Honestly, I could've titled this "AJ's Top 10 Favorite Games That Totally Didn't Change 500 Times While Trying To Write This Stupid List" and it would've been an apt description of the agonizing process I went through in trying to nail down this list. The first couple were easy but filling in the gaps at the end...strugglebus.
Speaking of that process, I want to clarify the basic criteria I used to compile this list all very famous games that everyone has heard of. I followed two basic rules to get the list: No multiple games from the same franchise and this list is my favorite games played, not the most well-made games I've played. That's an important distinction for me because if I was doing well-made games, Bioshock would have absolutely made the list because it's a masterpiece. Precursor now out of the way, let's get to the list, in descending order.
10. Plants vs. Zombies
Already an upset! If you've never played Plants vs. Zombies (heretofore known as PvZ, not to be confused with Protoss vs Zerg kekeke), I obviously would recommend you fire it up. It's an extremely simple concept, a basic tower-defense game with loaded with tons of charm. The premise has you defending your house from an onslaught of a multitude of goofy zombies that leave you increasingly humorous notes as you continue to deflect their relentless slow-moving assaults.
Buffering this experience is the goofy neighbor Crazy Dave, who drops in to teach you the basics of the game and leave you shaking your head because no doubt you've had a psycho neighbor before and this game lets you live that reality...only in zombie apocalypse form. Sweet. As you continue to smoke the zombies, the challenge ramps up as every tower defense games does, throwing more and more at you in order to keep you from reaching anything resembling a comfort zone.
Overall, it's an extremely charming experience that sucks you in with its simplicity and wins you over with its personality and sneaky challenge (just try to 100% this bad boy, tough guy). I've put in over 100 hours playing, replaying, and mastering the campaign, subsequent hard mode, and completing all the challenges (which I still haven't done...lol). Anytime I try to introduce people to gaming, this game always gets suggested as it is a wonderful bridge from hardcore gaming into casual gaming.
9. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!
First off, I fucking love this game. That should go without saying because these are my favorite games that I've ever played in my lifetime but I feel the need to re-iterate that I fucking LOVE this game. I use the training theme song (the one that plays during the image above) as my alarm clock. I LOVE this game.
This is my one and only nostalgia-heavy entry on the list. I beat this game as a kid, one of the first I ever truly beat. I had to have my brother show me how to beat Tyson, of course, because I was 5 and had no idea how to handle that shit but once he showed me I took Kid Dynamite to Pound Town. From the early round beatdowns to the trickier fights later on, this game comes at you in waves of pattern recognition that would set me up for a lifetime of being terrible at fighters.
Needless to say, Little Mac's inclusion in Smash Bros. for the Wii U was a day of reckoning for me. Fuckin love you, Little Mac <3
8. Resident Evil 5
Now we're getting somewhere. RE5 isn't the best of the series, and it certainly is basically RE in name and obligatory Wesker appearance only. It's a co-op action game, pure and simple. A complete departure from the franchise's roots in horror-survival style games, RE5 is all about kicking a whole lot of ass with a friend and chasing down a story that makes basically no sense whatsoever.
That....basically sums up why I love RE5 so much. I bought it the day it released while on vacation at my best friend's place in Knoxville and we sat down and ran it through over the course of several days. To this day, it's the only Playstation 3 game I've come even remotely close to acquiring a platinum trophy on. The campaign is fun as hell, the boss fights are big and explosive and totally weird and there's even an on-rails shooting sequence or two that warms the cockles of my heart.
Despite the presence of a bunch of QTEs, which no gamer has ever fucking enjoyed but developers keep insisting they're worthwhile, the game just hooks me. The inventory system is cramped, about the only thing that stays true to RE, and is awkward but the weapon upgrades become so dominant that you feel like a two person army by the end of the game. Despite the fact that RE has never been about that feeling, I still dig it. Gimme the big booms all day, yo. ALL DAY.
7. League of Legends
Cue all the eyerolls! I know it's the game with the most toxic community on the freaking planet. I DEFINITELY know that. I know it's a game with like 2 legitimate modes and there's no real beginning or end to it. It's just sort of a game you keep playing until your soul is crushed and spirit broken beyond repair. So why is it on this list?
I can't leave off a game I've played like 1500 rounds of! I obviously had to like the game to some extent. Between jungling my main man Jarvan IV and ulting some unsuspecting mage scrublords in the mid lane to rolling through with my boy Rammus and telling them everything is going to ok, I just can't get enough of Summoner's Rift. I love the lanes, the ganking, the strategic layers and even the god awful itemization.
This is the only MOBA on this list, I promise. I'm of the opinion that you can't really main multiple MOBAs. You're either a Smite/Dota/League player who is allowed to dabble in Heroes of the Storm, the black sheep of MOBAs that hasn't even dropped yet but when it does it will definitely be a big hit. Anyway, LEAGUE IS AWESOME, OKAY? I LOVE WINNING.
6. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty/Heart of the Swarm
I'm starting to feel a tinge of pride that my list is so diverse in terms of genres. Checking in at #6, the one and only RTS that I've ever devoted an obscene amount of time to: Starcraft 2. While I've enjoyed the occasional round with a Civilization or Dawn of War game (okay, I played the hell out of DoW2) , none of them compare to what SC2 has given me. I played Brood War only sparingly, mainly enjoying the various UMS mods from time to time but when I got into the SC2 beta, it was fucking on.
I reaper rushed and 3 rax marauder steamrolled to my hearts content from the time I got my beta key until the day I smashed my headset and keyboard against my wall in 2012 in a fit of gaming rage that caused me to take a huge step back from the game. Only in the last month or so have I revisited the wonderful Starcraft 2 universe, finally getting around to enjoying the Heart of the Swarm expansion's campaign. While known for its multiplayer, and specifically its 1v1, SC2 has so far produced 2 absolutely brilliant single player offerings. The cinematics, story telling, voice acting, and gameplay were all as top notch as you could ask for from an RTS, a genre whose replayability is not founded in its single player offerings.
Beyond the campaigns and standard multiplayer modes is the Arcade, which offers an unreal amount of user created content. I've played full blown 25 hour RPGs that somebody created using the map editor in SC2. Brilliant. Some of the most intriguing games I've played over the last several years have been simple user-created content from the SC2 Arcade. As a spectator esport, this also offers fascinating potential because few things grip me quite like watching a high level game of SC2 being played. Unless someone is massing mutas. Then you can just fuck them with a rake.
5. X-COM: Enemy Unknown/Within
When I originally sat down to make this list, I knew I had to include this iteration of the X-COM franchise in there somewhere. I'd simply spent too much time playing it over and over again not to include a game that caught me completely off guard upon its 2012 release. This is also the last game outside of my top impenetrable top 4 games so consider this my favorite game that never completely consumed and forever altered the course of my life.
With it's brilliant design and legitimately difficult gameplay, this game drew me in immediately. From the upgrade system to the itemization and the difficult choices between which missions to accept and whether or not to level a handful of characters in case of death (which will happen so prepare yourself) or to try to beef up a select few as quickly as possible, the replayability of this game feels nearly endless. Your personal style plays a huge role in how you develop your roster of characters so when you beat it once, turning around and beating it again playing entirely differently presents a unique challenge, especially for an entirely solo campaign.
These days, expansion packs typically consist of weapon and armor heavy offerings with miniscule updates to the game itself but when Enemy Within released in the fall of 2013, the game became an even tougher challenge as you battled not only the alien incursion but another human faction seeking to undermine you at every turn. Couple that with the new upgrade systems introduced that made your characters even bigger bad asses and everything that was great before got turned up into exceptional. I adore this game. It's music, combat, and atmosphere always reel me back in for another playthrough just a few short months after I last beat it. The consequences to playing poorly are harsh but force you to hone your skill level to a razor thin margin. Excellent. I love everything about it. Except when you're about to kill someone with a 98% chance to hit and you miss 2 shots in a row and that character ends up dying the next turn. I don't love that part >:(
4. Halo 2
I'll admit it. I didn't grow up on PC gaming. This means when I missed out on early offerings like Half Life, Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament and even to an extent Counterstrike, I missed the early boat on multiplayer-heavy FPS experiences. Naturally, when Halo came to the XBOX, it was a huge hit within my group of friends. I remember the days of lugging xboxes and TVs to each others houses so we could play 2v2 LANs and smoke each other. Almost all of us have those stories. This means that when Halo 2 dropped, it was basically revolutionary for my friends and me. We hit the internet with reckless abandon, leveling up as a group and taking to the amazing matchmaking system implemented by Bungie.
As my friends soon started to drop off, I made other friends on the game and developed life long relationships that would forever change my life. Halo 2 became more than a game to me. It was my first true gaming obsession. I would eventually turn my 14 hours-a-day habit into a very brief professional career, appearing in a couple of MLGs in Texas and made enough cash to enjoy myself as a teenager. The campaign, while an interesting story that remains infamous for its unbelievable cliff hanger ending, was only beaten by me one whole time. The rest of the thousands of hours I poured into Halo 2 were in the multiplayer fields, laying waste to scrubs who dare enter the ring with me and my battle rifle. Ahhh memories.
I slotted Halo 2 in the 4th spot because of the 4 games that impacted me the most in my life, Halo 2 was the most poorly designed imo. Those things count when you're looking for a tiebreaker. That's not to say I think H2 was a poorly designed game, it just had enough obvious flaws that it fell behind the other offerings on my list. I was going to finish writing this list but writing this up is causing me to hop on the X1 and play a little Master Chief Collection for a bit. pewpew, mother fuckers.
3. Guild Wars 1
Hailed as one of many potential "WoW Killers", Guild Wars hit the scene back in 2005 and proved to be what WoW was not in many, many ways. A predominantly PvP game built with a PvE element so people would actually play the damn thing, Guild Wars was a black sheep in the world of MMORPGs in the biggest way imaginable. With an easily reached level cap of 20, the grind to max a character was found in acquiring gear upgrades that focused on boosting a specific build for whichever class you chose to play. That said, the gear grind bestowed upon the players was almost entire aesthetic. You could easily acquire/craft max stats gear in a reasonable amount of time (relative to other MMOs, I mean). The real gear grind didn't begin until you saw somebody else walking around wearing gear you just HAD to have.
The real depth of the game was found in its 1500+ skills between its 10 different playable classes/professions. All with distinct playstyles, it paid to play all the different classes as each offered something unique to the player. While the PvE's lackluster late game certainly never lived up to traditional MMO standards, the PvP portion of the game is where the real brilliance of this game's design was found. One of the most skill and knowledge intensive PvP games I've ever played, the learning curve was extremely steep and unforgiving. While a turn off to many, that only fueled my personal competitive fire (as you can see as this list goes on, my favorite games are largely ones that pit me against other people).
Throughout the 3500 hours I poured into GW1, I met several people who I remain close friends with to this day. I was able to plow through a staggering amount of content, beating every single mission, dungeon, and challenge the MMO and its 3 expansions would offer me as well as running and coaching a PvP guild from the ground up. While we never achieved any sustained success, mostly because I was a baddie, the experiences I had in GW1 were unlike those I've had with any other game. I found a sense of community that would be unmatched before and since in my gaming life. While my real life struggled to find its footing. this game and its amazing community gave me just enough ground to stand on to keep me going. It will never be surpassed as a multiplayer experience for me.
2. Mass Effect 2
I remember the day I bought Mass Effect on ebay for like $7 and popped it into my xbox. I was sitting in the house my family moved into when we moved to Texas when I was 11 and by this point it was largely abandoned, featuring only a couch, a TV, and my Xbox as the only items inside the soon-to-be-sold house. I fired it up having read no reviews, had no conversations with gaming friends, and delved into the game headfirst. 14 hours later, I emerged wide-eyed and unsure of what I had just experienced. Was this the greatest game I had ever played? Would the first game on this list finally be challenged? 45 more game hours played over the next 5 days would reveal that no, Mass Effect 1 would not approach those lofty heights but would absolutely have me waiting anxiously until the second installment was released.
So what kind of fucking chance did I stand when ME2 was released and it turned out to be an improvement on ME1 in virtually every single way imaginable. Gone was the clunky and oftentimes cumbersome inventory system that left you with more crap than you knew what to do with. Gone was the leveling system that left you occasionally wondering how impactful your skill point choices actually were. Also missing was the unbelievably boring exploration of random planets that yielded more frustrations with the Mako than rewards. Gone were the many hours you could put into the game before ever doing anything interesting or even useful. Suddenly, the entire experience was streamlined into a brilliant storyline that led you chasing the entire explorable galaxy with reckless abandon, meeting and ultimately teaming up with a wide array of personalities among many different races. The Normandy transformed into a hodge podge melting pot of every imaginable combination of classes at your disposal. As if Commander Shephard's sleek new ship, shiny new implants after being brought back from the dead and significantly improved combat system wasn't enough, you also had an endless supply of fun toys to play with in the form of your NPC teammates.
The game, in my eyes, was basically perfect. Every single character encountered in Mass Effect 2 held value in some regard. Every decision you made impacted the universe as a whole in some way. Every step you took mattered. As you read with my love of X-COM, games giving me consequences is something that appeals a great deal to me. Naturally, ME2 resonated about as deeply as a game possibly can with me. I fought as much for my teammates as I did with them. I bled with them, cried with them, and in the case of the a couple of them, banged the living bajeezus out of them. Nothing says epic space odyssey quite like throwing down and bumpin uglies with a race so sensitive to the toxins present in the air that they couldn't remove their mask for fear of death. And yet, the most memorable moments found in the game come in the form of the conversations you have with your shipmates on your race against time and the tallest of odds. . Constant balls to the wall action and top-notch production value across the board made Mass Effect 2 an S Tier title that's very unlikely to ever be dethroned. So deeply did this franchise resonate with me, I chose to have major surgery on N7 Day in 2014 just to honor the gaming gods
1. Super Mario 64
This is, in my opinion, the greatest game ever made. From it's historical influence to the nuts and bolts of the game itself, nothing else compares. It's perfect. Not even the brilliant Super Mario Galaxy offerings have been able to approach the greatness of Super Mario 64. Without this game, I wouldn't be the gamer I am today. Plain and simple. The best game and most fun game I've ever experienced. While other titles on this list might someday fall off in favor of brilliant upcoming titles, this title can rest easy as it will never move from its lofty perch.
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