We’ve finally cracked the Top 10 of our 25 Greatest Video Games of All Time list! How exciting! This list comprises all of our favorite games from 5 different people with different backgrounds. If you are unfamiliar with this list, then check the following out: #25, #24,#23, #22, #21, #20, #19, #18, #17, #16, #15, #14, #13, #12, and #11. Let the top ten start…now!
Kai – The Secret of Monkey Island: Monkey Island – Monkey Island is hilarious. Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer created a world that is a parody of every pirate movie ever made. As the best game released during the “golden age” of (now defunkt) LucasArts’ point and click adventures, Monkey Island is a perfect representation of the fun, laid back attitude of those SCUMM-based games.
Andrew – Assassin’s Creed IV (II) – I’ll use Assassin’s Creed IV as a placeholder, but Rogue was fantastic, II was fantastic. For me, the multiplayer behind these games got tiring after ACII and they’ve just continued to make it more confusing and worse since then, luckily for me I don’t keep Xbox Live all year so it’s not much of a loss anyway. I am a huge magical realism fan (One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez anyone??) and that’s what these games are, they take the history – Catholic/European and add some nuances to it. The gameplay and mechanics are very repetitive and there isn’t much in the way of combat so “boss fights” aren’t really hard healthwise – it’s normally more about making you use stealth or putting them in a hard to reach location in order to up the difficulty. The story here is what wins it. They are simple games but they are nicely designed and fun. Naval combat was introduced in IV and added another fun layer to the game.
Po – Chrono Trigger – Time-traveling frog knight. ‘Nuff said.
Fit – Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Ah, the epicness. Hungry was surprised when I put Skyrim above Oblivion, but I really enjoyed it. Skyrim is the latest single-player game of the Elder Scrolls series. It doesn’t have the complexity, the nuances, and the feel of Morrowind (an earlier Elder Scrolls game), but it was epic in its own manner. The amazing graphics, the feeling of actually being in the world, of having the power to change it, and wonderful gameplay made this game special. In the Elder Scrolls game, you always have a legendary quest (usually multiple) before you. You start as a humble nothing and progress into [spoiler] a Dragonborn! We even named our snake, Dovah, after the dragon word for…”dragon.”
The music by Jeremy Soule is also absolutely extraordinary. So many feels! I used it for my meditation classes and it always eases the soul. Skyrim allowed me to be transported to another world and learn all of its intricacies. Although this is basically one of the first Elder Scrolls games to “really” get popular aka mainstream, I enjoyed it in my own way while staying away from the bandwagon. Being in the world, experiencing it in the detailed way Bethesda provides made it enough for me. <3 Elder Scrolls forever!
Hungry – Crystalis – Don’t be deceived by the horrible American name, “God Slayer: Sonata of the Far Away Sky” shares the credit with the original Legend of Zelda for not only making me obsessed with video games, but more importantly, making RPGs my favorite genre from a young age. (Released in 1990) Luckily I played the original when it was released and avoided the Game Boy Color remake, and as a result, this game is forever etched in my mind as perfection.
Few things need to be said. It improved on LoZ’s game play, introducing diagonal movement and jumping over enemies. The story is clearly influenced by Miyazaki’s work, the soundtrack is still on my iPhone, and it’s a post apocalyptic world that can be saved by the four elements of the Earth. The funny thing about this is that sometimes when people ask me what my favorite game of all time is, I have answered multiple times, Crystalis. For the sake of this list, it finds itself within the top 10 with nothing but age as its enemy.
That takes us off on our first step for breaking the top ten of the greatest video games of all time! I can’t wait for next week to see what #9 brings! Have you played any of these games? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. And as always, stay hungry and fit!
