Griffin's Top 13 Favourite Games of All Time! (Because Top 10 was too hard)
It's been a struggle, but here are the games that have dealt me the most joy (also some agony) ranked from 1 to 13.
List items
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This game was my introduction to the wonderful world of Battlefield and while it had teething problems at launch it didn't stop me hauling my PC down three floors to hook up to the internet every day for thrilling titan assaults and stalwart defenses of missile silos. I last booted it up in 2011 and there were still a few servers up and jumping.
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When Fallout 3 hit store shelves in 2008 I'm not too proud to admit that I stole a copy, downloaded it like the thoughtless 17 year old I was. I played this ill gotten game for 100 hours, loving every moment of post-apocalyptic exploration and branching dialogue. And then i bought it, and the DLC, and played another 150 hours over the summer of 2009. It marks a personal watershed for me when I left my piratical youth behind and embarked upon the path to responsible adulthood. Damn fine game too!
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I got this game for FREE with my brand spanking new 8600Gt video card one Christmas long ago. In the subsequent years I've played it to death online and off, re-bought it on Steam, and acquired all the expansions. Without a doubt it's my favorite RTS and I'd argue for it as one of the greatest PC games of the last decade. The way the battlefield changed over the course of a match as tanks rumbled across the map and artillery bombarded little towns hasn't really been duplicated to this day. Tactically, I feel like few strategy games offered the wide range of choices which contributed to a sense of historical realism unmatched in most games.
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Good Twist.
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Like every kid in the 90's I was into Pokemon: I had the cards, watched the show, and of course acted out my Pokefantasies in the handheld games. While Red, Silver, and Crystal all had long lives in my Gameboy Colour it was the first GBA version that remains my favourite. I played Ruby for years and logged over 500 hours collecting each and every Pokemon and training them up. I'm pretty sure I beat the Elite Four more than 1000 times.
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Empire: Total War was my first game in this franchise and while I sunk 50 or so hours into expanding the British Empire across the globe it was always fairly opaque to me. Shogun 2 streamlined the experience significantly and had samurai! Despite the lessened barrier to entry the game still felt extremely challenging with AI constantly outflanking you on the campaign map and sending their goddamn ninjas to set stuff on fire. The Fall of the Samurai expansion, which is set in the mid 1800's, is also cool and makes me extremely curious about what Creative Assembly could do with an even more modern setting, even if they don't seem interested in pursuing that path with Rome 2 announced.
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Mirror's Edge was an important lesson in humility for me. I had heard that while promising the game fell far short of expectations and had a lot of problems. When a friend talked about how he thought the game was cool I pooh-poohed it...without having played it. Eventually I picked it up cheap on a Steam sale and loved it. The visual esthetics are fantastic and free-running gameplay is fairly unique. I like this game so much that I consider those who criticize it's controls or story to be godless heathens. Oh, and I apologized to my friend.
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My favorite little indie game, Flotilla combines a simple but charming art style with an addictive one-more-run allure and deep mechanics. While I haven't enjoyed Blendo Games other output Flotilla remains a stalwart of my 15 minute time waster library.
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I played Half-Life 2 and its attendant episodes later than most, let's say sometime in 2012, and was astonished to discover that not only did the game-play hold up admirably seven years later the characters could still elicit an emotional reaction with their detailed animation and excellent voice work. I'm not surprised that Valve haven't done much with the franchise in a while given the high bar that has been set; I mean why take the risk? Maybe they see that having a silent protagonist (the game's biggest failing) is crazy these days and giving old Gordon a voice is more trouble than it's worth.
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Another great Relic title that, along with the subsequent expansions, was my gateway into the absurd world of Warhammer 40k. While I still haven't actually bought any pewter figurines I have invested heavily in the novels and spent an inordinate amount of time on the wiki reading about dreadnought variants and the chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus. For the Emperor!
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The first Valve game I ever played. Sublime!
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When I mentioned agony...
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I waited a year on tenterhooks for the PC release of Gears of War after playing the Xbox version at a friend's house. My mania grew to such epic proportions that I even wrote some atrocious fanfiction that has thankfully disappeared from the internet since then. My obsession continued when the game came out and I logged hundreds of matches despite the shoddy WindowsLive client. The classic Gears map Gridlock was practically my virtual home for months. Interestingly, I can't hear a chainsaw bayonet rev up without hearing "Gimme Shelter" my favourite song to soundtrack execution matches to.
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