(I have my official list on the official thread, but that's not how I actually rank my top 50. Here's my top 25, which actually encapsulates, like, so many since many of them are collections or groups.)
My Top 25 games ever: 2021 Edition (Intro, 25-21)
I am a person of passion, and the things I like I tend to LOVE or HATE. Also, as a writer, I tend to gravitate towards many forms of media for my recreation. Some people work out, some people hook up, and some people hang out. Me? I play a lot of video games. Maybe not as much as some people, but the games I play I tend to fall for moreso than any other forms of media because it's interactive. I can get an emotional attachment to a book but I tend to be extra critical of the prose. I can get invested in a movie or TV show but I'm always acutely aware that I'm simply observing the happenings and not involved. But games? I experience video games, and that makes them more special to me.
Like any other form of media or art, Games are a source of entertainment but they can be so much more. Movies and TV and music are passive forms of entertainment. You observe them, you watch them, you listen to them; but unless you're creating these forms of media, you don't really interact with them. Like a painting, you can enjoy it, interpret it, and think about it, but that's about as far as it goes. With books, you read the words and have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks and visualize or sensationalize the events depicted, so there's more interactivity there while not quite being fully interactive. Games, on the other hand, are so much more.
Video games can be casually observed, just like any movie or TV show. The fact that twitch is a thing and lets-plays are very popular on youtube shows the value of video games as a passive form of entertainment. However, for the most part, video games are also primarily played, and that opens up all sorts of new venues for interactivity. Games require skill, they require attention, they require effort on your behalf. Games can be social, bringing friends together to work cooperatively or competitively. You can't really do that with a movie; if you try socializing in a theatre you'll be shushed. Your sister will throw a pillow at you if you ask questions during Game of Thrones. Hell, even the lore and story of many games could theoretically be entirely missed if you don't investigate.
The point I'm trying to make is simply that Games mean so much more to me than other forms of media because games are interactive and therefore have more to offer and demand in return. They bring together elements of entertainment, sports, competition, and creativity in ways no other media can. So, because of this, I tend to get far more attached to video games than any movie or TV show or Book I've ever enjoyed, and I don't see that as a problem. Many old people complain about the medium being too violent or rotting one's brain, but old people are gonna boom, as it were. They complained about Radio and TV and music and every other media when it was new, too. Times change, and right now Games are the biggest form of entertainment out there.
On a forum I frequent (This one!), they yearly do a 'top 50' event where everyone lays out their top 50 games of all time, but make the others guess by doing hints. Like, for the game Mega Man X, one could drop a hint of 'the optional super weapon is the Hadouken'. Or, for The Last of Us, 'one of the most iconic enemies use a click as a form of exploration'. Stuff like that. Well, the rules for this forum's top 50 instilled a handful of restrictions that don't jive with me because I categorize my games differently than most. I get it, I respect it, and there has to be regulations to ensure they can compile the data appropriately, but for me it doesn't really do a good job categorizing my favourites. As a result, I have opted to rank my games the way I want to rank them.
The main difference being that I tend to lump groups of games together rather than only have individual games. A lot of games are tied for me, or are only good because they collectively work together to create something special even if no one game really stands out. For example, the Rock Band franchise allows you to export the previous game's track list into each subsequent game, and all the DLC carries forward. So, those tracks that came on the Rock Band 1 disc as well as all the DLC I purchased and played on Rock Band 1 are also available on 2, 3, and 4, and so on. Plus AC/DC, Green Day, and Lego games are also available to be brought forward. Not The Beatles, though. Sadly. Because of this, I just lump the entirety of Rock Band into one spot rather than having it fill up 4 or more slots. If I didn't lump games together, then this list would get very tedious with the same handful of franchises getting half the spots.
That's what the forum made me do. So Donkey Kong Country 1, 2, and 3 all take up individual slots. Multiple Rock Band, Ratchet & Clank, and Pokemon games are in there as well. I don't like filling it with spam, and I can't really pick a single game to represent a whole franchise every time so here's the way I want to do it. Note: I DO have two franchises that repeat themselves multiple times in this list, being the Souls games and The Legend of Zelda, but that's because each of these games are so different from one another and thus play and feel differently enough that they don't overlap enough. Breath of the Wild and Wind Waker are not similar at all. Bloodborne and Dark Souls are different enough to get their own places. Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3 are different enough in quality to get their own slots.
So, with those basics explained (to be elaborated upon as I go), here are my Top 25 as of the end of 2021. Let's start with a handful of honourable mentions.
Demon's Souls/Remastered – This game just got a remake on PS5 for launch and I fell in love with it. I played the original and liked it well enough but didn't finish it because I had just started a job in game review at that time and felt obligated to do what the website wanted instead of what I wanted. As a result, I never finished this game. However, upon getting it on Ps5, I beat it multiple times and got the platinum trophy all while wanting to play it more and more. It's pretty new on my list so it may go up and it may go down, it really depends on replay value. I will probably end up bumping it up into my top 25 because I'm about to go through it again with friends and I've found that playing Souls games cooperatively makes me like them more, so we'll see what the future holds. With this one, the two main things that hold it back are that I've not spent enough time with it, and a lot of the game's systems and features are a little too obtuse and unpleasant. I'm glad 'world tendency' never returned in Dark Souls.
Donkey Kong Country Returns/Tropical Freeze – The original SNES trilogy features VERY highly on my list and Donkey Kong 64 is one of those games on my 'games I hate in franchises I otherwise love' list, so I was energetically excited to hear when DKC Returns was announced. I still look back fondly on this E3 presentation. I was a little disappointed in Returns due to the waggle tech motion controls, but the rerelease on 3DS fixed all that and it has turned out to be a classic. Then there's Tropical Freeze, which has probably the best level design and most content of any DKC game. Seriously, both of these are great games just a few tweaks short of perfection. If these games had better controls, they'd be in my top 25, for sure. No doubt in my mind.
Red Dead Redemption/Undead Nightmare – I love cowboys, what can I say? Back when this game came out everyone was calling it Grand Theft Horse, and considering I loved the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy on the PS2 but had lost interest in the series thanks to hating GTA IV, I was excited to see what this had to offer. Fell in love almost instantly. Loved the characters, loved the world, and I loved how they balanced the serious nature of the main story with the sillier aspects of Rockstar Open World design. Lots of fun, and the zombie mod was even better. However, Red Dead Redemption II came along and was just so much better I had to separate them. Still love this game enough for an Honourable Mention, but it didn't quite make the cut.
Terrarria – I loved Minecraft, I love 2D Sidescrolling adventure games, I love being creative, and I love all the little things this game brought to the table. I want to add this to my top 25, because I have nothing but good memories with it, but for some reason I'm too intimidated to go back and get the platinum due to how obtuse much of the game design is. I'm sure if I found the courage to return to it, I'd be placing it a few spots higher on the list, but for now it gets a cozy spot in my Honourable Mentions. That should be good enough, I think.
Onto the official list. The titles will include the Rank, the game or franchise, the score I give it, and the consoles I own it on. There are many examples of games on this list that I've bought multiple times due to re-releases and ports.
25 – Mario Kart – 9.4/10 – SNES, N64, GCN, Wii, WiiU, Switch, GBA, DS, 3DS
I start off my list with a great example of how a franchise can be seen as a collective instead of a series of single entities. Mario Kart from beginning to end is just fun. They're fun solo but some of the best party games of all time due to the competitive nature mixed with a dash of random chance that ensures that even mediocre players can mess with the best. Anyone can play Mario Kart, and the franchise as a whole as basically done nothing but get better ever since its initial release on the super Nintendo way back in the early 90s by means of a growing roster and increasingly creative level design. More items, more game modes, and each new entry built upon the prior entry in one way or another, with the later entries even going so far as to repeat old tracks with the new mechanics.
While I would go so far as to say that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is easily the best in the franchise due to having so much content and having the best recreated tracks. I still like to see the franchise as a collective instead of a series of individual games. Why? Because so much of what makes each new entry great is the nostalgia brought upon by reusing old tracks and weapons and characters. The motifs that weave throughout the series like having Rainbow Road be the final stage or how BS Blue Shells are permeates the experience for me, making each game feel less like a sequel and more like an expansion.
For the most part, every new entry in the series takes what was great about the prior games, refines it, expands upon it, and adds to it, the only major exception being the spike in quality and the unique take on the formula that is Double Dash, which was so much better than its predecessor and wasn't topped until Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. We still haven't gotten coop Mario Kart, but we did get dual items!
All in all, Mario Kart as a franchise is exactly what you want out of Nintendo and is always great to whip out when you have friends over. It's pure fun, it's chaotic, it does require skill, but it can be enjoyed by anyone and is just fun to mess around with, and it's been on every significant Nintendo Console and Handheld since the Super Nintendo. There's a reason that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best selling game on Switch, the best selling Mario Kart, and one of the best selling games of all time.
24 – Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – 9.5/10 – PS3, PS4, Switch
Back before the Ubisoft fatigue kicked in, I was all-in on the Assassin's Creed franchise. I liked the story of the first game enough to get over its broken mechanics and poor implementation, I felt that the Ezio Trilogy were masterpieces in their own right, and unlike most people I actually loved Assassin's Creed III as well. Every game in the Desmond saga made me incredibly happy and I truly do feel that the franchise should have ended at the end of the third main entry. The 2012 prophecy came to pass, the over-arching story had concluded, and the main character had died. Perfection, in my eyes.
But the games sold so much that it was hard to not keep going. And so they did. And you know what? Somehow they made the best game in the series despite the fact that the game would actually be better off not being associated with Assassin's Creed. Yep, Black Flag really should just be a generic open-world pirate game, because that's where it excels. Sure, the characters are technically linked to characters from Assassin's Creed III and the collectibles are there because of the animus, but the reality is that only like 10% of the game's story has anything to do with the Assassins or Templars, the rest is just generic pirate stuff!
And oh boy is the pirate stuff so great. There's a reason that this game helped to inspire me to create a whole story series based off Pirates; many reasons, in fact. Basically, everything it needed to do well it did well. Sailing your ship is fun and relaxing, aided by the sea shanties your crew can sing. Exploring the cliffs and mountains and tropical islands is fun and beautiful as hell. The water is to this day some of the prettiest water I've ever seen in a video game and really makes the whole world feel organic. The ship and character progression are rewarding and encourage you to keep playing. Treasure hunting for booty and the sword play and combat and all the other swashbuckling adventure elements are engaging and persistently fun. There's stealth, there's platforming, there's sailing, there's combat, there's swimming, and all of it takes place in a region that's beautiful to look at and fun to explore.
It's pretty rudimentary and I do think the game would be better without its links to the Assassin's Creed franchise, but I can't help what this game makes me feel and that means it's one of those games I do periodically return to every few years just to experience it again. That's why I got it on PS3 and PS4, then got the platinum trophy before getting it on Switch and doing it all over again. I do like the entire Assassin's Creed series, but this one stands out as the game that is good regardless of its association with that series.
23 – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 9.5/10 - PS4
In much the same vein as Demon's Souls, this game is only as low on the list as it is because of the relative lack of time spent with the game. In Sekiro's case, it's due to lack of coop or multiplayer of any sort. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the souls games primarily for their singleplayer options. I beat them and get the trophies on my own without any help the first time before opening myself up to multiplayer options. However, Co-op gameplay is what makes the souls games, Bloodborne, and eventually Demon's Souls so special to me. Sekiro doesn't have that, and it's really the only complaint I have about the game because everything else feels so crisp and refined compared even to Bloodborne!
The thing that makes Sekiro special is that it's not actually a souls game. Sure, it takes a lot of design philosophies from those games – most notably the punishing difficulty, the boss battles, the world design, and the general feeling of accomplishment – but it has its own twists on each and every one of them so it feels fresh and unique. Dying has consequences like in Dark Souls, but in Sekiro you just lose some progress and money instead of having to get back to where you were to reclaim your lost stuff. There are levels but they are used for perks instead of stats. The level design is interwoven like other entries in the series but with a lot more verticality, thanks to jumping and a grappling hook. Bosses are important but there are mini-bosses and true bosses, each one giving different rewards.
But the biggest difference is that this game isn't an RPG. It's an action-adventure game. In Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne, you create your own character who doesn't speak, can look however you want, and can utilize virtually limitless variety in terms of weapons and spells. In Sekiro, you play as Wolf, one character with one weapon. The only real customization is in his prosthetic arm attachments. And while there's certainly potential for disappointment in terms of lack of customization, the swordplay and combat features are more refined than in any other game leading to some of the best boss battles and platforming and level design in the spiritual series.
Sekiro is a game that takes a tonne of inspiration from one of the most consistently great and unique game franchises of all time, but then does its own thing with each of those borrowed elements to create a game that demands more of the player and rewards you accordingly. Seriously, the only issue I have with the game – and I hardly consider it an issue – is that there's no co-op to give the game more life. Sure, I can return to it any time, and I will, but it's harder to justify when I could be playing Elden Ring with friends. It has the best level design and combat, but lacks coop. A fair balance.
22 – God of War – 9.5/10 - PS4
My confession with God of War is that I genuinely disliked the prior trilogy on PS2/3. Everyone went on and on about how tragic the game's story was and how the combat was some of the best ever. However, when I played it I felt that Kratos was just an asshole who deserved all his sorrow and thus wasn't a tragedy at all, the story was unoriginal and didn't have any compelling or relatable characters, and the gameplay was boring and unoriginal. It felt like baby's first Devil May Cry with somehow less compelling level design and a far worse story.
So oh boy was I shocked when God of War 4 was announced and I found myself oddly compelled by it. Suddenly Kratos – a character I thoroughly hated in the past for his reckless, one-dimensional rage – was sympathetic and compelling. Atreyus didn't annoy me. The art direction and combat style changed. Everything felt more like a whole new game as opposed to a reboot or sequel. And yes, this is a sequel given the game's story and even the gameplay, but it's unique enough to make me forget about how much I hated the prior games in the series. All of a sudden, God of War was more than just another mindless hack and slash game. All of a sudden, God of War was something truly remarkable.
And I mean this from pretty much every perspective. I don't actually believe in perfection when it comes to games (Even my #1 and #2 don't have a perfect 10/10 score), but this is genuinely a game that I feel is about as close to being without flaw as I've ever seen. The story makes sense and is actually tragic, the characters are all likeable and relatable and they all have motives that actually make sense, the world building and art direction are genuinely some of the best I've ever seen, and the game performs damn near flawlessly. In my platinum run on the game, I didn't experience a single glitch or slow-down. The music is swelling and orchestral and fits the theme perfectly, the voice acting and graphics are impeccable, and the decision to make the game one long, uninterrupted camera shot in gameplay and in cutscene is something I've never seen before (And is something I appreciate as a film school graduate).
And all of this praise comes before even mentioning the gameplay, which somehow manages to blend the fantastical, over-the-top elements of prior God of War games (as well as many other action game combat systems) with the weightier and more methodical combat systems of a Dark Souls or Bloodborne. You'll notice I like that sort of punishing combat that demands the best from you, with dodging and parrying and special abilities. There's a reason every Hidetaki Miyazaki soulslike is on my list. And God of War emulates just enough of that feel while doing its own thing to get a special place in my heart. I feel that God of War basically combined many of the best elements from the best games into one place and balanced all the elements nearly perfectly while telling a story full of engaging characters and top-tier writing, all supported by some of the best graphics and sound I've ever seen.
God of War is possibly the best total package I've ever played, the closest thing to a flawless experience I've ever had. So why is it only #22 on my list? Well, I've only played the game all the way through once, and a recurring theme on this list is that games I play more tend to get higher rankings. Once Ragnarok is out, I'll be sure to return to this game and see where it ends up, and if I feel compelled to bundle this game with Ragnarok. Oh, and while I don't think it's a flaw, I don't much care for the randomly generated Nifelheim segment. That part of the game felt less than compelling to me. The score is my personal score, not any sort of objective analysis. We'll see where this one ends up.
21 – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker/HD – 9.5/10 – GCN, WiiU
I remember. I remember just how much general audiences hated how this game looked. After Ocarina of time and Majora's mask, there was a Gamecube Zelda demo that looked mostly realistic and got everyone super excited for the next Zelda game. But then, when Wind Waker was announced, it split the fandom right down the middle, cleaved audiences in two. It seemed that most hated the toony, stylized look while some were cautiously optimistic and others actively loved it. I was in the 'cautiously optimistic' party. I didn't love the aesthetics, but even back then I didn't understand the hate. You know, see how the game plays before focusing too much on the graphics.
Back in 2002, every game console manufacturer and developer were going for the best and most detailed graphics possible. Everyone was going for bigger worlds and prettier faces. Nintendo wasn't going that route. As far back as 1995, when Yoshi's Island came out (more on that later), they experimented with trying unique styles to mask their technology's shortcomings. And you know what? It worked. Wind Waker is a game that is ageless. While it got a lot of flack for its visuals at launch and has continued to get some criticism for being a little too hand-holdey now that people aren't allowed to complain about its graphics anymore, in retrospect it was the most future proof game that I've ever played. It looks, feels, and sounds as fresh today as it did back in 2002 when 'toony, stylized art' was seen as a new and radical idea.
And that's not even to bring up how much of this game is just a pure joy to play. The combat is crisp, fun, and nuanced while being simple enough that basically anyone can enjoy it. The puzzles aren't too hard to figure out and the game is pretty easy, but exploration and progression are well-managed. A lot of people disliked the sailing aspect but I found it quite relaxing and the music that accompanied it is probably the best music in any Zelda game. Heck, the sailing theme from Wind Waker is up there in my top five songs across all of gaming as a whole. And yes, the animation is damn-near pitch perfect, ageless, crisp, and pristine. The facial expressions are exaggerated, the motions fluid, the pop of the hits and the various spell and combat effects are satisfying, and the art style truly does set it apart.
Oh, and while I didn't have many issues with the game at launch, Nintendo went ahead and made an HD remake of it on the WiiU that made the graphics even better, added gamepad functionality, and fixed two major complaints people had by giving you more control while sailing and streamlining the final grind-fest that was the triforce hunt. Honestly, they took a timeless game and somehow managed to improve it. This is one of those games I do intend to go back to even after beating it a half dozen times. Like I said, it has aged gracefully and feels as fresh today as it did nearly 20 years ago.
