Important Games
Games that I have strong memories attached to; games that played a pivotal role in my formative years; games that I unabashedly love, warts and all.
List items
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Probably one of the worst games to grace this list, Razor Freestyle Scooter came at a time when a Razor scooter was one of the coolest things a kid could own, apart from a Yomega Fireball yo-yo. This was my Tony Hawk. My X-Treme sports game. (Dreamcast version, of course)
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Forget Mario Party, this game was the shit.
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I bought a cobalt blue GBA SP just so I could play this game. Ah, what a sweet, sweet backlit device.
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The first game I ever played on a handheld device (silver GameBoy Pocket ftw!). I still have my copy of Blue that I played so much I wore out the cartridge's battery.
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^ What that says.
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Before my parents allowed me to own game consoles I spent countless hours playing this and Sam & Max Hit The Road on my Mac.
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Hands-down the best JRPG ever made. 'Nuff said.
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I still love the concept of this RPG series, and would buy an HD remake in a goddamn heartbeat.
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One of the first games I played on PSP. I lost both it and my PSP before I got to finish it, which saddens me to this day.
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My first GTA game at a time when hiding GTA games from the parents was my way of being a "bad kid" without actually being bad.
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I was so in love with RPGs that I bought a copy of this game before I even owned a PS2. I would just bring it and my memory card over to a friend's house to play.
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Some of my most vivid memories of high school consist of me sitting in my room, playing Tactics Ogre while listening to Paul Simon music. Yep, I was one of those "cool kids" you kept hearing about.
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Same as with Tactics Ogre. I was a huge SRPG buff in high school.
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One of my favorite N64 games. I remember fighting for just a few more minutes with the controller every time my parents tried to get me to stop playing.
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Before I got bored by the majority of FPS games on the market, there was Star Wars: Dark Forces.
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This game showed me that I can still manage to enjoy an FPS if it's one made by Irrational Games and Ken Levine. It's not perfect by any means, but the characters in this game give me these warm fuzzies of comfort whenever I see them on screen. I can't get enough of them or the beautiful world of Columbia.
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This is the first game that I heavily followed the development of, well before I really got into keeping track of video game news. I still remember first seeing screenshots of the game while listening to Gnarls Barkley's first album. Because of that, the two will forever be inextricable in my mind.
Same as Dragon Quest VIII, I bought and loved this game before I even owned a 360. It's a testament to how world-building and writing can make a game overcome the limitations of its own genre.
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The Mass Effect franchise is my Lost, in the sense that those who disliked the ending were haters who didn't really understand what the series' writers were trying (and succeeding) to accomplish.
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I used to get up two hours early so I could play around in Midgar before having to leave for school.
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Playing through this game was one of the single most powerful experiences I've had in gaming to this day. Entering Mexico at sunset brought tears to my eyes.
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Same fun gameplay variety that was found in Sonic Adventure, only without the unnecessary open-world bits. Also, no. Goddamn. Fishing levels. I can't remember how many times I played the demo that came packed in with my Dreamcast, but it was a lot.
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For a guy who hates most fighting games and card games, I sure did completely finish this game and collect every card available in it.
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When Sonic games have been sucking for as long as they have, it's nice to remember that the Advance games exist and are pretty great. Sonic Advance 2 was my favorite of the bunch.
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No game has ever made me care so deeply about characters as The Walking Dead did.
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For a guy who doesn't handle scary very well and sucks at stealth games (*glares at Metal Gear Solid* ... *hugs Metal Gear Solid* ... *sets off an alarm*), I absolutely adored The Last of Us. From the storytelling to the desperately intense gameplay to the incredible graphics, it made the long PS3/360 generation worth it.
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It took a ridiculous amount of time to remember this game and find it again, but I also spent a ridiculous amount of time playing it back in the day. Most vividly, I remember a joke about Seinfeld (called Whinefeld) and the phrase "This is a test. This is only a test. If this were a real emergency, we would have called your mother."
Awful. But so, so good.
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This game had one of the most messed-up gameplay mechanisms that I've ever used, but against all odds they made it work, even if it got a little bit difficult to manage in the later parts of the game. Toss in a twisty story and all the collectibles and you have one of the best games to come out on the DS.
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Even though I got into games later than others my age, I still had this game on GameBoy to give me that harsh taste of zero game saves and the repetition that goes along with it. Also, it had flying saucers and Easter Island heads with wings.
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Let'sa play checkers! King me! Go fish! Screw you Mario, for never letting me beat you.
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Being a kid who sometimes wore a clip-on bow tie just so he could pretend to be a secret agent, I loved the everliving hell out of Spy Fox. In time I dipped into Pajama Sam, Freddie Fish, and Putt Putt, but Spy Fox was always my favorite Humongous Entertainment jam.
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I had a high tolerance for storytelling bullshit back in the day. I still do now, but most of that tolerance is used up trying to keep up with the Kingdom Hearts storyline (which I've pretty much failed at). Still, the series' quirky mixture of Squeenix JRPGs and Disney worlds and characters keeps me loving the franchise. Mickey's a badass, you guys! Really, he is!
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So many memories of house-sitting for my grandparents and playing this game while watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami.
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We kept a copy of UT on the servers at school, which led to long hours of playing LAN deathmatch games in the computer labs when we were really supposed to be doing our classwork. But we didn't care - high school computer classes were a joke and we had already finished all of our work after a good 10 minutes of concentration. Shooting one another helped pass the time.
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One of the finest of the new wave of point-and-click adventure games, I feel like Kentucky Route Zero was one of the first games that clicked for me with regards to the idea of a linear narrative coupled with player-driven personality crafting through dialog options. It's one of the finest examples out there of video games as art.
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This was the first game I ever imported. Well, when I say imported, I really mean I ran (literally ran: I didn't have a license and my parents weren't keen on the idea of me spending money on games when Jump Super Stars came out) over to the Best Buy, which stocked random import games for a short period of time. It was just a fighting game, so it wasn't too difficult to play through the translation. I remember looking up guides online to get through the parts I couldn't understand, and playing it from start to finish. More than I can say for most other fighting games.
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I've been interested in visual novels for a long while now, but never dove into them too deeply. I've always looked at them from a distance, or through the lens of another genre, like Professor Layton's puzzles or more point-and-click style affairs. While 999 has some (mostly forgettable) puzzles of its own, it's the first game of its kind that got me genuinely interested in the visual novel side of the equation, with its branching storylines and hidden endings. From there I've expanded into games like its sequel, Virtue's Last Reward, and the Danganronpa series, but I get the feeling 999 will always be my favorite.
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This is an important game in many ways, through both its flaws and its virtues. The way the game addresses developmental disorders in an educated and mature way is something not seen in games very often. Apart from the narrative, the game somewhat falls apart when it gets into its interactive puzzles. However it never strays so far down that path that it leads to frustration. I'm not sure whether this story would have been better told in a different format, and I'm not sure I care. I'm just glad this game exists.
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I've always loved the world of The Witcher. The way Andrzej Sapkowski mixes fairy tales, medieval politics, and Western/Samurai, character-driven storytelling into such a compelling narrative has always astounded me. Being a huge fan of the source material, I am ever so happy the virtual incarnation of Geralt of Rivia has been left in the very-capable hands of CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 2 was one of my favorite games of the last generation of consoles, and CD Projekt really outdid themselves with this latest entry in the franchise. The game boasts tight, deep, satisfying combat systems in a beautiful, massive open world, filled with the type of storytelling that would feel right at home in one of Sapkowski's books. It's no small stretch to call it one of the best western-style RPGs ever made. I've never been more willing to completely lose myself in a world and spend untold hours exploring and questing. From searching for the Bloody Baron's family to discovering hidden armor from other Witcher schools to fulfilling the three wishes of a man who can't die (in the wonderful Hearts of Stone DLC), I found no end to the joy of exploring and cutting my way through Velen and the Isles of Skellige.
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Without question one of the best JRPGs ever made. It was hugely influential on my youth.
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