Welcome back to the Halo love/hate series! In this entry we’ll be going over the series’ third entry, Halo 3! We’re now past the point where I had any first-hand experience with these games: I remember this game being an absolute blockbuster at the time, and it was the #1 shooter in the world for a few years until Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare took over the genre, but I never got to play it. Could it resolve Halo 2‘s cliffhanger in a satisfying way? Read on to find out…
Love
New Weapons – As usual, a new Halo game means new weapons, and they’ve introduced some really cool ones here:
Best of all is the brute hammer. This thing is ridiculously satisfying to use. It’s devastating, one-shots pretty much everything, has a large area of effect blast when it hits (which will kill multiple clustered enemies), sends debris flying on impact, and makes a really loud noise. It’s the quintessential distillation of the brutes as a species, and it’s fantastic.
The spiker and mauler are both really cool options. The spiker is kind of like an SMG version of the needler, it’s really reliable and enjoyable to use. The mauler, meanwhile, is a shotgun pistol. Both of these guns are dual-wieldable, which just makes them even more fun to use.
The Spartan laser is also a really cool power weapon that puts out a devastating amount of damage. However, it remains fairly balanced due to its long charge time before it fires, meaning that you have to keep the target in your sights or waste the shot.
Oh, and the game now lets you pickup gun turrets from around the environment and use them as power weapons! It’s as badass as it sounds to pick up a heavy machine gun or a plasma cannon and then spend the next minute mowing down everything in sight.
Weapon Rebalancing – Halo 2 suffered a bit due to its wildly unbalanced weapons. You could maybe argue that this was intentional, but Halo 3 is clearly trying to make every weapon viable. There aren’t really any weapons here that I wouldn’t want to pickup. Most of the weak guns from Halo 2 have been improved massively: the assault rifle is back and actually useable, the shotgun is worthwhile again (although it’s still nowhere near as good as it was in Combat Evolved), the plasma rifle is far better against non-shielded enemies, the Brute shot is significantly better… really, the only weapon that has clearly been nerfed to oblivion is the energy sword. The lunge distance has been made extremely short, and while it does one-shot most enemies, I’ve had instances where I’ve had to hit a Flood combat form five times to get a kill on normal difficulty… HOW???
Epic, Free-Form Combat Scenarios – Gone are almost all the corridor shooting levels from previous Halo games: Halo 3 loves to revel in the large combat arenas where you fight alongside allies and use various vehicles to combat hordes of enemies. Probably the biggest highlight is driving a mongoose ATV while your allies blast rockets at enemy vehicles… and then a scarab walker shows up and you need to disable it, jump on board, and then blow it up from the inside. Combat is straight-up epic in this game!
Mixed
Equipment Pickups – Halo 3 introduces several equipment pickups, which operate similarly to the temporary armour upgrades you could find in the previous two games (bubble shield, deployable cover, auto-turret, invisibility, invincibility, flashbang, etc). The big differences are that they are way more common and you get to choose when to use them. They’re… alright. They certainly work, but they do not feel all that important to the combat flow (at least on normal difficulty: I can see bubble shields and deployable cover being way more impactful on legendary). A lot of these equipment pickups are stationary once used, which isn’t really something you want to be doing in Halo most of the time. It’s also really hard to see them; I kept accidentally picking them up by walking over them… I could count the number of times I intentionally grabbed an equipment pickup on one hand and still have fingers to spare for your mom.
Hate
The Story – Halo 3 is a suitably epic finale for a story about a galactic war and genocidal alien parasite. However, as it goes on, I can’t help but have several nagging issues about it which sour it somewhat:
First of all, the grand, sci-fi world-building of Combat Evolved and Halo 2 is pretty much gone. We learn nothing new about the Covenant society (which, if you’ll recall, had its entire freaking capital city genocided by the Flood in Halo 2). Basically nothing new is learned or introduced here, it’s just culminating the events of the last two games. Aside from a couple big deaths, there’s no risks taken. That’s fine, I guess, but it’s disappointing after the thoughtful writing and big revelations brought in by Halo 2.
On a related note, the war just kind of… ends. The prophets are dead, but you’re telling me that there’s no Covenant still choosing to fight? The Brutes sure as hell seemed to want to fight this war, they’re not taking over and continuing the fight? There’s no new power structure forming? Oh, and the game acts like the Flood have been defeated, but that was just one Gravemind… given that we know there are multiple Halo rings still out there, that presumably means that there are several installations which still have Flood on them, right?
I get that Cortana’s out of the picture for most of the game due to the events of Halo 2, but you can really feel her absence (and, when she comes back, it’s a breath of fresh air). Definitely makes you appreciate her character more, but the entire narrative suffers without her.
I also found it pretty disappointing that the last couple levels are basically just rehashing the ending of Combat Evolved, to lesser effect, in my opinion.
Finally, Arbiter’s just kind of “here”. People complained about him in Halo 2, so Bungie folded and he’s no longer playable outside of co-op. He’s still gets a couple story moments, but his character development is stunted and we miss out on a lot of the developments that would be happening on the Covenant side of things (like that the Elites are now working with humanity against the Covenant).
Flashbangs – So, something I neglected to mention about equipment: enemies get to use them as well. This is not that big a deal most of the time, but where it becomes infuriating is that one of the pickups is a flashbang. It’s worthless when you use it, but when Brutes start chucking them around, they’re infuriating. There’s a reason most first person shooters do give NPCs flashbangs, it basically makes the game unplayable when they’re used. Thankfully, these were only used on a handful of occasions during my playthrough, but there was one section early in the game where Brutes were just spamming them at me and it drove me nuts. Oh, and speaking of which…
Brutes – Brutes just are not that fun to fight compared to Elites. At least in Halo 2, you only start fighting Brutes halfway through, but here they’re the main enemy for a good chunk of the game. Since they don’t have shields, this breaks the strategic weapon choices from the previous two games, since plasma is less-necessary. They’re also a lot less intelligent, so the enemy AI is not nearly as interesting as it was previously.
Halo 3 is solid, but I can’t help but feel disappointed with it compared to Halo 2. While it is a fitting conclusion for the trilogy, the world just feels smaller and more dumbed down after the expansion it received in Halo 2. The gunplay is definitely improved, so it has that, but I guess this just shows where my priorities are with games: gameplay is just one factor to the overall package, and story matters quite a lot to me, to the point where Halo 2 is the clear best of the trilogy, even though Halo 3 undeniably plays better overall.
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Welcome back to the Halo love/hate series! In this entry we’ll be going over the series’ second entry, Halo 2! Like I said in the first entry, I had played a bit of Halo 2‘s multiplayer back when we did LAN parties at my church, but other than that, I had very little first-hand experience with the game. I didn’t see past the campaign’s opening cutscene, and I didn’t get that far into the novels to reach any Halo 2 content, so nearly all my knowledge of the game was just general cultural osmosis (Arbiter, the cliffhanger ending, etc). Would it be able to improve the rough edges of the original game? Read on to find out…
Love
Major Gameplay Improvements – It’s hard for me to really describe how much better Halo 2 feels to play compared to Combat Evolved in nearly every facet. Let’s put it this way: when I was playing through Combat Evolved, I’d be able to stomach one level per sitting before I’d want to turn it off. For Halo 2, I blitzed through three levels the first time I sat down to play and the only reason I didn’t play more was because I really needed to sleep. So I went to bed, and then I blitzed through another three levels the next day. Throughout this playthrough, I was gleefully playing two-to-three levels back-to-back whenever I could get the opportunity, it is that much fun. Knuckling down to specifics, major improvements include:
Vehicle handling is similar to Combat Evolved, but so much tighter and more responsive. No more crashing into everything because you can’t control your damn vehicle (plus, it also confirm that this was not an engine issue, it was very much a Combat Evolved issue, because vehicles are a blast here).
Explosives are far less oppressive now. You’ll still die to the occasional rocket launcher or plasma grenade, but the combat actually feels fair now.
Weapons held by allies can now be taken, meaning that you can customize the support that they provide, and you can get yourself a better weapon if needed (you are, after all, the best warrior in the room, so why are you stuck with the needler!?).
You can also hijack enemy vehicles now, which makes for some epic moments on its own, but it also means that you aren’t necessarily left flailing around if you have a weak weapon and some Elite is charging at you with a Ghost or a Banshee.
I also like the changes made to health. In Combat Evolved, you had a regenerating shield and a health bar which would be depleted when the shields went down. In theory, this sounds like a good system, but in practice, it means that you have very little margin for error. Shields down? You need to hide IMMEDIATELY or you’ll die in one hit next time your shield goes down, and who knows how long it will be before you find a med pack to restore those lost health points. Halo 2 simplifies this to just be a regenerating shield and then a set amount of damage you can take before your health and shields fully regenerate. It makes taking damage more forgiving and makes you feel like more of a badass, since you can choose to take that risk to take some damage if it means that you get to kill the last couple enemies in the process without punishing you for it.
Dual-wielding! – Easily the coolest new feature in Halo 2 is the ability to dual wield any one-handed weapon. I was grinning ear-to-ear like an idiot as I blasted away with dual SMGs in the opening levels. Granted, you can’t throw a grenade or melee when you’re dual wielding, but it’s very much worth it and, with this franchise’s strategic weapon-based combat system, it opens up so many options. You can choose to double-up your damage potential with a second copy of a particular weapon, or you can choose to shore up one weapon’s weakness with another (eg, SMG in one hand for Grunts, plasma rifle in the other for Elites). This is such an inspired feature and just another aspect of what makes combat in Halo 2 so goddamn fun.
New Weapons – Halo 2 introduces several new weapons to the franchise. My favourite is, without a question, the energy sword, which kills almost everything with one melee strike and which closes the distance with an enemy if you swing while close to them. I also really love the beam rifle, which is kind of like a plasma sniper rifle. The battle rifle is also excellent, leaving Combat Evolved‘s assault rifle in the dust where it belongs and I also rather enjoy tearing through Grunts with the SMG.
Level Design – One major reason why Halo 2 is so much more playable than Combat Evolved today is that they completely fixed my issues with the first game’s level designs. The way that levels are designed is far better at directing you to where you need to go next, to the point where I never got lost.
Graphical Leap – Graphics only matter so much, especially when comparing two twenty-year-old games from the same console generation, but it is notable just how much better the graphics of Halo 2 are compared to the first game (I played both games with original graphics, so their anniversary updates did not factor into this assessment). The character models are so much better and environments are all much more detailed than before, making the opening warzones and areas like the Covenant holy city truly awe-inspiring in open vistas.
“Blow Me Away” – As a big fan of Breaking Benjamin, the hype was off the charts when I was playing through Gravemind and this track started playing during one of the toughest battles in the game. You’d think that a post-grunge rock track might feel out of place, but no, it’s easily one of the highlights of the campaign.
Mixed
The Arbiter – One of the most interesting additions in Halo 2 is that you have a second playable hero: the Arbiter, the Elite who was in charge of the Halo ring that we blew up in the first game. A lot of the most interesting world-building and narrative beats comes from his perspective, as we get first-hand insight into the Covenant hierarchy and society. He also plays somewhat differently to Master Chief, getting access to an active camouflage system which encourages more stealth gameplay. That said, his levels suffer somewhat due to us not really having much investment in the fate of the Elites initially, as our concerns are on the fate of humanity. This improves over time, but it takes a while to really appreciate this side of the story. Arbiter’s gameplay can also be less enjoyable than Master Chief’s… I wasn’t able to find anything to confirm it, but I swear that Arbiter has less health and/or shields than Master Chief, meaning that you’re going to die way more and have to play much more carefully when playing as him. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not communicated well and, since you swap between the two characters throughout the campaign, the difference in health is going to throw you off every time you swap back and have to remember to play more conservatively again. It’s just kind of a bummer in a game that otherwise makes you feel like a total badass.
The Story – This is a true “Mixed” section for me, as the narrative of Halo 2 is extremely polarizing. It’s simultaneously one of my favourite and least favourite aspects of the game.
On the plus side, the presentation is way better. The opening sequence of Master Chief’s award ceremony, contrasted with Arbiter’s shaming, is downright cinematic and demonstrates that Halo has some of the best narrative presentation in gaming. In accordance, the narrative scope has expanded to the point where it is downright epic. We’ve got the fate of Earth hanging in the balance as the Covenant launch their final offensive on humanity, we’ve got Master Chief trying to stop a second Halo from firing, we’ve got Arbiter being sent to quash heresy and the getting caught up in a full-on Covenant civil war with three different factions involved. It’s extremely impressive stuff, especially for a goddamn first person shooter from the early 2000s.
That said, the way that this story is told is extremely confusing. The story is far more complicated, but the way that it is communicated to the player is often unclear, making it difficult to follow at times. For example, the first Arbiter missions take place on a second Halo installation, but the game takes a while to actually make this clear, and never really confirms if this is supposed to be the same installation that Master Chief and his allies are fighting on at the same time. Similarly, the Flood Gravemind just kind of shows up with zero foreshadowing or explanation. This is arguably the most dangerous being in the galaxy and we don’t really get any indication of what it is until very late in the game (hell, you’d need to use context clues to even clue in that this thing is a “Gravemind”). The way the game switches between Master Chief and Arbiters’ campaigns also doesn’t really help, as you’ll probably forget some of the details of what was happening in each campaign by the time you switch back to the other character.
Oh, and I’d be remiss to not mention the cliffhanger ending. I didn’t mind it, especially since I’m playing this game years after we’ve already had follow-up to it, but I can see how the story just suddenly ending with no resolution would be a problem for some people.
Hate
Energy Sword Lunge – As much as I love the energy sword, the way that its lunge has been implemented is a goddamn liability. Getting close to an enemy and then swinging will launch you forward in a lunge attack, even if you’re in mid-air. It’s really helpful and helps make the energy sword an absolute beast, but my God, you will launch yourself off the side of the map several times when you first get the energy sword until you come to grips with how it works. I swear, during the first couple Arbiter levels, I died more to the energy sword throwing me off the map than I did to Flood and heretics, combined. I did eventually get used to it around the time when the game stops having so many lethal drops around every combat arena, but it was infuriating for a while.
Weapon Balancing – Bungie were clearly aware of how overpowered certain weapons were in Combat Evolved, because the nerf bat has come for them. The shotgun is, sadly, the most nerfed. It’ll kill a Flood in one shot still, but it struggles to down Covenant outside of point blank range (and even here, you’ll likely need a couple shots to do the job) and its damage drop-off is pitiful. The magnum has also been made basically useless, and the plasma rifle’s damage is lower. Beyond general nerfs, there’s a pretty big gulf between the good and bad weapons in Halo 2. The brute plasma rifle, for example, is a weapon you never pick up unless you have no other option – it’s literally just the regular plasma rifle, but it overheats twice as fast. How exciting!
Halo 2 is a triumph. The original game was already acclaimed and revolutionary for its time, but Halo 2 absolutely blows it out of the water in nearly every regard. Everything has been tuned to make you feel like a total badass while playing and the campaign is simply enthralling. If Combat Evolved set the bar for quality, Halo 2 cemented this franchise’s place in gaming history. I’m so glad that I finally got the chance to play this game in full and I hope that I get the chance to relive one of those LAN parties someday soon to really enjoy that multiplayer carnage too.
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Surprise! It’s time for a new love/hate series! As you can probably tell, we’re going to be diving into the Halo franchise, going over all the mainline entries and their campaigns. Multiplayer is a pretty major aspect of Halo, obviously, but I’m about 23 years too late to properly dive into these games’ multiplayer modes, so we’ll just stick with the campaigns for this analysis.
As for my history with Halo, I got invited to a LAN party at my church a couple times where we hooked up four Xboxes and played Halo and Halo 2‘s multiplayer. It was an absolute blast and, for many years thereafter, Halo was the gold-standard multiplayer game in my mind, unsurpassed until 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I purchased an Xbox 360 with Halo Anniversary several years later and tried to play through the game’s campaign, but fell off about halfway through before selling the system. Recently though, Steam had a huge sale on for the Master Chief Collection, so I picked it up and finally decided to knuckle down and play through this series. How do these games hold up today? Read on to find out…
Love
The AI – No, I’m not referring to Cortana here (although she is an excellent character). No, I’m referring to what was probably the most defining aspect of Halo for me: the incredible amount of personality that Bungie have baked into all of their NPCs. Grunts scream and run from battle when you kill their superiors. When you kill an enemy, they will fire their gun a few more times in a death spasm. Your allies will rage and unload magazines into dead enemies in revenge. These are just some of the more obvious examples, but there is just so much personality baked into the NPCs that it makes them feel like more than just bullet sponges. It’s even more impressive considering that few shooter games today even bother with these kinds of touches to make their world feel real.
Enemy Designs – Combat is so much fun in Halo because you can feel how well-designed the enemies are in these games. Each enemy type requires different approaches to defeat them: for example, Elites have powerful weapons and shield generators, requiring plasma weaponry to kill effectively before they obliterate your own shields, while Jackals have an arm-mounted shield which needs to be overloaded with plasma or bypassed with precision weaponry, grenades, or good ol’ fashioned melee. In addition, each enemy type has a very distinct silhouette, making it easy to tell who is who in the heat of combat. As a result of this strong design foundation, Bungie are able to mix and match enemies and environments to make for endless potential for fun encounters.
Large-scale Warfare – While Halo is primarily a corridor shooter, like many of its contemporaries, it does open up during a few levels (most notably in the second level) and allow you to engage in large-scale open warfare. These areas are always the game’s biggest highlights, allowing you to pilot vehicles, including the Scorpion tank and Banshee, or you can just hoof it on foot and use the terrain to your advantage. There are also multiple moments where you can choose to just sit back and watch the Covenant fight your allies or the Flood, which helps sell the idea of this huge war that you are just a part of. It’s wild to see this kind of ambitious design in an Xbox launch game!
The Lore – The actual plot of Halo is pretty basic: you crash land on Halo, rescue your comrades, and then try to figure out what the Covenant are doing here. What really makes it stand out to me though is how authentic and real it feels. You can clearly tell that the people who wrote it are military history nerds and they ensure that the UNSC characters speak and act like real soldiers. Add in the intriguing zealotry of the Covenant and the mysteries of the Halo installation and this is a world that feels positively lived-in, even in this first entry.
The Flood – No one who played Halo for the first time expected it to turn into a full-on horror game about halfway through, but man is it effective. It’s a cool twist which comes just in time to shake-up the gameplay and introduce several new enemy types to deal with, which function differently than any other enemy you’ve encountered up to this point. Plus, y’know, the Flood are an existential threat which really ramps up the narrative as soon as they’re introduced.
The Shotgun – Oh. My. GOD! In the pantheon of video game shotguns, Halo‘s is easily one of the most satisfying. This thing is a fucking beast, shredding Flood and Covenant alike in a single blast. Most weapons in this game feel kind of weak, requiring a lot of shots to actually kill anything, but it is so refreshing when the shotgun arrives and bucks this trend. You don’t get access to it until about halfway through the game, but as soon as it was introduced, the entire back half of the game for me was ride-or-die with the shotgun.
Weapon Variety – One of the most impressive aspects of playing Halo today is seeing just how unique the various weapons are. This was kind of par for the course back in 2001, but since video weapons became codified as “assault rifle/pistol/shotgun/sniper rifle/DMR/SMG/machine gun”, it’s refreshing to see weapons as distinct and iconic as the needler and plasma pistol. Even the assault rifle and plasma rifle don’t overlap – the assault rifle is purely a low damage, high rate of fire weapon, whereas the plasma rifle specializes at knocking down energy shields and will overheat if fired for too long. There’s simply no overlap for any of the weapons here and, given what I said about enemy design previously, they all have some strategic use depending on the situation you find yourself in.
Hate
Level Design – This is my biggest complaint about Halo by far, and it’s the reason I fell off the game the first time I tried to play. It took me months to slog my way through this game and that largely came down to how dull the levels can get at times. This is mainly due to the time-period in which Halo was developed, as you can see the DNA of early corridor shooters like Doom or Star Wars: Dark Forces with these maze-like environments. It’s especially bad because the levels in Halo are, ultimately, quite linear, but I was still managing to get lost because of all the reused assets and non-sensical level layouts which make it hard to tell where you’re going and where you’ve been. Making matters worse, Halo loves to just throw wave after wave of enemies at you. I remember reading the second Halo book, The Flood, and realizing it was basically a full-on walkthrough of the game when it would describe how Master Chief kills all the enemies in a room, then goes to the next room and does it again for another wave. For how dull that was to read, it was a pretty accurate description of how these levels often play out and, while the enemy designs keep things fun, it does start to get a bit much towards the end.
Vehicle Controls – As much as I love that Halo lets you shake-up the gameplay by driving vehicles, the actual controls are fucking dogshit, specifically for the Warthog. They are so slippery and unwieldy, causing you to crash into everything if you end up in a situation where you need to drive with any sort of precision. This is especially a problem because the final level requires you to race a Warthog through an obstacle course while a timer counts down. Suffice to say, I failed the first time I tried this and that was almost entirely due to the poor vehicle controls screwing me over.
Explosive Spam – Holy shit, the sheer damage and blast radius of explosives in this game is nuts. A single explosion is often enough to kill you instantly and can come out of nowhere, with even basic Grunts frequently hucking plasma grenades at you. You are going to die to explosions all the time, especially in the latter levels when enemies are unloading barrages of grenades, fuel rod cannons, and full-on rocket launchers at you.
The Assault Rifle Suuuuuuucks – So I did say that every weapon in Halo is useful in certain situations, but the assault rifle’s the closest we come to a weapon just being worthless. Unlike most video game assault rifles, Halo‘s is only good at extreme close range due to some insane bullet deviation. Even Grunts take most of a magazine at close range to kill, which is insane. The only situation where the assault rifle shines is in killing pod infectors… but that’s not that impressive, because literally stepping on them will kill pod infectors, and they do such miniscule damage that it’s barely worth wasting a bullet on them.
Halo: Combat Evolved is rough. I can see how it revolutionized the shooter genre and it still has some brilliant aspects that hold up today, but actually playing the game can be exhausting at times. Still, for all its rough edges, I’m glad that I finally got to experience this game for myself and live out my teenage dreams for real.
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25. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003, PC)
Knights of the Old Republic has some of the best writing in all of Star Wars. Back when Disney bought Star Wars and everyone was still excited about the possibilities of new movies, I had a pretty simple request: adapt Knights of the Old Republic to film. You could adapt this game’s script with little changes required and it would be a hit (assuming they didn’t screw up in the execution). The twists would be able to land too, because most mainstream Star Wars fans haven’t played it, so it would still have impact. Oh, and most importantly, adapting KOTOR would not ruin the ending of Return of the Jedi and piss off the fanbase.
KOTOR is just the ultimate union of Star Wars fantasy and Bioware RPG gameplay. Customizing your character and slowly developing their Force powers and lightsaber over the course of the game is awesome. The real-time with pause combat is simple, but flashy in-motion. Seeing what the Star Wars universe was like long before the original trilogy is fascinating. The way that your affinity towards the Dark and Light sides of the Force affects your character, your companions, and the way the story plays out. If you love Star Wars, then you owe it to yourself to give KOTOR a try.
24. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002, PS2)
Another one of those games that was bought for me as a gift and that I wasn’t too interested in until I started playing, Sly Cooper is a fantastic blend of 3D platforming and stealth gameplay. In order to emphasize stealth, Sly (and most enemies you face) will die in one hit. This might sound rough, but the game is balanced around it and it feels very fair – if you are being sneaky, then you should have the upper-hand in every encounter. In fact, I actually prefer this system over Sly‘s sequels, which give everyone health bars… presumably because it is more “expected”? I guess it makes combat have a bit more depth? Whatever the case, combat isn’t really the focus of these games and I much prefer the snappier system in place here.
Like many 3D platformers of the day, Sly Cooper features collect-a-thon elements, but they aren’t just here to give you something arbitrary to do. Levels are littered with coins to steal, which will net you lucky charms (which allow you to take up to two hits before dying) or extra lives. You also collect bottles containing pages of the titular Thievius Raccoonus, which will eventually unlock really useful new moves and abilities that you can use, such as slowing time or creating a decoy to distract enemies.
So the core gameplay of Sly Cooper is rock solid, but the game’s presentation, characters, and story really elevate it. The game has a cartoonish, 50s noir style which is complemented by its cel-shaded graphics which have aged very well. The characters aren’t revelatory, but they’re fun: Sly’s your charming rogue, Bentley’s the high-strung brains of the operation, Murray’s the dumb-but-eternally-loyal and eager getaway driver, and Carmelita is the cop who will stop at nothing to put Sly behind bars… but is her obsession purely professional…? The whole thing is wrapped around a plot which is just perfect for video games: Sly comes from a line of master thieves who have recorded the techniques they have developed in the Thievius Raccoonus, but the book is stolen and his family murdered by a group of rival thieves called the Fiendish Five. Sly and his friends then need to reclaim his family’s knowledge and get revenge on the Fiendish Five. It’s a fairly simple setup, but compelling. Sly Cooper is just an extremely well thought-out video game: everything has been carefully considered and maximized to make Sly Cooper the best it can be.
23. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (2005, PS2)
Sly 3 doesn’t evolve the formula of the franchise very much: gameplay-wise, it’s more of what was established in Sly 2 (basically: Bentley and Murray are new playable characters, the one-hit-kill system is gone, stealth is de-emphasized, and guards can be pickpocketed for easy cash for upgrades). What really makes Sly 3 stand out is its exemplary writing, which builds upon all the developments made over the course of the trilogy. In this game, Sly is putting together a team to pull off a heist against Dr. M, who has taken over the island housing the Cooper family vault. Dr. M has been attempting to break inside to steal the generations of hoarded treasure held within. It seems like a pretty simple setup, but there are some major revelations and developments which twist the way we view our characters and the Cooper family in surprising ways. We also get several returning characters from the previous two games, some of which have undergone major developments. Most notable of these is Panda King, one of the Fiendish Five who killed Sly’s parents. The gang finds themselves having to recruit Panda King in order to successfully pull off the heist, but the tension between Sly and him is so taut that feels like it could snap at any moment. It is great writing, daring to take the difficult route, and the game is so much more rewarding for it. Dr. M is also a surprisingly complex villain, who I’d argue is the best antagonist in the franchise. Building up the gang and then executing this final heist makes for one of the most enjoyable game stories in its own right, but when you combine that with the things this game is doing as a trilogy-ender, it is a monumental achievement.
22. Ninja Gaiden (2004, XB)
Ninja Gaiden is notorious for its difficulty, demanding precision and quick reflexes to survive on higher difficulties. The game’s hero, Ryu Hayabusa, is a demon-slaying ninja badass and one of the coolest game heroes around. The story is functional by video game standards: Ryu needs to get back the Dark Dragon Blade, which was stolen from the Hayabusa ninja clan by the Vigoor Empire, all while battling ninjas, Fiends, and the Black Spider Clan. That’s right… there’s actually a game in my top one hundred which is here purely because of the gameplay. Ninja Gaiden‘s harsh challenge is tough, but fair, demanding that you learn its systems if you want to succeed. When you do overcome a fight that has been challenging you, the feeling of satisfaction is palpable, and the the fight is all the more manageable for it. Something I like about this game in particular which makes it stand out from its sequels is the hub-based world. For most of the game, you explore the streets of Tairon, battling enemies as you gain access to new areas and uncover some cleverly-disguised secrets that only a true ninja could perceive. I know that it’s been said before about this game, but it really does bear saying: Ninja Gaiden makes you feel like a true ninja badass and is well worth experiencing if you can stomach the challenge.
21. Bioshock (2007, PS3)
Whenever I recount my time with Bioshock, I always go back to the very first thing that happened to me in the game. You have an extremely brief opening cutscene where your plane crashes into the ocean and your character rises to the surface of the water to see flames from the wreckage. I sat there a good twenty seconds or more, expecting some object to come into frame from off-screen. Then it hit me: No… these are the in-game graphics!? The reflection of the fire on the water looked so good that I literally thought it was a CGI cutscene. The game was that immersive at its very first second. Then you travel down into the undersea city of Rapture and your mind is in absolute awe of what you are seeing. An art deco, undersea, libertarian dystopia is such a unique setting. And then the horror elements creep in, as you see what has become of the city and its denizens. By that point, you are just fully invested in Bioshock‘s atmosphere: this is just the coolest world design in videogames. It also, quite famously, has some of the best writing in any game of the time, being philosophical while also keeping it entertaining. It also has one of the best twists in gaming, a mind-blowing revelation that makes you re-evaluate your sense of self. And then there’s the plasmid powers you collect and upgrade during your journey which shake up the gunplay in unique ways.
Oh, and who could ever forget the first time they saw a Big Daddy? How about the sheer terror the first time you had to kill one? This game is fantastic, full-stop.
This was a game that I had heard about while growing up. I was really into gaming magazines around 2001. One of the first gaming magazines I bought was the Metal Gear Solid 2 cover story for The Official US Playstation Magazine, which really hammered home to me that these games were must-plays (I can still remember their guide on how to fake being sick to get a whole extra-long weekend off to play it). They all sang the praises of the Metal Gear franchise, and they said that Metal Gear Solid was the best one. That said, I wasn’t able to play them at the time: I was eleven when MGS2 came out, I was not allowed to play any M-rated video games, and I didn’t have any money to get them myself.
Around 2005 or 2006, I had fallen in love with the stealth action genre after playing all of the Splinter Cell released to that point. I was itching for some more top-tier stealth games, so obviously Metal Gear Solid was at the front of my mind. I managed to get a ROM of Metal Gear Solid, which I played on an emulator on my PC. I’ll tell ya, over the course of the next few evenings, my mind was blown. I loved the over-the-top action and characters. I loved the equally philosophical and farcical narrative. The presentation was incredible. I loved the insane, fourth-wall breaking gameplay moments. The boss fights were incredibly unique. It was just such a good experience that I started checking out the other games in the franchise as well, and soon Metal Gear Solid was even more important to me than Splinter Cell itself.
19. Shadow of the Colossus (2005, PS2)
Another one of those “early, undeniable examples of games as art” games, Shadow of the Colossus is unrivalled in its atmosphere. The colossi are these majestic, sombre beasts who you have been tasked to slay in order to resurrect an mysterious woman. The resulting journey is nearly wordless, which just absolutely sucks you into this game’s world. Each colossi is not fought in the traditional sense: they are all have a fairly simple puzzle based around their movements which, once solved, will allow you to climb onto their body and stab a weak point until the beast dies. Each colossi is unique and memorable, and the minimalist story really packs an emotional wallop. It’s just such an impactful and artfully-crafted videogame, you just can’t help but be in awe of the talent on display here.
18. Nioh (2017, PS4)
Once again, Team Ninja have an entry that I love entirely for the gameplay. Nioh has the best combat system of any game I have played, bar none. It plays largely the same as any other Souls-like: a stamina bar, challenging difficulty, if you die you lose your souls, etc. The main differences are that Nioh has a loot-based item drop system and that the game is linear and mission-based, rather than having you seamlessly navigating an open world. However, Nioh introduces two mechanics that shake up the Souls formula in some genius ways:
Weapon Stances – Each weapon you get has three stances for your attacks: high for a slow, powerful attack, mid for a standard attack, and low for a quick, weak attack. Right away, this wildly expands the options you have at your disposal for any given combat encounter, but certain enemies are also immune or vulnerable to specific stances.
Ki-Pulse – Nioh has a sort of “active reload” system to instantly replenish your stamina bar if you time a button press correctly. You will quickly get to grips with this maneuver when you play, it makes for a really cool system where you encourage aggressive combat maneuvers in order to maximize your damage dealt.
The game also retains Team Ninja’s pedigree for difficulty. In that quality, Nioh definitely stands out compared to its peers, with a level of precision required that rivals Ninja Gaiden. And I just love the guardian spirits, a charming gang of adorable, magic spirit creatures that give you special powers if you become friends with them. Nioh is just a great game to play, constantly pushing your limit and forcing you to get better.
17. Halo 2 (2004, XB)
Halo holds a special place in my heart. Some of my fondest gaming memories are playing Halo and Halo 2 at a couple youth group LAN parties as a young teenager. I loved the first few Halo books. The writing and world-building was (and still is) top notch. Despite this, I didn’t have an Xbox or a decent PC growing up. So, when the LAN parties stopped happening, I never really got a chance to play them again. I did, briefly, have an Xbox 360 and I attempted to play through Combat Evolved a couple times, but found that I didn’t like the game’s design. As a result, I never made it to trying Halo 2.
Fast-forward to a earlier this year. The Master Chief Collection was on sale for cheap on Steam, and I finally have a PC capable of playing it. Fuckin’ sold, that was an awesome deal. Once again, I found myself growing tired of Combat Evolved‘s design, but I forced myself through. Even then, it took me a couple months to get through to the end.
But then I started Halo 2. MY GOD, the sheer leap forward in every single way is spectacular. The story presentation and writing are legitimately film-like. The level design is much clearer and more distinct. Gameplay is improved in every regard. Dual-wielding guns is such a power trip. Even the small changes to the shields system make you feel more like a badass than before. I would turn off Combat Evolved after one or two levels, but for Halo 2 I blitzed through three levels back-to-back without breaking a sweat, and the only reason I didn’t go any further was because I badly needed to sleep. I got through Halo 2 in about a week, and loved it the whole way through.
16. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007, PS3)
The release of Call of Duty 4 was a bomb-shell in the gaming industry. This one game effectively killed the World War II shooter, which had been a gaming staple for a decade. Suddenly, every shooter had to be a modern military game. Its set-piece moments were jaw-dropping and influenced countless imitators. Halo had been the top dog shooter up until that point, but then this game dropped and arena shooters were decimated. Given that we were still early in the Iraq War at the time, the game had an extra layer of relevance. At the time, this game felt kind of dangerous and daring for how much it invoked real-world politics. This also, of course, started the annual Call of Duty release schedule that we are all sick to death of now.
And, in spite of all that, Call of Duty 4 is still as incredible as ever. This game looked unbelievable back in 2007. The campaign was shockingly strong for a straight-forward shooter game, with memorable characters, cool set-pieces and some gut-wrenching moments. It’s the sort of game that demonstrates the effectiveness of a good, curated, linear campaign: the iconic “All Ghillied Up” is almost entirely scripted, but goddamn if it does not get your pulse pounding. You may be done with Call of Duty now, but anyone who was there for Call of Duty 4 knows that that game was (and still is) a singular experience.
15. Ape Escape (1999, PS1)
Of all the games that were bought for us as a gift that I didn’t have much interest in until I played it, Ape Escape is the best of them. My brothers and I got a PlayStation for Christmas in 2000 and Ape Escape was one of the games we got with it. We didn’t have a whole lot of interest at the time though: what, we’re trying to catch some monkeys? Eh, sounds boring. But then, being bored one day, I decided to try it out, and quickly got sucked in. Now, Ape Escape is my most-replayed game of all-time. I must have played through it at least seven times since I first bought it. Hell, one of the first things I did when I got my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro was to load Ape Escape onto it and then play through the whole thing again, which ultimately led to me writing the Ape Escape Love/Hate series.
The core 3D platforming gameplay of Ape Escape is solid, but what really makes it stand out is the innovative use of the (at the time) brand-new dual analog controller. The left stick controls movement and the right stick controls whatever gadget you currently have equipped, giving you a level of control and precision unseen in console games up to that point. The gadgets themselves are also really neat, with the stun baton to whack monkeys and enemies, the sling shooter to snipe distant targets, the sky flyer to launch yourself high into the air or extend a jump, and the RC car to access small spaces (and harass monkeys), just to name a few of them.
Also… chasing the monkeys is just a hell of a lot of fun. They have three levels of alertness, so approaching them strategically is incentivized, and each ape has its own level of aggression and speed, making each encounter feel fresh. The time-travelling structure is also inspired, shaking up the environments and gameplay after every three levels so that it never gets stale. I love this game so much and I can guarantee that there will be even more replays of it in the future.
14. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988, NES)
Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of those sequels that blows its predecessors out of the water. Super Mario Bros. was a monumental game for its day, but Super Mario Bros. 3 surpasses it in every single metric. Its graphics are some of the best on the NES, and it’s wild to see how much they have improved in only three years (or two years if you consider that the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 originally released in 1986 and had basically the same graphical fidelity as the first game). There are way more levels and you navigate through them using an overworld map. There are even more clever secrets than before. The power-ups are more varied and are super cool: leaves and tanooki tails to fly, the frog suit to swim easier, and the hammer suit to hurl hammers at enemies. The combination of ambitious innovation and flawless execution make Super Mario Bros. 3 a timeless classic and one of the few NES games that is just as enjoyable today as it was back then.
13. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016, PS4)
So, as you can see from my placement of Uncharted 2 on this list, I really loved that game. However, it’s follow-up, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, was pretty disappointing to me: sure, the set-piece moments were better than ever, and there were some fun new characters, but the story felt like it was an after-thought, which made it by far my least favourite game of the trilogy. I figured that Uncharted 2 would remain the best of the franchise and that would be the end of it, but then a fourth game was announced for PS4. I was optimistic, but I really did not expect to love Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End as much as I did. The writing is the best in the franchise, bar-none, giving us a satisfying and mature end for these characters we’ve grown to love so much over the course of the series. The set-pieces are grander than ever, which is aided immensely by the improved technology since the previous game. The game also takes a cue from the Tomb Raider reboot, introducing some hub areas where you can explore and pick your next mission to complete. The game is also just gorgeous, putting its predecessors to shame in this regard (and those games were no slouches in the graphical department either). For the most part, Uncharted 4 is more of the same, but executed at the absolute best this franchise has ever seen.
12. The Last of Us (2013, PS3)
The Last of Us is one of those games that is so good that it transcended the gaming industry and is just part of the wider culture. This sombre, contemplative, depressing, and tragic story of a man and a girl travelling across a post-apocalyptic wasteland is easily one of the best-told narratives in the medium. Its ending is legendary, one of the most iconic in modern pop culture, and one which has been heavily-debated since it released (for my part, Joel did not do the right thing, and the Left Behind DLC is meant to make this unmistakably clear to the audience).
On top of this, I think that the gameplay is also very underrated. As opposed to Uncharted‘s bombastic action, the gunplay of The Last of Us is slower, more visceral and dangerous. You’ll often spend significant chunks of gameplay using stealth, avoiding alerting enemies as much as possible until you have to engage them. The cordyceps zombies also present a significantly different threat to the human survivors you come across, giving the game a survival horror tone. The way that you scavenge for supplies to craft make-shift weapons and items was also quite innovative for the time, and would be replicated for years after release by other games. This system encourages careful exploration and is done in such a way that you never have enough supplies to do everything you may want to. The Last of Us is Naughty Dog at their peak, flexing their development muscles to create an unforgettable experience.
11. Dead Space 2 (2011, PS3)
Your mom may hate Dead Space 2, but I love it. The game comes out of the gate swinging, featuring one of the most horrific and pulse-pounding opening sequences of any video game. The original game was already great, but Dead Space 2 ups the ante by bringing in more Uncharted-style bombastic action set-pieces. Contributing to this is that Isaac Clarke is no longer a silent protagonist, which allows him to have a lot more personality. This also enables the game’s more personal story, which sees him grappling with crippling PTSD and mental illness due to the events of the first game. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about all this though is that the game does all this without compromising the survival horror tone – this game is every bit as scary as its predecessor, while also being an action thrill-ride at the same time. The franchise’s core gameplay is every bit as compelling as before, but is now more refined and has more variety of weapons and enemies to keep combat fresh and endlessly replayable. Of all the new additions, my favourite is the Stalker enemies. While most necromorphs will attack the moment they spot you, Stalkers mess with your head like a pack of wolves. They’ll surround you, peek at you to see if you’re distracted, fall back if you get too close, and then scream like a banshee as they charge in for the kill. The first time I fought these guys, I was absolutely terrified, it was such a special experience. The Tormentor is also one of the coolest and most intense boss fights I’ve ever experienced, despite basically being an interactive cutscene.
10. Pokémon HeartGold (2009, DS)
I played countless hours of Pokémon Gold and Silver back in the day, making them one of my favourite games in the franchise. I think that the fourth generation of Pokémon games were the peak of the franchise’s gameplay. Combine these two interests together and we have Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, remakes of the gen two games utilizing the engine and mechanics of the fourth generation games. These games are the ultimate Pokémon adventure, full-stop. The difficulty is legitimately challenging, even for series veterans. The Johto region feels lived-in and steeped in history. The post-game in Kanto is expanded further as well, making this meaty second chapter even more impressive. Your favourite Pokémon follows you around on the overworld. It’s just the best rendition of the classic Pokémon formula, I don’t know how else I can describe it.
9. God of War (2018, PS4)
I’ve dabbled in the God of War games, but I haven’t gotten a chance yet to play through them all. However, I decided to try out the 2018 God of War and was surprised by just how good it was. While I do think that the story of the Greek God of War games is underrated and a lot more interesting than people give it credit for, God of War‘s 2018 entry is unrivalled in its writing. Maybe it’s just the timing of the game for me: I got this right after the birth of my son, so the tale of Kratos and his son, Atreus, on a journey to spread the ashes of Atreus’ mother really resonated with me. Seeing a more matured Kratos lends him so much more depth and sympathy – you can see how he’s trying to direct Atreus to not make the same mistakes he made. And then there’s the primary antagonist, Baldur: he looks like a drunken weenie the first time you see him, but he quickly demonstrates that he is incredibly dangerous, unhinged, and a legitimate threat to Kratos.
The game is also just gorgeous. The environments are breath-taking and I love all the colourful particle effects which just make the game look magical as you go on your Norse journey. The way that the game plays out like one long, seamless take keeps you immersed in this world.
The game also just plays well. I wasn’t sure if I’d like an over-the-shoulder melee system, but it actually plays about as well as the more traditional action game camera in the previous God of War games. It plays like a nice middle-ground between a Souls-like and a more traditional character action game. Kratos’ axe is also just the coolest melee weapon ever, allowing you to throw it and then have it fly back into your hand with the press of a button (hitting any enemy it crosses paths with on the way there for bonus damage). Combat is bloody, visceral, and satisfying. I particularly like the optional Valkyrie bosses hidden around the game world, which really test your skills and are a stiff challenge.
I loved my time with God of War. I rarely bother to platinum games, but I knew pretty early in that I was going to see it through for God of War. I loved this game so much that I had to see everything it had available, including all the optional challenge areas.
8. Dark Souls (2011, PS3)
Another example of “gameplay isn’t everything”. I think that Nioh is superior to Dark Souls in terms of its combat. However, I think that Dark Souls is, without question, the better game overall due to its less-obvious qualities. Of these, the best is the looping, open-world structure. Each area is designed like a linear level, funneling you through encounters until you reach a boss or the next area. However, many of these areas will connect to other areas, giving a sense of interconnectedness and geography to the world. There are several moments where you will reach a gate or an elevator, use it, and then be shocked to see that you’re now in an area you’ve already explored. The sense of verticality is also very unique, as the world is designed as a bunch of regions stacked on top of each other: at the bottom are the ancient, forgotten dregs of this world, while the top is the isolated, gilded realms of the gods themselves. That’s right, FromSoft have mastered world design so well that it’s even thematic. The game’s story presentation is also very unique, choosing to communicate it through the environment and item descriptions rather than an overt narrative. This intentionally leaves much of the story up to interpretation.
Of course, then there’s the combat system, which still influencing the industry to this day. It is relatively slow and deliberate, forcing you to carefully consider every action you make while balancing your stamina bar and limited healing resources. The enemy designs are inspired. Creatures like the Gaping Dragon, Pinwheel, and The Four Kings are such unique concepts, but so evocative and mysterious in their design. The difficulty is tough but fair. Pretty much anyone is capable of overcoming its challenges with a little perseverance and, if that fails, level-grinding.
Dark Souls is a game which just feels like a myth brought to life. Exploring and battling through its forlorn world is haunting, like you’re trespassing in a place you were never meant to be. Its difficulty may have been long surpassed by its successors, but it is still a good challenge and as satisfying as ever to overcome.
7. Bloodborne (2015, PS4)
Bloodborne was my first Souls-like experience. Like Dead or Alive, this game came across my radar after completing the Ninja Gaiden games. I was looking for another game with challenging hack ‘n slash combat, and Bloodborne came highly recommended. With that in mind… I was not primed for the kind of experience that Bloodborne was offering. The combat was fast, but not as fast as Ninja Gaiden, and there was no way to block, so I kept getting destroyed by basic enemies. The gameplay wasn’t really “clicking” with me, but I decided to persevere. However, piece-by-piece, it started to click in place in my mind. The importance of shortcuts, parry and dodge timing, careful analysis of the area, and stamina management really started to settle in. Around two-thirds of the way in, I “got” it, but I still wasn’t blown away. However, this all changed in one moment: I bought the DLC, played through to Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower… and I was stuck. She absolutely destroyed me multiple times. I tried to summon a co-op helper, but no one was answering my bell. I distinctly remember sitting there, waiting for minutes for someone to respond, when I decided: “Fine, I guess I’m just gonna knuckle-down then and do this myself.”
I died, over and over again. I must have done so over twenty times, but I was slowly learning more and more of Lady Maria’s moveset, getting her health down lower and lower as I went. When I finally managed to overcome her, it was like a deadly ballet between the two of us, and I felt a satisfaction that I had never felt in the game up to that point. I was changed, and I resolved to try to beat every Souls-like boss thereafter without summoning, if I could reasonably do so. It was the true start of my love affair with these games.
Like Blasphemous, Bloodborne is a game which ticks all my boxes. Souls-combat, but faster and more aggressive? Gothic and eldritch horror aesthetic? Blood? Fanatics? Goddamn fuckin’ werewolves!?Bloodborne is what you get when you take a solid gameplay foundation and then commit to a particular vision and aesthetic, elevating the game well beyond the sum of its parts.
6. Civilization VI (2016, PC)
While I think I’d say that Civilization IV was the most fun I had with a single Civilization game, if I had to pick one of these games to play today, it’s Civ VI, without question. Starting with Civ V, Firaxis shook up the series’ formula in some pretty fundamental ways, moving from a grid to a hex-based map, and making cities far more specialized and customizable. While I wasn’t a big fan of Civ V, Civ VI plays like a more refined version of that game, but with several more features added. Shaping your nation and conquering the world through diplomacy, culture, religion, or good ol’ fashioned war is a lot of fun, and no two games will ever play out the same. There are also an overwhelming number of civilizations available to play, providing even more variety and incentives to play the game how you want. I also like how the game doesn’t really force you into picking one particular victory route early – it’s completely viable to wait until the modern era to really commit to a victory condition (unlike, say, Civilization: Beyond Earth, where you’re pretty much knee-capping yourself if you diversify your nation’s interests). The “just one more turn” gameplay is just as addictive as ever as you set goals for yourself and see them come to fruition over the course of the next few turns and there are lots of options to customize the game to your liking (including options for some pretty wild, alternative game modes).
5. Tetris (1989, NES)
Tetris is the definition of “simple, but addictive”. Drop shapes made up of four blocks, try to make lines with them to clear them out before they reach the top, you get more points if you clear more lines at once, and the game gets faster the more lines you clear. Good luck, and try to get the highest score possible.
There are lots of different versions of Tetris out there: they’re all great, and I really like the quality of life improvements that have been developed over the years, but the NES version was the one that first got me into the game. Whenever I start replaying Tetris, I can see the blocks falling in my mind where ever I go. I used to keep track of my scores in NES Tetris… I wanted to show off a bit, but I can’t find the text document anymore… As I recall, I used to be able to get to around level twenty-five when it starts getting too fast to react, and I’d get as many four-line-clears as possible up to that point.
4. Resident Evil 4 (2005, GC)
Resident Evil 4 is an incredible game. The ambition, innovation, and attention to detail on display is staggering. Resident Evil games had grown really stale at the time, so it came out at the perfect moment. What makes this more remarkable is that the game basically plays like a classic Resident Evil game, only with full 3D and manual aiming, but its changes make it feel like a wholly new thing. Its over-the-shoulder camera revolutionized third person videogames and resulted in numerous imitators for years thereafter. It established Leon Kennedy as an absolute badass. There are just so many things you can say about this game’s legacy, that you really can’t understate how important it was.
For my part, I owned a copy of Resident Evil 4 on PS2 back around 2008, but I hadn’t really gotten past the opening village battle. It wasn’t until 2021 when I started the Resident Evil Love/Hate series that I finally decided to commit to trying it out. While it took about an hour to get used to the controls, once I acclimated, I was stunned at just how refined this game was. The whole experience is so lovingly crafted and varied that it never gets boring, and the campy tone doesn’t diminish from the horror elements. Then there’s all the little, optional systems you can engage in: treasure-hunting to get extra currency, the gun range where you can win prizes for good shooting, and you can do tricks during the jet ski section. Hell, what other game makes inventory management fun!? There’s a reason why this game is still being re-released and remade twenty years later, it’s an essential pillar of the gaming landscape and a monument to fantastic design.
3. Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023, PC)
Back during the early-to-mid 2010s, video games liked to tell us that “your choices matter”. However, after scores of Telltale and Quantic Dream games, the Mass Effect trilogy, Fallout, etc, gamers came to realize the truth of the matter: making consequences matter in games is hard. If you give the player the ability to make a choice which could change the game world, it’s simply too much work to make that choice actually matter in the grand scheme of things. At most, you may create a short, branching path, but it will just lead back to the main path again. Have to choose to let one of two characters die? You can be sure that the one you saved with have basically no bearing on the plot, or they’ll do the exact same things the other character would have done anyway. Hell, Fallout will let you kill just about anyone, but if a character is actually important, you can shoot them as much as you want, but they’ll just fall unconscious and forget anything happened the next time you see them. Once you realize this, it really destroys the illusion and can make certain choices completely worthless when you encounter them. I remember distinctly feeling this in The Walking Dead: Season 2 when you had to choose which characters would live and die… effectively rending that character useless for the rest of the journey, since they could be dead in another player’s playthrough and it would be too much effort that half your player base will never see to give them a major role thereafter.
Baldur’s Gate 3 throws this conventional wisdom out the window. While the game’s narrative does move forward on a fairly linear track, the amount of influence you have over events is astounding. While it doesn’t offer nearly as much freedom as a proper, tabletop DND game, it comes unreasonably close to achieving that. Like, for the earliest example of this unprecedented amount of freedom: you come across a druid grove where tiefling refugees are staying. The relationship between the grove and the tieflings is extremely strained, but the tieflings can’t leave because the road to Baldur’s Gate is too dangerous due to raids by the Cult of the Absolute. As a result, they’re on the verge of committing violence to stay in the safely of the grove. Initially, you can pick a side to support, or you can choose to try to find a compromise. Or, later on, you come across the Cult of the Absolute, who are trying to kill both factions, and you can choose to side with them. The expectation is that you will find a peaceful solution, but if you want to side with the cult and massacre everyone, that is completely viable. In fact, an entire character and their unique storyline is locked behind this option. Hell, you can choose to kill everyone on all sides and the game will just continue to go along, locking off content as characters abandon your party and questlines become unachievable. Characters will even acknowledge all the unexpected little choices you make. And, if this isn’t ridiculous enough, the game is fully voice acted, meaning that the amount of work that has gone into planning for every eventuality players could make is mind-boggling. Most players will never see much of this content. Hell, there’s an entire world of animals and corpses you can talk to, but you will only ever see it if you cast “speak with animals” or “speak with dead”, respectively (and you really should, these interactions are amazing). Hell, when you do reach Baldur’s Gate, much of the populace are interactable, with dialog trees and fully voiced performances. Many of these characters are there for nothing more than flavour, and all it does is make the world more believable and lived-in. That is the scale of the work put into Baldur’s Gate 3, and the more you think about it, the more it defies comprehension.
That’s all well and good, but the game is also just really fun. Due to the level of freedom, you get to approach its turn-based combat system in whatever ways you see fit. You really come to love the characters here, customizing their abilities to suit your needs, and forming relationships with them as you advance their side-quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an unreasonably good game, the sort of experience that you simply cannot expect anyone else to one-up. It will be the sort of game that we point to even a decade from now as an unrivalled pinnacle of the industry and one that you can go back to over and over again and find new secrets each time.
2. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005, PS2)
As I said in the Metal Gear Solid entry, I became interested in those games because of my love for Splinter Cell. When I was in my early teens, I bought Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at a street fair, and it began my love affair with stealth games. I loved it and made sure to pickup a copy of the original game shortly thereafter. With those two completed, we came to the newest game at the time: Chaos Theory. I had loved the previous two games, so I was super excited to get it… but, I couldn’t. See, Chaos Theory was the first Splinter Cell game to be rated M. My parents had a “no M-rated games” policy for us kids. I was only sixteen, I couldn’t wait another year to be old enough to play them! No, I was going to have to put my own roguish skills to the test…
So, one day when we were at Wal-Mart, I headed to the electronics section to look at the games. There was Chaos Theory, locked behind the game cabinet. I asked the clerk to get it out of the cabinet and ring it up. I figured he was going to ask me to verify my age, which would dash my plans, but he didn’t bother. I snuck it home and kept the game hidden so that my parents would never know that I had bought an M-rated game. My brothers and I were very good kids, so intentionally disobeying them like this was exciting and dangerous. It’s kind of silly, but it felt like I was the one sneaking about and pulling off secret missions without getting caught.
Chaos Theory plays much like its predecessors, but with some tweaks. These include a new noise meter, an EMP device for your sidearm, improved graphics and animations, smarter enemies, and a choice of lethal and non-lethal melee attacks. The missions are also really well-designed. Most famous of these is the bank heist near the start of the game, which is just a flawless example of thrilling game design. The level mixes infiltration, exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving in such a glorious blend. The voice cast are on top form here, especially Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher. His performance in this game makes Sam Fisher downright terrifying at times. Chaos Theory was the absolute peak of Splinter Cell, before Ubisoft felt that the series needed to be shaken up. As a result, we’ve never really gotten another game quite like it, making it a game that is still worth playing to this day.
I love the writing. The political philosophizing stands side-by-side with big, dumb action sequences, and juvenile humour. The journey that Naked Snake goes on in this game is genuinely moving.
I love the characters. Naked Snake is the best Metal Gear character, bar none. The Boss is just incredible, and her motherly relationship with Snake adds so much emotional weight to the plot. EVA is a great Bond girl; enticing, but one who you never really think you can trust. Ocelot is a lot of fun when he shows up, I love that they gave him a more immature personality to match his age. Volgin is such a fun villain to hate; joyously evil and sadistic.
I love the boss battles. The obvious highlight is The End. The first time I came across him, I knew his reputation. I got shot by him almost immediately without even seeing him and decided right there to chicken out on the fight. I knew about the clock-skip trick, where you can win the battle automatically by moving your system clock forward a week, which causes The End to die of old age. I did it, but I didn’t feel good about it. Some time later when I replayed the game in the Subsistence re-release, I decided to knuckle-down and do the fight for real this time. I can distinctly remember running around lost for the first part of the fight, trying to figure out where The End was hiding. However, I soon began to realize all the ways you could pin-point his location, and soon it was a game of hunter vs hunter. I think it took me an hour and a half, but I gunned him down and felt the rush of satisfaction for overcoming such a creative and unique challenge.
I love the setting. A jungle in Russia is a pretty wild setting, but it’s so evocative. The jungle is the realm of predators, so being able to hunt enemies here makes you feel so cool. The setting also takes Metal Gear from the hallways and corridors they had been in up to that point. Levels are open, with lots of room to maneuver and pick your approach. You have to hide in plain sight, which is so much more badass than hiding in a locker.
I love all the ways you can mess with guards. For example, you can blow up their food supplies to make them hungry and vulnerable to eating poisoned food that you’ve left around. You can also blow up their ammunition stores so they can’t shoot you if you’re spotted. You can also throw a pissed-off, poisonous animal at them to get it to bite them to death.
I love the new survival elements. Having to hunt for food to sustain yourself really hammers home the idea that you’re an operative deep in enemy territory. I love how the camouflage meter facilitates the more open level designs without sacrificing the stealth gameplay.
I love the ending. Snake Eater has my favourite ending of any piece of media. The first time I played this game, I was blown away by the final boss fight and cutscene. It re-contextualized the game’s events and really made me question what I had done to get to this point. It’s beautifully acted and emotional. It’s the cherry on top of a perfect sundae.
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Lately, I’ve been seeing people on social media posting Topsters lists of their favourite video games, which has gotten me thinking about the topic. It got to the point where I put together my own quick-and-dirty list on Bluesky, but that didn’t really leave me all that satisfied. You see, for about twenty years now I’ve been using IMDb to track and rate every movie I’ve seen in that time. It’s actually been pretty useful for me, and I can easily look back and get a rough idea of what movies I’ve seen and what my thoughts were on them. This put me on a journey to try to do the same for every video game I’ve ever owned and/or played, which led me to a site called Backloggd. Having spent a couple weeks recounting every game I can remember playing, I’ve now got a big list of nearly four hundred games I’ve played (four hundred!? GOOD GOD). That’s a big enough library that I can legitimately put together a top one hundred games of all time list… so why not do just that?
A few notes before we start: first, I’m not going to include compilations here (so no Master Chief Collection, Tetris & Dr. Mario, Super Mario All-Stars, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, etc). The upper-echelons of the list would probably be dominated by compilations, and that just doesn’t feel fair to the legacies of the individual games. Secondly, I’m not going to make this “one game per franchise” like I would if this were, say, a top twenty-five. If your franchise is good enough to get multiple entries, then you’ll get that representation (although a sequel that basically invalidates its predecessor’s existence will likely push prior entries off the list entirely). Thirdly, this is wildly subjective and, by its nature, only based on the games that I’ve actually played. As a result, I guarantee you that I have not played some all-time classic that you love. Please tell me how much you hate me for not including it down in the comments below.
Got it? Let’s get onto the list then…
100. Echochrome (2008, PSP)
A fun, quirky, minimalist little puzzle game on PSP where you have to rotate a 3D maze in order to change perspectives and allow a mannequin to reach the exit. Can be a bit finnicky with its controls, but it’s such a unique and striking premise that I can’t help but love it.
99. Theme Hospital (1997, PC)
This business simulation game was a blast back in the day, but what really made it stand out from the crowd was the various wacky ailments your hospital would have to treat.
98. Peter Jackon’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (2005, PS2)
In the annals of licensed video games, King Kong was easily one of the best. 90% of the time it’s a tense, immersive first person shooter where you struggle to survive against the monsters of Skull Island. For a glorious 10% of the time, you turn the tables and become Kong, beating the ever-living crap out of every monster that had been harassing you up to that point. The game was also just legitimately revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of immersion, with no HUD to speak of and direct involvement from Peter Jackson himself.
97. Guacamelee! (2013, PS Vita)
A joyous, lucha libre-themed Metroidvania. I remember trying a demo of the game when I was on a vacation in Atlanta and immediately deciding that I was going to buy this game when I got back.
96. Pokémon Diamond (2006, DS)
The fourth generation of Pokemon is probably my favourite of them all (and I say this as someone who stopped at gen two and came back for gen six, so this isn’t nostalgia speaking). The physical/special split was revolutionary for the gameplay and the difficulty was legitimately challenging. Granted, Diamond makes the list largely because I have not gotten around to playing Pokemon Platinum yet. When that happens, I expect Diamond to drop off and Platinum to move higher up, as it’s generally considered vastly superior to the other two Sinnoh games.
95. Vigilante 8: Second Offense (1999, PS1)
Car combat is one of those genres which are dominated by one big franchise (Twisted Metal), and the rest are a bunch of forgettable rip-offs. Vigilante 8: Second Offense is the closest anyone ever came to stealing the crown, with its significantly better graphics and interesting innovations. Who cares about any of that though: on the Arizona stage, you can cause a meteor to strike the arena, which will send any nearby cars flying and then a giant ant comes out which attacks everyone on sight. Entire evenings were spent in our household on this one level as we blasted each other and this giant, fuck-off ant over and over again.
94. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, PS2)
Another Peter Jackson licensed game makes my top one hundred! The Return of the King game is a fairly simple hack ‘n slash by modern standards, but it sure is fun and miles better than it had any right being.
93. Assassin’s Creed 2 (2009, PS3)
At the time of its release, Assassin’s Creed 2 was a revolutionary experience, perfecting the half-baked formula of its predecessor, and featuring an interesting narrative with a protagonist who was surprisingly endearing. At the time, I would have easily put Assassin’s Creed 2 much higher on this list. However, only one game later, I was halfway through Brotherhood, when I suddenly found myself completely done with this series’ structure of “travel halfway across the city to your mission, then travel halfway across the city to complete the objective”. I still think Assassin’s Creed 2 is good enough to warrant a spot in the list, but oh how the mighty have fallen.
92. Freedom Fighters (2003, PS2)
Freedom Fighters is a legitimately revolutionary game for its time. It starts out as a pretty terrible third person shooter due to its wildly inaccurate weapons. However, it soon evolves into something special, as you start being able to command an ever-growing number of squadmates, until you’re eventually commanding a dozen guys into massive battles against tanks and helicopters as you attempt to liberate an occupied USA.
91. The Sims 3 (2009, PC)
I wasted way too many hours in university playing The Sims 3 that I should have been spending on homework and socializing. Oh well, it’s not like I wasn’t enjoying myself.
90. Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015, PS4)
I reviewed the first Tomb Raider reboot game back when it came out and, as much as I enjoyed it, it clearly was a bit rough around the edges. Rise of the Tomb Raider largely smoothed off the rough edges and made for a much more refined and enjoyable experience overall.
89. Bioshock Infinite (2013, PS3)
Another one of those games that probably would have ranked a lot higher at one point, Bioshock Infinite still impresses due to its amazingly-realized world and mind-bending story. Hell, the game spends a lot of time just being a walking simulator and, honestly, that’s when it’s at its best. The shooting gameplay’s pretty rough, which does lower its overall quality somewhat, but Booker and Elizabeth’s adventure remains as unforgettable as ever.
88. James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004, PS2)
Everyone’s got a favourite James Bond video game, but for my money, Everything or Nothing is the GOAT. An early third-person cover shooter, this game was hard as nails back in the day. Its plot was pretty over-the-top, but considering it was coming out after Die Another Day, I guess that was just par for the course for Pierce Brosnan’s Bond. Honestly, the craziest thing about it was probably that Shannon Elizabeth was a Bond girl, but then again, so was Denise Richards during the Brosnan era, so what do I know?
87. Future Cop: LAPD (1998, PS1)
Future Cop‘s single-player gameplay is fun enough – blast away violent criminals, gangs, and cultists from the comfort of your transforming mech. However, what really pushes it over the top is its multiplayer mode, Precinct Assault, which is basically a proto-MOBA: get points for killing enemies and capturing neutral territory, use these points to buy bases, defensive units, and offensive units, which will attempt to enter your opponent’s home base. First side to get an offensive unit inside the enemy’s home base wins. It makes for an endlessly addicting, back-and-forth struggle to come out on top.
86. EarthBound (1994, SNES)
This cult classic is largely memorable for its quirky humour and writing, which does away with the JRPG conventions of the time, instead featuring a bunch of psychic children fighting gangs of weirdos in the 1990s.
85. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999, PC)
Man, you had to be there back in 1999, chopping down trees, mining stone and iron, and then marching out your massive armies to go obliterate your opponents’ base while the horns of war sound.
84. Total War: Warhammer III (2022, PC)
…and then we have the ultimate evolution of the epic RTS, Total War: Warhammer III. Total War has been producing jaw-dropping battles for decades, but the Warhammer games unshackled that formula from the limits of history and into glorious dark fantasy. Warhammer III gets the placement here by default since it allows you to bring in all previous factions and DLCs into one enormous world map to conquer. It’s a staggering amount of content on offer and makes for an overwhelmingly massive sandbox to play in.
83. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018, Switch)
And speaking of overwhelmingly massive, Smash Ultimate is probably never going to be surpassed in the fighting genre in terms of sheer roster size and content on offer. The core gameplay is as simple and fun as ever, making for a great pick-up and play experience with your friends and enemies.
82. XCOM 2 (2016, PC)
Confession: I kind of hated XCOM 2 on launch. I had loved XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but the guerilla ops of vanilla XCOM 2 just didn’t jive with me and the RNG felt way off. However, after War of the Chosen released, I decided to give it another look, and it sank its hooks into me deep, to the point where I can’t really see myself going back to the original game anymore. The modding scene is also pretty incredible, allowing you to deck out your soldiers as Space Marines, Solid Snake, and even Helena Douglas and Hitomi from Dead or Alive.
81. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001, PS2)
I have my issues with Metal Gear Solid 2, but in the eight years since I wrote about it, the game has only managed to become even more relevant. Even if it’s not a game I’d particularly want to go back and play at a moment’s notice, I find myself thinking about it all the time, which is a level of longevity you really can’t say about a lot of media two decades from release.
80. Bully (2006, PS2)
Billed as “Grand Theft Auto in a school” at a time when anti-bullying campaigns and the Grant Theft Auto moral panic were at their height, Bully is nowhere near as controversial as it may sound. In fact, you’re the one bringing down the bullies (although you can wedgie the nerds if you want to be a dick).
79. Death Road to Canada (2016, Switch)
A hilarious and addictive zombie survival roguelike, Death Road to Canada is the definition of a “just one more run” game.
78. Journey (2012, PS3)
One of the early, undeniable examples of “games as art”, Journey is a short, thoughtful, gorgeous experience.
77. Super Mario Bros. (1985, NES)
The quintessential 2D platformer, Super Mario Bros. is still a great game even today. Hell, its plethora of secrets are so well-ingrained in the collective conscious, that it’s easy to forget how truly mind-blowing all the hidden blocks and warp pipes really are for a forty year old game.
76. Dead or Alive 3 (2001, XB)
Oh hai, Ayane! Dead or Alive 3 is a gorgeous, spectacular, and downright fun fighting game, which really stands out due to its awesome stage designs.
75. Minecraft (2011, PC)
You don’t need me to explain what Minecraft is, right? I actually only started playing it this year as a bonding activity with my son. As cool as it is to see our world get built piece-by-piece, it’s even more exciting getting to see him learn and get to grips with how to play games in the process.
74. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009, PS3)
Very few games reach the level of blockbuster hype that Modern Warfare 2 achieved, and it lived up to that hype and then some. The campaign is explosive and exciting. The notorious “No Russian” mission is still referenced today, fifteen years later. The multiplayer was also a massive evolution, bringing in dual-wielding and even faster gameplay than its predecessor.
73. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998, N64)
Whenever we’d visit my cousins, the first thing we’d do is fire up their N64 and play a few levels of Rogue Squadron. Flying around in various Star Wars vehicles and dogfighting Tie Fighters is a joy, and it’s still just as fun today.
72. Lollipop Chainsaw (2012, PS3)
A perfect example of how gameplay isn’t everything, Lollipop Chainsaw demonstrates the power of leaning into style. The combat is kind of janky and overly-simplistic, and the enemies are downright rude, but when you’re bopping to pop hits while chopping zombies to bits and the entire screen is turning rainbow, it’s hard to not have a great time.
71. Among Us (2018, PC)
It can be easy to forget due to all the memes and merch which have flooded the public conscious, but at its core, Among Us is a fun social deduction game. Seeing how your friends react under pressure is fascinating, and trying to off them as an imposter gets you sweating like no other game can when your friends are trying to figure out who did it.
70. Life Is Strange (2015, PS4)
At a time when the market was saturated with Telltale narrative games, Life Is Strange stood out with its unique time travel powers and bold writing choices.
69. Pokémon Black Version 2 (2012, DS)
I maintain that the fifth generation of Pokémon was a fairly messy one, but they got the balance between fresh experiences and wild ambition far better for Black 2 and White 2. It largely continues the gameplay improvements from gen four, but adds a ridiculous amount of content, while providing a completely remixed map from Black and White and brand new story.
68. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990, MSX2)
I will never stop banging the drum that Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an underrated masterpiece. Many of the things Metal Gear Solid was hailed for were present here in their infancy eight years earlier.
67. Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005, PS2)
Star Wars: Battlefront II was a wild game, especially considering it came out only a year after its predecessor. It adds more maps. It has a progression system to upgrade your weapons. It makes heroes playable, and adds significantly more. It completely overhauls the flight system from the previous game, adding full-on space battles where you can dogfight, blow up critical ship systems, or board the enemy ship and cripple it from the inside. It was just a massive game with a scope and scale beyond many modern games that I sank countless hours into back in the day.
66. Pokémon Crystal (2001, GBC)
Back when I was a kid, gen two was the pinnacle of Pokémon, a massive improvement upon its predecessors and a shockingly expansive game for a tiny little Game Boy cartridge. Of the gen two games, Crystal was easily the definitive version, hence its placement on the list.
65. Left 4 Dead 2 (2009, PC)
Left 4 Dead 2 was controversial prior to launch, due to releasing only a year after its predecessor. However, as soon as it arrived, all complaints were washed away in a sea of undead. Left 4 Dead 2 is a fun co-op action experience, made all the better due to its AI director who makes every playthrough unique and tense.
64. Halo 3 (2007, XB360)
Halo 3 is a damn good time, with the best gunplay of the original trilogy. If not for some personal gripes about the story, I’d probably rank this significantly higher.
63. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (2002, GBA)
The last Fire Emblem game to not get an international release, The Binding Blade has some fan translations which are easily accessible and which help make the game playable for English-speakers. Its sequel would be fairly dumbed-down for the western audience who weren’t used to the series’ gameplay, but for those itching for a larger, more challenging experience, The Binding Blade is just what you asked for.
62. Civilization IV (2005, PC)
The last Civilization to retain the series’ “classic” structure, Civilization IV is possibly my favourite single entry in the franchise. However, its successors have taken the overall experience so far that I am not sure if I could ever actually go back to this game. This made it a bit hard to rank for me as a result, but I think that its more classic Civ gameplay gives it a somewhat unique place and its legacy deserves some recognition.
61. Battlefield 3 (2011, PS3)
While there’s a palpable sense that Battlefield 3 was taking a bit too much influence from Call of Duty, this game was an incredible experience back in the day. This was also the last time that DICE prioritized my favourite game mode, rush, and some of the rush maps here were incredible.
Whenever I bring up memorable video games, I always go back to Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. To some degree, this game is kind of crappy… there’s basically no explanation of its mechanics, extremely repetitive gameplay, and very simple combat. You will struggle to make it more than a few hundred meters from your home without your ape having a panic attack (oh hey, just like real life!). You will be killed by predators out of nowhere and you will miss multiple jumps and fall to your death. These deaths are permanent, mean one less ape in your colony, which is already teetering on the edge of extinction.
However, you will eventually begin to get to grips with the mechanics. You’ll learn how to move around so as to avoid danger. You’ll learn how to make tools to make things easier for yourself and to fight back against the predators. You’ll start trekking out further and further from your home. You’ll learn to communicate with your troupe and start forming armed, roving gangs for safety. Soon, this massive jungle you’ve been exploring won’t seem so massive.
What really cemented the game for me was when I decided to climb the father tree, the largest tree in the jungle. I was carefully making my way up this massive trunk, climbing into the clouds, giving myself literal vertigo due to the sheer height. I reached the top and the entire world stretched out before me. There were so many more places left to explore, and I’d barely scratched the surface of it all…
…oh, and then I had to figure out how to climb back down. Truly an unforgettable game, far more than the sum of its parts, even if it takes a lot of patience to find the gold within.
58. Battlefield 4 (2013, PS4)
While the first six months were unacceptably bad, Battlefield 4 is now arguably the best Battlefield game on the market. Packed with tons of weapons and maps to engage in large-scale war on, I poured hundreds of hours into this game at the peak of my obsession with online shooters.
57. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (1991, SNES)
Turtles in Time is a great beat ’em up, but it’s one of those games that cements its legacy with one simple mechanic: you can grab enemy Foot soldiers and throw them at the camera. This would be cool enough as-is, but the cherry on top is that this is how you have to damage multiple bosses. Fuck yeah.
56. Fallout 3 (2008, PS3)
Fallout 3 came out at the perfect time, back when the open world game was still special, and when the Fallout universe hadn’t been explored in a decade. It made for a really evocative and unique experience that can’t really be recaptured now that everyone knows what Fallout looks and sounds like.
55. Twisted Metal 2 (1996, PS1)
In terms of pure gameplay, Twisted Metal 2 may just be the pinnacle of the series, with some iconic maps, lots of fun characters to play, and entertaining weapons to blast your friends to smithereens.
54. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017, PS4)
I really love RE7. I love how it mixes the long-forgotten, classic Resident Evil gameplay with modern horror conventions to create a truly fresh, terrifying experience. This is easily the scariest Resident Evil has ever been.
53. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004, PS2)
Pandora Tomorrow was my first Splinter Cell game and it immediately cemented my love for this franchise and stealth games in general. Shooting out lights, hiding in shadows, using gadgets, and generally just fucking around with your enemies is as fun as ever.
52. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (2002, PS2)
Oh hey, remember how I said we’d get multiple games from the same franchises on this list? Well, I had a really hard time picking between Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow, but I had to give the original game the slight edge, due to preferring its story campaign just a tad more (sadly, I never got to play the multiplayer in Pandora Tomorrow, so I can’t comment on that).
51. Hitman 2 (2018, PS4)
IO Interactive’s modern Hitman trilogy is a stunning accomplishment. Create a vibrant, expansive, multi-level open sandbox, throw at least two targets into it, then set you loose to figure out how to kill them in a manner that suits you best. The sheer level of freedom is jaw-dropping and the ways that the world will react to your actions is remarkable to see. I’ve only played the first two of these games, but Hitman 2 gets the edge for me due to its more creative scenarios.
And that’s it for part one. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then part two will be up tomorrow!
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