This is an exercise to try and rank the games that mean a lot to me. I am going to try and elaborate on the reasons why they are on this list, starting from the bottom. It is a work in progress, I am constantly shuffling things about and will take me some time to complete.
It successfully furthered what I had fallen in love with from Demons Souls. But the real masterstroke in Dark Souls' design is the structure of the contiguous enviroment. When playing through the first time, something started to click and I realised that everything could be mapped to fit perfectly into a 3D model. I started to map in my head where there might be potential hidden paths and shortcuts. Then I discovered Ash Lake, with its infinite black depths and the plain of trees as far as the eye could see. I felt simultaneous horror and enlightenment as I began to theorise on the structure of the world and the meaning of this terrifying tear on the plain of existence being visable on a horizon from from the black depths of the Tomb of Giants.
I played the UK release, Illusion of Time, at the age of twelve. It opened my eyes to the scale and scope of what a video game's setting could cover. This was a globe trotting RPG with increasingly fascinating themes, from starving on a raft to exploring Angkor Wat to plunging the depths of the Great Pyramids. I came to this after The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past and Secret of Mana and found there to be many compelling aspects that further cemented my love of Action RPGs on the SNES.
An incredible iteration on thatgamecompany's earlier titles, Journey is a joy instilling feast of breathtaking enviroments. The multiplayer mechanics become deeply meaningful through their minimalism. The game draws you to highest highs of sand sliding, desperate lows of freezing death and then transcendent bliss in a single sitting.
The portal gun mechanic remains fun and the puzzles are cute, but it was the writing that really made me love Portal 2. Jay Pinkerton, Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek did an amazing job. J.K. Simmons' Cave Johnson and Stephen Merchant's Wheatley deliver some of the most laugh inducing moments in a game ever. The moments of utter triumph through the last 30 minutes are perfectly scripted.
