Your Top 100 Games Challenge

How can you like a game if you don’t play it?

Wow, I was thinking about making such a list when that thread was bumped a while back, but never, ever considered ranking them with any sense! This would be beyond what I can do, considering I’d probably miss a bunch of games I loooved but didn’t leave a big imprint in my brains (just skimming through yours and SamS’ list, Plants Vs Zombies is one such game).

What was the Mark of Kri (I don’t dare to ask about Voodoo Vince)?

Yeah, I only ranked them in very broad strokes, as in “these should be near the top, while these should be somewhere in the middle”, and then whatever is not near the top or middle ends up near the bottom by default after you try to reorder it. But it’s still not easy. It’s really hard to compare. Why is Warlords Battlecry 2 above Witcher 3 on my list? I have no idea. The two are nothing like each other so it seems really silly that they are on the same list, honestly.

Nevertheless, the actual process of making the list did make me realize that there were a lot more “top games” in my mind than I had thought about previously.

Thanks! It would be weird if you included games that you only heard were great from other people. It would be like me including Starflight or Civilization IV or Gothic 2. I’m sure they are great, but since I haven’t played them, …

Just from my own point of view, I don’t really sweat the rankings all that much. I basically tried to take the top 10 placement pretty seriously but the rest are basically just games that I think belong in my top 100. That’s pretty much it. I couldn’t say why the 73 spot is there, and not 72 or 74, and I really don’t care to. Therese are games that mean a lot to me, for whatever reason, and 100 seems like a big enough grab bag to catch a decent spread of games I wanted to call out.

So something like Plants vs Zombies, yeah that’s a totally lightweight game for a top 100 list. But, I own and have played on like half a dozen different platforms and, no lie, I pretty much play every day. I just love that game.

I agree with @Rock8man that I wouldn’t want folks to put games they haven’t played on their list. I don’t think these lists are meant to be a 100 greatest, and those kinds of lists don’t mean much anyway. I think of mine as 100 games that I love, that have meaning to me, and I like sharing that and seeing other people share that. Like with @Knightsaber’s list, I have never given the Farming Simulator games a moment’s thought, but he liked them enough to put two entries on his top 100. Now I’m thinking whoa, what’s up with that? Maybe I’m missing out, I need to take a closer look.

As for Mark of Kri, that’s a PS2 game that was kind of a stealthy/brawly kind of game. You playrdnthis massive kind of Pacific Islander looking dude who is trying to keep a group of people safe. That’s not much to go on, but man did I love that game. Haven’t played in a long time, but it looms large in my memory.

Edit: keep me of want to put ME: Andromeda in there, but I don’t know what I’d bump. Maybe next revision in a couple years I’ll have a better perspective.

It brings me back to your number 1: Starflight. Honestly, what type of games are still attempting that sense of exploration? I don’t know about Starflight specifically, so let’s talk about my number 1: Star Control 2 instead, which I have played through many times. Just that feeling when you’re playing it for the first time, and you’re exploring from Earth and finding other star systems, and realizing just how big a sector of the galaxy you have access to. Who is trying to recreate that these days? How did primarily two people make a game of that scope back then?

The two games that tried to do that recently were No Man’s Sky and ME: Andromeda. No Man’s Sky took the procedurally generated approach, and ME:A mostly took a more hand-made approach with a little bit of procedural generation. I actually enjoyed both approaches. The last year was a good one for me, for returning to that sense of awe of exploration. Ultimately I stopped playing No Man’s Sky because their combat system sucks. I mean, I love Star Control 2, but there’s no way I would have played it to completion even once if I didn’t love their combat system and flight model. ME:A, on the other hand, has a great combat system that I really enjoyed. I just wish they had some empty worlds to explore and more content.

I hope we’re seeing a trend though. The return of the galaxy exploration game. Hopefully with some enjoyable core gameplay loop too, though.

Man, I hope that Andromeda’s and No Man’s Sky’s failures in the marketplace don’t kill enthusiasm for what they were trying to do. I don’t know who would take up the flag for the kind of huge, galaxy-spanning rpg that Bioware was attempting - CDPrrojekt could probably do it, but they’re tied up with Cyberpunk. I don’t think this is really in Bethesda’s wheelhouse, though there were rumors they were working on something like this back before E3.

Andromeda could have been saved, had there been the will to do so. I think about the awesome story-focused DLC for GTA4, that also added features and activities to the base game. But I guess it’s on life support, so we will have to pray to the gods of space exploration games to forgive us our trespasses, maybe grace us with something cool in a few years. In the meantime, there’s always indies.

Anyway, you mentioned rating Star Control 2 higher because you played it first and that’s basically the story with me and Starflight. Could’ve maybe gone the other way, but I had Starflight on my C64 back in high school, and I don’t think I had a system that could play Star Control until much later. Just couldn’t get its hooks in me the same way by that point. Still a great game though, made it onto my list.

I’ve revisited my list (I contributed a couple\few years back). Surprising to see the differences from my last one. A lot of it is the same, but some games dropped off while others made an appearance, and ordering changed. Barring a few games I’ve worked on, I tried to keep to single entries in any given series. Games I played with others (single screen usually, but not always) rose up a bit. I suppose in my old age I’m getting more sentimental, so those held more significance for me.

As a note - anything below 35 is only broadly grouped as opposed to in any kind of real order. Like ten at a time of “these over these”, but nothing more than that.

1 Witcher III, The: Wild Hunt 2015 XB1
2 Deus Ex 2000 PC
3 Dragon Age: Origins 2009 PC
4 Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The 2002 PC
5 System Shock 1994 PC
6 Red Dead Redemption 2010 Xbox 360
7 Toy Commander 1999 DC
8 Half Life 1998 PC
9 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2007 PC
10 Secret of Monkey Island, The 1990 PC
11 Worms Armageddon 1999 PC
12 Tomb Raider 2013 Xbox 360
13 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2000 DC
14 Red Faction: Guerrilla 2009 Xbox 360
15 Rock Band 2 2008 Xbox 360
16 Saints Row: The Third 2011 Xbox 360
17 DOOM 2016 PC
18 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2004 PC
19 Dishonored 2012 PC
20 Diablo II 2000 PC
21 Halo 3 2007 Xbox 360
22 Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi 1991 PC
23 Star Wars X-Wing 1993 PC
24 Super Monkey Ball 2001 GC
25 Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter 1986 PC
26 Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams 2001 XBOX
27 Sam & Max Hit the Road 1993 PC
28 Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 1993 PC
29 Fallout: New Vegas 2010 PC
30 Full Throttle 1995 PC
31 Batman Arkham City 2011 Xbox 360
32 Gears of War 2006 Xbox 360
33 Loom 1990 PC
34 Portal 2 2011 PC
35 Resident Evil 5 2009 Xbox 360
36 Agents of Mayhem 2017 PS4
37 Shenmue 2000 DC
38 Rebuild 2011 iOS
39 King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human 1986 PC
40 Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel 1987 PC
41 MechWarrior 1989 PC
42 Commander Keen Episode IV: Secret of the Oracle 1991 PC
43 Eric the Unready 1993 PC
44 Flashback 1993 PC
45 Jagged Alliance 1994 PC
46 Quake 1996 PC
47 Terra Nova 1996 PC
48 Plants vs. Zombies 2009 PC
49 Hunter: The Reckoning 2002 XBOX
50 Jet Set Radio Future 2002 XBOX
51 Serious Sam 2002 XBOX
52 Conflict: Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad 2003 XBOX
53 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time 2003 XBOX
54 Dead Rising 2 2010 Xbox 360
55 Mass Effect 2 2010 Xbox 360
56 Jet Grind Radio 2000 DC
57 Professor Layton and the Curious Village 2008 DS
58 The Room 2012 iOS
59 Quest For Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero 1989 PC
60 Out of This World 1991 PC
61 Betrayal at Krondor 1993 PC
62 Day of the Tentacle 1993 PC
63 Return to Zork 1993 PC
64 Dreamweb 1994 PC
65 No One Lives Forever 2000 PC
66 Quarantine 1994 PC
67 Under a Killing Moon 1994 PC
68 You Don’t Know Jack 1995 PC
69 Interstate '76 1997 PC
70 Descent: Freespace - The Great War 1998 PC
71 Descent 1994 PC
72 Thief: The Dark Project 1998 PC
73 Call of Duty 2003 PC
74 Metro 2033 2010 PC
75 Walking Dead, The: Season One 2012 PC
76 Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2003 XBOX
77 Alien Isolation 2014 XB1
78 Brute Force 2003 XBOX
79 Burnout 2: Point of Impact 2003 XBOX
80 Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge 2003 XBOX
81 Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, The 2004 XBOX
82 Punisher, The 2005 XBOX
83 Borderlands 2009 Xbox 360
84 Eternal Darkness 2002 GC
85 Wolfenstein 3D 1992 PC
86 Mindshadow 1984 Apple IIc
87 BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception 1988 PC
88 Dragonstrike 1990 PC
89 Lemmings 1991 PC
90 Syndicate 1993 PC
91 Dink Smallwood 1998 PC
92 Dig, The 1995 PC
93 A-10 Tank Killer 1989 PC
94 Revenant 1999 PC
95 Saints Row 2006 Xbox 360
96 Movies, The 2005 PC
97 Crackdown 2007 Xbox 360
98 Infinity Blade 2010 iOS
99 Saints Row IV 2013 Xbox 360
100 Adventures of Willy Beamish, The 1991 PC

I like this list! It’s close enough to mine that it makes me question the variances on my own list. Kind of wish I had made a place for The Crescent Hawk’s Inception, that was a great little game. And I wonder how many other folks have even played Dreamweb?

For some reason, I played Crescent Hawk’s Inception multiple times as a kid. It got me into Battletech.

And Dreamweb was one of the first really mature adventure games I played. It seems like a given now, but back then an adventure game with mature themes and content taken seriously was decidedly an outlier (at least in America). I really dug it.

The first Descent: Freespace over it’s sequel?

Halo 3 over the original?

Wing Commander II over the other entries?

Xwing over Tie Fighter?

Wait a minute, Brute Force on the Xbox? Hunter: The Reckoning on Xbox? I played both of those. You crazy man. :P

I don’t know nijimeijer, are you trying to be a rebel here? :)

I still wish I’d been able to make more progress in Betrayal at Krondor back in the day. My party always died before they got to Krondor.

Let’s not be harsh, @Rock8man, these lists are always going to be about as subjective a thing as possible. Someone else said it better, these lists give you real insight into the forum’s members, what makes them tick. I’d probably make them a requirement for starting an account here, that’s how much value I see in them. Probably a good thing I’m not Tom Chick.

Betrayal at Krondor, that one takes me back. I remember playing it on a severely underpowered PC and never beating it. I have vague memories of my party constantly being poisoned.

Indeed. Point by point -

  • Freespace over Freespace II - yup. The first one had a bigger impact on me. The second one was awesome, and an improvement in every way, but I have fonder memories of the first.

  • Halo 3 was the first one I seriously played multiplayer on Live. My wife and I would split screen together, connecting on Live with a large group of friends. We had sooooooo much fun.

  • WCII is the one a friend and I played together (after obtaining the speech disks). While I think the series (core series) peaked with 3, the second one had a social element that places it higher in how I feel about them.

  • I actually liked playing in the Rebel ships more than the Empire ships. I know Tie Fighter is technically a better game, but man, as a kid, playing in an X-Wing (or a B-Wing or A-Wing) was … transcendent.

  • Brute Force was awesome in four player split screen co-op. Hunter, too. I had a blast going through those with family and friends. Played through them multiple times. Also see the random “Conflict” game on there. I love me some split screen co-op.

I too prefer X-wing over TIE Fighter, even though I agree TIE Fighter is probably the better game. Just can’t beat zipping around in an A-wing for my money.

Also, reading about all the games you played as a kid is slightly depressing. I was out of college by the time X-wing came out.

YES! Why X-wing vs. TIE Fighter: Balance of Power is the one on my list, should I ever finish it.

I preferred X-wing Alliance over both of them because of the modernized controls and excellent training missions where you had to do a timed run through Asteroid rings. But you couldn’t do that right away. It was only after you left your family behind and joined the Rebels that you got to go to the training yards. And boy was that an amazing reward.

Plus I just loved flying the Mellenium Falcon-like vessels in that game, with half a dozen automated turrets.

If it makes you feel better, I’m equating “kid” with “adolescent”, so maybe that closes the gap a bit? :)

A little.

I must confess I thought Dreamweb was one of those digital pinball games…

So here is my gaming psychological profile, Plants vs Zombies enhanced. I had most of it done a while ago it appears: guess I was ashamed to post it.
Bunch of stuff not released in the US, sorry about that.

The cream:

Dark Souls (PC)
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (Amstrad CPC version, for the blue borders around the screen that made the sea look so much larger…)
Offworld Trading Company (PC)
Gakkodeatta Kowai Hanashi (Super Nintendo)
Twilight Struggle (iOS)
Shenmue 2 (Sega Dreamcast)
Kerbal Space Program (PC)
Super Momotaro Dentetsu 2 (NEC PC-Engine)
M.U.L.E. (Atari 800)
Machi (Sega Saturn)
Herzog Zwei (Sega Megadrive)
Phantasy Star II (Sega Megadrive)
Konoyonohatedekoiwoutaushojo YU-NO (NEC PC-98)
Art of Fighting (SNK Neo-Geo)
Frostbite (Atari 2600)
Culdcept 2 (Sega Dreamcast)
Europa Universalis II (PC)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS)

And the rest:
Approaching Infinity (PC)
Gunhed (PC-Engine)
Shiren the Wanderer 5 (Nintendo DS)
Sid Meier’s Civilization (PC)
Donkey Kong (Nintendo Gameboy)
Halo (Microsoft XBOX)
Snatcher (NEC PC-Engine)
Musha Aleste (Sega Megadrive)
Le Mans 24 Hours (Sega Dreamcast)
American Truck Simulator (PC)
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (PC)
Pro Tennis World Court (NEC PC-Engine)
Quiz Nanairo Dreams (Sega Saturn)
Desktop Dungeons (PC)
The Binding of Isaac (PC)
Seireisenshi Spriggan (NEC PC-Engine)
Stunt Car Racer (Commodore Amiga)
SSX 3 (Microsoft XBOX)
Front Mission (Super Nintendo)
Every Extend (PC)
Carrier Command (Atari ST)
Armageddon Empires (PC)
Sujin Taisen (Nintendo DS)
Kamui (PC)
Silent Hunter III (PC)
Hitman: Blood Money (Microsoft XBOX)
Total Air War (PC)
Pro Yakyu Spirits 2010 (Sony PSP)
Heroes of Might & Magic II (PC)
Starflight (Sega Megadrive)
Baldur’s Gate II (PC)
Gabriel Knight (PC)
Knights of the Old Republic II (PC)
Oasis (iOS)
Sakura Taisen (Sega Saturn)
Kuron’yoma Gakuenki (Sony Playstation 2)
UnReal World (PC)
Unreal Tournament (PC)
Ghost Recon (PC)
Mahjong Kakuto Club DS (Nintendo DS)
Renowned Explorers (PC)
Batman Arkham Asylum (PC)
Shining Force (Sega Megadrive)
Der Langrisser FX (NEC PC-FX)
X-Plane 5 (PC)
Final Fantasy Tactics (Sony Playstation)
Wizardry 8 (PC)
Sorcerian (NEC PC-98)
Ys 1&2 (NEC PC-Engine)
Shadow of the Colossus (Sony Playstation 2)
Quadrilateral Cowboy (PC)
Gyakuten Saiban (Nintendo Gameboy Advance)
Sokyugurentai (Sega Saturn)
Winter Games (Amstrad CPC)
Mount & Blade (PC)
La-Mulana (PC)
Plants vs Zombies (everything)
Pro Pinball Big Race USA (PC)
Lemeilleur no Renkinjutsushi (PC)
The Fool’s Errand (Macintosh)
Elder Sign: Omen (iOS)
Mark of the Ninja (PC)
Ranarama (Amstrad CPC)
Strider Hiryu (Sega Megadrive)
Space Harrier (Amstrad CPC)
Captain Blood (Amstrad CPC)
Frontier: Elite 2 (Commodore Amiga)
Katamari Damashii (Sony Playstation 2)
Disciples (PC)
Freespace 2 (PC)
Psi-Ops (Microsoft XBOX)
Out Run (Arcade)
Burnout 3 (Microsoft XBOX)
Stephen’s Sausage Roll (PC)
Saints Row: The Third (PC)
Metal Gear Solid V (PC)
Space Channel 5 Part 2 (Sega Dreamcast)
Monaco (PC)
Tenshi no Uta (NEC PC-Engine)
State of Decay Year One (PC)
Hungry Cat Picross (iOS)
Ultima Underworld (PC)

It was actually tough to limit it to 100 titles, while I thought it would be the contrary.

The people whose lists resonnated the most with me in the thread were @Thraeg, @Juan_Raigada and @divedivedive’s. It is funny, because we all list very different games.

Good list! You’re right that I don’t recognize all the games, whether they weren’t released in the U.S. or may have gone by a different name, don’t know. But you’ve got a couple of games listed that I actually do own but haven’t spent much time with, Monaco and State of Decay. Keep meaning to spend more time with them, I know I would enjoy them. Also interesting to see Quadrilateral Cowboy - I have that on my Steam wish list, just need some spare time as much as anything else to dedicate before I pick it up. You also reminded me of a game I really enjoyed but haven’t spent time with in years, Psi-Ops. That one was a lot of fun.

Psi-Ops was a blast. That and Project Snowblind are two underrated and somewhat forgotten gems from that generation.