Merry End-Of-November! Here, for the purposes of festive argument, is a list of indisputably (yes, indisputably) the greatest videogames ever made:
- Yakuza 0
- A masterclass in how to blend a gritty and compelling gangster story with such ridiculously over-the-top craziness that it’s quite incredible that the whole thing works. But work, by God, it does. It also contains some of the strongest characters in any videogame I have ever played.
- Prey
- I’ve talked about this game at length (here). The pinnacle of blending first-person gameplay with hard sci-fi in a way which is fascinating, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Also a flawless execution in level design, sound design, and design generally.
- Mad Max
- Unquestionably far from perfect, but nails world atmosphere better than any other open-world game I’ve ever played. And in an open-world game, that’s kinda important. I’ve previously raved about it here.
- All three The Witcher games
- Yes, all three of them. Probably the best trilogy ever made – each entry tweaking the core gameplay to shift genre slightly. From fairly hardcore RPG to action RPG to open-world RPG without breaking cohesion from the whole – but also making each entry feel completely fresh and new. As an added bonus, they are also some of the most beautiful games of their respective generations. The Mass Effect series would be the strongest competitor here but as much as I very much liked that series, it’s really only the first game which I loved.
- Saints Row IV
- 4 beats out 3, although I very nearly put both in here. But 4 wins out because firstly, it’s probably the best example of cost-saving asset re-use without it feeling like that’s what was done, secondly, because as well as being an incredibly well-made and fun game it also contains some of the finest voice-acting to ever grace a videogame. And finally because, against all odds, they managed to go completely bonkers in a series which had already gone completely bonkers, and somehow make it still seem perfectly reasonable within the Saints Row universe. A love-letter to (and piss-take of) almost everything (but mostly They Live and The Matrix) without feeling derivative or as if it’s taking cheap-shots. Simply magnificent from start to finish. And nobody has ever done a better mockery of Metal Gear Solid. Also: Keith David.
- Alien Isolation
- Is there a finer example of faithfully recreating a film in videogame form? The answer, is no.
- Minecraft
- See? I’m not just picking the most obvious games, I — oh wait. But come on, this game has done more for videogames than any other videogame in history. Little kids getting into modding, firing their creative imagination, it’s simply wonderful. You don’t have to like it, or play it, or even regard it as original, but it would be madness not to include it.
- Fable 2
- Yes, Fable 2 not the first one. And no, not because of the dog. Well, a bit because of the dog. But the Fable series is probably the most charmingly British videogame series ever made, and number 2 was the most charmingest – helped by a veritable who’s who of British celebrity voice actors. Three had a lot of this too but the ambition rather over-reached what could feasibly be done – I applaud the attempt but two remains the strongest of the series for me.
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- The last point at which each entry in the series was better than the preceeding one. Yes yes yes, Daggerfall. Daggerfall is incredible as far as accomplishment and ambition goes, but Morrowind was the game which made the best compromise between that scope and ambition, and having the thing actually be fun and accessible. After that, it’s downhill as far as the compromising goes.
- Dungeon Keeper / All of Bullfrog’s Softography
- Nobody is going to contest this, so there’s no point in going into it. This is simply objectively true.
- Elite (on the BBC Micro)
- Created a genre. Not too shabby an achievement, really. It also did so much with the available tech that as a kid you firmly expected to have a holodeck within a few years (SADFACE). The new one gets an honourary mention for its sound design and how well they took those simplistic ship designs and made them work as believable spacecraft.
- The Secret of Monkey Island
- Not 2, or (perish the thought) 3 or 4, but the first. The greatest point-and-click adventure of all time, utterly impossible to topple. It’s absolute hyperbole to declare anything as “perfect”, but TSoMI is perfect – suck it. The sequel had better music and better sprites, but the backgrounds suffered from tech limitations and were all rather muddy despite the source artwork almost certainly being wonderful. So the clean pixel work of the first remains stronger, to me. The Police Squad of videogames – had fun with game tropes that were barely even tropes at that point. And it demonstrates why humour is often made better by being limited by the number of letters you can realistically fit on the screen. The juxtaposition of the writing style with the realisticish Mills & Boon romance cover style character portraits only made the delivery funnier (see: Police Squad comparison). Terrible terrible TERRIBLE error to shift to “cartoony” for the sequels and re-makes. I will argue your face off if you dare disagree with this.
- Captain Blood
- It was just flupping amazing and if you don’t agree, we can never be friends. I’ve always fancied utterly ripping– paying this game a homage. Given the power of computers nowadays just imagine what could be done with this concept. I won’t say more because – flupping hands off – I want to make it some day 😀 Let’s never speak of the sequel though.