excluded) in that regard. From a technical standpoint, games ran much smoother and experienced fewer issues than in previous games. This was a tremendous boost to my beloved Griffball (basically handball). I felt like a god in that game. If there was a professional Griffball league/tournament, back in the early-to-mid 10s, I would have totally tried out for it. Anyway, the collection of maps was also the best. I havent sat down to do a ranking of all the maps in the series, but Exile might end up on top, and Meltdown, Longbow, Perdition, and the Valhalla update called Ragnarok would all rank pretty high up as well.

Taking over for Bungie, 343 Industries also breathed some necessary life by incorporating contemporary features found in comparable games. Chief among them are a sprint button and loadouts. I dont need to talk about the former, but the latter was derided by my friends to the point of, but not solely limited to, them exiting the series. Being able to enter most games with my choice of weapons and abilities got me hooked onto it even as nearly all of my friends left. Not all players have the same interests or skill sets, so giving them the flexibility to provide an initial setup that most interests them, is more suited to their skills, or both is a basic but valuable feature. I was able to start off with two of my best weapons in the Light Rifle (an underrated but major point for 4 was that the new Forerunner weapons were my favorite in the series) and DMR, and I made my armor ability be the hologram (creates a decoy, and you dont know how valuable this is for someone who mostly plays objective games).

Despite some early growing pains, Halo: The Master Chief Collection was a huge triumph for me and still probably my most played XB1 game, but relatively speaking, Halo 5 was disappointing despite my fondness for its Warzone co-op and PvP variants. Im not sure how hyped I am for Infinite, but I will say that 343 Industries doesnt settle for staleness, so I have some hope that it will get back to the level that they achieved with 4.

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11. Far Cry 2 (Xbox 360, 2008)


I had been aware of this series for some time, but I didnt take the plunge until 2009, and that was only when Far Cry 2 was Amazons Video Game Deal of the Day for I want to say $15 when I was in college. Back then, I would often play a game right after buying it, so I remember beginning it in my dorm room. This was to my recollection the first open-world FPS that I played, and I was in awe.

Wildlife wasnt the dangerous menace that later entries had (not that it stopped zebras and gazelles from messing up my rides by running directly in my path at the worst possible time), but this was arguably the most dangerous Far Cry game that Ive played. Being in landlocked Africa, there wasnt much in the way of hiding places or easy routes to escape attackers, and if you met up with nearly anyone outside of specific places, they were not friendly, and they were often in groups. With neat mechanics that later games dropped like gun-jamming and weapon rusting, Far Cry 2 almost felt like it was doubling as a survival game of sorts.

While not a narratively-heavy game, and I honestly cant remember too much of the plot more than a decade later, they had a unique initial set-up and linking system that ultimately allowed me to craft a much more personal story in my mind. Instead of being in the shoes of a specific player, creating your own character, or choosing a male/female version of the same character, you can choose one of about a dozen characters, all with their own personalities and backstories as your character. While the attributes of your chosen character wont come into play, they will for the remaining characters that you didnt choose when they become what the game calls buddies and feature prominently in the game. You can save them, they can save you, and they will all have personal missions that you can choose to do throughout your time in the game. You can strengthen your relationship with your buddies to the point of having a best and second-best buddy, which affects side missions and who is your savior when on the brink of death. Its more novel than tangibly impactful, but I was absorbed in it all the same.

How this played out for me was like it was straight out of a movie. One of my best buddies was a Hungarian/Israeli named Paul, and during a situation late in the game (Im not sure if this was a story mission or just out and about in the world), I got into some heavy shit, and just when I thought it was over for me, Paul came to my rescue and we returned fire to our assailants, ultimately emerging victorious after a hard-fought battle. I thought it was all over until bullets came out from nowhere and instantly killed Paul. That was when I learned that buddies could die, and they didnt come back. It wasnt long after this that I was in the final stretch of story missions, and lets just say that the timing, way, and simply fact that Paul died gave the end-game a higher meaning to me.

Some time in the past decade, I did a project about my Top 100 moments in gaming. It was slightly ridiculed for including things such as Louie Anderson dancing in a Family Feud game (that might have been my #2) and basic things that gave me a great sense of wonder like jumping through a painting for the first time in Super Mario 64 when I was six or seven. I bring this up because Far Cry 2 took home the top spot and it is one that is unscripted and might have been solely experienced by me.

I was just driving to my destination when I made a turn just as a jeep full of enemies was right around the curve. Knowing it was best to just get out and take care of them, we began a firefight, and as I was about to clean up the last guy, another jeep came upon the scene, and those enemies came out. This kept happening, and it was getting darker. Eventually, there were no natural light sources, so we had to go by where gunfire was coming from or throw molotovs to cause small wildfires. After a while, I got overwhelmed, and just as I was about to perish, my buddy Andre came in, helped me up while saying an encouraging line or two, and then we got to business taking everyone out. It was just pure chaos. I had no idea how many reinforcements came, but it was a lot. I didnt even hear any jeeps, so I was either too focused on who was immediately trying to kill me, or they arrived on foot. The darkness was constantly illuminated by gunfire, and I was chucking molotovs all over the place. After several minutes, the gunfire lessened and eventually subsided completely. It was faintly visible due to a wildfire that I started by becoming a mad arsonist, but I saw Andre nearby say a few words and go on his merry way. That was when I saw the wildfire make its way to a large tree and engulf it in flames. It was soon the only thing both on fire and discernible through the night sky. Now I have no plans to become an arsonist, but my god was that so hauntingly beautiful. It felt like only a few seconds, but the flames let up, and I was left alone in the pitch black night. I think about that entire sequence, especially the lone, giant tree on fire, fairly often.

I tried to recreate that moment seemingly dozens of times to no avail. Far Cry 2 was already a special game to me, but that just put it over the top for me.

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