Street Fighter II These moments have stayed with me for over 20 years. Metroid Prime dropped you into the Chozo ruins with no one to talk to. Plus, you never knew when you’d stumble upon random events that would sometimes deliver game-changingly powerful items. Everyone has a favorite character and that’s because of its diverse, fantastical character design. Vote for your favorite games on this Ultimate List of The Best Video Games of All Time. Anyone who picked Odd Job was instantly disqualified.In 1997, GoldenEye was a revelation. It’s the reason I love first-person shooters and the reason I stuck by PC gaming at a young age, and I owe it all to its earliest iterations.Left 4 Dead 2 came out exactly a year after the original, which upset a lot of people who (incorrectly) assumed the sequel would be a glorified expansion pack to the first.
Purists will no doubt claim that SSB: Melee is the game that put the series on the map, but it’s impossible to ignore the sheer wealth of content that is present in Ultimate, from the insane roster size of 70+ characters that is still growing, to the enormous World of Light story mode, to the library of over 800 classic video game songs jam-packed within its cartridge.Smash Bros. has always been simultaneously the quintessential party fighter, as well as one of the most hotly competitive fighting games on the scene, a split that has resulted in two different audiences for the series. It’s dark, steampunk-laden world was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I loved how the heroes were more brooding and complex than their cheery predecessors. As your city grows, you’ll have to keep track of things like mass transit, entertainment, and the economy but the difficulty curve never feels too steep, and success always seems just a stadium away. Final Fantasy VI Fallout 2 will surprise you again and again.A small child falls into the world of monsters and suddenly finds themselves the target of an ancient grudge that calls for their death. Few things could ruin a friendship faster than wrecking someone's ride just before the finish line – though thankfully all was (usually) forgotten during the next round of Crash Mode.Starting the journey of Fallout 2 as a tribesman with nothing more than a loincloth and a spear to my name and gradually fighting my way up to a power-armored, gauss-gunning killing machine is a fantastic and surprisingly natural feeling of progression – one that few games have been able to match. While choosing a faction seems a tad more meaningless than it used to, mainly because the factions basically are tasked with the same things, the old days of Crossroads and Tarren Mill are memories some players will have forever.Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic almost single-handedly rescued Star Wars video games from purgatory. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Resident Evil 4 Not only did it nail the feeling of stalking and beating down thugs with an impressive array of gadgets, it raised the stakes of what a caped crusader could deal with in a single night.Arkham City’s heaping helping of infamous rogues let you experience them in their element, and found perfect ways for Batman to foil them via both brain and brawn – leading to some of the best boss fights ever conceived. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the all-time best-selling game on PlayStation 2 – itself the best-selling console of all-time – and it’s just not at all hard to see why. The result is a gorgeous, freeing open-world action/adventure experience that evokes the wonder and fear of exploring a bold new place with the empowering tangibility of becoming its hero.Super Metroid’s minimalistic environmental storytelling set a bar, way back in 1994, that I believe has still yet to be eclipsed. Soulcalibur Fallout: New Vegas And if a friend couldn’t keep up the pace on the waterfall level, you could easily incentivize them to improve their skills by scrolling the screen upward and killing them, which I did whenever my little brother lagged behind.When Tony Hawk Pro Skater came out, it was like nothing anyone had ever played before. That sense of reality is what helps you empathise with Geralt, understand the world, and really understand how bad things have gotten when the crazy shit starts popping off.An RPG with enough complexity to satisfy the urge to tinker, but enough character never to feel impersonal, Wild Hunt is a staggering achievement no matter how you look at it. Each supervillain added to the oppressive weight of trying to save the day with the odds stacked against you, and the story’s climax remains one of the most striking moments in video games.The island setting of The Witness enveloped me in its striking colour palette and minimalistic soundscape.
That’s because Capcom got it right the first time, with a perfect blend of atmosphere, action and story that made us want to play through again and again, through multiple releases, on every platform until my girlfriend was all like “Hey, maybe it’s about time that you should think about getting a job?” and I was like “Uh, unlocking the Handcannon is my job now, howbouthat? Everything from the UI to scene transitions to the animated cutscenes is absolutely dripping with style, and the battle system combines series staples with mechanics that haven’t been in the franchise in over a decade for perfectly balanced fights. How about a jetpack? The odds are always overwhelming, the atmosphere always malevolent, and the reward always worth the risk.And as is typical of Blizzard as a studio, Diablo II can be played on countless different levels. Created by a “dream team” at Squaresoft including Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and character designs by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, Chrono Trigger’s pedigree was only outshined by its universal praise upon its release in the spring of 1995.
Purists will no doubt claim that SSB: Melee is the game that put the series on the map, but it’s impossible to ignore the sheer wealth of content that is present in Ultimate, from the insane roster size of 70+ characters that is still growing, to the enormous World of Light story mode, to the library of over 800 classic video game songs jam-packed within its cartridge.Smash Bros. has always been simultaneously the quintessential party fighter, as well as one of the most hotly competitive fighting games on the scene, a split that has resulted in two different audiences for the series. It’s dark, steampunk-laden world was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I loved how the heroes were more brooding and complex than their cheery predecessors. As your city grows, you’ll have to keep track of things like mass transit, entertainment, and the economy but the difficulty curve never feels too steep, and success always seems just a stadium away. Final Fantasy VI Fallout 2 will surprise you again and again.A small child falls into the world of monsters and suddenly finds themselves the target of an ancient grudge that calls for their death. Few things could ruin a friendship faster than wrecking someone's ride just before the finish line – though thankfully all was (usually) forgotten during the next round of Crash Mode.Starting the journey of Fallout 2 as a tribesman with nothing more than a loincloth and a spear to my name and gradually fighting my way up to a power-armored, gauss-gunning killing machine is a fantastic and surprisingly natural feeling of progression – one that few games have been able to match. While choosing a faction seems a tad more meaningless than it used to, mainly because the factions basically are tasked with the same things, the old days of Crossroads and Tarren Mill are memories some players will have forever.Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic almost single-handedly rescued Star Wars video games from purgatory. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Resident Evil 4 Not only did it nail the feeling of stalking and beating down thugs with an impressive array of gadgets, it raised the stakes of what a caped crusader could deal with in a single night.Arkham City’s heaping helping of infamous rogues let you experience them in their element, and found perfect ways for Batman to foil them via both brain and brawn – leading to some of the best boss fights ever conceived. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the all-time best-selling game on PlayStation 2 – itself the best-selling console of all-time – and it’s just not at all hard to see why. The result is a gorgeous, freeing open-world action/adventure experience that evokes the wonder and fear of exploring a bold new place with the empowering tangibility of becoming its hero.Super Metroid’s minimalistic environmental storytelling set a bar, way back in 1994, that I believe has still yet to be eclipsed. Soulcalibur Fallout: New Vegas And if a friend couldn’t keep up the pace on the waterfall level, you could easily incentivize them to improve their skills by scrolling the screen upward and killing them, which I did whenever my little brother lagged behind.When Tony Hawk Pro Skater came out, it was like nothing anyone had ever played before. That sense of reality is what helps you empathise with Geralt, understand the world, and really understand how bad things have gotten when the crazy shit starts popping off.An RPG with enough complexity to satisfy the urge to tinker, but enough character never to feel impersonal, Wild Hunt is a staggering achievement no matter how you look at it. Each supervillain added to the oppressive weight of trying to save the day with the odds stacked against you, and the story’s climax remains one of the most striking moments in video games.The island setting of The Witness enveloped me in its striking colour palette and minimalistic soundscape.
That’s because Capcom got it right the first time, with a perfect blend of atmosphere, action and story that made us want to play through again and again, through multiple releases, on every platform until my girlfriend was all like “Hey, maybe it’s about time that you should think about getting a job?” and I was like “Uh, unlocking the Handcannon is my job now, howbouthat? Everything from the UI to scene transitions to the animated cutscenes is absolutely dripping with style, and the battle system combines series staples with mechanics that haven’t been in the franchise in over a decade for perfectly balanced fights. How about a jetpack? The odds are always overwhelming, the atmosphere always malevolent, and the reward always worth the risk.And as is typical of Blizzard as a studio, Diablo II can be played on countless different levels. Created by a “dream team” at Squaresoft including Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and character designs by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, Chrono Trigger’s pedigree was only outshined by its universal praise upon its release in the spring of 1995.