Top 100 Favourite Games (2023)
Well, it’s been three years since the last Top 100 list. I was intending on creating one of these lists last year, but I decided to postpone it as I didn’t think enough had changed to warrant a new list. Just like last time, this list was created from scratch (i.e. I shuffled the old list, added some other games I like, and then reordered everything from there).
I’ve tried to consolidate things a bit more this time around. There’s so many great games, and the number 100 keeps feeling smaller and smaller. Basically, my goal was to have as many different things represented as possible. For example: in 2020, I had both The Curse of Monkey Island & Monkey Island 2 on my list, but in the intervening years, a new Monkey Island game was released (and it was surprisingly fantastic), so I guess Return to Monkey Island is now my one Monkey Island 'representative’ game.
I couldn’t bring myself to remove either of the System Shock games, though, so both of those games are still on this list. But I did restrict myself to one Portal game, one Zelda game, one Dead Space game, and one Borderlands…FPS game.
Observations
There were a lot of pretty big shake-ups this time around. For example, Apex is no longer in the #1 spot. I guess you could say that Apex is no longer at the…peak. A lot of things have happened with the game over the last 3 years. Sure, there’s been some really good improvements, but also a lot of questionable stuff - why was there a Post Malone-themed event????? Don’t get me wrong, I still love the game, but maybe it’s just not quite the same…
And that means Isaac has now officially returned to being my official favourite game, officially. I’m no longer playing the game on a daily basis, but I really appreciate that it’s received some hefty updates over the last few years (not to mention that there's an upcoming co-op mode).
The largest increase in ranking since last time was Knights of the Old Republic (up 39 places). I suppose a big factor was all the talk about a KotOR remake, which mighta prompted a bunch of nostalgia in my brain.
And the largest decrease this time around was Bejeweled 3! Which dropped a whopping 46 places. I don't know what to say about this other than I guess Bejeweled isn’t nearly as compelling to me as it was three years ago…
This time around, there were 13…and a half (see below) new entries, including a lot of older games. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Alpha Centauri, Deus Ex, and Fallout: New Vegas were all games I had wanted to get around to for years (decades, even), but never did. Deus Ex and Alpha Centauri, in particular, were both games I had tried to play many, many times before, but never got that far in. Until now...!
The Whispered World has returned! It was in my Top 100 list from 2016, then it got pushed out. Consolidating games from the same franchise is probably the main reason for this being back. It’s also a game I think about from time to time (in a good way). Also, coincidentally, it ended up landing in the same position that it was in back in 2016 (spooky!).
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Mirror’s Edge, and Cadaver also (~spooookily~) happened to remain in the exact same positions they were in back in 2020, despite this year’s list being created from scratch without even looking at the previous order.
Anyway, here's the year/decade stats:
Games by year
| 1990 | 1 |
| 1991 | 2 |
| 1992 | 1 |
| 1993 | 7 |
| 1994 | 6 |
| 1995 | 6 |
| 1996 | 3 |
| 1997 | 1 |
| 1998 | 2 |
| 1999 | 4 |
| 2000 | 2 |
| 2001 | 0 |
| 2002 | 3 |
| 2003 | 2 |
| 2004 | 1 |
| 2005 | 0 |
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2009 | 6 |
| 2010 | 4 |
| 2011 | 7 |
| 2012 | 4 |
| 2013 | 5 |
| 2014 | 5 |
| 2015 | 1 |
| 2016 | 3 |
| 2017 | 2 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2019 | 5 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2021 | 3 |
| 2022 | 1 |
| 2023 | 1 |
Both 1993 and 2011 are tied for the years with the most games on the list. 2001 and 2005 both had zero games (sad trombone noise).
Games by decade
| 1990s | 33 |
| 2000s | 25 |
| 2010s | 36 |
| 2020s | 6 |
You know, thinking about it, the 2000s really were an awkward time for video games.
