#25: A french town in this game, which is one of the most popular multiplayer maps, and remade in couple of it's successors, is also seen, pretty much exactly the same, in an excellent mini-series by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

Hint 2: That series is Band of Brothers. It’s pretty amazing, even the big painted advertisement on the wall of this house looks the same!

24 Super Mario Bros 3? 

Not my top NES game, but that is because platformers are not my #1 genre.  Probably the best NES game you could get by anything close to an objective measure.

That's correct.

#26
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
(Change YoY: No change)

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was one of the few high profile JRPGs of the previous console generation. Most of the genre had slowly fallen back into the niche status it had risen from thanks to the popularity of Final Fantasy in the 90s, but from time to time a game manages to push past those limitations. This felt like a game that was made specifically to my tastes. JRPGs are my favourite kinds of games, and Studio Ghibli has produced many of my favourite animated films of all time. So putting the two together under a talented development studio like Level-5 was just dream come true, and fortunately the end result lived up to the hype.

JRPGs had largely been treated as second class citizens on home consoles in the early years of the 7th console generation, with even most of the developers known specifically for their work within the genre seemingly being ashamed for the genre, trying to experiment with the genre and make it more western in aesthetics and style. Unfortunately, in the process many of these games lost what made the genre interesting and unique to begin with. Ni No Kuni has no such issues, fully embracing its Japanese roots and not worrying about making a game that caters to the tastes of focus groups. 

#25
Journey
(Change YoY: No change)

Sometimes the game you play doesn't need a huge challenge for players to overcome or an intricate plot to carry them through to the end. Sometimes all you need is an experience that you can just lose yourself into for a few hours, and Journey is exactly that. It's a game that gives the player a simple target, a light at the top of a mountain on the horizon, and then lets him or her take their time with the world it places them into. As the name suggests, it's all about the journey, and the ultimately goal is there to just signal a start of a new adventure.

There still is nothing quite like Journey out there, even if many games have since tried to emulate its serene atmosphere, none have quite managed to find that same balance, either trying too hard or missing something important. Journey's not a game I go back to play very often, but every time I do I thoroughly enjoy every moment I spend with it.

Finally, these games haven't been guessed yet, so here's an additional hint for each one:

#21:The supposed End of the World is a literal stone wall so high it's almost impossible to scale. A JRPG first released on the Sega Saturn before making its way onto the PlayStation a few years later.

#20: The Core and the Arm. This RTS game got a sequel a few years later that changed the setting from futuristic sci-fi to medieval fantasy.

Call of Duty

• Windows PC
  
• 2003
• First-person Shooter
• Infinity Ward/Activision

The genre and this series in general usually gets a lot of flack from gamers, but 'Call of Duty' is a real classic, shaping the modern first-person shooter for generations to come. Meant to be just an ordinary military shooter, it unexpectedly (or maybe it was just the terrific gameplay design) rose far beyond that, and still has a very much active online community.

Even though this is one of the few games I actually played online extensively, the game shines bright in it's single-player mode. The story follows the diary entries of three Allied soldiers during World War II, an Englishman, an American and a Soviet Russian, starting with a campaign for the American and ending with the Russian character and the final battle to take the Reichstag in Berlin. These soldiers, their experiences and the missions are semi-based on real-life accounts. The add-on 'United Offensive' added even more missions, among them some that are taking place during the horrifying Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

Taking place during World War II meant the game already has a massive advantage compared to most other shooters for me, but it also is just absolutely great in terms of solid gameplay and good level-design. In reality, one might swap this game in this list for the second installment, which is actually just as good and is a clean continuation of the foundation set here, but loses on account of the novelty factor.

#24: 60 minutes to save the princess or it's game over. And those 60 minutes include your deaths.

Okay, I'm all caught up on reading this massive thread, so let's do this. I'll have to post two to three games a day to catchup, but that's ok. Before I start with the actual list, I'll post what got dropped from my list this year, and why. 

Skyrim: Dropped

When this game came out in 2011 Bethesda was King of the Open World. Being able to make your own fantasy character and then wander around an absolutely huge world, with two amazing sets of DLC to boot was fantastic. But over the past few years so many open world games have put Skyrim to shame. You can't climb in Skryim, you can't use spears, you can't jump very high, fistfights are limited, and combat as a whole is just limited. Horizon, BotW, Spiderman, GoW, and just about every open world game these days, has better combat, better mobility, a better camera, and a world that was crafted with more attention to detail. Bethesda's dungeons are uninteresting, unchallenging, and uninspired compared to more modern takes on the open world. Their AI is dumb, and their stealth mechanics are fresh out of Morrowwind, a game from 2002. Other games have better AI, and stealth mechanics that involve using the real world in a dynamic way. 

Monster Hunter Tri: Dropped

Monster Hunter games are in a bit of a weird place right now. Like Morrowwind the older games are bursting with content, but have a presentation, and mechanics that are stuck in the past. Like Oblivion (used to be) Monster Hunter World is up to date with both graphics, and mechanics, but light on content. At any rate, I had to choose between taking Tri off the list, keeping it, or adding a new MH game to the list. I'm a big believer that a GGOAT list should include games that are playable and enjoyable today. And since MHT doesn't have servers anymore it gets taken off the list. What game will replace it? Will it be anohter MH game? Just wait and see. 

Uncharted 2: Dropped

Man, when Uncharted first came out, it was the perfect merger between so many game mechanics. The ability to climb, do stealth takedowns, fistfight, throw objects, parkour, and use guns all in a single game? Yeah, that was amazing. Then you've got to add the perfect multiplayer mode from Uncharted 2, and the epic sequences. Multiplayer let you do pretty much anything you could do in the main game. When's the last multiplayer game that let  you kick your buddy off a ladder, or pull him down from a window? Or just put your gun away and fistfight it out? Lots of games these days merge stealth, platforming, and gunplay though. At least on the single player side of things.  TLoU is flat out better, so it was dropped for no longer being groundbreaking, and for being redundant. Why bother having two Naughty Dog games on the list when only one of them is still GGOAT material? 

Half Life 2: Dropped

When Half Life 2 first came out it was groundbreaking. A full blown physics engine, gameplay that changed with every level, and the gravity gun. Sadly, many games have just overshadowed it. And it never got a sequel, which leaves the story hanging. Every game these days has a physics engine. Lots of games have weapons that are as fun as the gravity gun. Hell, BotW has three or four weapons/items that are just as fun in the first tutorial area. Finally, it just looks terrible by today's standards. Games that go for a cartoony, or stylized art style still look awesome, but this thing was trying to do photo-realism circa 2004. Yeah, no thanks. 

Still no guesses on these two, so let's add some hints.

#21:The supposed End of the World is a literal stone wall so high it's almost impossible to scale. A JRPG first released on the Sega Saturn before making its way onto the PlayStation a few years later. The main characters of the game are named Justin and Feena.

#20: The Core and the Arm. This RTS game got a sequel a few years later that changed the setting from futuristic sci-fi to medieval fantasy. Supreme Commander is a spiritual sequel to this game.

Man, I missed a week!

#29
Generally, gamers don't like hand-holding, but it's kind of a requisite for this game.

#28
This RPG is finally coming to a cartridge on a Nintendo system.

#27
This 6th gen game gives new meaning to "boss battle."

#26
Its sequel got a brain-bending story trailer at the Game Awards

#25
The monarch from this game gets her time in the sun in this month's biggest fighting game.

#24
This 1996 title inspired a huge series of games, the most recent arriving this year and underwhelming many.

29: Ico

27: Shadow of the Colossus