Top 200 Games of All Time: 10 - 4

10: Age of Empires 2

• Year: 1999
• System: PC

Age of Empires 2 is the absolute peak of the real time strategy genre. All dozen or so kingdoms were balanced. You could win with the British or the Japanese or the Byzantines. It played like a fighting game, where you needed to learn what made your empire strong. 

And the buildings had scale. Traditionally, RTS buildings would take up roughly 4 squares to your characters 1 square. Well Age of Empires 2 had giant castles. Although not true scale, they made the game feel so much more realistic. 

There was nothing more satisfying than rolling up on an enemy with a half dozen Trebuchets or put in the cheat code and roll in with a missile firing Shelby Cobra. 

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. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 120-111

120: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

• Year: 2014
• System: PC

X-COM is a frustrating game in that it gives you the odds to hit. And there's something in your dumb caveman brain that makes you think, "ohh, 60% chance to hit. That's definitely going to hit." And then when the dice roll doesn't go your way, you have to quickly adjust and prepare to get pummeled the next turn. 

X-COM is hard, as it should be. This is a strategy game. You're supposed to fail sometimes, readjust, and come back at it. 

X-COM 2 didn't live up to the first game, instead opting to spike the difficulty in ways that I don't think are fair. Too often are you flanked by unmarked enemies, and your squad immediately gunned down. But X-COM 1 felt mostly fair. Thee enemy ambushes came where you expected them to. 

Spoopy Games: Silent Hill

With Halloween quickly approaching, I figured I'll do what every other gaming blog and site does. It's time to cram lists of spooooookkky games down your throats.

Today, I'm focusing on the Silent Hill series.

A series that got in early on the survival horror game and one that Konami seemed to keep it's hands off of through the first several.

Silent Hill's foggy town was often used to sell the PlayStation 2. It's demonic scenes and story line kept large portions of the mainstream away from it. It's influence has spread to both games and film, becoming more than a Resident Evil clone. Silent Hill is a survival horror pillar that will forever be talked about in video game history.

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga

Age of Empires II is probably the height that the RTS genre will ever reach. I know there's an argument in there for Blizzard's RTS games and there's probably a couple people that would fight for Command and Conquer, but they are wrong, it's Age of Empires II.

I spent hours setting up LAN parties between my brothers and I, and we would have epic three hour long battles against the A.I. I'd hold the line with Teutonic knights, keeping their annoying small groups away from our early civilizations, while my brothers constructed siege equipment before laying waste to our enemies one by one.