No fixed order. These are all just really good games that I appreciate, things that did something that really changed things for me. Or just games that I have a particular fondness for.
Why this list? Because I always get the question, and I never have a valid answer. Maybe this list will help me find an actual answer? Or maybe the answer is that "it's complicated"?
In my opinion, where the Mega Man series set up the series for success, it's the X series that kicked the training wheels off of the series and really showed us what it could do. Adding layers to the storytelling and game mechanics.
I really, really love this series.
And while the game mechanically got stronger in X3, X5 and X6 in particular - I think that MMX(1) was such a leap for it's time (also, nostalgia).
Honorable Mention: Mega man 2.
I hear you, this is heresy.
The remake of X-COM. The one that the creators of the series weren't involved in - but this is where I got started with X-COM, and between the additional booklets that was presented as the diary of an X-COM veteran faced with the Terrors of the Deep.
20 years later, I still remember my best soldier - Grigori Chipov, who got so powerful that some of his stats were victim of buffer overflow, resetting his stats...
The music... still haunts me.
Tentaculats... are the stuff of nightmares, more than any monster before or after.
The "AI" that adapted to how well you did...
In many ways, I think this game made me love Star Wars. I've always thought of this game as much larger than it is - it adds so much to the Star Wars fiction.
There's a reason why I have a Lego Tie Defender in my bookshelf...
This might be one of those, "you had to be there" things.
When I started playing Fez, I expected a cutesy platformer... and for the first couple of hours, that's what it was.
Until I accidentally peeked behind the curtain and realized that I hadn't even started playing the game yet.
The days following are a fever dream of puzzle solving using notes, graphs and more.
This is so much more than it seems.
Similar to Fez, I expected a cheap, pretty bad platformer.
I wound up with a game that made me question a lot of things about myself and the people around me.
Typically, I like to let games have a few years before I sing their praises.
In other words, Nier may still fall off this list. It all depends on how I feel about the game in 2-3 years time.
That said... what Ending E does is... undescribeable. It's something that
In my opinion, the ultimate JRPG. Never released in the west. (edit@2019: until now... ok...?)
I've spent a lot of time playing JPRGs over the years - but most of it has been chasing the high of Seiken Densetsu 3 and it's labyrinthine story, it's vivid characters.... it's... just perfect?
Honorable mention: a Link to the Past. (Heresy! It's not a JRPG! ... well, yeah, but it just falls short of this list)
Probably the closest thing on this list to an objective answer. In many ways, I think that Minecraft is the rawest and the most a video game can be.
A game with nearly no guidance, nearly no goal - a game where either you find adventure, or it probably finds you.
Even if that adventure is to make a sick pickaxe.
This is controversial, but allowing only one game of the franchise here, I'm going to pick V for 2 major reasons:
1) Mechanically, it so feels like the game that they've been trying to make since MGS1. It's the first time the game shows you how badass the main character is.
2) No other game in the series has made me feel what V did. Racing through this game, I felt like I was in a state of psychosis, mirroring that of Boss'.
Despite this, I have so many reservations about this game - it's clearly not finished. There are parts of it that are straight up repulsive. And Quiet is a torn between a great, layered character and fanservice. It's far from a perfect game.
This is one of my favorite series also, because how it treats life. Even in the most series, tragic moments, the series will jab you in the ribs and crack you a radiant grin. Because that is what life is.
That said, it's also a standin for the other games in ther series, preference which probably goes something like: 5, 3, Peacewalker, 4/2, 1.
I don't want more than one game per series on this list - and this is kind of breaking that "rule".
But at the same time, it's so different, and it holds a different place in my heart - MGS is Kojima, *this* is Platinum.
Revengeance is a breathless game that thrusts you from silliness to silliness, escalating endlessly.
And similarily, Platinum: Revengeance, Bayonetta, Transformers
(haven't finished Bayonetta 2 yet.)
Ultima 7 did open world with daylight cycles and NPCs with schedules in 92.
The rest of the industry are still trying to catch up to the standards set by this game.
This is the game that taught me about the (Ultima) Virtues and Principles. About Balance.
I think, in a not overly exaggerating manner - this game taught me, as a kid, more about right, wrong, philosophy and the difference of people than anything or anyone else has. To some degree, this game raised me, to some degree, this game formed the ground of my philosophical foundation.
FAST. MECH. ACTION.
This was one of the first pc games I bought with my own money. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
For me, this game is the gold standard for Mech Games - even today, I feel like I would rather play this than Mech Warrior Online - despite rationally knowing that MWO is a better game today.
... you know what? I still gnash my teeth over the end of Mass Effect 3. But even though Mass Effect 2 is easier to call a good game, Mass Effect 3 has occupied more of my life - and despite the problems we've had, I have enjoyed the time.
Their original attempt at ending the series is only eclipsed by the Indoctrination theory in being bad, though :P
This is not the 4000 hours I've put into the game speaking here - No, I think that where World of Warcraft really shined is 2 areas:
1) It brought people together in a manner that previous (and following) multiplayer games have only tried to. This was a movement.
2) World of Warcraft's raids are without irony, one of the best things to happen to this industry. It's become an incubation for demonstrating the number of complex challenges that a developer can expose a player to and have them excel... the number of different kinds of mechanics in the very fluid notion of "endgame" in WoW is staggering.
For example, compare the Assembly of Iron to C'thun to Nefarion. And all of those fights were created before the developers really started getting wild with the encounters.
These mechanics are what most of the more complicated mechanics are built on.
