No worries, I only posted to make the CEX joke.


Seriously guys, that deserves a place in a top ten for this alone

i'm suprised by the lack of pes, trackmania and champman. Whats really amazing is no shout for starcraft of WoW. Is that because this is a mainly GBR forum?

I never said a link to the past was on N64.

Seriously though, nice work Adam.

Too tricky to simply pick ten, and there's more than likely a heavy dose of rose tinted aviators with many. In no particular order:

Battlefield Bad Company 2 - 360
The perfect blend of destruction, teamwork, vehicles, gunplay, map design and battles... in a field. Wtf happened DICE?

Star Wars - Arcade
It's the Eighties, post RotJ, I'm a young man with a bedroom full of Millenium Falcon, X-wing, AT-AT and Wookie. First I heard it, then I saw it, then I sat in it, grasped that unique controller and away I went.

Chase HQ - Amstrad C6128
I saw it in the arcade, that most impressive of cabs with the flashing lights, but it wasn't until I got my home copy that the love affair started. The iconic 928, Nancy at HQ giving the orders, the frantic dash to range in the perps as the hand plants the berry on the roof and the twisting, screeching game of tag that ensues.

Operation Wolf - Arcade/Amstrad C6128
My first experience of an arcade lightgun, my virgin hands grasping that iconic Uzi, wildly spraying the screen, laying waste to sunglass wearing mercs, armoured cars and chickens. Every young boy's wet dream.

Desert Strike - Megadrive
Apache attack helicopter... you want more?

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 - PS2
So good, all the five previous versions led to this golden edition. Perfectly paced, virtually flawless football, seemingly too good to cross gens. Only in 2012 do we see the green shoots returning.

Forza Motorsport 2 - 360
3 and 4 are better, no question, but 2's multiplayer was perfect. The virtual pub lobby, random rascists, D400 Minis around Tsukuba, first corner Cobra pile ups in New York. 3 killed the public lobbies and the regulars stayed away for 4.

Battlefield 1943 - 360
A halcyon summer spent island hopping with the best 1200 I've ever spent on XBLA. Sure we hated the theme tune after a first evening spent staring at the menus, but weeks more of the chaotic orchestration of war, G's 'Suribachee' growl and Steveo's 3 hour protestation (he loved it really), the seeds of Team Awesome were being sewn. A benchmark in downloadable gaming.

GTA Vice City - PS2
GTAIII left the biggest impression generationally speaking, but this is where music, style, setting and gameplay all colluded to inspire and immerse. Walking into a club as the opening beat of Pointer Sister's Automatic kicked in, standing in the middle of the dancefloor as the digital throng danced around me, truly immersive.

Halo: Combat Evolved - Xbox
Not now a massive Halo fan, or then, but a couple of LAN nights with some colleagues and I was sold and a massive black slice of hardware was accompanying me home with this solitary title. Sublime, freeform gunplay, sprawling levels of chattering grunts and a nod to Aliens at every turn. I loved the tone the game takes as the Flood begins to infest the game, you can almost feel the air turning thick and dead as you advance onwards, shotgun in hand. I really should pick up the anniversary edition.

The first ten from the top, but you could enthuse about so many and for different reasons, whether the game was 'good' or not.

Impossible to include a FIFA/PES/Champ Man/Football Manager, I couldn't even begin to pick a definitive version of each.

dynamiteReady wrote:

Plenty of Japanese games in my list...

All the ones in my top 10 are Jap. If I could list 10 more, they'd be mostly Jap.

EDIT: oops, Journey isn't Jap.

Haven't played it all the way through, but the controls work well with the game. Really wanna play the game again. "Did you send out the invitations? I said no more than 50 people!"

TheDJR wrote:

Impossible to include a FIFA/PES/Champ Man/Football Manager, I couldn't even begin to pick a definitive version of each.

Well, you had the ISS series on the PS1 which was good, but the Pro Evolution series changed everything... Suddenly, you had players that felt (and looked) like individuals, rather than templated models. 

Recognising (Brazilian) Ronaldo was one thing, but the way the game communicated physical qualities, such as the weight and agility of specific players... You showed the game to people who at the time, were playing the likes of Fifa Road to the World Cup, and they were blown away.

That's why I had to list that version above all others. I see it as a tipping point.



And this vid too...

How do you do it? Do you have 5 hands and play two games at once and mark with the free one?

1. Dark Souls. As a total package I don't know that I can ignore the obsession, the effect it had on my playing of other games, and how good I found it when most games of late have left me completely jaded.

2. Halo CE. Just about see above. I put in so much time. Played so much co-op and so much local MP. And the revisit last year just highlighted that it pretty much stands the test of time.

3. SotC. Flawed, but executed epic bosses well ahead of everyone else, and nailed less is more and leaving things to imagination.

4. GTA Vice City. Like the Halos, hard to know which ones to include, and then in what order. But this is the one that I loved the most at the time of release, I think. Close call with SA, but SA pushed some RPG buttons a step too far.

5. Colin McCrae 2.0 The handling was just so good. And shaving seconds off times and trying to nail corners was just so satisfying. And it was nails hard in spots. Aiming for consistency over the course of an event made it even better.

6. Halo 3. In hindsight, the first of the really complete package Halos. 4 player co-op, and the beginnings of stuff like arcade scoring and forge which have gone on to be a big part of the replay value of FPSes in general. MP was where it's at.

7. Halo 2. Flawed in so many ways, but at the time, online MP was something else. it brought out the worst in a lot of people, and there were, again in hindsight, massive balance issues and bugs/tricks with the MP, but still: Hour upon hour of customs on Lockout and Midship. Say no more.

8. Ico. The little game that could. See Adkm's reasoning.

9. Prince of Persia. Sand of Time. Perfect length. No filler. Perfect little final section where they take away the sands of time, yet the game remains fair. probably UBi's best work.

10. Blast Corps. Amazing amount of time spent hammering platinum scores in this. Amazing.

Honourable mentions:

BFBC2 (MP FTW), NBA2k11, ODST, MGS, Chrono Cross, Bioshock, PGR 2, GTA SA, GTA IV, Rez, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Orta, XI (Devil's Dice), and various XBLA titles.

I guess I still need to write five more.

Total War: Shogun 2

Essentially i'm using Shogun 2 as a representative for the entire series. I still own an original big boxed case of the first Shogun somewhere and i've enjoyed the living fuck (eloquence get tae fuck) out of nearly every game CA have made since then (Viking: Total Warrior was really crap). Creative Assembly have turned the bloody history of many a nation and peoples into a fine piece of gaming that's heavily reliant on the facts but not to the extent gameplay is sacrificed. An RTS series that strives for top quality in every iteration and Shogun 2 is currently the pinnacle.

Power Stone 2

Power Stone 1 was one of two launch titles I got with my Dreamcast along with Sonic Adventure and was easily my favourite of the two. And I might have creamed myself when I read the second game was going to be four player. It's an incredible party game that I spent an unhealthy amount of time on as a senior school student trying to craft as many different items as I could in the item shop in preparation for mates coming around so I could batter them across the screen with my new giant tennis racquet. In my opinion blasts any of the Super Smash Brothers games into oblivion yet it's sadly destined for the forgotten Capcom title pile.

Phantasy Star Online

A tenuous placement on my top ten list but it had such an impact on my young self I can't not give it recognition. This was my very first online game. I remember my first experience with the word "lol" from some female character I was trying to chat up like a fool and getting pissed off thinking it was a nonsense word. I remember my first time being duped by some cunt claiming he had food for my mag to instantly turn it into one of those super rare console mags. I remember making friends with random people who were blatantly older than me and defeating the first boss, a huge Dragon with a full team going mad and every emote in our arsenal (including the cock sucking ones) for half an hour straight we were so ecstatic. And I remember racking up over 60 quid in a single months phone bill from sneaking out during the night at my mums to plug in the DC's 56k modem and have a session. Also the pang of losing contact with some of the people I knew on there. First internet bonding.

Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War

I bought a PS2 very late in the day, having been a Dreamcast man till that ship sank. And this is the game that got me to buy one at last. Looking back the plot is melodramatic splurge of the Japanese kind (it's hard not to laugh at the ending mission) with very poor voice acting but the way it's delivered during missions is superb and really hooks you into the action. Having intermittent radio communication from troops on the ground makes you feel part of a much larger operational war machine. Actually making you realise you're primarily supporting the guys on the ground who are doing the actual labour. Which is odd as then the game can do a complete mood swing and send your squadron against an enemy super sub boss fight you have to fly between missiles to take down on your own. And both approaches somehow work in the grand scheme of the game. For one epic experience.

Shadow of the Colossus

A popular one. The thing I like about SotC is one of the same things I like about Dark Souls. The feeling of the lone adventurer. It lends itself to the ancient hero tales from antiquity and stories of the search for the holy grail. Lone wanderers with martial skill travelling to unknown lands to search for treasures/answers, to face unforseen adversaries and somehow, against odds, succeeding more from courage and sheer balls than anything else.

JonB wrote:

@Adkm - cheers for taking over the compiling - I guess I didn't have a lot of time today.

No worries.  My entry sparked precisely zero conversation, so I thought I'd better do something worthwhile.  Plus I got the chance to be pedantic about writing out titles and looking up some of the formats.  That takes longer than you think, so the heart sinks a little when you see someone write OoT or SotC.


I'm off to bed, so I'll sort out some more when I get up.

Apart from Monkey Island this is in no particular order:

— Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
— Zelda: A Link To The Past
— Super Mario World
— Final Fantasy 8
— Mario 64
— Pro Evo 4
— Hotel Dusk: Room 215
— Starfox 64
— Broken Sword: Shadows Of THe Templars
— Batman: Arkham Asylum

EDIT: Replaced Tekken 3 with Hotel Dusk

Mass Effect was average at best. 

I love Braid, Limbo, Bastion and Fez. But just not as much as the games I have on my list. Bastion would be closest to entering my top 10 or 20.

I could've filled more slots with current games easily, but wanted a representation of my gaming life.