My Top 100 Video Games (11 – 15)
I hit a video game milestone recently: I have beaten 100 games! I thought it would be fun to rank all 100 of the games in a series of videos. Here’s the eighteenth video, ranking games 11 – 15.
This is episode 18 of 20 in my top 100 Videogame series. Check out the full Top 100 Video Games playlist for a bit more about the rest of the videos, specifically check out video #1 to learn about the qualifications for this top 100 list, the main qualification being that I must have beaten the game for it to make this list.
Questions will pop up throughout this video. Please use the comments section to answer these. I respond to pretty much everything.
15. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was developed by Bethesda Game Studio and originally released in November 2011…and later released on everything, including the Amazon Echo. Really. Well, it’s not the same game, but a novel choose your own adventure type experience that was created specifically as a funny reaction to the claim that Skyrim has been ported to pretty much everything. I, for one, am very happy about all that porting because that’s what allowed me to eventually play the game. My first, and only, experience with Skyrim was by playing it on the Nintendo Switch. This was before The Witcher 3 and before the Assassin’s Creed games and before any of the other visual marvels that the Switch has proven itself able to handle. Skyrim was the first game that people said, when originally announced for the Switch, was too good to be true. No way could a game that huge actually be playable on such an underpowered machine like the Nintendo Switch. Well, it is not only very playable but is both impressive visually and technically. I experienced no bugs during my playthrough. That’s not only impressive for such a technical feat, but it’s impressive given that this is a Bethesda game, a studio whose games are notoriously buggy.
So why does Skyrim rank so high on my list? I mentioned in the previous video when I discussed Fallout 3 that I was originally averse to playing this game (hence why I waited so long to play it). The wizards and magic aesthetic just doesn’t interest me. But I took a leap with Skyrim, mostly because I, like so many other gamers, doubted the Switch could handle the game’s scope. I was more interested from a technical standpoint than from a gameplay standpoint. But I was hooked immediately. The game focuses on character-building, character relationships, and exploration more so than overt wizardry and magic. I know, I know, the game is literally about wizards and magic, but my barrier against those things dissolved so quickly and completely from the very start that the game never really had a chance to annoy me with them. The game didn’t hold onto magic tropes to tell the story. The game didn’t force you into playing as a magic user (though I did use the fiery hand spell for most of the game). Even the overt wizard characters have grounded lives. That was important to me. Now, having played the game, could I hold my own in a conversation about the deepest lore of the game. Probably not. I cannot claim to have that level of passion for the source material. I’ll leave that to more invested gamers who deserve such attention. I will say, though, that Skyrim did…even if ever so slightly…open my eyes to what a nuanced wizards and magic world could be. I’m sure I unfairly look upon the genre as melodramatic fluff, which isn’t fair at all. In fact, that’s the question for this entry. What game should I play that places the wizards and magic tropes in a nuanced world of storytelling? And don’t say The Witcher 3. I’ve tried playing that game multiple times. I’m way too dumb to play that game.
Of all the games on this list, Skyrim is the one that I want to go back and play again the most. My extensive backlog of games prevents me from rationalizing such a move though, but I swear, when I finally have no unplayed games on my shelf I’m going to dive headfirst back into Skyrim.
Question for the comments: What Skyrim-like game should I play?
14. The Beginner’s Guide was developed by Davey Wrenden and originally released in October 2015. Of all the games in this top quarter of my list, The Beginner’s Guide is the one that I’m sure most people haven’t played and probably most people haven’t heard of. And that’s a shame, because this experience is quite honestly an awakening.
The Beginner’s Guide is Davey Wrenden’s followup to The Stanley Parable. Ah, now I’ve got your attention. Of course you’ve heard of The Stanley Parable. Everyone loves The Stanley Parable. I do too. It’s number 30 on this list. And for good reason. It’s incredibly funny and it constantly breaks the fourth wall. The Beginner’s guide, well, it’s a much different thing. For starters, it’s not funny. It’s a much more serious game. However, it does break the fourth wall…constantly. In fact, so constantly the game seems to hover completely outside the stage. It’s a game about game design but not in a gamified way. Stay with me, please, I need the watch time.
The Beginner’s Guide takes the form of a series of half-built mini-games narrated by Wrenden himself. These games were created by an enigmatic developer named Coda whom Wrenden met at a game jam in 2009. But Coda is reclusive, and had become more so over the years, to the point where Wrenden wondered if he was still around and still making games. The Beginner’s Guide is Wrenden’s attempt to evangelize for Coda’s work while also trying to coax him back into society.
This doesn’t work out quite how Wrenden wants, nor how the player expects.
The game has a lot going on. First, Wrenden places himself into the game and presents it as factual, and the player is meant to believe it is factual, but it’s not. Why does Wrenden do this? Because the story is so much more powerful when the player believes they aren’t so much as playing a game but are instead being introduced to and educated on a reclusive genius that Wrenden himself has perhaps grown too attached to. The game asks a lot of really great questions: how much of a person’s genius is compromised by external forces? Does art have to be appreciated at scale in order for it to be culturally important? Does a genius have an obligation to share their genius with the world?
In some ways The Beginner’s Guide could actually contend for my favorite game of all time, as it shares a lot of the introspective elements that my #1 game does. Speaking of which, you should absolutely subscribe to this channel to make sure you don’t miss that #1 video. Who knows, I may go back and play this game again (after Skyrim again) and this list could end up very different.
Question for the comments: What game made you think the most?
13. Portal was developed by Valve and originally released in October 2007. (12) Portal 2 was also developed by Value but was originally released in April 2011. Portal three was developed by my imagination and was never released because my imagination is bad at making video games. But it should keep trying. We need another real Portal game. Do you hear me Value? We need another Portal game!
These two entries are smooshed together because, like many of the serial entries on this list, they are very similar games. Portal is a short, super funny, super interesting puzzle game with a very unique mechanic. Portal 2 is the same but turned way up in all the right ways, with all those right ways being really just one way: it’s way funnier. Oh, and it’s a longer game, which normally I don’t care too much about, but in the case of the Portal games, yeah, I could do with some added length, especially considering the first Portal game can be completed in about 3 hours.
The unique mechanic with the Portal games is that the player can create a portal connecting almost any two places in the gameworld. Restrictions on the placement of the portals and enhancements for moving around the environment are peppered throughout and slowly introduced which then create the variety of puzzles the game is known for. Games have attempted to copy elements from Portal, most notably Q.U.B.E, Q.U.B.E 2, and even much of The Talos Principle, and here’s where I’m supposed to say “but those games are terrible.” But I can’t say that, because those games are pretty amazing. The Portal games have been able to inspire game developers to develop great games. And I want to think, though this is probably too generous of me considering the inherent need for games to make money, I want to think that the developers of these inspired games simply respected the Portal source material way too much to insult those Portal games with subpar attempts. Those “knockoff” games are extensions of the Portal games’ legacies. If you haven’t played those, then do it! But play Portal 1 and 2 first.
Question for the comments: Any other games inspired by Portal that I should play?
11. Fallout 4 was developed by Bethesda Game Studio and released in November 2015. Yeah, that’s right. I like Fallout 4 more than Fallout 3 and even more than Fallout: New Vegas. But there’s a simple explanation for that, which is right over there…(ducks under desk, moves head up, looks around, “are you gone yet?”) Okay, I probably don’t have a reason for liking Fallout 4 more than any other Fallout game that will satisfy anyone. To most players, Fallout 4 lacked the dramatic impact of Fallout 3. Fallout 4’s storyline by comparison is nonsensical and frustrating and epitomizes the phrase ludo narrative dissonance. Your character had her (in my case, her; you can choose a male or female character), had her child stolen from her during a cryogenically frozen state and as soon as she leaves that state she…looks around for spare parts to build things. The game narrative tells you to find your son, but really, the gameplay is telling you to build a town out of parts of found desk fans. That’s ludo narrative dissonance.
Fallout 4 also lacks the role playing of New Vegas. There’s no real impactful choice about which factions to align with. There is no freedom to do a pacifist run or a genocide run. In fact, this is one such game where a genocide run would be welcomed because one of your most enduring companions, Preston Garvey, quickly, almost comically fast after the game’s release, garnered a reputation across the internet as being the most annoying character in all of video games. Sorry Navi. You had a good run.
So why, then, do I love this game so much. Simply put, it’s a game I looked forward to for months and was completely satisfied with upon finally playing it. It met my expectations for a franchise that I had built up a strong love for. But just being satisfied isn’t enough. Fallout 4 just feels so great. It’s responsive. It’s not too difficult. The narrative, though flimsy at best, holds the story beats together well enough to encourage exploration across a diverse range of environments, at least diverse for a Fallout game. And though I don’t normally put too much emphasis on add-on content to justify the core game’s experience, the Far Harbor DLC includes one of the best characters in all of Fallout. DiMA is an early synth prototype who is aware of his early generation faults but maintains a brilliant balance of machine logic and human emotion that builds to an incredibly satisfying climax with one of the core game’s companions, Nick Valentine. If you played Fallout 4 and maybe gave up on it because you didn’t like it, especially considering the hype following Fallout 3, I urge you to give it another shot. Maybe compare it to Fallout 76 and that will help you better appreciate this amazing game.
Question for the comments: Just give me your thoughts on Fallout 4.
