List items
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A balanced, tight RTS experience with graphics that hold up even today, which is more than can be said for it's successor AoE II. The differing architectural styles based on the faction's geographical location added to the beauty of this prime example of a multi-layered RTS that gave me countless hours of enjoyment. Even now I can play the game and watch in wonder as a nomadic civilization takes it's roots and progresses to building a powerful empire out of dust and sand.
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Zug Zug! WarII was a fantasy RTS that dealt with serious subject matter and allowed (through various clicks of the mouse) to make it's characters more personal. The combat on land, air and sea was ferocious and complex with an emphasis on micromanaging and upgrading your units. With engaging world developing from the pages of the manual to the briefings and various cutscenes WarII was a game that made you care about the lonely grunt or footman who spawned from your barracks and was sent into the fray. It was also a lot of fun. The inclusion of the hero character in the sequel took away the character of the factions and grunts making the game focus on buffing your hero, which took away from what made the series so special.
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An off the wall adventure that is a rarity in the modern games industry. Grim Fandango has a wonderful theme and (then) modern adventure game mechanics. This allows for a great sense of exploration and immersion in Manny's upside down Aztec/Mayan Underworld that operates much like our modern world. Think of it as a undead-film noir-comedy-adventure with a gripping story, memorable characters and that Schaefer twist that has put him on many people's favorite developer lists. Grim Fandango is a fantastic voyage through the underworld that any adventure game enthusiast worth his salt can attest to. It really was the pinnacle of Lucas Art's adventure games (with their hefty catalog that is a bold statement)
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Western influences on a Japanese team make for interesting experiences as Silent Hill 2 has one of the strongest plots in game history. Combat is a joke in the game and what makes it so involving is the exploration and riddle mechanics. As James delves deeper into himself the more the player digs into the dark corners of Silent Hill. Silent Hill 2 is one of the few games that a person plays that makes him/her question how games should work. Rather than make game play tight and smooth, Team Silent decided to give the player reason for playing, and that is found in the incredible atmosphere and themes found in the game. The game is pitched as "scariest game ever" but in reality it wasn't the fear that kept me going but the wonder.
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Braid was the game that introduced me to "Independent" games and I have a lot to thank Jonathan Blow for in that regard. Braid itself is a fantastic puzzler with an awesome soundtrack and beautiful visuals. The end game becomes wrapped up in a fairly muddled conceptual plot that deals with love,obsession, evil and other various art tropes all under the guise of a Mario game pretense. A beautiful and calming experience even when the puzzles were at their most frustrating, Braid is a game I will remember for a long time to come. I may even bring myself to do a couple speed runs in the near future.
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I must confess that this was the first Metroid game I ever fully owned. However the reason I have it on this list has next to nothing to do with the games as a series. Metroid Prime is a game that I love because it works so well as a 3D-platformer/adventure/shooter hybrid. It combines intense shooting with platformer-esque exploration of beautiful 3D environments. The second stroke of genius that Prime has is the scanner visor. Almost everything (within reason) is able to be scanned. The process of scanning reveals weaknesses and strengths as well as giving an abundance of flavor text. The scanner adds levels to the environment and gives it that extra detail. This is a technique that isn't seen in many games and while I initially thought it to be a tedious process the level of information delivered made me instantly curious every time i saw something new in the game world. In short, Metroid Prime is a unique game that had excellent concepts and solid combat, it's weakness was the amount of backtracking that is unfortunately associated with "metroid-vania" games as abilities get introduced or removed.
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Baldur's Gate II tells a story that is both unfamiliar but easily relate-able. You wake up as a lab rat for the crazed Irenicus who is possibly the best antagonist in games i have played so far. There are so many dimensions to his fundamentally evil character that you cannot help but admire and hate him at the same time. The game then has you put together a rag-tag group of adventurers with their own agendas in an effort to find out just what Irenicus did to you in that laboratory and why you keep on having strange dreams. Quite simply one of the best Role-Playing games I have played Baldur's Gate stands out among others in it's genre as it continues to provide throughout the game with plot twists and characters that are instantly genre staples yet are unique.
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The original Half-Life was the game that convinced me shooters can be deep with minimal involvement of the player character besides puzzle solving and killing enemies. From humble beginnings as a lab assistant Gordon Freeman goes through a combination of excellently scripted sequences and player driven direction that create a instant classic of the First-Person-Shooter genre. Taking the corridor shooters of the past and introducing more open environments (while keeping core gameplay the same, Gordon still needs to get from A to B) as well as introducing deeper problems to be solved than find the red key makes half-life stand out from it's contemporaries at the time of it's release. The lush 3D graphics (for that time) also help bring Black Mesa to life. As these type of lists go games are added because of personal attachment, which often looks over glaring flaws. Half-Life is on this list for two reasons, my personal attachment to it and the amount of things it does right. It is very hard to nitpick quality games such as Half-Life.
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Pax Imperia is the quintessential 4x game. While games like Master of Orion II give the player more aims and polish, Pax does what 4x games are supposed to do which is open up space to the player's fledgling empire and give them to tools to conquer all that oppose their expansion. While Pax is clunky in more than one way the level of detail that goes into ship design, planet management and various other aspects of the game (needed to be played against a non-AI player to fully appreciate) more than make up for it's lack of presentation or not-quite-there game mechanics. From games such as Pax Imperia the blue print for more widely-acclaimed games is clearly visible.
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While Myst was a highlight in my gaming career Riven was the game that represents what that franchise means to me. A wonderfully imagined virtual reality that is highly that sucked me in even without constant interaction between myself and the game. The stunning visuals that have aged well remind me of a time where I could spend hours simply examining the details of a room or worrying over a puzzle that was wonderfully thought out by the developers. Everything about the presentation of this game was well done, even down to the multiple discs and their sleeves. Myst was a mysterious journey for the player and created a setting that was mysterious. Riven fleshed out that mythos and gave you a purpose in it that was beyond simple exploration. While compared to modern gaming Riven requires extreme patience and as such I don't think that I will have a gaming experience quite like the one Riven gives a player ever again.
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