#11

The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)

Change From Last Year: =

One of the most important aspects of video games to me are the stories they tell, and how they tell them. At their best, video games can create stories in ways that no other medium is capable of simply because it is an inherently interactive medium. They can tell stories through their gameplay, the way the player and characters interact with the world around them, and in countless other ways. One of the best stories in video games to me is in Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, even though at its core it is a very simple narrative of a man and a girl who have lost their loved ones becoming each other's surrogate family over the course of a long and difficult journey.

What makes The Last of Us special is how it builds its world through its environment, from the bleak, abandoned towns and cities to the people who have lost their will to carry on, and the nature that is slowly creeping in on areas that humans have abandoned after the outbreak. This, together with the wonderfully written and acted characters, makes it a genuinely special game. Everything else is good or even great as well, but it is the story and characters that to me make the game something truly exceptional.

7: Katamari Damacy?

6. Mario Bros. 3

Am I in 2nd place now?

Yes!

I should go back and count all you guys's correct guesses to my games as well.

Both correct!  Yes, now you are in second place.

Nice.

I counted all the guesses on my game. You are in shared first place with Mnementh with five correct guesses. There's also ten games that went unguessed. Maybe I should've given a third hint...

Guessed by The_Liquid_Laser

One of the contenders for my personal title of most played game ever. There's a small handful of games that I have played an embarrassing amount of hours. Thousands, maybe even ten-thousand. Two of those are still to come, mind. I don't know what it is. 'SimCity 4' is still the greatest city builder ever made. Even greater than 'SimCity 3000' (#22), even greater than 'Cities: Skylines', not in my list this year. I guess it just came at the perfect time, with the perfect features, looking perfect and having the perfect balance of ease and complexity. 'Cities: Skylines' may be more modern, you may even be able to make a good looking circle, but 'SimCity 4' just had "it". What is "it"? I don't know, there have been entire tv-programs about trying to find people that have "it", but they hardly ever do. But yes, 'SimCity 4' has "it", and I was good at it.

#8: Objectively speaking, this game is probably not the best game in this franchise anymore, everyone knows it, but my nostalgia for the N64 in this particular case is too strong.

Seems I need to defend my lead.

#8: Tower of Doom

#7: I know it is already guessed (but I knew it the moment I read it), but I wanted to add that I played it last year at the time of the greatest game event and thought: to late to add now. Before I only played once a level at an anime con, because the game was never released in europe until Reroll.

#5: And this is also so easy: Might and Magic is the RPG-series which had the excellent strategy spinoff Heroes of, and the second entry had the game music as audio-tracks played by orchestra on the CD-version. So Heroes of Might and Magic 2.

All three correct. Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl is the full name of the remake. And you really want to give nobody else a chance.

@Hiku were my guesses wrong or right

#20 Ocarina of Time

This is still the best Zelda game pre-BotW. It has the most dungeons and the 2nd best exploration out of all the games that came after it, and before BotW. Majora's Mask had fantastic exploration, but only four dungeons. Windwaker was only six dungeons. Twilight Princess had eight dungeons, but lacked as much exploration. Skyward Sword has the least amount of exploration out of all the Zeldas, but many dungeons. When this released it was glorious. In 1998 we hadn't seen a 3D world that was so large, and well put together. Sure, maybe there's a few of the first MMO's that might have competed with it in terms of the quality and size of the game world. But those games have aged terribly, while OoT is still a joy to play. The basic Zelda formula of get a new item, use said item to beat dungeon or explore new areas, to get a new item still holds up extremely well. So does the formula of peppering a game with all sorts of secrets to freely discover on your own. Ocarina of Time has dropped 12 spots on my list the past few years, mainly because the combat is simple compared to what modern games do. The rest holds up phenomenally!