Top 200 Games of All Time: 30 - 21

30: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

• Year: 2010
• System: PC

I don't know if I've played a game that has gotten me as worked up as Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The only weapon you have is light and that light is at a premium. 

You don't know why you wake up in a giant castle. And at first, you don't really know there's an evil lurking underneath. That is until the first time your torch blows out and all of a sudden, there's something going bump in the night. 

And you dig deeper into the catacombs, you come across the water monster, one of the scariest scenes in games ever. My heart was in my throat the entire time. Eventually you make your way to the dungeon where things get more and more tense. 

29: Bioshock

• Year: 2007
• System: Xbox 360

We all remember the first time we played Bioshock. It was so different from anything at the time. Now

Bioshock-inspired-Ayn-Rand hellscapes are used often in "post apocalyptic" games. 

Not only was it dripping in ultra cool atmosphere, but the combat had so many layers to it. 

You have the standard shoot your way through a fight. 

But what's this, a room is flooded. Fire electricity into the water and fry everyone. Shoot some ice into the water and freeze everyone. 

And then you see a hulking Big Daddy wandering the halls with a little sister. Someone you need to either harvest or save to power up, but it means getting into an extended fight with a Big Daddy that means a huge drain on your resources. 

28: Batman: Arkham Asylum

• Year: 2010
• System: PS4

Batman had gone quiet for a long time and then all of a sudden we got both the best Batman films and Batman games. 

Arkham Asylum played in it's own universe, closer to the animated series, but it's own thing. You have Mark Hamill's Joker, but then you had these psychotropic sections against the Scarecrow, or the little too on the nose Poison Ivy confrontation in the green house. 

It had a nice balance of fighting, detective work, and scripted scenarios. Really, the only thing I'd say kind of sucked was the last boss fight.

The Batman games did better when they were contained to a living place. Every area of Arkham Asylum feels lived in. Something that was lost with Arkham City. 

27: Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

• Year: 2013
• System: Wii-U

I wish I could go back and punch those Legend of Cellda people in the face. "Noooo, I'm an angry

internet twerp, give me realistic Link!"

Wind Waker is the best Zelda ever made, but back when it first came out, the internet went angry mob and tore it to pieces. 

The game is beautiful. Because of the cell shaded art style they went with, you can upres this game forever and it will always look good. 

Wind Waker has you traveling by boat to many islands. The map is split into a grid and there is something to do in each of the squares. There's so many dungeons, sub-dungeons, pirate ships, puzzles, and they are all incredibly diverse and the HD version made it easier to get to everything, streamlined some of the tedium, and made the game brighter.  

26: Lords of the Realm 2

• Year: 1996
• System: PC

Lords of the Realm 2 was where I first learned the hard lessons of capitalism. There's a balance of feeding your people, but not taxing them too much, fortifying you land, while sending the populations' sons off to war when you want to take over the next region. 

Outside of the map view over the island you were fighting for domination of, you would get into battles. Sometimes there were open skirmishes in an open area. These almost always went bad for the player character. The computer was too good at managing their people. 

But then there were the sieges. One person would siege the other's castle to take control of the land. As the defender, you could drop hot oil or drop extra gates to block the enemy. As the offence, you could throw volleys of arrows toward the walls while you pike men worked on the gates. 

This was probably the most hard core strategy game I played as a kid. Even today, I boot it up every so often and play a few hours and am amazed I was able to balance happiness, health, and money of my people in order to dominate the world. 

25: Gone Home

• Year: 2013
• System: PC

Gone Home is only a few hours long, but I've never played a game before that builds so much tension,

makes you care so much about characters, and makes you cry so hard without ever meeting another person in the game. 

Gone Home starts from a foreboding trope as old as literature is. A storm, an empty house, seemingly abandoned all of a sudden. Your mind starts racing. You immediately start thinking there's a haunting. 

And then you realize the potential haunting isn't the biggest threat, but the biggest thread is real life. And the real life consequences of where your mind start wandering are so much worse than the haunting. 

And I'm not going to ruin anything else about this. Just play it. It's like 3 hours of your life and it will leave you feeling things. 

24: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2

• Year: 2001
• System: GameCube

It's hard to get a game with flight, especially on a planet, to feel right. The craft moves too fast and you zoom by everything. Too slow and it doesn't feel real. If you adjust the map size to account for flying, you risk making too much of the map feel empty. 

Rogue Squadron 2 is still my favorite flying game because it got this right. The maps are full of cities, enemies, other craft. You feel you're moving fast, but you have time to hit your target. 

The scale you feel when on approach of a Star Destroyer or the Death Star is awe inspiring. 

23: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

• Year: 2008
• System: Xbox 360

Ubisoft, GIVE US BACK CO-OP RAINBOW SIX!

I ran this game probably two dozen times with various combinations of friends of mine. Every time, trying new tactics, taking new roles, seeing if we could do it faster, with less downs. 

Rainbox Six Vegas 2 is one of the best build co-op campaigns of all time. Every map gives you choice, every enemy smart enough to try to flank you, 

And when the credits rolled, you had a dozen or so maps of Terrorist Hunt. Small little skirmishes, hand built maps, where you could toggle as hard or as easy as you wanted. 

Hell, I would pay $60 for a terrorist hunt game. 

22: Uncharted 2

• Year: 2009
• System: PS3

Your vision comes into focus and your perilously hanging hundreds of feet above a snow bank. One that you will only touch after you've bounced off the jagged cliff a few times. 

There's blood on your shirt. Maybe a bullet wound. Maybe a stab. Maybe someone else's? The adrenaline doesn't concern itself with that. The adrenaline only cares about survival.  

Uncharted 2 is the peak of Drake's adventures. The temples feel like they exist in this world. The Six-Axis controls are gone, the characters fully developed, 

21: Metal Gear Solid 5

• Year: 2015
• System: PS4

Metal Gear Solid 5 is damn near a perfect game. If not for my intense love of Metal Gear and all the

weird villains and plot points, this would be at the top of the list. 

Yes, you get kissed by the Kojima weirdness, but it's like a kiss on your cheek. It doesn't mean anything, and you just got friendzoned by your crush. 

If only there was more of the weird-os. Like a guy that can machine gun bees at you or an octopus lady who's in constant pain or even a good ole' fashioned cyborg ninja fight. 

Metal Gear Solid 5 sacrificed some of the story to have a living world. One where there are rules, but those rules are used to complete your objectives in the sandbox. This is one of my favorite games of all time and the only reason I haven't gone back to it is because I don't have the time to be as obsessive as I would like to be. 

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