My Top 10 Favorite Video Games OF ALL TIME :D

A favorite game is like a warm snuggie that you can cuddle yourself into, reach for a bag of chips, and dive into a world of  indulgence. The experience might not be the best for your brain and body, but oh boy is it satisfying.

The following is a list of games I consider to be my favorites, not because they're the best games I've ever played, rather because they've managed to rattle around in my head like earworms over the years, and because Steam tells me I've devoted precious months of my life to playing some of them.

10: Expat (Brendon Chung - PC) 

Expat represents a possible evolution in the production workflow of indie games. Its minimalist yet appealing graphics serve not only to immerse our imaginations by letting us flesh out what is abstracted, but on a technical level they allow Brendon to implement an array of complex systems without having to model everything 1:1. This was a jam game that took less than a month to complete, and yet it achieves so much to the end of dynamically (and procedurally) generating player-authored stories.

     Expat is the coffee-table book of video games. You can pick it up and put it down at anytime, and every-time you press "Godspeed Space Bounty Hunter," a new world is procedurally created, making each play session unique. Another thing I love about it is its ease of mod-ability (a design choice Brendon continued in his game Quadrilateral Cowboy.) Anyone with a basic knowledge of file structure and coding can insert their own music, place-names, and graphics into Expat, enabling you to turn this space-bounty hunter sim into a more personal and comedic experience. The game is free to play -  available through Chung's website. I highly recommend giving it a go. 

9. Crash Bandicoot: Warped (Naughty Dog - PS1)

     Warped is the game that made me fall in love with video games. Warped is an audio-sensory feedback loop of gooey-deliciousness. Warped is the best Crash game (in my own personal opinion, don't @ me). Everything about Warped feels good. The jumping feels good. The sliding feels good. The crate-bashing feels oh-so good. For a Playstation 1 game, hell for any game, Warped looks incredible. Andy Gavin and the team milked every last drop of juice from that system to make the most gorgeous game they possibly could. Warped comes with a full color manual (remember those, kiddos?) that has pictures of all the main characters and bosses. I learned how to draw by studying those pictures.

     If you haven't played Warped on the PS1, you haven't played Warped. The remaster feels off in my hands (don't @ me). They stripped the collision boxes down and ruined some of the game feel. But fuck it, when the original looks and plays this smooth, there's no reason to get the remaster. Go play Warped today! 

8. Everything or Nothing (EA Redwood Shores - PS2)

     As a kid growing up on a diet of James Bond movies and bad action flicks, Everything or Nothing filled the need I had for nonstop karate chopping, motorcycle driving, car window smashing, stealthy-shooty violence. "EOA" is the best James Bond game of all time, and before you throw up the hands of protest, let me state my case. EOA was the only game that let you truly play with the genre-elements of a good Bond film. You had the set pieces, the villains, the third-person perspective that let you see Bond, and all the production value that goes into a Bond movie - from the polished graphics to the fully stacked voice acting cast that featured the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Hiedi Klum, Mya, and John Cleese. It had an original theme-song, a beautifully orchestrated score, and a script penned by the series' main screenwriter.

     Unlike many games that try to pack in multiple forms of gameplay experience and fail to do any of them well, EOA executes each of its varied gameplay types perfectly. This game gives you some of the best action playgrounds I've ever experienced, and the hand-to-hand fighting system alone is worth picking this title up. Plus there's a full length co-op campaign! Are you nuts?? Go play this game!!! 

7. Crash Team Racing (Naughty Dog - PS1)

     Forgive me for putting two games from the same franchise on this list (I promise that'll only happen, like, three more times). In this entry, Naughty Dog approaches the kart-racer genre and once again injects its wonder-some opiate of game feel into our veins. Aside from the solid track design, incredible four player splitscreen and battlemode, excellent jump/drift/and boost mechanics, what makes this particular game not only a classic, but what I would consider the ultimate go-kart game is its sheer depth. This is a racer you can really sink your teeth into. You can play CTR all your life and you'll still find new secrets, tricks, and methods to improve your game.

      Baked into its relatively simple structure is a wide-spectrum of skill based moves and strategies that take time to fully develop. That's what sets CTR apart from hundreds of other kart racers - depth of strategy and with that infinite replayability. My only criticism of it isn't a flaw in the game itself but rather the console: I would have loved a wider selection of tracks to race on. That said, CTR manages to pad its roster with 16 (!) raceable characters, an unheard of amount for the time. 

6. Gravity Bone (Brendon Chung - PC)

     Are my biases showing yet? If Expat is the coffee-table book of video games, then Gravity Bone is the giant framed painting you hang above that coffee table in your living room. Once you see it, it holds you captive. When you are finally done looking at it, you feel a little different afterwards. Gravity Bone is the game that makes you go, "fuck, I didn't know video games could make me feel this way. Is this really a video game?" Despite its short length (~ 20 minutes) and the fact it runs on the Quake 2 engine, Gravity Bone looks and feels like no other game. Every-time I play it I thirst to explore its art-deco hallways for longer, to immerse myself deeper into the lore of Buenos Aires and the Chungverse. This little gem is also available to experience for free on Chung's website, and if you buy the highly praised sequel Thirty Flights of Loving, it comes bundled in the download. 

5. Goldeneye: Source (Fan mod - PC) 

     I know what you're thinking. Brandon, how is it that EOA is the greatest Bond game of all time when you ranked GE:Source higher up on the list? Well, that's because Goldeneye Source isn't so much a Bond game than it is a par-none shooter with Bond music and set dressing. Nevertheless, there's a lot of video game packed into this little online multiplayer shooter. Not only have all the multiplayer maps from your childhood been fully remastered and expanded upon, but this mod includes maps from other Rare and Bond shooters, including Nightfire and Perfect Dark (server exclusive), meaning that you'll never run out of platforms to be ragdoll blasted off of.

     The weapon set is varied, the mechanics polished, and the game modes infinitely replayable. The best way to play is on a one-shot kill server with enhanced movement speed, auto-rotating weapon sets and team games. (Yes I'm a huge nerd). Pick it up for free! My only criticism is the lack of different hands for POC characters such as Mayday and Baron Samedi (really weird and kinda racist), and the fact that Xenia and Natalya are notably missing from the original roster. This drags the number of playable female characters down to only two, which sucks big-time. 

4. Arma 2 (Bohemia Interactive - PC)

     Arma 2 features a lot of things I love about Expat and games in general: Player-authored stories and the ability to modify, download, remix, and create new content. At its heart, Arma 2 is a military sim, but playing it as such is disregarding a lot of what makes it special. Arma manages to curate a sense of place and time like no other game. It gives you maps that are miles long and contain whole cities, forests, and ruins for you to drive through and explore. One of my favorite things to do in this game is drive a car at night through a thunderstorm listening to the radio.

     As environments go, the worlds of Arma 2 feel real in a way I haven't seen captured in other franchises. Besides that, if you're like me and you hate enacting imperialist fantasies of real-life countries against other countries, you can download stuff like Cobra dudes from GI Joe, Predator and Alien, stormtroopers, and other pulpy shit. It's like you're a kid again, playing with action figures. Set them up in any configuration you like and tell a story. 

3. Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon (Insomniac - PS1)

     Just look at that fucking skybox! Spyro 3 is the best Spyro because it has the best skies. Need a cure for seasonal affective disorder? Play Spyro 3. Soak up 300ccs of pure majestic atmosphere. Forget about playing it. Just turn up the music, stroll to a nice vista, sit down and gaze into that beautiful fucking skybox. Need another reason to play this game? It's got a penguin with rocket launchers. Need another reason? It's got dinosaurs with cowboy hats and six shooters. Need another reason? No you don't.

      Just look at how fucking perfect that sky is - with its gel-like layers of color, serene cloud formations, and big-ass Dreamworks moon. Oh yeah, and did I neglect to mention you get to play as an adorable purple dragon with a dragonfly sidekick (who is also playable)? I thought I didn't need to. I know you're going to play this game because there is no other game that's gonna give you such a diamond-necklace of a skybox. Play it right now. 

2. Sub Rosa (Alex Austin & friends - PC) 

     Sub Rosa is dangerously good. It's an online multiplayer shooter about car chases, intrigue, and deals gone bad. What I love about it is it's ability to generate crime fiction stories through the interaction of its core systems. In the basic game you have three teams, each representing a corporation. One team has a disk, one team has the money to trade for it, and the other team ain't got jack. In the given time limit, the three teams must come up with a strategy to acquire what the other team(s) has(have) and return it to the vault.

     This setup, along with a cleverly designed cell phone comm mechanic and city environment, makes for one nail-bitingly tense game after the next. On top of that, everything from the animations to the car driving is simulated using physics - there are no preset animations. That means everything feels REALLY good to use and interact with, and the whole setup makes for some awesome and occasionally hilarious outcomes. Sub Rosa is in beta testing right now, so you can either sign up to play it on Steam early access or wait until it's 100% finished.

1. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 

     Ah yes, Splinter Cell. Nobody does shadows and lighting like SC - nobody... I have a full write-up of my experiences as an angsty teen playing this game if you're interested in checking that out, so I won't go into too much detail here. However, I will say that what separates this stealth game from your Metal Gear Solids and Thiefs is the writing and banter between all of the game's characters. The father-daughter like relationship between Sam and the chief data analyst is both hilarious and touching. The in-house snark contest that Sam and his boss go in on will have you consistently cracking up. And before I end up sounding too much like you're middle-aged aunt harping on about the latest episode of NCIS, let me just say that this game lets you throw a wrench at a guy climbing up a ladder, knock him unconscious so he falls down that ladder to thud into the other guy at the bottom of the ladder, knocking him out too. You can't do THAT in Metal Gear Solid (unless you can, I haven't played all of them, don't @ me!). 

There. I've given you my list of top ten comfort blankets made of digital bits. Feel free to comment a game that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy down below. I don't mean makes you feel warm down below in that way... I meant literally down below, where the comment boxes are. Pervert. Stop twisting my words. Until next time.