My Top 5 Video Games of All Time!
Finally, I’m ready to talk about my 5 favorite video games of all time! After 19 videos counting down my top 95 games, it’s time for my top five video games. I’m excited. Are you excited? You should be.
After 19 videos counting down my top 100 favorite video games of all time (of this moment of all time, right now), after all those videos we’re finally at my top 5 favorite video games. I’m excited? Are you excited? Well if we’re both excited, then we might as well jump right into the list.
5. Horizon Zero Dawn was developed by Guerrilla Games and was released in February 2017. I wanted to play Horizon Zero Dawn when it was first released. I really did, but I just couldn’t do it. There’s no colon in that title. That’s weird right? It just feels like there should be a colon there. I don’t trust games that remove my colon. Though, I will admit that it’s impressive that they can do so. No, the real basis for my hesitation was my false understanding that the game was heavy on stealth.
I’m not a fan of stealth games. I don’t comprehend fun in a game forcing the player to set up an elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque series of events in order to take down an enemy without being seen only to inevitably screw up the entire plan because you’ve accidentally wandered one pixel into the enemy’s vision cone. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. It’s probably my fault. I slept through most of ninja school, so I’m bad at stealth. But no matter where the fault lies, suffering through the fault is not fun.
So imagine my elation when I finally played the game and realized that all my fears were for not. The game does have stealth elements, sure, but this game makes stealth fun. How? In one word, the stealth is forgiving. You’re not screwed when you screw up. Should you collide with the enemy’s vision cone, that’s fine. Retreat and try again. Maybe this time mark their paths using the game’s path marking ability (it’s probably not called path marking, but that’s what it does). Enemies have established territories meaning there’s almost always an opportunity to run away until the enemy loses interest. Some players may say this ability to capitalize on an enemy’s predictable loss of interest takes away from the immersion, but I say this is a necessary part of the game. It keeps the game fun. Players don’t want realistic enemy artificial intelligence. They want dumb enemy artificial intelligence. And that’s what we have here. Read more about this idea of dumb artificial intelligence in my essay “Being a Ninja is Easy in a World Full of Idiots,” available now for $0.99 at Amazon.
But that’s not the only way Horizon Zero Dawn makes stealth fun. The game also marks safe zones using tall, red grass. Picking out these tufts of grass becomes a really fun strategic first step to ambushing the enemy. Just map your path from red grass to red grass. You can practically squint your eyes and let the colors blur, to see the best path forward. And though the grass is red, it’s not distracting. The entire world is exceptionally colorful, so these red bursts of grass integrate into the environment. Actually, even the mechanical dinosaurs really don’t stick out that much after the first shocking introduction to them. That’s the work of some skilled artists and world-builders at Guerilla Games.
Because this game isn’t abusively hard on the player in terms of stealth, it may not be a good game for those who love the rigors of most stealth mechanics. But I’m confident there’s still plenty for you sadists to love.
The combat is also exceptional, offering plenty of cinematic parry and attack options, letting players choose between straight forward melee combat or a more strategic slow-motion attack, both options being strong options in most cases. The player isn’t compromising a successful fight by choosing a wrong approach. Even just brute forcing through a battle works most of the time, though perhaps less elegantly and therefore maybe a bit less satisfyingly. This game truly lets the player act as the player wants.
Something else that must be said. Aloy, the female protagonist and playable character, is never sexualized. We get a few comments about her being pretty, but thankfully nothing too gross. I’m happy that games are allowed to move beyond the early days of Laura Croft.
Question for the comments: What do you want from Horizon Zero Dawn 2?
4. NieR: Automata was developed by PlatinumGames and was released in February 2017. The same month as Horizon Zero Dawn, which is maybe one of the reasons it didn’t sell that well initially. And it does have a colon as one would expect, so I agree with you, it should have sold much better than it did.
If you’ve heard anything about NieR: Automata, it’s likely three things: 1) that the game has 26 endings, each represented by a letter from the English alphabet, 2) that to truly beat the game you must complete endings A-E and 3) that the game mixes genres like a state fair chef mixes already deep-fried food with more deep fried. That meaning impressively but unnecessarily.
Let’s first start with the 26 endings. This number isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. Most of the endings don’t require a full playthrough to experience, and some of them can even be found accidentally. Once I simply went the wrong direction only to be greeted by some short story closing text about how I was giving up. Roll credits. It was quite funny. In fact, one ending can be found simply by removing a specific item from your character’s inventory. Let’s say you need more room in your inventory, so you decide to remove the massive OS chip. Well, because your android character needs the OS chip to function, though the game doesn’t overtly tell you this, removing the chip causes your character to die. Roll credits. Back to the start menu. I always welcome this level of 4th-wall breaking (head back to my videos mentioning The Beginner’s Guide, number 14 on this list, and The Stanley Parable, number 30 on this list, for more 4th wall talk). To me, when a creator can stretch the conventions of a genre with such humor and wit, I’m often impressed more than I would be when judging the more traditional elements of a video game like the game’s mechanics and gameplay. Maybe I’m a sucker for style over substance, and though I wouldn’t prioritize style over substance in most cases, here the style informs the substance. So it works.
Some may think—as I did originally—that forcing the player to finish endings A-E is an artificial way to lengthen the game. But what the unacclimated player doesn’t discover until the 2nd playthrough has started, is that those subsequent endings B-E aren’t simply replays of the same game. The game is very much a different experience with different characters, different levels, different set-pieces, and a different point of view. The playthroughs are essentially just chapters in a fuller narrative. And the credits after each playthrough are simply another way to punch through that 4th wall.
Think of the player as the android proxy itself, being reset after each playthrough like a machine but with firmware intact. The experience of your character may have ended, but the memories of that character (including the experience points, weapons, and items) essentially get uploaded to your storyline B, C, D, and E characters. This idea of an evolving machine is in fact very thematically relevant. A big portion of the game explores the idea that machines—born of humans, in the image of humans—have become sentient and have actually evolved over tens of thousands of years. What do they evolve toward? Their human creators, of course. The machines attempt to replicate the human behavior learned through ancient books. In one specific instance, you walk into a robot orgy. It’s…interesting. That’s not how robots recreate. But they don’t care. They are attempting to satiate their gods, in a way, much like humans do with many of our religions.
But what about genre mixing? Creativity is often born by taking two disparate elements and combining them in previously unfathomed ways. In the world of video games, this mark can also be one of crushing disappointment. Overt genre mixing doesn’t often turn out well. But fans of NieR: Automata often cite the game’s seamless incorporation of varied game genres as it’s core strength, and I agree that this game does genre mixing better than most other attempts. The game seamlessly moves from top down shmup to arcade brawler to 2d fighter to 3rd person open-world RPG and even to a minor text adventure and asteroid clone. Impressively, NieR: Automata nails all of them. But I’m confident I’d still love this game with only the core 3rd person action brawler on display. It’s that good.
I knew, going into NieR: Automata that the game had 26 endings. I knew that to “truly” beat the game, I had to complete multiple specific endings. And I knew that I wasn’t going to do that. I had a backlog of orphaned games to play meaning I couldn’t waste dozens of hours on a single game. Well, as it turned out, I could spend dozens of hours on a single game.
I went into this game thinking I would maybe like it. 35 hours later, I was considering proposing marriage to it. What’s weird, is I cannot fully understand, let alone articulate, why I fell so hard for this game. The NPC robots and their attempts to emulate a human society based on ancient books and artifacts is endearing, sure. That alone would keep me interested for a few hours. But it can’t be just that. The controls are tight, though admittedly a bit button-mashly. The difficulty curve is perfect and even allows the player to grind until overpowered, which of course I did . The overall story, though hard to follow, is really interesting.
I will probably never be able to articulate exactly why I love NieR: Automata so much. And that’s okay. Love doesn’t need to be defined.
Question for the comments: Have you played NieR: Automata?
3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was developed by Nintendo and released in March 2017. Just one month after NieR: Automata. Damn, NieR: Automata really did get smothered upon release, huh?
I had not played a Zelda game since The Wind Waker in 2002. Though, I think I remember playing 2006’s Twilight Princess, but I could just be suffering a fever-dream mashup between that game and Okami. They both have cell-shaded style wolf characters who follow scent trails. So, they’re pretty much the same game, right?
Breath of the Wild had to earn my favor. I’m not a Zelda fanboy. I’m not a Nintendo fanboy. I just felt something special about this game. I’m sure the build-up upon release infected me in ways I cannot consciously understand. I don’t remember overtly buying into the hype, but I’m sure I did. I say all of this to relay just what Breath of the Wild was up against when I purchased it along with a Nintendo Switch day-one. This game had $360 worth of fun to pay back.
And you know, I got exactly what I wanted. Another Fallout 4. Think about it, Breath of the Wild is an open world, RPG with pretty annoying crafting mechanics where the protagonist wakes up from a decades long cryo sleep to exit a vault into blinding sunlight with a single goal that is quickly abandoned in favor of tedious exploration guided by an all-knowing piece of handheld computer technology. And screws are weirdly important. The games are frighteningly alike in many ways, so if you like one, you may actually like the other.
But of course I say that half-jokingly. Breath of the Wild offers a unique experience. This game is masterfully created. Its world design is impeccable. No matter where you are in the world, you can look to the horizon to see something interesting, to see something worth journeying toward. And en route to that thing you’ll notice several other things worth investigating. This game simply refuses to be boring. It’s the absolute best possible implementation of an open-world design.
Breath of the Wild also opened my eyes to how immersion-breaking artificial barriers in a game can be. Breath of the Wild removes artificial barriers that would otherwise pull the player out of the game. Everything you see can be reached. Everything you can reach can be climbed. Where most other games simply don’t allow the player character to climb walls or navigate up hills beyond a certain degree pitch, Breath of the Wild invites such maneuverability. Additionally, where other games might artificially gate the player’s progress with invisible walls along the play space’s perimeter, Breath of the Wild allows players to go anywhere. The gates here are gameplay gates. If you venture into an unmapped area to be met by a monster that can one-shot kill you, that’s the game’s gate. It’s organic. If you’re good enough, you can get past the gate, but most players will decide to turn around and venture forth elsewhere. Thanks to Breath of the Wild, I actively criticize any game with artificial gates. Breath of the Wild has taught players, and therefore should teach other game developers, that artificial progress gates are immersion-breaking. Now, of course, not every game strives for total immersion the way Breath of the Wild does, and that’s okay.
Breath of the Wild should have been spelled with a D because of how big and explorable this game is. Sorry, I couldn’t find a better place in this video to put that pun. I sort of broke this video’s immersion a bit with that. I have so much to learn from you, Breath of the Wild.
Question for the comments: What do you want from Breath of the Wild 2?
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 was developed by Rockstar Games and released in October 2018. In some ways, What I love about Red Dead Redemption is what I love about the previous entry, Breath of the Wild. Specifically, the elimination of artificial gates. Early in the game, the player is forced to trog through deep snow. This game opener sets a tone that puts off a lot of players. It forces the player to move slowly. It forces the player to take in the game’s story. Some players hated the crawl. I, perhaps because of how Breath of the Wild made me appreciate organic gates, loved this slow intro scene.
Sure, the player could deviate from the intended path here to embrace the true organic, open-world nature of the game. But because the deep snow makes moving long distances quickly a chore, most players wouldn’t subject themselves to that. Most players are going to trog through the snow like the game wants them to.
But the game also knows when breaking immersion is warranted. Here, again, I’ll compare to Breath of the Wild. In the Zelda game weapons will break after enough use. Sure, this is closer to reality than a world full of unbreakable weapons, and sure having a weapon break may support immersion. Though, when I turn the game off because I’m so frustrated, I’d argue that breaks the immersion more than the weapon system supports it. But I digress. Red Dead Redemption 2 not only foregoes weapon degradation entirely, but it also doesn’t hesitate to halt missions entirely when necessary. Often, during the game, when a mission starts to go wrong—for example, when you navigate too far away from your companion—the game will flash a mission failed screen. Is this immersion breaking? Definitely. But, from a quality of life standpoint, I appreciate a game that’s telling me when the current mission is basically impossible. This is much better than the alternative: playing out the entire futile mission for another 10 minutes only to have to try again. The game knows when to spend the player’s time and it knows when to save the player’s time. I appreciate that.
So much is said of this game’s attention to detail and focus on realism. Positive and negative attention. The game looks absolutely gorgeous. The voice acting is top notch. The world feels real and lived in, even to the point that buildings change over time and characters grow facial hair over time. Corpses decompose. Horses testicles grow and shrink according to the ambient temperature. But where the realism tends to aggravate players—and I’ll join this chorus—is that many of the character animations take too long. Skinning an animal happens slowly, though still much faster than skinning an animal in real life, so at least Rockstar didn’t honor that degree of realism. The start and stop of character running animations takes a lot of time to get used to. Characters are slow to build up speed and are slow to return to idle. This is real, sure, but seeing it from a 3rd person perspective reminds me just how screwed the human species would be if our brains were smaller. If it wasn’t for complex reasoning, we’d definitely be prey for every even mildly capable predator.
The game’s open world, mission based gameplay allows the player to explore the world, to become Arthur Morgan, at their leisure. And this is a world that you want to explore leisurely. There’s so much to see and so much to do that spending dozens of hours with this game is welcomed. If no other game ever got made, I could spend the rest of my life with Red Dead Redemption 2.
Question for the comments: The snowy intro: loved it or hated it?
1. What Remains of Edith Finch was developed by Giant Sparrow and was released in April 2017. Wow, 4 of my top 5 games were released in early 2017. Maybe recency bias has played a role, but if so, not too much of one. All of these games are objectively beautiful specimens.
Wow. What can I say about What Remains of Edith Finch? Well, a lot actually. So much so that I’m currently writing a book about it. Follow me on Twitter to keep up on my progress.
What Remains of Edith Finch follows the impact of a family curse that has caused every member but one of the Finch family to die. You play as Edith Finch, the family’s lone surviving member, as you return to your childhood home to learn more about the curse and, perhaps, to escape it. What Remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator that delivers its story with variety and creativity without ever buckling under the weight of its heavy message.
The first, and most consistently impactful visual you experience in the game is the Finch house itself. The Finch house’s exterior is seemingly impossibly constructed, perceived even in silhouette. It simply looks awkward to stay upright. The family matriarch, Edie Finch, believes in the curse so fully that she doesn’t allow bedrooms to be reused. Instead, after each death, the room is boarded up and new rooms are added to the house. Every birth and every marriage sprouts new rickety staircases leading to narrow antechambers that bloom into unstable bedrooms. The house itself is like a tree with as many nodes as there are doomed Finch souls.
The architectural stories that make up this house seem to defy stability in the same way the stories of the family curse do. It’s a lovely play on words. The player is never really certain if the curse is actually real or if the progenitors of the curse are simply insane. Everything is one perspective shift away from crumbling. That type of tension is rare for a walking simulator which is strange because the very nature of a walking sim—a genre that’s so overtly controlled—should be a perfect vehicle for tension. Hopefully What Remains of Edith Finch gives the genre permission to explore tension a bit more.
As we move from the outside of the house to the inside, we learn that the interior is no less confusing. Books dominate the player’s periphery, like the house itself is constructed using books as bricks. Even the spoken dialog is matched to the perspective of the house. The Finch house is a beautiful melding of a Borgesian library labyrinth with Mark Z.Danielewski’s titular House of Leaves. If you are unfamiliar with Jorge Luis Borges or Mark Z. Danielewski, read them immediately. I recommend House of Leaves and all of Borges’ collected fiction, but maybe start with The Garden of Forking Paths.
What Remains of Edith Finch’s core message is that words are important and confusing, enough so that they can define—or even redefine—a death. Where one person may be satisfied with a simple medical diagnosis—for example, Molly fell from a tree and died—others may prefer something magical—Molly possessed a giant sea monster and led it to her bedroom where the monster ate her. The former is sterile and believable. The latter, though more mysterious and perhaps more gruesome, does offer at least a way for the family to control the chaos, to own it, and in that way be brought together by the tragedy. It’s here that the game reveals its heart.
While playing What Remains of Edith Finch the player is constantly asked to choose between those two narratives, the plausible vs the magical. Ultimately, you as the player get to decide what you believe, in much the same way Edith and the rest of the Finch’s have to navigate the possibility of a curse vs. the probability of no curse.
This open-ended approach that puts the burden of interpretation on the player would be awful if the game weren’t executed so well. Oh, but it is executed so well. Each family member’s death is explored in incredibly imaginative ways. For example, Barbara Finch is a washed up childhood horror movie actress who was killed during a home invasion. Her story is explored by way of an interactive Tales from the Crypt style comic book. Lewis Finch died in a fish cannery. The plausible version: he got distracted and fell into a fish grinder. The magical version: his imagination created such a powerful proxy that real life—and the real danger associated with it—couldn’t compare the glamor of his fiction, so he committed suicide. His death then becomes almost noble, as the avatar he feels comfortable with outlives the real Lewis that he simply endured up until the moment of his death.
What Remains of Edith Finch shows us is that our own creativity, our own ability to imagine death is what makes us susceptible to it. And that we can either choose to abide by the imagined deaths of others or we can imagine one for ourselves.
As I mentioned with my overview of Davy Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide, I love a game that asks interesting questions. With What Remains of Edith Finch I’m left pondering the power of storytelling. I’m asking questions about the obligation one should have when having children amid the possibility of a hereditary disease. I’m wondering how important social engagement is to escaping mythical world views. There’s just so much to love about this game. If you have a few hours, you own it to yourself, to your future self, to play What Remains of Edith Finch.
Question for the comments: What’s your favorite video game of all time?
