Top 200 Games of All Time: 20 - 11

20: Tomb Raider 2

• Year: 1997
• System: PS1

The first dungeon of Tomb Raider 2 has the best string of Indiana Jones-esque traps. Slide down the steep embankment, flip over the spikes, grasp the zip line, and land near a campfire. Wait? A campfire? In the back of this tomb? 

Yeah, Tomb Raider 2 did everything bigger. You're not killing as much innocent wild life. Instead, you're going after Mafia types in Italy, Antarctica, caves. Lara's mansion is opened up a little more and has plenty of secrets. You rode a damn snow mobile, a boat. Lara got vehicles for Christ sake. And you fight a god damned dragon for the finale. 

Tomb Raider 2 took the great concept of the first, but fixed many of the problems of the first. 

19: Star Craft

• Year: 1998
• System: PC

The ultimate rock paper scissor game. Star Craft hit a perfect balance between the three factions. 

Zerg allowed you to cheaply and quickly throw masses of weak creatures at your enemy, creating the term Zerg rush and forever changing a strategy in all RTS games. The Protoss cost a ton of money, but gave us "you must construct additional pylons." And then you had the Terran, which ended up defining the look of the space marine in everything Sci-fi for the next two decades. 

Star Craft is still played competitively 20 years later for a reason. There's not been many RTS games that have come close to the king. 

18: Resident Evil: REmake

• Year: 2002
• System: GameCube

It was sort of insane that Capcom did a from the ground up remake of the original Resident Evil, less than 10 years after it came out. But here we are, and it's a piece of history. 

There weren't many remakes at this point. Metal Gear Solid is sort of a spiritual remake of the NES games, but other than that, I can't think of any. 

And instead of just rebuilding the same game, but higher resolution, they redesigned the mansion to make more sense. They recorded new lines of dialogue. All the puzzles were changed. The game still looks good today, partially because of the tricks they did like model the candle light so that it still reflects off the walls.  

I've memorized basically every Resident Evil game to the point where I can do an almost no gun shot Resident Evil 2 run, but there's something about the twisting corridors of the mansion that still keeps the fog of war in my mind. 

17: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

• Year: 2005
• System: PS2

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a perfect James Bond game. Out of control super villains, some of the best of the

series. (Sniper battle with the old man, the flame throwing Cosmonaut, Bee guy, your fucking mentor)

It has the perfect music queues, even having a parody of the James Bond title sequence song while you climbed a 400 foot ladder. 

Yes, the camo system and the heal system are too many menus deep, but you forget about that because you are playing on a canvas. This game is art. 

You may have noticed by now that when a game is able to make me cry, it generally gets on this list. I cry every single time the credits roll on MGS3. Metal Gear Solid 3 has the best ending to any game ever made. 

I can't wait for Konami to package up all the Metal Gears again, so I can buy a Metal Gear collection for the sixth time. 

16: Condemned: Criminal Origins

• Year: 2005
• System: Xbox 360

Condemned: Criminal Origins was not on my radar. I don't even remember how I ended up with it. Probably some sale or something. 

Condemned is the greatest hits of horror. An abandoned department store filled with creepy mannequins. You've got the school at night time. And a god damned library from hell. 

Condemned is one of the scariest games I've ever played. It's one of the most intense thrillers I've ever played. Condemned belongs in the True Detective universe and would be widely regarded as the best season. All around, Condemned is a complete melding of genres. It makes you feel as if you're playing a true crime story. 

15: Diablo

• Year: 1997
• System: PC

I used to have a Christmas tradition. We would spend all day at my grandma's house, followed by my

aunt's house, just generally having to interact with way too many people. 

We would come home and all I would want to do was have some quiet and listen to some music. I've always been very excited about Christmas and unable to sleep, so I knew I would end up staying awake most of the night anyway. 

I would turn the 24 hour Christmas Story marathon on, boot up Diablo, and do a run and see how far I could get. 

Sure Diablo 2 is a better game, Darkstone may have some life improvements, but Diablo 1 has the memories. 

14: Demon's Souls

• Year: 2009
• System: PS3

This is one of the few unestablished franchises that I preordered a game based off a trailer. I don't know what it was about this trailer, but I felt like this was going to be big. Not only that, but I never buy deluxe editions, but I did that too. 

And sure enough, Demon's Souls hit. (Maybe not as hard as Dark Souls) It was addictive to try to figure out how to get a better run. Fight your way back to the Tower Knight over and over again, only to get crushed over and over again. And when you just didn't have enough poison resistance, you could escape the poisoned swamp and go level up in the magic prison world instead. 

I'm glad we're going to get an HD remaster. This is still my favorite Souls game and I can't wait to play through it again. 

I sold my Deluxe Edition of Demon's Souls a few years later for $220. (Not bad for $80 purchase) and it funded me buying my jungle green Metal Gear Solid PSP. 

13: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

• Year: 2011
• System: PC

I didn't understand Deus Ex in the late 90s. I was still in the mindset that FPSs were run and gun, dodge

and hodge (?). I didn't know there was this thinking man's shooter. 

So when Deus Ex was rebooted with Human Revolution, it was a life affirming game. You can play Deus Ex guns a blazing, sneaking around, being charismatic as hell. There's even an achievement for beating the game without killing anyone. 

It's one of those games where you can see an alternate path and get frustrated because you don't have the perk to use it. 

The sequel was a little tone deaf and probably killed another game in the current series, but I'm hoping that Square will give the franchise another chance on the next generation. 

12: Duke Nukem 3D

• Year: 1996
• System: PC

Duke Nukem 3D was a refreshing pallet swap of Doom. While everything in Doom had sort of the same dark colors of the moon base, Duke Nukem 3D had brightly colored cities, apartments, and even a moon base. 

On top of that, the humor was perfect for 12 year old me. You could see pixelated boobies on the strippers. You could hear Duke quip sexual innuendos. I thought Duke Nukem was so cool, I actually wrote three Duke Nukem comic books. 

I had Duke fever so hard, I also learned how to setup a LAN so I could play deathmatches against my brothers in our house. I even got into the mod scene and figured out how to swap out map files to essentially have unlimited Duke Nukem. 

11: Final Fantasy IV

• Year: 1991
• System: SNES

Final Fantasy IV (North America) was the first time I felt like 2D sprites could convey real emotion.

You felt the hit when the twins sacrificed themselves. You wanted to rise to be a Paladin. 

And the sprites, look at that beautiful bastard next to this. That's a damn good looking sprite. 

Final Fantasy IV was the first time I felt games could be more than just a simple platformer or a simple sports game or a simple racing game.  If was the introduction to a lot of the Final Fantasy menu styles, job types, even names that are still used in Final Fantasy games. 

Final Fantasy IV still holds up as an epic adventure in some medieval setting. If you play a ROM, be sure not to save scum like your boy did. You may just save yourself in a dungeon you can't survive. 

• 200-191
• 190-181
• 180-171
• 170-161
• 160-151
• 150-141
• 140-131
• 130-121
• 120-111
• 110-101
• 100-91
• 90-81
• 80-71
• 70-61
• 60-51
• 50-41
• 40-31
• 30-21

Top 200 Games of All Time: 70 - 61

70: Darkstone

• Year: 1999
• System: PC

Darkstone is more or less a Diablo rip off. But like a really good Diablo rip off?

It fed my need for more Diablo. But it also filled a sort of general need for a role playing game. There wasn't this overarching hell is spilling into the world. There were fully populated villages to interact with. 

There of course were randomized dungeons. Dozens of enemies and spells and weapons. 

Darkstone wasn't better than Diablo, but in a time where Diablo clones were everywhere, Darkstone stood above the rest. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 90 - 81

90: Dead Rising 4

• Year: 2016
• System: Xbox One

Dead Rising 2 and 3 sort of leaned into more mainstream story telling and video gaming. They lost a little of that weird from Dead Rising 1. 

It's a miracle that Dead Rising 4 exists at all. The game was almost finished when they decided to basically scrap it and start over. Not only does it exist, but Dead Rising 4 recaptures that weird from the original perfectly and is able to give you the greatest hits of the good things from DR2 and DR3. 

You start in a mall, which is better designed than the mall in the first one. Weapons crafting sort of took away from DR2, but DR4 finds a way to make it fun. You move through a military encampment, which then opens out into a full realized town, which is better than DR3. There's plenty of opportunity to drive over zombies, make wacky weapons, take the story seriously, or just mess around for a few hours. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 200-191

200: Tetris

Year: 1989

System: Gameboy

Blasphemy! One of the top selling games of all time at 200? The inspiration for essentially every puzzle game ever made! 

Well buckle up, cause games that were inspired by Tetris show up much higher on this list. Honestly, out of all the games on my list, this one traveled and up and down the most. It peaked around the 30 mark, but I felt like I was supposed to have it there and not that I actually wanted it there. I like some of the other puzzle games better than Tetris, but that doesn't take away from how good it is. 

My list of favorite games was damn near 400, so the fact that this was in the top half of games I just considered good, says a lot.

199: Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time

Year: 2005

System: DS

Not starting off great. I can already see people jumping down my throat for putting this over Mario RPG. Well... I never had Mario RPG, but I did have Partners in Time and I found it charming and addictive. 

This was also the game where I learned about the rampant DS bootleg market. I bought this from Gamestop and then tried to re-sell it on eBay. And I got an angry email from my buyer. And then when I told the buyer I had no idea what he was talking about, I got 8 pages explaining different ways to spot bootleg DS carts. I gave the guy a refund at at some point lost the cart in my couch cushion. 

198: Donkey Kong

Year: 1986

System: NES

This was the ultimate trial and error NES game. It didn't fell unfair like some games (Looking at you Bayou Billy, you piece of...) but it was challenging. Although it only had like 4 stages, they were a challenge every time you played there. There wasn't really "memorizing" the stages cause things would always bounce weird, frame rates would drop randomly, and there's always that terrible moment where you felt cocky and you tried to get one over the big gorilla. 

It never worked out and you always lost a life. 

197: Mariokart 64

Year: 1996

System: N64

My cousin dragged a kitchen chair into the room, attached a steering wheel to the kitchen table / entertainment center, and put pedals on the floor. I sat 18 inches from the screen and played until 3 in the morning.

I had played the SNES version of Mariokart and I was a seasoned veteran of Wacky Wheels on the PC, but nothing prepared me for the chaos of a 3D racing game.

I was total dogshit and still largely am, but somehow Nintendo pulling off four player split screen with very little slowdown was life changing. I only had one friend who had a TV big enough to actually play four player split screen, but those Friday nights locked in the battle mode were special. 

196: Sonic Adventure

Year: 1998

System: Dreamcast

That demo Sears had playing over and over again of Sonic outrunning the whale... that alone gets you on the top 200 list. 

To this date, Sonic Adventure is one of the few 3D Sonic games to feel fast and capture the general feeling of Sonic the Hedgehog.

If not for the short comings of the Dreamcast controller or some of the mid-game confusion around what you needed to do, this game would've been much higher on the list. 

195: Ice Hockey

Year: 1988

System: NES

Nintendo sort of knocked it out of the park on their first try. This game is old enough to where they could just call it Ice Hockey cause nothing else existed like it yet.

Some people might get pictures of Blades of Steel in their brain, but as soon as you talk about the fat guy, everyone knows this game. You built a team around a skinny fast guy, a very average guy, and a fat slow guy and dammit, that's all the strategy we needed in 1988. 

In instead of getting an expensive license like the NHL or Olympics, Nintendo kept it simple and opted for generic national teams of countries that probably played ice hockey.

194: CyClones

Year: 1994

System: PC

My dad worked with a bunch of tech nerds in the early to mid-90s, which meant every now and then, when I went to sign into the ole Hewlett-Packard on the weekend, I'd find random CD-ROMs and Floppy Disks hanging out. Most of the time is was dumb Simpsons WAV files, but sometimes I found find games. 

One of those games was CyClones. You know Raven Software, the people that bring you many of your favorite Call of Duty maps? This was one of their early gigs. 

I was used to playing Doom where everything technically lived on the same plane of existence or Duke Nukem 3D where if you dared press the Page Up button you'd shoot your weapon into a distorted reality. This was the first first person shooter to use the mouse look. Eat shit Half Life, CyClones beat you to the punch by 4 years. 

193: Costume Quest

Year: 2010

System: PC

This was Double Fine's Renaissance period. Their second coming. Costume Quest, Double Fine Adventure, Stacking, The Cave... all these very charming puzzle games in a time where we were duct taping chainsaws to our giant machine guns. 

This RPG stayed the perfect amount of time, once credits rolled you felt like it had reached a nice conclusion. You didn't have the grind you get in Final Fantasy games. I also happen to be working on a similar game with my brother at the time. Costume Quest beat us to market by a long shot and did it much better than we probably would have.   

192: Earthworm Jim

Year: 1994

System: Genesis

This slot was a constant battle between Earthworm Jim and Vector Man. I loved the 2D run and gun platformers of the Genesis era, but could only find one spot on the list for them. And that number is 192. 

They were able to have these big beautiful sprites and not sacrifice frame rate or speed. When many games would slow down character movement or felt like you were running through syrup, the Earthworm Jims of the world sprinted and fired a machine pistol.

This was one of the first games that I felt captured that Saturday morning cartoon / Ren and Stimpy art style.

191: LHX Attack Chopper

Year: 1990

System: PC

There was a time in PC gaming before the ASDW keyboard scheme wasn't standard yet and you would find your hands playing finger Twister on the keyboard. This was one of those games. Legit, I tried to play it on the Internet Archive and I couldn't figure out how to take off even.

My friends and I thought the maps in LHX were infinite. You could pick a direction and just keep flying, always finding little patches of enemies here and there. 

There was nothing more satisfying than loading up a Hellfire missile and firing it on a lone bazooka carrying infantry man on the ground. 

The best this game felt was when you locked onto a tank and while dodging it's ground fire just unloaded everything you had. The use of 3D space felt great (in 1990).

Spoopy Games: Random One Offs

As I've said, I was addicted to Resident Evil. I'd always flip through my Official PlayStation magazine looking for the words Resident Evil clone, I would write down the name of the game, and keep the list in my wallet for anytime I went to Babbages with some extra cash.

I ended up getting a lot of random horror games for the PlayStation 1 and 2. This learned behavior has followed me through to today.

Even though horror games have become more popular thanks to the rise of indie games and hot demos like PT, I still have fun hunting down the lesser known games.

So this list is essentially a mix of things that I didn't know were going to be important at the time and things that are still little known or played that have a special place in my heart.