Correct!

40- Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders

This game was a mix of action, RPG and strategy with unique gameplay. The story is quite interesting with the basic humans, elves and orcs involved. As you go through the game you unlock more units and these units add to the strategy. Nothing is more satisfying than using your melee, ranged, and special units correctly to completely destroy the enemy. A special unit for the humans is quite simple like elite armored knights or catapults, but for the orcs it could be a massive ogre, or flying wyverns. Of course once you are in the thick of battle is nice to swing the weapon as well and slay a few grunts.

39- Warcraft 3 + Frozen Throne, correctly guessed

I didn't get to play this game until years after World of Warcraft's release, but it was still quite interesting to playthrough. While I was already adapted to hero gameplay with Age of Mythology, the heroes in Warcraft 3 were different because you could decide when to use their abilities. The RTS gameplay was quite similar as expected but the story was quite enjoyable after playing World of Warcraft. The official lore helped a lot with understanding World of Warcraft and the main characters.

Not quite. Hint: This is a SRPG, not a FPS.

I always wanted to play Pinball Dreams when I was a kid, BTW. I liked all those games that let you make your own levels.

Pinball Dreams is the reason I liked Pinball simulations in the first place. Sadly it needed long to find another Pinball game I liked as much in Zen Pinball.

For #36 a bit of a longshot, but maybe Valkyria Chronicles 4 then?

After Doom revolutionized the 3D games many games tried to push the envelope. Descent took a direction only few others took: a fully 3D-experience by setting it into space and allowing to move and turn in each direction. This was called six degrees of freedom.

This makes controlling a bit difficult, not because the controls are complicated, but because you have to get in a mindset of full movement freedom and the ability to keep track of your position. So the challenges aren't the enemy robots alone, finding the right path without getting lost is a challenge in itself. And extremely satisfying if you're able to pull it off.

This is demonstrated each level, as you have to find the exit after destroying the reactor which explodes after that. You have to reach the exit in time before the mine explodes and destroys you too. As navigating is a challenge, this meant I died quite a few times trying to find my way to the exit.

As you can go not only left and right, but also up and down, the level design can quite intricate. To support you, the game gives you a freely movable automap realized with wireframe models.

Other than the level-design and navigation challenge the game features more or less all that Doom had set as a precedent: destroy the enemies (in this case mining robot drones that were infected with a virus that made them rebel), finding keycards to open color-coded doors, collecting weapons, ammunition and items that float around. As an additional feature you can rescue the human staff, that is taken hostage by the robots, for extra points.

The story is simple. In the future (the year 2169) companies have started mining on different celestial objects in the solar system. For this many mining robots are used. A virus overtakes these robots, so that they rebel against their human owners. You are sent to end this danger.

To play it today, you can use Dosbox as usual to emulate DOS. That works well. If you don't own the game, you can as so often rely on GOG, where it already packaged into a Dosbox-emulation. Also you can play for free in the browser on archive.org, emulated in Javascript. As usual with this browser emulation, your performance may have issues, depending on your system and your browser. As I just saw, there is also a project called DXX-Rebirth, which provides a modern engine for the Descent game files. I haven't tried it yet, but seemingly it improves resolution and uses modern graphic card features.

As DXX Rebirth offers clearer visuals, I use a video from that project. The original game is the same, but with lower resolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ8IqaxBR6I

#38 Guessed by SanAndreasX: Resident Evil

#37 Guessed by SanAndreasX: Child of Light

#36 Guessed by The_Liquid_Laser: Cadence of Hyrule

a) Fight musical bosses.

As more than ten games of my list are now revealed, it is time for the honorable mentions. I played over the years so many games and liked a lot of them. Limiting my list ot only 50 can be hard at times. So here some great games, which just haven't made the cut.

To avoid replication, I don't list games I had listed the past two years. Here are the honorable mentions from the last two years quick (with link, so you can see the description):

• 2017: Wii Sports Resort (Wii, 2009), Dune (DOS, 1992), Hearthstone (Android, 2014), Chaos Overlords (DOS, 1996), Dillon's Rolling Western (3DS, 2012), Micro Machines (DOS, 1991), Bravely Default (3DS, 2012) and Duke Nukem 3D (DOS, 1996)
• 2018: Undertale (Switch, 2015), Oxenfree (Switch, 2016), Darksiders II (WiiU, 2012), Unreal Tournament (Windows, 1999), Doom reboot (Switch, 2016)

And now on to this years honorable mentions.

Into the Breach (Switch, 2018)

This game does an amazing job to reinvent the turn based strategy genre. It has very small maps that are more or less fast to play through, but the gameplay is very challenging and deep. Also it has a permadeath feature, in which you take another time-jump, to try again in a new reality with taking some perks with you. The game is not about fighting and defeating the enemies alone, it is also about saving people and infrastructure. Besides making damage it is also important to use the ability to push enemies. Although the maps are so small, you find yourself in complex considerations each level.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (WiiU/Switch, 2014)

The WiiU had quite a lot good games, which more or less were at loss at the ill-fated system. Luckily Nintendo ported most of them to the Switch, so that more gamers can enjoy them. Captain Toad is one of these gems. It is in basic a pretty simple puzzle game, but it is so much fun solving all these little puzzles in the colorful Mario world. If you like little brain-teaser, Captain Toad is the right game for you. Check it out!

Wacky Wheels (DOS, 1994)

There were many Mario Kart clones over the years. In my youth I played Wacky Wheels. As I didn't know Mario Kart back then, it was my first exposure to this kind of gameplay. And I think Wacky Wheels can stand on it's own, it was fun, had quirky animal characters. You threw hedgehogs instead of shells. And in multiplayer it had an array of interesting weapons you could hit your foe with. Most fun for me back then, was a trap to invert the characters controls. You could still drive well, if you adapted to it, but it strongly depended on your skills.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch, 2018)

I am generally not the biggest fan of fighting games, but some I still like. The Smash series offers interesting ways to play and is easy enough for a Rookie in fighting games like me to have fun, while at the same time it offers better players also a lot of options. And Smash Ultimate is really the Ultimate version of Smash Bros. The roster is breathtaking, the game is crammed full of content, it offers so many stages, items and play modes to choose from. And it has a good single player mode. There is something for everyone.

FreedroidRPG (Linux, 2011)

FreedroidRPG is a free and open source game, which is developed since quite a few years. It combines the puzzles of Paradroid for taking over robots with the general gameplay of Diablo and plays in a futuristic world, there robots have taken over. You play as Tux (the Linux-mascot, a penguin) and try to help the remnants of humanity. If you like this sort of action RPG, FreedroidRPG might be for you.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Switch, 2015)

As The Witcher now reached with Switch a platform I can play on, I have now tried this game too. I haven't played through it yet, only the first parts, so it entered not my TOP 50 yet. But I liked what I saw so far, maybe this game will make my list next year. The open world with many things to do is something I like, and the environments are very beautiful. Colorful nature and strange monsters. I have to say though, this country is pretty in the shit, dead bodies on spikes or ruins everywhere. And also monsters are roaming wild. The Witcher world makes Skyrim feel like an amusement park.

Sid Meier's Colonization (DOS, 1994)

This game was a spin-off of Civilization and I felt this was the better game than the original Civ. In Colonization you play the colonization of America by european countries. As in Civilization you explore, build cities, strengthen your economy. The ultimate goal is the declaration of independence. A fun experience and a great classic game.

Blockout (DOS, 1989)

This is another classic. Blockout is basically the principle of Tetris - but in 3D. The blocks can be in shapes that extend in three dimensions, and the pit can have complicated structures. You have to fill a layer completely to remove it. This can be quite the challenge, although the blocks move slower than in Tetris you need the extra time to find good solutions. The game was also quite configurable, with different block-sets and pit sizes.

No guesses still, I thought the franchise would be easy.

#38: Luckily there's a weapon that can change it's phase modulations, otherwise resistance would be futile.
#38 (hint 2): It doesn’t work against 8472 though, but luckily you have the regular phasers for that.

#39

Batman: Arkham City (Playstation 3)

Change From Last Year: =

Rocksteady's Batman games have this weird place in my mind where I often don't really even think about them that much, and whenever a new game came out I was never in any kind of rush to play them, but then when I do eventually do that I'm always reminded about the fact that these really are some of the best open world games ever made. In my opinion, the best of them is Arkham City, as that is where Rocksteady found the best balance between the linear story and open world exploration, and where they had polished some of the rougher edges from the previous game. Asylum had some minor issues like it's disappointing bosses, while Knight focused too much on the bat mobile in its gameplay, which puts them both slightly below Arkham City in my estimation.

#38

Assassin's Creed II (PlayStation 3)

Change From Last Year: =

There was a brief period of time during last console generation when Assassin's Creed was among my favourite video game series in existence. More precisely, that was from Assassin's Creed II to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I took a break from the series when Revelations came out because the games were just coming out too close to each other and I didn't want to burn myself out with the series because I liked it so much. Then Assassin's Creed III came out and pretty much ended my excitement for any future installment with the series. But, even with that said, ACII and Brotherhood are still excellent games, with II being my favourite thanks to it's great story, interesting characters, and varied locations.

S.Peelman said: No guesses still, I thought the franchise would be easy. #38: Luckily there's a weapon that can change it's phase modulations, otherwise resistance would be futile. #38 (hint 2): It doesn’t work against 8472 though, but luckily you have the regular phasers for that.

I know this is a Star Trek game, but I have no idea which one.  Starfleet Command?

Cadence of Hyrule?