More for it's gameplay and mechanics than it's dungeon design or story. A game where I never fast travelled and everything gave me that child like sense of wonder again. Usurped by Tears of the Kingdom for sure but it was the first so it's still the default

Maybe the first dark and dreary sequel (not really). This opened my brain up so much to how physics puzzles can work and make you feel smart (even when they're brain dead simple). But what I love about this game the most is the Source Engine aesthetic. I think it looks incredible to even today. It's created such an identity that you just know Source Engine when you see it.

I don't care what anyone says, Jetstream Sam wasn't the standout here, it was Sundowner who stole the show. He's fuckin' invincible.

Also maybe one of the more thoughtful attempts to capture the politics of Metal Gear with the fewest amount of stumbles. Not the game I wanted it to be, but a great end to the themes of MGS2 and MGS4.

Jack Baker is the best villain this series ever had and that's because he's so fucking goofy. Yet you can see he wasn't always that way and there's a tortured person held captive by the monsters man that welcomes you to the family.

A great argument on how Japan understands better about what made 70s indie horror work so well. Sometimes you just gotta get fuckin' nutty with it.

Half Life to me is the pinnacle of the AAA shooter and one of the best visual representations of the 90s. It's got pure classic vibes even today and it's playful design is just great. I think about the beauty of the tram ride during the intro and it still amazes me to this day.

Maybe the most exciting multiplayer FPS since Halo 2. One of the few MP games I consider myself good at.

The perfect idealization of how you imagine a fun vacation. The jungle gym style level design excels here while contextualizing places just enough for you to truly appreciate the aesthetics and vibes. Simultaneously relaxing and a blast. I will never leave Isle Delfino in my head.

My go to for talking about effective balance of action and horror and game mechanics. It's still at it's prime all these years later and it will never age. Some of the most incredible new-era feeling atmosphere too. A great case for crossing Metal Gear and Resident Evil.

What if Resident Evil was also a Castlevania game? I think about it's fantastic out of time setting and atmosphere a lot. Maybe one of the few games in recent years that gave me an actual child-like fear of one specific enemy.

Finding Princess Beach. This lives as one of those games that hit at the right time (not specifically because of the pandemic). The emotional journey of the story and even just the gameplay is one I enjoyed a lot and got lost in. Maybe the most humanist game out there. It also contains some of the most beautiful moments I've experienced in a AAA game in years. Classic Kojima cheese and all.

I mean... it's Doom. A game that understands fun at it's core and playful garage style design. It's one of those games that I look at a lot for inspiration.

One of the biggest inspirations to me from a color palette standpoint. The only other rival to Crystal Chronicles for best soundtrack. Ko Otani crushed it and is the perfect Kaiju composer (shout out to Godzilla: GMK and the Heisei Gamera trilogy that he also composed). I think also from a gameplay standpoint the game still stands out a lot. Exploring the forbidden lands feels never directly deadly, but distinctly poisonous and cursed. This game makes me think a lot about how puzzles can be organically worked into a boss fight without being boring or "phase" oriented.

The ocean is alien and scary as hell and Subnautica understands that. It's not even a horror game outright and yet the deeper you go the more upsetting it gets.

Absolutely bonkers and a blast in everyway. A game so bloated and so AAA that it just ends up working. I think about this game's insane control scheme a lot. Full of movement mechanics that aren't actually needed but at a higher skill level turn you into John Wick (somehow it's the only game gets close to that feeling...). I end up spending half my time on the floor rolling around and sliding into dudes.

It's a wonderful experience being the Virgil to my friend's Dante whenever I lead someone through the game for the first time.

It has a style and look to it that I love a lot. Maybe my favorite art style for the series. It's primordial feeling vision of Hyrule is really cool

The biggest most AAA celebration to a series you can get. My favorite Snake and Hayter performance. The intro still gives me fucking chills and it's vision of the near future is so upsettingly relevant and shows the cost of infinite warfare. The way we go about our normal lives in ignorance or willful bliss of all the conflicts supplied by the nations in control. Everything normalized until we just don't think about it. This game is goofy and cheesy but it's not without point and it's not without tooth. Kojima is nothing if not hopeful even at the darkest hours.

A game I can only best describe as Courage the Cowardly Dog incarnate. I think about this dollhouse design complimented by it's wacky approach to horror that is at times quite effective at mood and getting a good chuckle.

Cozy : ) until you get to the Crystal Palace then I just feel depressed : (

I think about this control scheme and pacing a lot. The Star Fox banter during the missions is wonderful too.

Cozy : )

Until I lost over half my population of Pikmin to a fucking frog : (

Maybe evokes one of the best feelings of being on an alien planet even though it's just someone's backyard.

There will never be another idol game (better mechanics or not) that will ever top Cookie Clicker. The best to ever do it and the best that will ever do it. Top tier humor for intellectuals like me.

More memorable to me for it's first two levels and amazing modding community than anything.

A predator hunting predators. The best example of making an office complex into a nightmare labyrinth while giving you the best shotgun ever conceived.

MGS has always pushed the envelope for interactivity between the player, the main character, and the enemy AI and that creates an incredible sandbox that no other stealth game (or any genre for that matter) has been able to recreate. MGS3 had a peak series art style and the crushing melancholy of an ending still hits hard.

I will never forget the original trailer that used the theme track from Miller's Crossing. Absolutely beautiful.

I'm still mainlining the Fires of Rubicon track well after the original reveal. Pump that Coral directly into my veins.

The ultimate me game. Filled with an atmosphere so brooding and bleak that it wraps around into absolutely beauty. No game has done scale this wonderfully and no game has made the barrage of gunfire and missiles dazzling and fear inducing all at once. And the speed on display here. Fuck your tank builds, I never stop moving.

Boats are a cheat code to me. Spooky boats though? Instant attention. Revelations found the best balance of the series between post RE4 and old-school RE when the series was at it's most confusing. Fantastic monster design

A game that works so hard off just presentation alone. That art style and quiet atmosphere is impossible not to think about.

Hypernormalization to it's core. MGS2 asks the question what if the internet was actually evil? What if the era of hyper-connection was just a fucking nightmare of unreal reality and manufactured memes? To be honest, better at its questions and themes than The Matrix. Disgustingly relevant today. RIP to that unlockable demo for Evolution Skateboarding tho.

The only scifi game I can think of that understand the primordial beauty of exploring an alien planet that is also teaming with life. Fuck your realistic barren rocks, I want to hang out with alien dinosaurs.

That insane music too is something I think about a lot because it's the first game I've played where I really wish there was an option to turn off the fucking music. A shame because when the music is good, it's fantastic and weird. Uncontested spot for the most baffling town music.

The music track Warhead Storage is my default sneaking music and forever stuck in my head. Atmosphere so thick it's almost a horror game.

I don't give a single fuck what anyone says, this is better than the original game in almost everyway. The over the top cutscenes are one of the aspects I love the most and think about a lot. The fact that it was a Gamecube exclusive is also just... wild.

What I think of when I think good super hero games. A game where you're actually just as bad as the ones you hunt. The perfect Judge Dredd game.

Whenever I think of games from the era, this is one of my go-tos for just really fucking good world building. The Legacy of Kain series was made whole with Soul Reaver and Raziel remains a fantastic tortured character on an odyssey through the hellscape left behind by the previous protagonist. Kain himself being such a good rival.

The visual style for this game is just perfect and Ozar Midrashim is a perfect opening track.

Maybe one of my favorite soundtracks out there. There's still tracks I hear in my head to this day. Absolutely lovely atmosphere and art style too. The atmosphere is one of the key components that has stuck with me. Sweet, cozy, and mysterious.

Something I will always remember more for it's fantastic CGI reveal trailer than for the actual game itself. That original reveal trailer was the right mood and the music is still stuck in my head to this day. Simple but full of an energy and emotion that the game wasn't able to capture half as well.

Everyone but me seems to collectively forget this game at one point existed and was heavily marketed as 100% canonical and the missing link between MGS3 and MG1 and that upsets me greatly because I think it's one of the only other instance where a Kojima-less Metal Gear was really fucking good.

Incredible pixel art and animation. Very memorable soundtrack. Distilled Metal Gear but also nothing compromised.

Despite the purpose of the game being hunting, I spend so much time just exploring these beautiful forests and soaking in the atmosphere. A game I think of a lot when I think of virtual tourism and escapism.

What if Death Stranding's vehicles didn't suck and trivialize deliveries for most of the game?

This is the anxiety of finding out the road you thought looked harmless was actually going to be an hour long effort of trying to free it from the mud. The amount of times I've gotten a backup car stuck getting another car unstuck is too numerous. Movement mechanics are big to me and I never thought a car game would be like one of my favorite examples of it.

I love the idea of this game so much but always disappointed by how much the card mechanic fucks you more than balances things. I really REALLY want to make a turnbased stealth game some day and Acid is a major inspiration for this.

an incredibly odd experience that is so baffling and fun and memorable and weird and bad and also great. So much potential and also a great case that sometimes games are accented by their crustiness.

The vertical platforming design of the dungeons are fascinating to me and the vibes are some of Square's best. It doesn't hold a candle to the original Crystal Chronicles, but it's just memorable.

Incredible vibes and atmosphere. Incredible music too. One of my go tos for 7th gen.

Forever seared into my brain as where japanese gaming in the west was at for 7th gen consoles. While also being just so weirdly charming and of a style I feel like we've been missing. Scuffed doesn't have to be a curse and even a 5/10 game can still be a banger.

I always think of this game as the love-child of SWERY and Suda 51. It's weird, quirky, non-standard, and just fucking great.

Incredible music and incredible atmosphere. Weird comedy and horror go hand in hand.

The most agonizing and cramped dungeon crawler. Brutally dark and oppressive feeling. Not even From Soft's best of today tops the atmosphere of this game. The quietness only accented by the creatures lurking in the darkness are just wonderful.

This one is more of a personal note. This game to me is a great analogy for depression and the climb out of the pit of despair. Each ascent is new progress no matter how small and even when you fall you know what you're capable of and find all the shortcuts or confidence to speed run the spots you've been through before so you can get back to where you were and get even further the next time. I spent like 42 hours with the game's original map but my final run was like... an hour and a 1/2 when I finally beat it.

One of the most fascinating stealth games to emerge from the post Metal Gear void. Deeply flawed in some weird ways but from those flaws emerge something I really want to love and think about a lot: a stealth game where you are able to fight back and have all the bells and whistle gadgets but you're still at such a distinct disadvantage at all times and you end up taking the opportunistic coward's route more than the stoic heroic route. Infact, being a hero is often punished and you're an idiot for thinking this was about you.

Also I just love the visual look of this game. Great character art by Yoji Shinkawa.

I will always think about what this could have been and how sad I am it never will

It's such an oddity and yet Id made such a wonderfully quirky and complex (yet still simple game). Maybe like one of the biggest inspirations for me in RPGs and a game I would fucking love to make one day.

The closest a game has gotten to Courage the Cowardly Dog in terms of atmosphere and I appreciate that greatly. I think about this often in how it really makes the concept of stuff like the backrooms work to it's advantage and how sweet it all is.

Maybe the best at evoking that DnD inspiration Id used for making Doom. One of the first games I think of when talking about the Nintendo DS.

Another game I still have on my old ipod touch and still works! There's several versions of this but the iOS version is the most "polished" I guess. Teenage me was in love with it because it went after RE4 in terms of mechanics and actually felt like a pretty decent attempt at streamlining it for a phone. Probably better it was a unique game based on a movie (as opposed to the RE4 Mobile Edition being a watered down translation).

But still, I loved the airport setting and the game was just cute. I wanna replay it and the other versions

A game that is made of pure insane commitment to finishing a personal project. One dev over 10+ years making one of the most ambitious HL2 mods and a game with its very own view of the future. The future is messy and a brutalist labyrinthian nightmare of forgot architecture, capitalistic greed, and the slow agonizing death of a planet. Detroit but they built Los Angeles on top of it and then built New York on top of that.

Memorable for all the same reason as Doom RPG and Wolf RPG. It's adorable and has those gameplay mechanics and designs that I never see anyone else really trying out. Love the combat.

A game where I can live my fantasy of just wanting to take pictures of cool looking animals. Forever the visual I think of when I think of the power and ambition of the 7th console generation. That and the idea of observing nature from afar is better for everyone than getting your dumb ass up close to some lion that's just trying to chill. Very zen game.

Sad to find this game isn't as good as I remember it, but I think about it's 00's edgelord presentation and humor a lot. It's a time capsule for the PSP in my opinion.

I actually still have this on my old ipod touch and it still works. It's a game that I don't exactly hate in concept. I think it works great as a mobile game, though I think it's a bigger tragedy that it's more or less lost to time.

It's saddening to me that the only successor to this that I can think of is Nikke Goddess of Victory. Which isn't a bad game at all, it's just very... horny. Too horny.

Basically for all the same reasons as Doom RPG but I find it neat how this took advantage of some smaller mobile phone gimmicks like aiming with the rifle scope with accelerometer to get extra damage from a headshot. The like... mix-match of the sprite work evokes such a memorable garage quality.

To be honest, I kinda wanna live in this game. Searching for alien signals, sipping on coffee, driving a golf cart around, and schizophrenically checking to make sure I locked every door just seems like a lot of fun.

Everything I love about the Id RPGs but wrapped up in a game that is just so fucking huge it gives Elder Scrolls games a run for its money. This to me is what I think of when I hear Classic style RPGs.