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: 50 - 41

50: Hunter Hunted

• Year: 1996
• System: PC

Hunter Hunted is a game that I only know of about four people ever hearing of and less ever playing it. But it's a fantastic platforming adventure game that takes place in the post-apocalypse. 

Aliens have enslaved humans and these Minotaur looking creatures and make them fight for entertainment. You control Jake or Garethe Den (I'll let you figure out which one is the Minotaur) and work together trying to rebuild a car to escape the aliens. 

Every level has objectives and exits you must find. And the best part of the game is there are 20 or so co-op levels where you and a friend can play split screen and try to reach the objectives together. 

I still have a disk copy of Hunter Hunted, but in a terrible Twilight Zone like episode, no disk drive to be found. I check GOG, Steam, and the Epic Game Store at least a few time a year waiting to see if this gets added to the library. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 80 - 71

80: Warlords II

• Year: 1993
• System: PC

I didn't understand Warlords II for a long time. I had the Shareware version, so a lot of maps and characters were locked and if you clicked on them, you would get the "send a check or money order to this address." But I kept at it because what else was I going to do. I was getting like $5 in allowance, I couldn't exactly afford games. I survived mostly on shareware.

I'd play until inevitably, I would run out of units and die. I couldn't figure out how I was expected to win because the instructions were so obtuse. 

And then I discovered Gamefaqs. 

And then I started realizing checking out the ruins would get you treasure and maybe allies. And then I figured out how to make more units. And eventually I got really good at the game. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 100-91

100: Zack and Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

• Year: 2007
• System: Wii

There were less than 5 games on the Wii that actually used the waggle for good. Zack and Wiki was the second best of those five after Wii Sports. 

Zack and Wiki was an interesting puzzle game. You would be introduced to a situation such as your plane crashing and you jumping out and having to find a way to slow your decent. Or a volcano with a locked door. And using the Wiimote, you would have to open an umbrella to slow your fall or grab a key and actually use it to unlock a door. 

This game does what most of those phone game advertisements promise. There's an order of operations to solve the puzzles and when you do it, it's incredibly satisfying. 

Top 200 Games of All Time: 140-131

140: Liero

• Year: 1998
• System: PC

I always liked Worms, but it always felt a little slow. Especially when playing against the AI where you would have to wait long periods of time for them to make a move. 

Liero solves that problem. Gone are the back and forth of turns, instead, we play for keeps. This is Worms: the Death Match. 

You move quickly through the underground tunnels, using grappling hooks, and firing wildly, cutting through the mud. Sometimes you might just carpet bomb downwind from you, hoping you'll get a lucky bounce of the trenches you were building. 

Liero was a free download I found when I was looking for a copy of Worms on the internet, and it ended up being a blast to play against my friends. 

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. 

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.

Tomb Raider Anniversary

Played on: PC
Release Date: June 1, 2007

I had a dream last week where I was exploring an Mayan temple and it gave me a craving for some old style Tomb Raider.

Luckily, during one of the Steam sales a few years ago, I picked up every Tomb Raider game up to the 2013 reboot for roughly $15.

Unluckily, the PS1 ports of those games don't support controllers and are basically unplayable with a keyboard. So I have four PS1 Tomb Raider games in my Steam library that I may never touch.

The original Tomb Raider has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first times I thought, "Videogames will never look more realistic than this."

In 2007 (during the second reboot of the franchise) we got Tomb Raider Anniversary which was a remake of the very first game with some of the additions from Tomb Raider Legends.