Top 30 Video Games: 2007
Some time ago I compiled a list of my top 30 games of all time. It was about a year ago and for some reason I had call to revisit the list today and noted, with some dismay, that I have altered my list internally since this was published.
In an effort to correct the flaws inherent in the previous list, I’m reprinting it here, updated and revised to include games I’ve played since and games that I’ve reconsidered. Note that my criteria may have changed somewhat but it still remains rooted firmly in games that I’ve played that I feel have delivered the best experiences. Some games I recognize for their base brilliance and others because I just played the heck out of it in spite of some perhaps obvious flaws. For the most part whenever a game has several iterations or minor variants, I chose the one that I feel is best overall which is not meant to diminish the brilliance of the others, but mark that a game can be refined over time and also can in some cases be reduced to less than its original promise. For example, I wouldn’t put the GameCube Resident Evil and the PSOne Resident Evil on the list spearately, I’d merely include the former as being the superior version of the same game.
Finally, it should be noted that there are several games which do not appear because my memory of them is lost in a haze of thousands of games I’ve played and while I recall their general brilliance, I can’t remember enough at my advanced age to know what made them so great. They are on my short list of games to re-play but their omission here is a product of the continual refinement of this list and not of some slight against them. The notable examples are Chrono Trigger and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Full list after the click.
30. Puyo Pop Fever – Often known by other names and with many variants, this game is one of the best multiplayer puzzle games you can find. It’s simple gameplay and addictive (or is that vindicitve?) versus attacks make it among the best non-fighting fighting games for two players and the new Fever mode is a flat-out hoot.
29. Twisted Metal II – Ah, Twisted Metal: The fighting game for people who don’t like memorizing hundreds of obscure moves. Never mind all that boring fisticuffs hooey: How about getting into a heavily armored car and racing around virtual cities, lobbing homing rockets and power missiles at your unsuspecting foes? Semi-destructible environments, crazy deep gameplay and the best split-screen multiplayer in any game makes for a game that has yet to be matched in terms of time consumption. This game has fallen significantly since last year (down 18 spots) not because it stopped being great but because I realized that as much as I played it, the motivations were more social than anything and that didn’t warrant top 10 consideration.
28. Eye of the Beholder – Classic PC role-playing with the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons license. Dr. Mac, Scott and I spent practically an entire summer listening to Metallica’s black album and fighting our way through swarms of giant spiders and kobolds trying to unlock the game’s secrets. The first-person perspective added some much-needed immersion to the D&D licensed games and the old-school dungeon crawl setting was perfect for passing a slow summer afternoon—provided you’re a pasty geek like me. Another long drop, but again due to the fact that the quality of the game deserves mention on this list but perhaps not so close to the top.
27. Metroid Prime – To say I was skeptical about this game that took a beloved side-scrolling action/adventure franchise and dared to make it not just 3D but first person is putting it mildly. But Retro Studios captured the essence of those original games precisely and made first-person platforming viable for the first time that I can recall. The sense of solitude and wonder that permeates the game is uncanny and the little touches like Samus’ face reflecting in her face shield when a bright light flashes or the droplets of moisture that mist up the screen when walking through waterfalls are just tiny examples of a game that was very good to begin with but elevated to brilliance through attention to detail.
26. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance – I admit to a weakness when it comes to turn-based strategy games. Standing tall among them is this gem for the GameBoy Advance: As deep as any disc-based game with a stellar combat system (with just enough randomness built in due to the Judge system) and a near-perfect class system that encourages all those OCD-inspired traits borne by role-playing gamers and strategy hounds. Any criticisms that could be leveled at this game stem from the so-so storyline and relatively bland characterizations.
25. God of War – This game actually got a five-spot bump up the ladder this year, mostly because of its relative strength compared to some other games that were ranked higher more for nostalgia than actual relative quality. Also God of War has influenced so many new or upcoming platform fighters that its true influence is only now being felt which was probably predictable but a testament to this game’s excellence.
24. Planet Puzzle League – A new game to the list, it earns its spot not only because it takes the puzzle game genre into a broader consideration and crafts an experience that is the sum of what came before it, but it adds clever features that take everything fun about puzzle games into consideration and lets you create an experience that works best for you. If you like the screw-your-buddy vs. mode of Puyo Pop, there is something similar here; if you want an actual brain teaser puzzle, you can do that; time attack is here; straight versus mode with no goofy power-ups and so on. It’s all here, in the perfect puzzle game package.
23. Galaga – This is the the game I can’t pass up in an arcade. Perpetually 25 cents to play, it’s like Space Invaders without all those sissy shields. Oh, and the aliens dive-bomb you and don’t just drop weak little slow-moving bombs on you. Plus the Galaga spaceship is roughly 400 times cooler looking than the boxy little turret thing from SI. It’s one of those games that has to be experienced in a dark pizza parlor game room (square footage: 4) with a pocketful of quarters and a determination to nab the high score spot. Initials put in when you achieve the goal? P-O-O, of course.
22. Mario Kart DS – Mario Kart games are staples. The fun, addictive gameplay is better than the most realistic Gran Turismo or Project Gotham Racing and the controls are simple enough for kids but deep enough for more experienced gamers to find challenge as well which makes it a great family game. I chose the DS version only because it is the only one with online multiplayer (wonderful fun) and retro courses from previous iterations. Could easily be replaced by DoubleDash on the GameCube which is just as fun but lacks online multiplayer.
21. Counter-Strike – Who knew a side project based on a second generation game engine could conquer the world of online multiplayer? Well, when you work in such subtle innovations as real penalty for death, team-based modern combat that actually encouraged teamwork, reward for skill and a development model that lent itself perfectly to being adaptable maybe it shouldn’t have been such a shocker.
20. StarCraft – StarCraft’s claim to fame? Merely perfect balance and a truly engrossing single-player campaign. StarCraft also offers a healthy dose of the coolness factor with some quality Science Fiction-y units (including a Human faction that is actually as fun to play as the less mundane alternate choices, Protoss and Zerg) that seem to have drawn some inspiration from Warhammer 40K. Not many games boast opportunities as impishly satisfying as rushing an opponent’s base with dozens of Zerglings followed by a swarm of Hydralisks spitting acid.
19. The Legend of Zelda – Other than the classic sound effect you get for discovering a secret door, the other thing that will always stand out in my mind about the original Zelda game is that surreal TV commercial they put out for it that featured a freakish guy looking paranoid and shouting out the names of some of the game’s enemies. “Octoroks!” But the game itself had so much to offer: From the gold colored cartridge to the battery save feature to the detailed quest that was the first I’d ever heard of that didn’t actually require going through entirely the way the designer intended. People would talk about beating Ganon with just the wooden sword. “Insanity!” I thought, but it was certainly possible. Still as playable 20 years after its release as it was back in the day.
18. Baseball Stars – If only—if only—they made baseball games this simply fun and ceaselessly entertaining as Baseball Stars these days. The semi-role-playing elements of stat boosting and team tweaking was ideally balanced. The lack of any kind of license actually worked in Baseball Stars’ favor. If only the battery save feature hadn’t been quite as cantakerous I might still be playing this game. Oh, and did I mention that the actual baseball game was incredibly fun as well? Modern baseball sims might get closer to the real game, but none touch Baseball Stars with a ten-foot pole in terms of raw enjoyment.
17. Tempest – For all the arcade gimmicks: The trackball, the bike handles, the two-seater racing wheels and the double-stick tank controls, none have had a game that matched their promise as well as Tempest. The game is simple, abstract even. But with a rotating knob and a single fire button there is a world inside these cabinets full of tension and action that many modern games never find.
16. Dead Rising – If you take a recent game like Prey and contrast it with a game from twenty years ago like Faxanadu or Maniac Mansion, you may notice once you move past the obvious graphical fidelity that one thing modern games lack is serious challenge. Take this old-school style challenge level and blend equal parts ultra-gory zombie B-movie, sandbox-style open-ended play, terrific graphics that take full advantage of the hardware and a cheeky, twisted sense of humor and you have a memorable game that may give Capcom’s own Resident Evil series a run for its money as far as zombie games are concerned.
15. Pac-Man: Championship Edition – The classic maze structure of Pac-Man is a pillar on which video games are built. Ms. Pac-Man made some obvious minor refinements and pretty much since then the name of Pac-Man has been stuck in those early 80s years. While Pac-Man’s significance has never been lost, his relevance has been in question for some time… until Pac-Man Championship Edition. CE is the first game to capture the essence of what makes Pac-Man a great game while at the same time offering something new and exciting. It’s a modern refinement of a classic rather than a hackneyed “re-imagining” or some similar nonsense. Pac-Man CE is Pac-Man only better and that means it has challenge, excitement, nostalgia and something precious few other video games can claim: Elegance.
14. Bionic Commando – “What do you mean, ‘I can’t jump’? Look at all those platforms! How else am I supposed to get up there!?” This is the brilliance of Bionic Commando: With nothing more than a funky physics scheme that made a grappling hook seem like an appropriate replacement for the genre-standard jump button, Capcom created a game that stood head and shoulders above it’s copy-cat relatives (Strider, anyone? Anyone?). A long, challenging quest with the first seeds of player choice, varied gameplay, a great item system and the second-most memorable boss fight (”Dude! It’s Hitler! And his face just exploded! Sick, dude!”) ever: It’s a certified classic.
13. Metal Gear Solid – I suspect that the old Metal Gear games from the 8-bit era were ahead of their time. They encouraged sneaking past enemies rather than killing everyone in sight (”Whaa?”) and offered so many power ups and weapon choices that most people just kind of scratched their heads when they tried to play the game. But the Playstation allowed the game to work in a way that made sense for what the Metal Gear series was trying to accomplish. The stealth-based gameplay was new and, surprisingly, exciting. But what made MGS so great was the subtle touches: Snake’s laser scope filtering through the fog; footprints left in the snow that alerted guards to your presence; the Sniper Wolf battle; the frequency key on “the back of the CD case” and, of course, the Psycho Mantis fight. As I played it I kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”
12. Planescape: Torment – The crazed, surreal role-playing game that everyone harkens as among the best of the isometric D&D licensed family is one I picked up on a lark: It was like $10 at Fry’s and had an interesting cover. Plus it said Dungeons and Dragons on the cover so I figured, “Why not?” But this isn’t some Thief/Mage/Fighter/Cleric dungeon romp: This is an intricate and dark tale of an immortal main character with no memory and a cast of increasingly bizarre traveling companions (including a floating skull and a burning corpse) trying to figure out nothing more than what the heck is going on. If not for the sometimes frustrating combat, it would be a role-playing masterpiece.
11. BioShock – For the first time since Half-Life, someone has created a game that really understands how to use video games to tell a story. It’s not a game that forgets what it is as an attempt to be some grand experiment in interactive narration, because it remains a delightful shooter at its core. But never mind the power-ups: Look at the architecture! Observe the cleverness of the setting and experience the tension crafted so deliberately out of the environment, out of the sublimely woven backstory, out of the position it places the payer within it. It is a game that asks hard questions but doesn’t answer them itself, it forces the player to answer. And why not? BioShock is only Half-Life’s lesser because it treads the ground broken by Valve’s earlier work and doesn’t quite deliver the final moments that a game of this scale and depth demands, but as you stand in a virtual world and gaze in wonder at your surroundings, feeling things less commonly felt while playing games than fear or excitement—things like remorse, awe and sorrow—you may forget for a time that Black Mesa ever existed.
10. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – Occasionally a person will miss a game that is worthy of their attention. With my memories of Castlevania III standing firm as the pinnacle of the series, I somehow skipped Konami’s PlayStation gem. Everything that made Castlevania III a great game is here, but then you realize that is merely the thinnest of films atop a richer and more complete experience. SotN set the stage for every good Castlevania game to follow (mostly on Nintendo’s handheld systems) and even those excellent titles can’t quite recapture the precision with which this game is executed.
9. Final Fantasy VI – If you thought FFVII was epic, you missed out on FFVI/FFIII. I mean, what other game has an apocalyptic, literally world-altering event happen halfway through the game? This is the fantasy role-playing game that made people realize what was possible on consoles. The only bad thing about this game is the fact that its epic story was so popular that later Final Fantasy games (and actually later console RPGs in general) began to think that story could trump gameplay and we ended up with stuff like Final Fantasy VIII and X. Still, you can’t hold that against FFVI which did everything that it possibly could just right and did so without the aid of fancy 3D graphics or even non-game engine cut scenes. The impact of this game can be summarized with Kefka’s mocking, braying laughter that still reverberates in the skulls of my peers.
8. Nethack – Gamers like to mutter amongst themselves that graphics don’t really matter. We don’t play games to look at pretty pictures. We like the pretty pictures, sure, but that’s not why we play. Should we ever require proof of this, direct your inquisitors to Nethack. It’s the rare video game that requires imagination; it’s the curious crossroad between computer role-playing game and pen-and-paper RPG. Nethack can inspire fear with an ASCII character and triumph with a punctuation mark. There is so much to do and so many options for play in this game that it sometime even outpaces the most system-taxing titles of our current generation in terms of player choice and cohesive, permissive environment. I think if you compare Nethack to Oblivion, you may not find the multi-gigabyte monstrosity that is Elder Scrolls IV holds up in terms of available actions and believable interdependence between the world’s inhabitants. It seems impossible, but then again, so does Nethack.
7. Super Mario Bros. 3 – There was a time when all the cell phone stores you see anywhere that could even be remotely referred to as a shopping center weren’t peddling cell phones. The ubiquitous storefront venture of the late eighties was the Mom and Pop video rental store. This was before the big corporate chains crushed everyone out of business, and they were everywhere. In the little shopping center down the street from our house when I was kid there was one of these stores and they were renting something else: Nintendo carts. Someone who worked there must have either been a gamer or was just really ahead of their time because they not only carried video games for rent before most other people were even considering such a wacky notion but they also had a handful of imported titles from Japan. Among them was this insanely anticipated forthcoming title named Super Mario Bros. 3. Following up the fun but unusual SMB2 (which was actually a Mario-ized facelift of an unrelated Japanese game), SMB3 was hyped everywhere, including getting top billing in a feature film so having a chance to play it (albeit the text was in Japanese) ahead of its release was spectacular. The game was everything players wanted back then: Reminicent of the original console-bundled classic, offering plenty of new challenges, loads of secrets to find and perfectly tuned platforming gameplay. I rushed out and bought the game when it was finally released in the US and I’ve played through it probably ten times including several times after getting the facelift for Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES. It’s a timeless classic and deserves all the praise it gets.
6. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem – Good games are memorable games. Ones that stay with you… like Eternal Darkness. The game’s sanity effects that show blood running down walls, distorted perspectives, simulated program glitches and a whole assortment of freaky occurrences that suggest the game is playing you as much as you are playing it results in a game that sticks in your mind long after the credits have rolled. Multiple endings, a deep and engaging story inspired by Lovecraft’s mythos and strong gameplay round out the checklist of one of the best “adult” titles on the GameCube.
5. Resident Evil 4 – For all the things that Resident Evil did for gaming, it always had a little something holding it back. Whether it was the control scheme (pretty bad for most of them), the unlikely puzzles (RE:CV), terrible voice acting (I’m looking at you, Resident Evil 1), pointless story (ahem RE3) or unconvincing characters (RE0), it was usually very much worth the playthrough, but never a spectacular experience. RE4 fixed all that and added a healthy dose of extra gore, a strong story, engaging (and involving!) cutscenes, phenomenal graphics, sharp puzzles that never got too puzzle-y and plenty of extras to make it not just a great play but a great buy.
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Like a lot of people, I was disappointed by the recent Star Wars prequels. I didn’t hate them, but they left me wondering, “Was my delight in the world of Star Wars merely a product of my young memory applying a sense of wonder that eventually became nothing more than simple nostalgia?” Playing through KotOR is direct evidience that there actually was something to Star Wars to begin with: It wasn’t just nostalgia. That Lucas lost track of what made Star Wars good to begin with is a topic for another time but fortunately the team at BioWare tapped into that sense of awe with a prequel to the prequels which draws the player into the world of Star Wars like no other Star Wars licensed property since Timothy Zahn’s novelized adaptations of what would have been episodes VII, VIII and IX. KotOR gets Star Wars perfect, blending enough new with the familiar and incorporating a wonderfully engaging story into a huge experience. There is so much here to praise: The Light/Dark paths through the game that make it one of the few role-playing video games that is actually re-playable; PC-style dialogue trees and detailed character interaction—on a console!; a smooth, good-looking combat system based on d20; really stellar character progression including Jedi powers that are introduced at just the right moment. I could go on. The bottom line is that if you like role-playing games or if you like Star Wars or if you like games that make good purchases (value-wise) and you haven’t played this game, seek it out immediately, I implore you.
3. Super Metroid – Everything that was good about the original NES Metroid remained in the Super Nintendo update. In fact, if they had only bothered to remake the original game with the new 16-bit graphics, plenty of fans (probably myself included) would have been perfectly content. Instead they expanded the game, added new power-ups, introduced a more complete storyline and laid out the game in such a way that 2D platforming/adventure reached its pinnacle early. This game stands testament to how to do a sequel right (stick with what worked the first time, know when to tweak or refine and give ‘em more of what they want) and even without the pressure attached from two previous, popular 8-bit adventures (Metroid II came out for the original black and white GameBoy) Super Metroid would have been a brilliant game.
2. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Bethesda’s epic, soaring role-playing game has but one defining characteristic that vaults it to the second best game I’ve ever played: It lives up to its own genre. Most computer role-playing games pay only very passing resemblances to real role-playing games. In many cases the differences between a computer role-playing game and any other kind of role-playing game are more in pace and exposition than anything else. For the experience they provide, most video games are as much RPGs as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest and even then only in that you assume a role to play. Role-playing staples like Hit Points or fantasy settings are not definitions of the genre, merely conventions. What Oblivion does is allow you to truly pick a kind of character to be and execute, as you wish, that person’s story. Are you an elvish Alchemist? A cruel Orc murderer? A noble thief? Then carry yourself appropriately here, and so as you would if you existed in this realm, as this person. Accept only those tasks which suit you, undertake only the quests that you would if this persona were truly yours. You may change and you may bend to the path the game has in mind, but as an good GM will tell you, you follow the player’s lead.
1. Half-Life – Ever since games started, timidly at first, trying to tell stories along with providing opportunities for play they have struggled with how to do this effectively. If you stop the game and show the story you interrupt the real reason for turning it on in the first place: Essentially you inject a bit of movie into the game. For most designers this was an acceptable compromise. Reward the players with a bit of a break as we throw some exposition at them between boss battles (or whatever). This wasn’t much of a problem with older games which were always third person and whose graphics were generally anything but lifelike. Then came first person games with Wolfenstein (and others) putting players into the protagonist’s shoes. 3D graphics from Quake and a steadily improving market for video accelerator cards started making things look semi-realistic and this presented a problem for the story-in-game people: Players live through the action in this character’s shoes, do we pull them out of that state to show our movies? Half-Life solved the problem like no game before or, really, since: Don’t pull the player out of the character’s shoes. Somehow the writers of Half-Life managed to present a silent protagonist that didn’t strain the suspension of disbelief and using scripted events and a few load-time tricks they delivered the most immersive, emotional and enjoyable experience of any game I’ve ever played. I was literally frightened at times while playing this game… wandering through dark corridors with nothing but a flashlight to guide my way made my palms sweat. Each time I fell into any water my phobia welled up, rationalized by the inevitable Ichthyosaur attack. The conspiratorial tone led by the G-Man’s creepy presence was timed perfectly with the X-Files craze and the attention to detail was such that even later expansions like Blue Shift and Opposing Force fit perfectly within the game’s story and carefully crafted world. When the game was over there was always Counter-Strike which made this game the only real must-purchase PC game for a period of almost ten years. Half-Life stands alone as a game that does what so many others attempt to do but fail and in doing so didn’t forget that above all else it was still supposed to be fun to play.