Yes on #7 and #1. Not the right answer for #6.

9 is Super Mario 64 (as I used a similar clue :p)

6 someone else guessed Tomb Raider - could also be Tomb Raider II as the human enemies in that game are very blocky.

4 is Leon being a smartass in Resident Evil 4

3 possibly Metroid Prime?

#9, #4, #3 are all good. Still a no for #6.

Yup, you got all of them correct except for #8. I mean, the hint was referring to Hollow Knight, but you got the number wrong, it's #6.

I'll add my two cents on the #6 guess-fest. Final Fantasy VII?

And #5 is A Link to the Past.

Correct on both!

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Over 30 years on, this remains the greatest Metroid game in my opinion. While I would love to see a new entry take its place one day, the reality is nothing can ever really be better than Super Metroid, because this game is just perfection. It not only lay the groundwork for everything this series would go on to become, but also set the bar impossibly high, with a game so meticulously crafted, with so much attention to detail, that even Nintendo executives would question the developers for "trying to make a masterpiece" instead of just finishing the game so it could sell.

Well tough luck, Nintendo. They made a masterpiece.

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Guessed by @drbunnig

I think from a young age I always appreciated videogames for the art form they could be, but Shadow of the Colossus was the eye-opening moment, the game that fully convinced me that this medium was capable of making deeply immersive experiences and telling compelling stories. The amazing cinematography and camera work throughout, the beautifully consistent art direction, the orchestral soundtrack, everything about this game felt like the highest art, comparable to the greatest movies, yet so unique to the world of videogames in how it immerses you in its narrative and has you questioning your own actions as the player.

This truly blew my mind when I played it as a 12-year-old, and while the industry's made such great strides since then, I think this still stands as one of the greatest and earliest artistic masterpieces in videogames.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Down, down, down, by the river...

This may not be a new entry into the list and I'm not sure I even played it at all this year, but Baldur's Gate 3 feels like a new entry because of how much its lasting impact has affected my opinion of it. I played this game early in 2024, meaning I got most of the year to process my feelings on it and think about its place in these rankings, yet with another full year to think back on it, I've only gone and ranked it significantly higher.

There was just something so special in how this game, despite putting millions of players through a mostly similar path, manages to make your individual experience through that path feel so uniquely yours. It's hard to describe what made this game so special to me, because my feelings are inherently attached to the journey I went through, the character I created and the choices he made. For that same reason, I've found the game hard to revisit - as interesting as it'd be to see the outcome of different choices, those will always feel like "what if?" scenarios to me, whereas my original playthrough feels canon.

In the end however, the reason why that experience felt so personal and amazing for me is the same as for everyone else: this is a gigantic game with an absurd amount of content, all of which is extremely well thought out and impactful. There was not a single moment in my 200-hour playthrough where I said "ah, it's another one of these". That never happened. Every single area, every single character, every single quest, every single combat encounter felt unique and meaningful, every single thing felt significant to the main story. And when there's so much endlessly compelling stuff to do for that long, the result is you get attached.

And so, Baldur's Gate 3 won the hearts of everyone. Though we all had our different experiences through our different choices, we all built up the same attachment to our own experiences through the compelling adventure this game puts us through.

Anyway, I feel like I wrote a lot of the same things on last year's post about this game, though in better words back then. Baldur's Gate 3 was a journey I'll remember forever.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

I remember booting this game up for the first time, laying sick in bed, enjoying the first moments through Hallownest from the warmth and comfort of my blankets (how good are Switch Joy-Cons for playing like that, eh?). This was just a couple days before me and my family went on a long car trip, and by then I was already too hooked to put it down. I played this throughout the trip, during our stay there, and on the way back... I was convinced the game would've been over long before the trip was done, yet it just kept going on and on, getting better and better, until I finally finished it on the TV screen after getting back from the trip.

How long was I playing this for? Two, maybe three weeks? And for all that time, it was the only thing in my head. I was completely absorbed in Hollow Knight, obsessing over understanding its world, conquering its challenges, and seeing all there was to see. I couldn't believe how amazing this little game about bugs was. After a 45-hour playthrough, I thought I was proper done with this and wouldn't revisit it, yet time proved me wrong as I've gone back to replay this over and over, and usually to full completion too.

I don't think I can genuinely fault Hollow Knight for anything. It's simply a perfect videogame.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Persona 5 has been opening my Top 5's for a few years now and seems set to stay here for a while yet. I'll admit it can get a little boring to have the same games in the same spots over a long time, but what can I do? The moment I look at that image up there and put on some music from this game, I remember that this is quite simply on a different level. Much as these 5 games at the top of my list have had a mostly consistent ranking between them in recent years, the reality is I see them all as my favorite game in the world.

A common theme amongst those five, and certainly Persona 5, is that these are the kinds of games that completely took over my whole world from the moment I booted them up until long after I finished them. I mean, we're talking about a 100-hour JRPG that I played through in 8 days. That's 12.5 hours per day on average. If that sounds absolutely fucking insane, it's because it is, I'll be the first to admit. I was absolutely insane about this game. During that week, I felt like I was living the life of a Phantom Thief myself - stealing hearts in secrecy half of the time, and being a (barely) functional human being the other half. Pretending I was still capable of normal thoughts and conversations when really the only thing in my head at all times was the next palace infiltration.

And with each palace, each story arc, the narrative just pulled me in deeper and deeper, I was more and more invested, the game got unbelievably epic towards the end to the point where it couldn't have possibly lived up to its own hype, and yet, it did. Everything up to the last palace, the final boss, and the aftermath of your actions, it all added up to an experience I genuinely can't describe in words. Hell I feel like Atlus themselves don't really understand how to describe it, because they made an expanded version of this game whose added content, even if mostly good, failed to capture the essence of what made Persona 5, Persona 5.

This is a game about not giving in, about standing up against the bullshit society throws our way. We live in a world where the people in power have an increasingly absurd amount of wealth and control, at the expense of absolutely everyone else. The sad reality is we probably can't do anything to change that, but at the very least I'm glad this game allowed me to live out the fantasy of actually doing something about it. That's who I want to be beneath the mask.

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