The series' first reach beyond the confines of one city, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ' fictional state of San Andreas featured numerous terrains and multiple cities — a move Rockstar would repeat a few games later. Telling a surprisingly emotional story about gang life and the difficulties of escaping it, San Andreas was a watershed moment in one of gaming's best series.
GoldenEye revolutionized first-person shooters by taking them off the internet and putting them on consoles. The smooth gameplay — and great local multiplayer — established a new home for shooters.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 didn't change much from the original Galaxy ; it just perfected everything that worked in its predecessor.
The game continuing the series' tradition of pushing boundaries and expectations. NHL '94 was an early example of a game displaying a realistic recreation of the sports world.
For hockey fans, it still stands out as one of the best representations of the sport in games — with a nice bonus of having accurate team-specific organ songs. In Elite Beat Agents, you're out to help those in need — through the power of dance.
One of Nintendo's bizarre rhythm games, Elite Beat Agents charming sense of humor, surprisingly awesome soundtrack and addictive gameplay made gave it a true sense of character. Keeping a lot of what made people fall in love with the series in the first place, while opening things up for those who'd never tried the game before, Civilization 5 dominated the real-time strategy genre.
SimCity let players build better cities. It expanded on the city building genre by adding more meaningful institutions, like libraries, schools, museums and even prisons. Massive in every conceivable way — from the world to the script, lore, items, weapons and side quests — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt distanced itself from other open-world games with its extreme attention to detail. Dance Dance Revolution is a workout.
Used in schools, for exercise and anywhere someone wants to make video game players look dumb, DDR 's revolutionary active playstyle has helped the series stand the test of time. While rhythm games have a few forebears to their credit, none saw the same ubiquity and success as Dance Dance Revolution. Players all around the world fell in love with the game because of its catchy soundtracks and its unique mix of showmanship and technical performance.
As one of the most compelling early examples of what the genre could do, DDR paved the way for a host of equally entertaining and peripheral-specific rhythm games. The genre has a lot to owe to its arrow stomping, booty shaking and crowd pleasing forefather. Half-Life was a bleak story about science gone wrong. Unlike a lot of games at the time of its release, Half-Life told its story completely in-game, free of cutscenes. This, mixed with the great world design, and the fact Freeman was voiceless, allowed players to slip into Half-Life 's world, personally engaging with the story more than in other games.
Focusing less on the actual playing of the sport, Football Manager put players in charge of a soccer club, giving them control of all the crucial choices a team faces over a season. Football Manager innovated the amount of depth a game can have, allowing true soccer fans to experience what it's like to work behind the scenes for their favorite club. Mass Effect 2 marked the pinnacle of the series' agency and consequences.
Essentially putting you on a suicide mission, the series built upon its deep relationships by placing your favorite characters' lives in your hands. This gave decisions true weight. BioWare is known for crafted narratives and diverse, intriguing characters. Its Mass Effect series sets these elements against a beautiful sci-fi backdrop filled with exotic alien species, each with their own interplanetary drama.
The franchise reaches near perfection in its second installment, Mass Effect 2. The bonds you form with your many crewmates throughout the game will have you replaying the game to make sure you save every, last, one.
Mass Effect 2 is a master class in action-adventure role playing with a hero designed to appeal to, and inspire, a wide variety of gamers — making it one of the greatest video games of all time. Though not as popular as its sequel, the Valve-developed Dota 2, Dota quickly became a multimillion-dollar asset to the esports industry. As it existed in the Warcraft 3 custom-games community, Defense of the Ancients was a gathering.
Very few games have built identity, history and genre like Dota , and fewer have released "remastered" editions while maintaining such. Players embrace Dota 2 's semi-regular updates, endless depth and free-to-play draw, and it's a hit on Twitch and in the greater esports world. Competitors have copied it and even paralleled its success, but Dota has thrived regardless, and its hardcore, tight-knit community may support it evermore.
Shadow of the Colossus was more about the journey than the destination. Players spent a lot of time on horseback searching for 16 colossi — and sometimes even longer trying to defeat them. A game as much about subtlety as it was grand scale, Shadow of the Colossus is an example of games as high art. Striving for a level of realism still pretty rare in games, the game combined classic adventure mechanics with an approach that would later be known as a survival sim. Mother 3 took a lot of what made its predecessors so special and threw it out the window.
Emphasizing familial pressures, Mother 3 had a level of seriousness other games of its time didn't, quickly making it one of the most beloved games of all time, even though it was never released officially in North America. Super Mario Kart is a great racing game.
But it's a Nintendo racing game, and that distinction matters. A mix of Nintendo's trademark zaniness and a highly-competitive racer, Super Mario Kart became a staple of couch co-op games, proving who was the best behind the wheel with a well-placed banana peel. Every wannabe rockstar finally had an audience in Guitar Hero. As one of the most popular rhythm games, Guitar Hero launched a renaissance of music-based games.
Though the genre fell off over time, the first Guitar Hero was a phenomenon. The Sims took decades of simulation game history and applied it to something everyone could understand: the human life. Free of all the complicated, obtuse angles of other simulators , The Sims ' accessibility, diverse character creation and variety of daily activities made it one of the most successful games in the genre. Halo made Xbox. Without it, it's hard to say what Microsoft's game division would look like today.
And that's thanks to the game's mix of scale, story and competition. The controls worked amazingly well on a console pad, too. Wii Sports was the rare game that found its way in the hands players who normally wouldn't think of touching a game. Fusing easy-to-understand, easy-to-play sports minigames with Wii's accessible hardware and user interface, Wii Sports made many in the industry rethink what games needed to be. Evolving the design set forth by Demon's Souls, Dark Souls continued the series' legacy of sadistic gameplay and accomplishment of learning.
Dark Souls was a game always pushing back. You played by its rules, yet those rules were always fair. The first time I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , it permanently changed my impression of what a video game can be, and what the medium can accomplish. Ocarina of Time made the transition from 2D to 3D look like the easiest thing in the world. Everything you'd come to expect from a Zelda game was there, yet a host of new mechanics elevated the gameplay.
Featuring the groundbreaking target-lock system and songs needing to be learned, Ocarina of Time stood out. Diablo 2 was one of the fastest-selling PC games — which makes sense. Following the immensely popular Diablo, this sequel didn't change too much. With more addictive hacking and slashing, and more loot and cows, Diablo 2 became one of Blizzard's highest achievements by being the only thing it needed to be: more. Grand Theft Auto 5 is the game that just keeps on giving.
Providing players an entire state to play in, the game's open world was light years beyond anything seen before in terms of world detail, depth and sheer number of things to do. Resident Evil 4 was a new perspective on an old genre. A change-up on the Resident Evil formula, RE4 introduced more action to the long-running survival horror series, and placed the camera over protagonist Leon Kennedy's shoulder — which fixed the series' legacy control issues.
Nintendo's first major success in North America and the first game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, Donkey Kong broke ground as one of the earliest examples of what a platformer could be — and it introduced Mario. W orld let Mario find new items, it changed how he jumped and traversed levels and it introduced Yoshi. Utilizing the expanded size of the Super Nintendo, World was a much bigger game than earlier Marios, shipping with 96 total worlds.
Persona 4 's greatest achievement may just have been getting people to pay attention. When released, Persona 4 found large fanfare in the west — and its deep story, meaningful social links and addictive procedural dungeon crawling established the series as one of the best in games.
The vibrant graphics, spectacular soundtrack and finely-tuned JRPG combat are more than enough reason to adore Persona 4 , but the game's authenticity is what allows it to touch players' hearts. The literal inner demons its teenage heroes must face are immediately recognizable, as the cast faces fears about their responsibilities to their families, their petty jealousies, their questions about their sexuality and who they want to become as adults.
Persona 4 's explorations of friendship aren't throwaway plot devices used to set up jokes or provide the conflict needed to advance the story; they're sincere invitations to the player to challenge their own inner demons and see what persona emerges. One of the first interactive fiction games, Zork changed gaming when the game actually spoke back to the player in an intelligent way. Utilising a "text parser," Zork was able to understand complex commands, recognizing some conjunctions and prepositions, which added a layer of depth and complexity to the world.
He would show me the printouts of what he was doing in the game, and I would give him suggestions about how to solve some problem like opening a jeweled egg they found. I still remember his excitement as he told me how he and his friends discovered how to move the carpet in the white house, open the trap door and descend down into the great underground empire.
I was hooked on video games from that moment, even though I was only playing them vicariously by reading a printout and hearing my brother talk about what he was doing.
Gone Home scoffed at what a game "is. Spelunky is a 2D platformer you'll probably never master — or even beat. Its procedural nature ensures no two playthroughs are the same, and it's so masterfully designed, so full of mysteries and so addicting, that many players find themselves constantly playing through each new iteration as if it was a new game.
If Spelunky is a healthy body, then the player is its virus. Without human interference, the cutesy caverns and jungles operate without incident. A shop clerk waits to make a sale, a school of fish swim their daily laps, a bat quietly sleeps. Only when the player enters the fray does it become clear that every creature, person and object is a safeguard designed to impede their progress to the treasure at its core.
At first, the tools for survival — a whip, some rope, a bag full of bombs — feel lethally unpredictable. An explosion knocks a rock into your head. You dodge a booby-trap arrow, only for it to catch you on the ricochet.
But slowly, you learn to turn the body against itself. You send a peaceful shopkeeper on a violent rampage or convert a spike pit into a burial ground for a pack of thieving monkeys.
Designer Derek Yu assumes an intellectual and emotional patience from his players. The magic of his design is that everything good can just as well kill you, and everything bad can become the one thing that keeps you alive. Given a more realistic setting than most games in the genre, EarthBound was developed to be enjoyed by people who don't play JRPGs — or even games in general.
Its goofy tone, cultural satire and genuine heart made it a standout. When Japanese RPGs were obsessed with fantastical settings, Earth B ound stuck out as an outlier for its cartoony, modern setting.
Why have a Phoenix Down when you could power up with something as relatable as a pizza instead? Ness was just a normal kid, living in a small-town parody of American culture. But the game held surprises at every turn, thanks to its sharp, surprising, hopeful writing that made us care about the bond its four heroes shared, not to mention one of the most unforgettable soundtracks ever. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind took the series' history of open-ended gameplay and expanded upon it greatly.
Putting less emphasis on plot, Morrowind made its titular world the star. And Morrowind 's world was a treat to get lost in — especially without waypoints constantly looming overhead. This game, in its sheer scale and fully realised ambition, manages to impress 15 years later. A vast island, with nooks and crannies aplenty waiting to be explored, where going off the beaten track was not only encouraged but required.
This was an RPG par excellence, explorable at every level, and its perfect balance of good graphics for its day with a truly open world environment has rarely, if ever, been bested. Journey was a game about companionship and the freedom of death. Players weren't told who they were playing with, and only had the option to help each other, forcing players to trust one another. This competition-free approach to multiplayer combined with the game's beautiful allegory for life made Journey an instant classic.
With its over-the-top sometimes-on-fire gameplay, it ushered in new wave of arcade sports games emphasizing craziness over realism.
But Jam 's precise gameplay made it a standout over imitators. Metal Gear Solid gets credit for popularizing the stealth genre.
Bringing the Metal Gear series into 3D, the game let players sneak around real environments, hiding from guards and hiding bodies. Using elaborate cutscenes and voice acting, Metal Gear Solid 's cinematic presentation made its deep story of top-secret infiltration rival Hollywood blockbusters. Nearly 20 years after playing Metal Gear Solid , I can still remember what my first time was like. It was my introduction to stealth.
It hadn't even occurred to me that not killing enemies could be a fun alternative. Even today, every time I see a security camera in the real world, my instinct is to remember it, just in case I need to sneak past later. And because the game's story was designed and written for adults, it taught me that games had grown up just like me.
It set the stage for my next two decades of gaming. Revolving around the construction and management of a Dwarf colony, Dwarf Fortress is a game you can't win — you simply play until you're done or defeated. The open-ended gameplay and unique use of text-based visuals made the game an early example of an indie game becoming successful solely based on its unique gameplay and style.
Rogue created an entirely new genre. Elements of this dungeon-crawler, like randomly generated dungeons, permadeath and collectible weapons and items, gave birth to a wave of games called "roguelikes. FIFA 12 took the long-running sports series and turned it into something beautiful. The host of new features made it a faithful recreation of soccer, allowing players to not only play the sport, but manage their teams down to the sheer minutiae.
Most players just call it FIFA. Why is FIFA great? To this day, Super Mario Bros. Its success isn't limited to just genre, though. The game also helped pull the video game industry out of the calamitous s crash. A return to the series' original top-down perspective, A Link to the Past 's Hyrule was massive — especially for the time — featuring numerous dungeons and two overworlds. It was " the purest representation of the time-honored Zelda formula ," according to GameSpot. Giving players control over nearly endless mechanics and outcomes, Civilization 2 played a part in making its games among some of the finest-crafted experiences the industry ever had the fortune to play.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night carried the legacy of 2D games like Super Metroid into the bit era — when sprites had fallen out of fashion.
And it also happened to have one of the most polished, explorable worlds ever seen in a game. What Portal lacked in length it more than made up for in unique, experimental gameplay based. Portal's puzzles allowed players to experiment with the best — and coolest — ways to progress with their Companion Cubes. Reinventing how running, jumping and action worked in three dimensions, Mario 64 was one of the first games to explore how 3D spaces could replicate what players loved in 2D.
It also experimented with freedom of movement and open levels that later became staples of the genre. Inspired by creator Will Wright's interest in urban planning, SimCity established the city-building genre. Giving players the option to mark areas as commercial or residential, build transportation systems, adjust tax rates and more, SimCity revolutionized the simulation genre with its amount of content and depth.
Praised for its revolutionary AI, gameplay and realistic physics, Half-Life 2 is the standard to which many first-person shooters are still compared — though few have managed to make the same impact. Blizzard's decision to add three races to StarCraft revolutionized strategy games, opening up new tactics and playstyles, and ultimately solving a problem many found with strategy games.
StarCraft introduced the idea of diversity to strategy games, paving the way for others to experiment with different playstyles. Grand Theft Auto 3 changed the world. The dawn of the modern Grand Theft Auto game, it showed how open worlds could work, with sandbox gameplay allowing players to do nearly anything they wanted. Its violence, too, intrigued and scared the wider world, bringing levels of media attention unseen before in games.
Darker than earlier Final Fantasy games, FF6 tackled tough issues like infidelity, suicide and genocide. Giving players, for the first time, access to 14 playable characters, each with their own levels of emotional attachment, Final Fantasy 6 was a bleak, memorable, standout in a series known for great experiences.
Final Fantasy 6 isn't just a great game — it's one of the rare examples of a moment of true elevation for the medium as a whole. Stealthily stalking enemies and fist-fighting in Arkham Asylum is a total joy, as is traversing its claustrophobic bounds while utilising Batman's arsenal of handy gadgets. Narrative-wise, Rocksteady was able to capture the bleak and twisted side of its protagonist and antagonists alike with aplomb, and the asylum itself is often as scary as the villains who lurk within its shadowy halls.
An amnesiac witch who uses her hair as a weapon against angels and demons is definitely up there as far as game pitches go, but somehow the Bayonetta series just makes it work. The spooky shapeshifter sequel saw our hero literally going to hell to save her friend Jeanne and stayed true to its predecessor's mix of intense action and spectacular style.
Originally released for the Wii U, the game won over a whole new generation of Nintendo fans with a Nintendo Switch release in Bayonetta 2 struck a fine balance between accessibility and depth, and it remains a masterclass in cinematic combat design to this day.
FromSoftware's first pivot away from its Souls series, Bloodborne gave us yet more action-RPG fare, this time with a Lovecraftian twist. While adopting faster combat mechanics to great effect, the result is horrifyingly brilliant and exceedingly punishing, as per the devs' reputation, set within a decaying world where blood itself is the setting of Yharnam's main currency. While its predecessors hardly shy from challenge, Bloodborne enforces a new level of vulnerability on its players by removing shields entirely, placing a new onus on parry mechanics, and pitting them against some of the most terrifying and twisted bosses to grace the face of video games.
After its debut venture Limbo — a gorgeous monochromatic puzzle game — was received well by players and critics alike in , Playdead's follow-up, Inside, arrived six years later with a level of expectation not normally levied at independent studios.
But, full credit to the developer, Inside more than delivers as a smart, dark, emotive, and intriguing puzzler, whose set-pieces often baffle, before evoking the most satisfying, punch-the-air eureka moments upon successful completion.
Upon release, Limbo was compared with film noir, and with Inside having been part-funded by the Danish Film Institute, the latter's roots in cinema also shine throughout. Puzzle games have come on leaps and bounds in the last decade, but few leave such a lasting impression as Inside.
Shadow of the Colossus is one of those rare games that transcends the usual confines of the medium, so much so that it should probably be on show in museums as a masterpiece. The story seems simple enough, a young hero trying to save a damsel in distress by fighting gigantic monsters, but everything from the visual style to the emotional beats of the story ultimately come together to leave scars on your soul.
Each colossus is a level in itself, a huge structure that must be climbed and conquered, and the game resists the temptation to overload its hero with tools, giving you just a sword, bow, and loyal companionship of Agro the horse to succeed. You can still see the game's influence in titles released today, anytime you have to scale a huge enemy like they're a jungle gym — that's the Colossus effect.
Want to see a fight? Trap 30 Zelda fans in a room and ask them to decide what the best of the lot is. While a 3D Zelda game ultimately made it higher up in these rankings, A Link to the Past deserves its place in the hall of fame too. The adventure's shift between the Dark World and Light World is a transformative mechanic that Zelda games have returned to again with good reason, while difficulty was fine-tuned to push you with every boss — encouraging you to explore and understand Link's powers and equipment without screaming a hint into your pointy ears every five minutes.
Everyone loves A Link to the Past, from nostalgic Nintendo babies to speedrunners, and if you don't, you should probably go back and play it again. It is, after all, the best of the 2D Zelda games. Dishonored 2 is everything a sequel should be. Arkane smartly reunites players with the original game's protagonist, Corvo Attano, while expanding the scope of play with a second playable character in Emily Kaldwin. Everything Dishonored did well, Dishonored 2 just does it better — its intricate world-building, multi-tier mission structure, inventive skill combinations, and array of intelligent puzzles.
Throughout, there's a real sense that the city of Karnaca is a living, breathing beast which exists independently of the player's actions — be that in full stealth mode without killing a single enemy, or high chaos while offing as many foes as possible. Clockwork Mansion is not only one of the best levels in the Dishonored series, but one of the most innovative levels in the history of video games.
Dead Space 2 is the perfect example of a sequel done right. Because everything that the original game did well in — it was fast, frantic, sometimes disgusting and always super-violent — Dead Space 2 dialed up several notches a few years later. It's been 10 years since the arrival of Visceral Games' second entry to the series, and yet few games have captured the claustrophobia of horror with such skill, timing, and finesse since.
Dead Space 2 and its predecessor wear their influences on their blood-soaked sleeves, not least those derived from Resident Evil 4, but do so in all the right ways. It's a mark of deference. Here's what's come before; and here's where we're taking you now. Dead Space 2 is the pinnacle of action horror, and will undoubtedly hold its own among the highest echelons of the genre in another 10 years from now.
There's something so undeniably comforting about Stardew Valley. ConcernedApe may have set out to put their own distinct stamp on the farming sim formula of series Harvest Moon, but the dev ended up changing it forever. Delivering a cosy, pixelated world, you take on a fulfilling role as an office-worked turned farmer who inherits their grandfather's land.
At a surface level the premise might sound simple, but as an open-ended sim with so much to discover and do, it's anything but. The residents of Pelican, though, are at the heart of what makes Stardew Valley so special. Each neighbouring character has their own distinct personality, and as you develop relationships — be it friendships or romantic bonds — you get to learn their relatable backstories.
With scores of updates since it initially launched, Stardew Valley continues to shine as one of the best examples of its genre. Super Metroid was a true achievement when it arrived in and it's still influencing the games that you're playing today. The action stuck to its side-scrolling, exploration-based roots, but evolved in some notable ways. Samus gained the ability to shoot in all directions and our sense of control over the adventure was further improved by the addition of the automap and inventory screen.
With state-of-the-art visual and audio design, its creepy atmosphere, and expanded mechanics that encouraged exploration, Nintendo delivered a silent crawl through a hostile alien world that the industry has never quite gotten over. Almost two decades later, and no other entry in the series has ever quite lived up to its brilliance.
This was the moment when Drake cemented himself as the most charming of action heroes. Pairing him up with firecracker Chloe Frazer added a new frisson to the treasure hunter's usual banter, and she matched him at every quip. The sequel was also when it felt like Naughty Dog nailed the cinematic style that has become its trademark , with massive set pieces and smaller moments of emotional punches working together seamlessly.
Whether you were shooting off guns and one-liners, scaling the walls of a ruined temple, or fleeing from the monstrous guardians of the fabled city of Shambhala, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves looked incredible and was one of those rare occasions where the execution was just as impressive as the image.
A whole generation of players were introduced to the RPG through Cloud and his iconic Buster sword, and all these years later, it's impact is still very much being talked about today — thanks in part to the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Its impressive sense of world-building, classic turn-based combat formula, and in-depth story work together to create one very engrossing JRPG.
With a cast of characters that have cemented their way into popular culture, Square Enix delivered an experience that's legacy will live on for a long time to come. Red Dead Redemption 2 is as epic as video games come. Set several years before the events of its series forerunner, Red Dead Redemption 2 takes place in a gorgeously-rendered, massive interpretation of the American midwest at the turn of the 20th century, and follows the trials and tribulations of outlaw and gang member Arthur Morgan.
With that, expect countless heists, shootouts, hunting, horse riding, and bounties as you strive to keep the American Frontier era alive. Much like its sister series Grand Theft Auto, falling foul of the law is governed by a tiered wanted system which you'll inevitably max-out more than a few times. Simply the best western game there is, and one of the best sandbox games ever made. There are few sequels that are quite as excellent and beloved as Mass Effect 2.
BioWare killed off Shepard in the opening minutes of the iconic protagonist's return and gave the series a rebirth in a figurative and literal sense from that moment on.
Pitted against impossible odds in a high stakes overarching suicide mission, each crew member fighting alongside you aboard the Normandy brings something to the table, and it's all too easy to form bonds thanks to their unique personalities.
With refined combat, stellar character-driven storytelling, and choices that carry life and death consequences for the characters around you, Mass Effect 2 succeeded at taking the series to new starry heights in a way that few sequels do, and it's arguably become the quintessential space-faring RPG.
After Mariah Carey, it's hard to imagine a more impressive comeback than the one Kratos was able to pull off in the reimagining of God of War. Gone was the frat boy tomfoolery of the original series, instead, we got an unbelievably rich tapestry of emotion, Norse legend, and sharp bladed satisfaction. This new Kratos was just as deadly and as physically able to carve a path through the world and its warriors as before, but now we actually cared about why he was doing it, and become utterly entangled in his relationship with his son Atreus.
Tears and blood were shed, in no small part thanks to the incredible performances given to the lead roles by Christoper Judge and Sunny Suljic. In , Resident Evil 4's tweaks to the familiar survival horror formula seemed subtle. But, some 16 years later, the impact it's had on horror games, and video games across the board, cannot be understated. From its fast and aggressive hordes of infected villages, to its over-the-shoulder camera perspective, so many games, spanning so many different genres, have drawn inspiration from Resident Evil 4's makeup, which is why it's considered one of the best games of all time today.
By switching to a first-person perspective in its most recent outings, Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village, Capcom's enduring survival horror series has been revitalised — but there's a strong argument to be made that Resident Evil 4 is Resident Evil at its very best.
There are few experiences quite as beautiful or profoundly atmospheric as Journey. Taking on the role of an anonymous traveler who ventures through a mysterious world, the movement of Thatgamecompany's adventure pulls you into a relaxing rhythm as you glide across sandy peaks and soar through ancient ruins. Accompanied by a gorgeous musical score, there's a deep allegory at the heart of Journey that succeeds at capturing various emotions.
Along the way, you can even be joined by another nameless player in what is one of the most unique online co-op encounters you can have.
As thoughtful as it is moving, with a wonderfully stylized world that entirely draws you in, Journey really is a rarity among games that everyone should experience. Drawing on the rich, fantasy novels of Andrzej Sapkowski, the game put us in the shoes of the surly monster mercenary and then set us free in a land of epic quests, complicated characters, and moral ambiguities. Even the smallest side quest could suddenly deliver an emotional epiphany, like the one with a suicidal werewolf or the tale of the ghost of a woman who was eaten alive by plagued rats.
The main quest packs just as much emotional punch with a family of misfits that — even if Wild Hunt is your first ever Witcher game — feels familiar and important as you fight through the struggles of the story together. There are many heroes in gaming, but there is only one Geralt of Rivia. Would you kindly agree that few games challenged us in both skill and moral decision-making than BioShock did in ?
Because not only does Irrational Games' spiritual successor to the wonderful System Shock 2 have us exploring the crumbling underwater world of Rapture, taking on its unhinged and hostile inhabitants, and injecting ourselves with copious amounts of DNA-altering drugs; it also forces us to choose whether or not we want to harvest the souls of innocent children.
That might sound like a no-brainer, but if you're to have any sort of chance of overcoming the Little Sisters' hulking, near-impenetrable Big Daddy minders, the power these little 'uns yield once consumed could come in handy. First-person shooters don't come much more thought-provoking than BioShock, and few have come as close since. The expansive open-world of Skyrim offered up a sprawling adventure with an impressive level of freedom to shape your journey as the Dragonborn.
With rich main story quests and an abundance of side quests that have just as much depth and intrigue, the fifth instalment in the franchise draws you into its fantasy setting and refuses to let go. You're really encouraged to play your way and decide how you want to spend your time, with a variety of different weapons, powers, and skills on offer.
Building on the legacy of the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim's vast sense of scale in every sense has continued to impact games in the RPG genre that followed. It's no wonder players keep returning time again across several platform generations and re-releases. Pokemon Go got us out of our seats and into the streets. Do you remember what the atmosphere around augmented reality technology was like in ? At best, it was wilfully dismissive, and at worst it was actively hostile.
But then Pokemon Go changed all of that and has since given over million would-be Pokemon trainers the opportunity to live out their dream of becoming the very best, like no one ever was. Developer Niantic captured the imagination of the general public and became a genuine cultural phenomenon, using a mobile devices' GPS data to locate, capture, train, and battle Pokemon relative to your real-world location.
The setup is inventive, the play is simple and social, and the end result is yet to be replicated. It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly video games escaped the common misconception that they were distractions designed for children, but we're going to make the argument that it started here — with Maxis' hugely influential SimCity.
It didn't just kickstart the city-building genre, it made non-linear simulation games a phenomenon. Perhaps the gamification of city planning shouldn't have worked as well as it did, but there was something about SimCity that just spoke to a generation desperate to seize control of their surroundings. Maxis had us marking land for commercial, industrial, and residential development, building transportation systems, managing the power grid, and altering the tax rate to keep the 'sims' on the ground happy.
SimCity was educational, open-ended, and impossible to walk away from. Space Invaders may look crude by today's standards, but the impact that Tomohiro Nishikado's shoot 'em up had on the landscape of video games from the late s onwards cannot be overstated.
Said to have been inspired by prior video games such as Breakout , and H. Wells' alien invasion science fiction novel, Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter game that not only set the template for countless shoot 'em ups in its wake, but also marked the beginning of the so-called 'golden era of arcade games'.
In , British daily national newspaper The Times named Space Invaders as the 'most influential video game of all time'; while in , Guinness World Records billed it as the 'top arcade game of all time'. Why Super Mario Kart? The truth is, Nintendo EAD has done such a truly excellent job evolving and expanding upon the foundation laid down by this SNES classic over the last 30 years that any of the instalments yes, even Double Dash — especially Double Dash could quite easily sit in this position.
So, what is it about the debut of Mario's kart racing side-hustle that pushed it so far up the rankings? It's because of the masterful execution of, what was at the time, a relatively novel concept. The clever track design, slick implementation of simple combat into its high-speed races, and the addition of an irresistible suite of same-couch multiplayer modes helped enshrine Super Mario Kart as legend.
Few video games have transcended the medium and spilled into the world of pop culture like Pac-Man. The maze chase game, which sees players munching pills while outrunning ghosts on fluorescent maps, is one of the longest-running, best-selling, and highest-grossing video game franchises in history. And, believe it or not, those are only the games released in the '80s. Over 40 years later, the influence of Pac-Man can not be overstated, nor can the undeniable simplicity, challenge, and replayability that lies at the heart of his debut outing.
Much like Doom and Halo: Combat Evolved before it, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare set a new standard for the first person shooter and changed the dynamics of competitive multiplayer. The boundless energy and ingenuity of Modern Warfare's single-player campaign is still unrivalled in this space, while the introduction of the Killstreak and levelling systems, weapon customisation, and Prestige mode would bring a new-found sense of progression and retention to multiplayer gaming that has impacted generations of games and players alike.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a landmark release, its quality and innovations caused a seismic shift in the landscape of the video game industry that we're still feeling the aftershocks of to this day.
To say Portal was a happy surprise in is an understatement. Launched with almost no fanfare as part of The Orange Box — a five-game package which marked Half-Life 2's arrival on consoles, bundling Valve's critically-acclaimed FPS with its subsequent Episode One and Two add-ons, Team Fortress 2, and Portal itself — Portal became an overnight success, wowing with its intelligent, brain-teasing puzzles, and lightning-quick, but exceedingly dark humour.
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