Finally time for the next batch of write ups. I guess all I'll add is here are the top 15 games of my teens:
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#35 Overwatch Overwatch was essentially the end of an era: the last online multiplayer game I got really into. I played it extensively during the beta and for a few months after launch and even if it's not my kind of game anymore it was a pretty damn fun and polished game at launch. It’s unfortunate how the IP was handled because I loved it at launch and even looked forward to the sequel at first, but at this point I’m just indifferent to it. Oh well. |
#34 Hearthstone Hearthstone is here for a sort of similar reason as a game I was really into it for a period of time, only this period stretched several years and arguably it’s among the games I’ve been best at since I reached Legend and such. Still, it's competitive merit (or lack off) isn’t as interesting to me as simply the fact that it was a fun card game in my favourite game world with a good mix between balancing and wackiness. |
#33 The Talos Principle The Talos Principle was the one game that could fill that same niche as Portal and on top of that had an interesting philosophical angle to it as well. I played main game and DLC to 100 % competition back then, and have played it since as well. I probably appreciated the complexity and addictive flow of the puzzles even more the second time, but either way it was a great experience both times I played it. |
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#32 The Witcher/The Witcher II The Witcher 1 is a bit unique since most games I played in my teens were either ones I heard about through friends or played because of good reviews, but this one was just kind of coincidence. A very lucky one as well since I had a blast with both games, and yes, particularly the first, even with bugs and less refined combat. Thanks to that I ended up looking forward to the Witcher III not because of the hype surrounding it but just because it was another Witcher game. |
#31 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
MGS2 was a game that blew my mind back when I first played it and that’s something I appreciate greatly because it happens so rarely anymore. The fourth wall breaks and unpredictable story… It was Kojima at his most ambitious and most over the top. Honestly, it’s exactly the kind of game I would have been more critical of if I played it five years later so I’m glad I played it when I did. |
#30 Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition I got this game as a present when I was still fairly young and had it lying around for a year or two before I mustered up the guts to play it (I mean look at that box art!) And yeah, I loved it of course. The merchant, the motion controls, getting one-shot by a chainsaw, it all added up to a thrilling experience. It was easily one of my favourite games on the Wii and for a long time my favourite horror game (ah to be young and easily scared again). |
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#29 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors/Virtue’s Last Reward Here’s another game (or pair of games) that blew my mind actually and more than that just offered some really compelling stories and mysterious. I also loved the puzzles that were not only interesting but also incorporated science and the like and the like in clever ways. Finally, both games also just a solid cast of characters and the whole structure of having to try out different routes and see different possibilities play out was always really cool. |
#28 Final Fantasy VII A game that’s as old as me but which still holds up today. At some point in my teens, I got interested in trying older JRPGs on WiiWare and Steam, and FF7 was without compare the one that hooked me the most. Characters, story and gameplay are all excellent in this one and it just adds up to a special single-player experience and one that I have ranked quite a bit higher in the past on my regular lists. |
#27 Borderlands 2 But my teens were actually much more about multiplayer than single-player and one of the games that me and my friends had a blast with together was Borderlands 2 (and Borderlands 1 before that). It’s quite simply fun and addictive – a shooter RPG with cool gunplay, skill and loot and then it even had great characters and funny writing on top? It had a few flaws when played solo, but in multi-player it worked better and even now I kind of want to play it when writing about it. |
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#26 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Skyrim was the open-world RPG for a lot of people back in early 2010s and well I guess it still is since they never released the sequel. To me it was the definitive open-world game for a long time as well as well as the definitive fantasy sandbox. It was easy to have fun with because it was just a well-designed, highly detailed game with endless content, or at least it felt endless at the time and I made multiple characters to try out different builds and go to different places even though the game kind of allows you to do everything on just one. I kind of miss that feeling. |
#25: APB: Reloaded Now here’s the definitive proof that the quality of a multiplayer game depends not on the game itself but on who you play it with. APB: Reloaded is not a great game if you go into it wanting to play seriously, but we were about as far from that as you can. Basically, the game was just a playground where we made our own stories, games and races, always only a few moments away from stabbing each other in the back (hilariously). Add to that the fact that my character looked like Hugh Jackman with a top hat and the one thing we did play missions for was to unlock the fastest cars which we gave ridiculous paintjobs. It doesn’t even feel wrong to place a “bad” game this highly because I just have too damn many good memories with it. |
#24 The Stanley Parable I’ve written about The Stanley Parable several times before and I don’t know what’s left to say except play it if you haven’t. I played it first in my teens and loved it, so did my friends because how can you not? It’s the Stanley Parable. |
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#23 Diablo III Diablo III is probably in the top 3 games I have been most excited for in my life and unlike others it didn’t disappoint me. Taking a step back first, I want to appreciate how into this game I was before it even launched: watching the trailers endlessly, reading about the classes and trying out builds in the online skill calculator (which you still can). And yeah, the launch was rough, but both during and after that I played it tons in both single and multi-player, trying out all the classes and their skills which is where this game really shined. I still remember beating Diablo back in ‘Hell’ in the original difficulty system over several dozen tries with mid-tier gear. Then I got back into the game with RoS and made a bunch of fancy builds now that legendaries actually existed. I’m a bit sad the game eventually went full live service with ridiculous power scaling, which has deterred me from returning to it, but it did have a golden era. |
#22 World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft was very nearly much higher on this list as the #5 game of my life because it’s been a huge part of it and also doesn’t fit perfectly in one of my categories having been a game a played for close to a decade. But instead, it had to settle for being the second favourite game of my teens which is where most of that time was placed. Again, Warcraft is my favourite gaming world and this game is that world and though I haven’t touched it in years my appreciation for it, particularly the very basics of it, has not vaned. I’m very strongly considering getting in on the new classic servers some time in the next year because while I doubt, I could get as invested in the game today as I once was I have no doubt it would be an awesome nostalgia trip to revisit Teldrassil, Stormwind, Ironforge and all the other places that are burned into my mind. |
#21 StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty StarCraft 2 has ranked #5 on my list all previous years but if anything, it feels even more at home as the number 1 game of my teens. This was the game me and my friends played back then for several years. Campaign, melee, custom maps, we played it all to death and were just generally huge fans of it, I even have a Protoss mug that one of my friends made himself. It’s also fitting that this completes the Blizzard trinity, Diablo, Warcraft, StarCraft as the top 3 of my teens because that really was the one developer I played (and loved) everything from during that time. Even Heroes of the Storm, the one Blizzard game from that era that couldn’t make it, was something I played extensively for a while. It's a shame I’ll never again be able to look forward to everything from Blizzard with excitement, but they still had a damn good run and will be filling many spots on these lists for years to come. |
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