My Top 10 Games

About two years ago, there was a meme floating around Facebook where you'd list your top 15 most memorable video games and tag a bunch of friends, who'd then have to do the same or face death by a thousand cuts (Facebook memes used to be hardcore, man). Looking back at the list, I realized that if I were to re-write it today, it'd be radically different, because what I'm looking for in my video games now is a lot different from what I used to. That said, I decided to come up with the top 10 games that have had the biggest impact on me. If I were to list favorites/games that took up hours and hours of my free time, Call of Duty and Halo would totally dominate the list. There are a bunch of games not on here that I love too, like Battlefield 3, Assassin's Creed, and the Uncharted series, so I also chose this criteria so the list wouldn't be bloated. As Strong Bad said of his e-mails, "I can't pick favorites. They're like my childrens." So these are the games that I still love to talk about.

10. Call of Duty: Black Ops

"Because the numbers were telling me to!"

The COD series and I have a tenuous relationship, but COD:BLOPs was the one that showed me that the series can still have fun with itself. It's a unique setting with characters that have more going on than just being chisel-jawed defenders of freedom, and even bothered to mess with the conventions of the series and play with expectations to achieve a pretty nice mind-screw as far as FPSs go. I'm actually pretty optimistic for the sequel, Oliver North shenanigans notwithstanding.

9. Myst

"Before arriving in this Age, I was determined that it would be a

journey to a world very different from my previous adventures,

and it was."

Spring break of sophomore year, I found that Myst and it's sequel, Riven, were on sale in the iPhone app store. I downloaded them both, and as soon as I fired this game up, the memories flooded back. My family had the original game on a very old Mac, and even though I was way too young to get any of the puzzles on my own, I used the strategy guide to explore, because really, that was all I wanted. The world was intriguing and contained a story of familial tension that's practically Greek in tragedy and scope. Rediscovering all this years later, I found to my dismay that I still had to resort to strategy guides to get anywhere, and to my delight that the game and its accompanying mythos was still as engrossing as ever. The player was the central actor, free to explore a world reeking of invention that had much to offer. When I placed my hand on that linking panel for the first time in over a decade, I learned what timeless really meant.

8. Max Payne

"'I was in a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the

most horrible thing I could think of."

Don't get me wrong: I love Max Payne 3. The game is fun as hell, and I've got no problem with the aesthetic changes Rockstar made, because by itself the game works. But the sad part is, it's not there by itself. Ultimately, it's proof that a game like the original Max Payne couldn't be made today by a big AAA studio. Not only was the original Max Payne the first to use bullet time in a way that was totally awesome, but it had a noir aesthetic that managed to be both gritty and self-aware, drawing you in while still managing to recognize just how absurd it was. Great gameplay paired with a stellar atmosphere made this one a real treasure. And that's not even mentioning consti-Payne up there. Yeah. Soak it in.

7. Half Life 2

"The right man in the wrong place can make all the

difference in the world."

I didn't realize until after I'd played it why Half Life 2 is so widely regarded as the benchmark for immersive game design. It's a bunch of little things, really; the game has no cutscenes to speak of, placing you squarely in Gordon Freeman's shoes and never taking you out of them for the entirety of the game. The silent protagonist is done right, enabling you to easily project your personality onto Gordon Freeman. Rather than give you an infodump about the dystopia you're dropped into, you're left to piece together the backstory yourself, not through audio diaries or old intel logs, but by set details that communicate effectively and economically how much of a dump the place is. A masterwork of game design by pretty much any standard.

6. Grand Theft Auto 4

"Life is complicated. I killed people, smuggled people,

sold people. Perhaps here things will be different."

I bought GTA IV expecting exactly what I got from it's predecessors: a playground of vehicular manslaughter and just regular old slaughter, complemented by a colorful cast of characters and plenty of unsubtle satire and innuendo. To be sure, I got those, but the other thing I got totally gobsmacked me (Love that word): A scathing, soul-searching commentary on the fallacy of the American Dream, as seen through the lens of a jaded Serbian mobster who never comes close to the heights of fame and fortune achieved by the other protagonists in the series so far, and set in a city that's just as real and alive as the New York City upon which it's based. When you aren't going absolutely batshit crazy on a motorcycle, you're basically playing a Scorsese film. A triumph of both organic and linear storytelling.

5. Minecraft

"The aim of the game is not to mine, or craft, but to

run from creepers."

At first I didn't want to touch this game. I was worried it would be a time-sink full of complex and obtuse rules that I would have to spend hours learning and then using just to make a shack so I wouldn't die. In the rain. Hundreds of times. Then I saw friends playing it and realized that I was mostly wrong. There is a fairly sharp difficulty curve, but once you overcome it the game is so rewarding that it's easy as hell to lose hours to it and love every second. It combines a bunch of complex systems that let the player shape the world with a procedurally generating landscape that means not even the guy who made the game will be able to tell you what's in that cave or over the next hill. That's a romanticism you just don't get in many other games.

4. Far Cry 2

"Shoot to wound, then execute the wounded. Burn them.

Take them in close combat. Destroy their preconceptions of what a man is,

and you become their personal monster."

If the first 20 or so posts on this blog aren't enough of a clue, I really liked this game. It might not have been the best executed one ever made, but damn if it didn't get me thinking. A modern day Heart of Darkness depicting a country spiraling out of control in a haze of war and destruction, that uses mechanics to emphasize just how messed up the mind can get when it's immersed in bloodshed. More impressive, though, is the game world this all takes place in, a vast African savannah just waiting for you to play Rambo. Hellz yeah.

3. L.A. Noire

"May the cat eat him, and the cat be eaten by the Devil."

Though certainly not perfect, LA Noire is a shining example of a game that was willing to take some creative risks that looked to actually advance the medium beyond graphical innovations. The face-capture technology developed by Team Bondi was used to great effect so that the player felt like something akin to an actual detective trying to suss out the truth in interviews. Despite some design missteps, the game felt so much like the noir films it was based on, from the painstakingly recreated streets of 1947 Los Angeles to the rich characters. Proof that innovation in the video game industry is going to have to start coming from more unconventional directions if the medium is to evolve.

2. Spec Ops: The Line

"I thought I was here to protect this city from the storm.

I was wrong. I'm here to protect it from you."

Everything I said about Far Cry 2 applies here times 100. This is a game that takes all your expectations about a military shooter and uses them to stab you in the gut, then mock you for letting it stab you. And it is AMAZING. As these guys point out, it's the first AAA game to be extremely engaging without being fun. This is exactly what the medium needs. It even got me, and I thought I was too smart to be taken in. I entered the game expecting a Heart of Darkness story that would clumsily call out shooter games, but what I got was such a thorough deconstruction that my mind is still blown, and I still feel like shit for even playing Call of Duty. This is a game that, essentially, curses you for trying to reach its endpoint, an obsession mirrored by the main character, and when it gets there reveals to you a truth that only manages to be so cruel because it's one you already knew but never wanted to confront.

1. Bioshock

"A man chooses. A slave obeys."

Simply put, this is the game that showed me video games can be art. It was the first one I bought for more reasons than "It looks cool and will probably make me feel like a badass". I was sold on the atmosphere and story from the very first trailer, and the critical examination of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism that came along with it was just the icing on the cake. It managed to not only create a compelling world that the player could explore themselves in order to learn more about it, but it even managed to sneak in some meta-commentary about the nature of shooter games as well. An instant classic that will always hold a special place in my heart, right next to the new glands that let me shoot bees out of my arm.