The 10 Best Video Games Ever

This is not an objective article. My list of the 10 best video games ever is subjective to me, my limited play experience, and what I like. However, I'd be surprised to meet many people, who have played any one of these games, that wouldn't agree with me to some degree:

10. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (XBOX 2004)

It wasn't the first FPS I played (Wolfenstein) or my favorite (HALO 1), but there were so many things about this game that were firsts for me. I had never played a game that shocked me like this one, from the visceral violence (shanking someone in the kidneys, tossing a body into a meat-grinder) to actual live cussing. It featured a well-known star doing the voice acting (Vin Diesel), and had his likeness. It felt like a movie.

It also mixed so many different types of game play into the FPS: robot vehicles, puzzles, exploration and I still don't think there's a FPS that does hand-to-hand combat as well.

 

9. Knights of the Round (Arcade 1991)

From 1992-1994, I had a summer ritual. It involved me, my brother and my cousin walking a half-mile to the mall, and every visit went something like this:

• Stop by the ice-cream counter for a two-scoop cone (one scoop was always Superman Ice Cream)
• Buy a comic at the comic shop
• Spend two hours at the arcade (we had to stand on our newly purchased comics to prevent them from being stolen while we played)
• Buy a bag of fruit cocktail candy balls to eat on the way home

In that arcade, we played some truly awesome games: Dragon's Lair (featuring full-motion Don Bluth animation), Violence Fight (one of the countless Street Fighter 2 knock-offs), Final Fight, X-Men arcade, and The Simpson's Arcade Game. Not one of those games ate more of our quarters than Knights of the Round.

Featuring upgradable armor, three totally different playable characters, a variety of colorful enemies, and a fantasy genre that we liked more than similar games (Double Dragon, Final Fight), it still remains the only arcade game I actually beat (finished completely).

 

8. River City Ransom (NES 1989)

This game came out during the height of my interest in Martial Arts, and was similar to Double Dragon. It was an open-world game, so you could go anywhere you wanted, and play the levels in any order. It also featured a code system that would allow you to save not just your progress, but your RPG-like skills and attributes.

Leveling up enough to get Dragon Feet or Stone Hands was the ultimate rush, and it was also the first game I played that allowed me to eat Sushi, though at the time, I thought a cucumber roll was a piece of bread.

 

7. Castle Adventure (PC-MSDOS 1984)

This also happens to be the first video game I ever played. It consisted of moving your sprite-adventurer around different rooms of the castle, and interacting, through text, with each room. Combat was basically just pushing your character against an enemy, but you had to find the sword first.

The whole point of the game was to get out of the castle, and my brother and I spent no less than 100 hours looking for a key. Imagine our surprise when we finally found the key, only to discover that it could not open the front gate. To do that, we had to locate the kings scepter.

Not the most obvious choice for a top-ten list, but it unlocked our imaginations in a way that no games before (and few since) have.

 

6. Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (PC 1995)

My friend's dad bought a new computer. At the time, it had a half-gig hard drive, something he told me was bigger than the hard drives on most corporations' computers and so big that it would literally NEVER be filled. It also had SUPER VGA graphics (my poor computer was still EGA) and it had this new game: WARCRAFT II.

I'd played a RTS game before, Castles, by Interplay, but it was nothing like this. A fully-realized fantasy world, with amazing art, and colorful, cartoony graphics. I loathed losing a battle, because it meant I would have to turn the keyboard and mouse over to my friend for his turn.

I remember changing all the character sounds to Star Wars sound effects. Pretty awesome hearing archers shooting lasers. When Starcraft came out, it was clearly a better, more balanced game, but Warcraft is where it started for me.

 

5. Rainbow Six (PC 1998)

Oh. My. Gawsh. During one battle, I placed my RED team captain at a doorway, and armed with a shotgun, he blew away every enemy on the map as they tried to run through that crossroad. When a team-mate went down, they were dead for good, to be replaced by a generic "scrub" teammate who was not nearly as powerful.

This game combined an in-depth tactical map game, which preceded the action. You could set waypoints and paths for your different teams to follow, and they would wait at pre-determined spots for my "go-code," at which point they would perform a specific action, like breach a door, flashbang a room, escort a hostage to safety etc. During the action game, you could switch between teams, and between members of each team.

I'd never seen such awesome character death animations, and I still use the sound effects I ripped from the game for my home-video action movies. I never got into the sequels, but this one set the stage.

 

4. Mass Effect (XBOX360 2007)

I've played a lot of RPGs, and this one takes the cake. I love the dialogue and the storytelling as much, if not more, than the action. It has weaved such a tale of intrigue, betrayal, love, in epic proportions all, that it nearly rivals the Star Wars Universe. I played KOTOR first, and I loved it, but this game, and its sequels are truly amazing.

The decision about which of my teammates I had to allow to die, still remains the most heart-wrenching choice I've had to make in any video game, ever.

 

3. NBA 2K

I had played NBA Live since 1996, but when NBA 2K5 came out, I was an instant convert. It no longer felt like a video game. My aging grandfather couldn't tell the difference, and he'd watch my brother and I play as if it was the real NBA.

We've had so many down-to-the-wire, triple overtime games (and probably more blowouts) than I can count, and we've played every game type possible (but our favorite is Fantasy Drafted Associations).

This franchise has absolutely left its competition in the dust, and it makes marked improvement every year, not just roster updates (are you reading this, MADDEN)? I've never played any game more than this one.

 

2. HALO: Combat Evolved (XBOX 2003)

Yes, I did mean to only include the first one, and no, I haven't played Anniversary, ODST, or Reach, so I may be missing out. I'm not into online multi-player, and this game was the last hurrah in LAN gaming.

Before I got married, I lived in a bachelor pad, where we had set-up four T.V.s and four XBOXes, all networked together, in front of four couches. Our longest continuous game session was 27 hours.

The story was amazing. My heart absolutely raced when I first met the Flood and the end chase sequence was awesome. I tried 400 times to kill 343 Guilty Spark, I looked at the incredibly detailed textures through my pistol scope.

Multi-player was so fun. We learned the little tricks of every map, and who DIDN'T launch the indestructible Warthog with a pile of grenades and a Needler? This game also spawned the hilarious web series, Red vs. Blue.

Halo 2 and 3 became increasingly confusing, even while the multi-player and online features improved, but those aspects don't hold a candle to the first, most amazing single-player experience I ever had.

 

1. Tecmo Super Bowl (NES 1991)

Yes, this is the greatest game ever made. The things you could do in this game turned men into superheroes. My cousin once never rushed inside the 20 with Christian Okoye to avoid hurting his average yards per rush. I could run backwards with a quarterback 20 yards and then throw it 60 more to hit a running WR in the endzone.

My favorite players: QB BILLS, QB EAGLES and Thurman Thomas. This game made me a Bills fan and I was almost unbeatable with them. Only those who have played will know what this sequence of numbers means: 6, 13, 20, 25, 31, 38, 44, 50, 56, 63, 69, 75, 81, 88, 94, 100.

 

Honorable Mentions:

Dragon Wars (PC 1989) - Accompanied with a novel that revealed key points in the story, and gave hints and passwords, this game took RPG storytelling to a new level through an innovative way to copy-protect its content. Gatling Bow was the best weapon in the game.


Metal Gear Solid (PS 1998) - The first game I played that felt more like a movie than a game. Also, the first game where it just wasn't an option to kill every foe. You HAD to hide and run away. Nothing would get my heart racing like the alarm sound when you got caught.

Aliens VS. Predator (PC 1999) - Still the most terrifying game I ever played. It used darkness and sound to scare the crap out of you, and then a face-hugger would grab you by the head. Even when playing as the fearsome Predator, the Aliens were deadly and frightening. I actually screamed out loud at this game, and it sent my friend running from the room, yelling, "It's evil, it's EVIL!!!"