Every month we let an editor speak to discuss his or her personal top 10 games ever. This time it is Sven’s turn to take on this almost inhuman task, where he knows how to completely destroy his own favorite games.
How the hell do you determine which games are in your top 10 and in what order are you going to put them in? Just like with my predecessors, PK, Bas and Alie, it has everything to do with feeling and nostalgia. Still, somewhere halfway through this fairly irrational decision-making, you’re also going to look at the shortcomings of the various titles, in the hope that this can justify the ranking somewhere. That turned out to have little effect, but it is interesting to see that these games, despite sometimes insurmountable imperfections, are still my absolute favorites. Apparently they are that good!
That gave me the idea to do things differently. Why these are all fantastic games, most of you can think of yourself. I love every game on this list, but in the meantime they all secretly have something that they are quite crappy about. With each game I briefly mention why they are so good, and then finally kill them. At least, I try. That is not always easy to obtain, but here we go.
10. GTA V
There had to and would of course be a Grand Theft Auto on this list and Part 5 is the best. Yes I know, GTA Vice City had the nice 80’s vibe and San Andreas was quite impressive in 2004, but come on, GTA V has really gone over that on all fronts. The gigantic, incredibly detailed and believable world, the characters, the heists and the sheer amount of cool to do, it just didn’t stop!
Where it does not stop is GTA Online. It works well and I put in quite a bit of time, but we all feel that Rockstar’s enormous focus on multiplayer has come at the expense of any single player DLC. I was hoping for a GTA IV-style expansion, but it failed to materialize. In the meantime, GTA Online is still getting new things all the time, which the more offline-oriented player like me of course has no pocket for. And am I the only one who sees that those online avatars are horribly ugly ?! It’s simply impossible to create a character that doesn’t look like a knocked-down crack addict with five failed facelifts. If I can’t be a sexy koiboi in Red Dead Online, then I’m not even going to get into it! Got Rockstar ??
9. Dishonored 1 + 2
Here I have to cheat a little bit, because I can’t choose between these two! Dishonored 1 modernized the soul of Thief and turned every level into the ultimate stealth sandbox. Never before have I felt so empowered as with the skills the Outsider had given me. Dishonored 2 perfected combat, made non-lethal more engaging, had some unforgettable missions with insane mechanics / level designs, and took me to the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen in a game. Hell, better art direction than in Karnaca just doesn’t exist! The entire steampunk world (or actually of course ‘whalepunk’) of Dishonored is insanely original anyway and beautiful in all its raunchiness.
What is strangely missing in such an original world full of crazy lore, is a fascinating story. It’s all a bit lame and it never really takes off. Especially the plot of Dishonored 2 feels rushed and predictable and is not built up compellingly. Your character now has a voice, which should deepen things a bit, but the comments that father and daughter make on their environment is downright dull. Corvo’s voice acting in particular sometimes sounds almost laughable, like a kind of Dinklebot meets Adam West. Unfortunately! Let’s see if Death of the Outsider can make up for that a bit.
8. The Curse of Monkey Island
Yes, a point-and-click adventure in my top 10! Mainly out of nostalgia, because Telltale Games, the developer who is still kind of continuing this extinct genre, really doesn’t want me. I can still really enjoy this game from 1997. The cool characters, the wonderful music, that fuzzy, hand-drawn art style, everything! Moreover, with this game I learned English for the first time and understood more and more of the conversations every time I played the game again. 100% replay value! Sorry, Monkey Island purists, I can’t help it, this is my favorite part of the series.
In the meantime I also know that this is not really Monkey Island 3. Monkey Island dad Ron Gilbert has more than made it clear that this is not the third part he envisioned, if he had had the chance to make it. For example, he had never let Guybrush and Elaine marry each other and fans of the first two games were surprised when part 3 completely ignored the moronic ending of the previous part. But I don’t care, The Curse of Monkey Island remains one of my favorite games ever!
7. Journey
This masterpiece is perhaps the most beautiful three hours you can experience in our favorite medium. A piece of art that you should play out in one session, after which it cannot help but leave you enchanted. The atmosphere, the beautiful desert sand (or sometimes suddenly snow), the soft flow of the gameplay, the most tender multiplayer ever, not to mention the music. Oh Jesus, that music !! Composer Austin Wintory deserves a ribbon and luckily he has also won plenty of awards for this soundtrack.
I said earlier that coming up with defects has little effect on the order of these top 10, but it turns out not to be. I found it so difficult to come up with Journey that I was forced to move this game a number of places. Could it be too short, or are there too few game mechanics? No, putting in more would only be at the expense of the purity it has now. I would almost say that the biggest disadvantage of Journey is that you can only experience it once for the first time, but that is also so boring …
6. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Thanks to withholding a Gold Award, the PU may be known as anti-The Witcher 3, but nothing could be further from the truth. We love it. This groundbreaking RPG has even landed very high among my personal favorites, and then you are doing something right. Like, for example, creating the most beautiful and fascinating open fantasy world ever, with no boring quest in it? Literally every side quest is originally written and has an interesting story or crazy twist. And that is terribly clever!
But ALL JESUS, how much talk is going on in this game !!! Then you might be able to have the best-written dialogue in an RPG ever, but couldn’t it be anything less? That main storyline is so very long and much too much of it you spend talking. Especially with the centerpiece in Novigrad, where you are just quacking quest after quest, I needed the fast forward button.
What do you say? The combat in the Witcher is actually not that fascinating? Hmm, I didn’t have much trouble with that …
5. Metroid Prime
As you can see from this list, I am not a huge Nintendo fanboy. I never got further than two Super Marios, some games of Mario Kart and one and a half Zelda adventure. But then there was Metroid Prime. A world opened up for me. I used to do everything on PC, but a friend convinced me that this was the reason to get a GameCube and he was absolutely right about that (thanks again Lucien, if you ever read this!). The thrill of discovering and endlessly scanning everything that is loose and stuck, the most exciting boss fights and all that in incredibly beautiful graphics; it made me realize that I was far from done with computer games!
Possibly the only thing a little less fun about Metroid Prime? The map. This is completely in 3D and requires the spatial insight of Antoni f% # king Gaudí. Besides, I spent so much time staring and fiddling with that map while playing that I also tried to call it up in real life when I got lost somewhere. And that is quite difficult, in 2003, without a smartphone with Google Maps!
4. RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
There are games where I regret the sheer amount of hours I wasted (* cough * Skyrim * cough *) and there are games where almost every second of the many months of work was 100% worth it. RollerCoaster Tycoon falls of course in the latter category, since for me there is no cooler strategy sim like this multi-star work by Chris Sawyer.
Hmm, just like with Journey, RollerCoaster Tycoon has almost no flaws for me, those games are almost perfect! Yes okay, building underground is a bit difficult and especially in the missions it sometimes takes a long time to wait until you have money to continue building, but you took that for granted. The silliest thing is perhaps that Frontier, the only suitable RollerCoaster Tycoon developer, had to find a new brand name, because Atari had to make the cheap, weak and especially buggy infusion RollerCoaster Tycoon World if necessary. Oh and a few more mobile games that I don’t even want to mention here. F #% cherry …
3. Grim Fandango
The best adventure game out there, period. No wonder the genre was a bit finished after that, it had just reached its peak! The strength lies mainly in the razor-sharp dialogues, the film noir atmosphere, the beautiful setting and the overall originality in which all this is packed. And of course the always soothing voice of Tony Plana. The TV series Ugly Betty is a completely different experience for Grim Fandango fans from the rest.
Another reason we have to do with gameplay-free Telltale Games nowadays is that the gameplay of the old school adventure games was actually not that much fun at all. Seriously, those puzzles in Grim Fandango don’t make any sense anymore. No normal person can finish this game without consulting a walkthrough at least 20 times, as the solutions are often frustratingly illogical. No one would accept that now if this game were released today, most of us don’t have the patience for that anymore.
2. Red Dead Redemption
If for some twisted reason you still didn’t think Western was cool, then after playing Rockstar’s best game you will certainly find it! Red Dead Redemption really does everything right in that regard. From the whacky characters to the phenomenal soundtrack, everything is one big ode to the spaghetti western. The game was also called GTA on horseback, while RDR is much better than GTA itself in many typical GTA matters! Perhaps the best thing about RDR is how satisfying, hard and rough the shooting is. Very clever for a third-person game and something that RDR 2 has yet to match.
What is less fantastic about Red Dead Redemption you can already feel coming; of course that’s Jack, John Marston’s retarted son. The most annoying thing about Jack was that after finishing the game, you were obliged to continue playing with him, instead of John. Logical, after all, John was dead, but not everyone had prepared their savegame strategy for this and had to do any remaining missions and collectibles with the kid. It’s also good that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be a prequel and hopefully it will be a little less glitchy at launch …
1. BioShock
And then on to my number one. I’ve tried but still can’t get around it. After recently playing the remaster I knew for sure again: BioShock is and will remain the best game ever for me. From the first moment you knew it was going to be something special. Crash down at a mysterious lighthouse, descend into an art deco town at the bottom of the ocean and be greeted by some kind of junkie armed with meat hooks and an Irish-sounding guy on the radio. Best opening scene of a game ever.
But BioShock isn’t that fantastic either. After the well-known big plot twist, the story collapses a bit and you know that you are really only working towards the grand final boss fight. This is a well-known issue with long game closing stages. In BioShock, however, they happily take it a step further, by stuffing my absolute GAME-ERGERNIS NUMERO UNO into it, just to stretch: a escort mission. ROT! ON!!
Oh, crap. It took so long to carefully compile a top 10 and then forget about classics like Command & Conquer, Commandos, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Anky’s Ruiterschool … Well, nothing more that can be done. I’ll leave it there. These are my ten favorite games of all time, which, despite their shortcomings, are indestructible for me. Now you again! Which of the editors should come and confess their favorite games next month? Tell us in the comments!
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