My Top 3 Games In Every* Genre

We all have our favourite video games, new and old and I’ve certainly never been shy about sharing my Top 10’s and Top 25’s on the platform. In the beginning this was something I was desperate to keep to Notes because I’ve always hated those low-effort ‘listicles’ popularised by Buzzfeed and others but over time, my attitude on the topic relaxed. Sometimes it begins to dawn on me that I’ve actually been writing here quite a while now: a year and a half. I’ll reference old articles and points I’ve made and realise I wrote these things 12 months and over 500 subscribers ago.

So, I’m writing another favourites list, not on Notes or using Topsters but on my own, broken down genre by genre; a 1-25 numerical list doesn’t do my thoughts on everything justice and let’s face it: that’s boring.

I’m more experienced in some genres than others and I’m a child of the 2000’s so please don’t cry if your favourite overlooked gem on the Amstrad that only you, your cousins and your uncle ever played doesn’t top any of my categories. I’m going to be omitting Puzzle games and JRPG’s and a few other genres too because I simply have not played enough to give it the proper thought, plus a Fighting section comprised entirely of Tekken wouldn’t be very interesting. Some games I can’t pin a genre to as well so I left them out; what do you call Ocarina Of Time? Action & Adventure? RPG? I don’t have a clue.

Enjoy.

Being born in 2000, I was alive for the latter half of the 3D platformer boom and played many titles in the genre but as of now, my heart is set on SM64 as the top dog. I wish I had a more shocking and refined gem to put here but I’m not above saying it as it is and recognising the classics. It feels almost superfluous to even talk about how good this game is, you’ve all played it anyway.

I didn’t play Super Mario 64 in its entirety until I was an adult and since then I’ve been revisiting the game regularly. It controls really well to this day, has lots of fun levels and getting 100% is a lot more manageable than it is in, say, Super Mario Odyssey; I prefer shorter games to longer ones.

Some might put Odyssey in SM64’s place but I found that game to be too easy and the gimmick was never used to its full potential.

When I was growing up, the glorious trifecta of GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox reigned supreme, with the PSP, GBA and the DS on the side for those of us who needed to evolve Machoke into Machamp or to play Vice City at school. Sony’s premier platformer franchise on PlayStation 2 was Ratchet & Clank: a relentlessly charming, sometimes cynically humoured shooter/platformer hybrid that brought child Lawrence hours of fun. Much like the rest of PlayStation, I’ve always felt this series fell off after the PS2 and never quite hit the same.

The Ratchet & Clank quadrilogy on PS2 are all worth playing but after a marathon a couple of years ago I’ve decided the second one is my favourite, closely followed by Gladiator, which is #4. As the games went on they became more about wave-based shooting and frantic combat than platforming; the first game is a little clunky and unrefined and R&C 3 is an awkward mix of new and old but Locked And Loaded and Gladiator are the best of traditional and shooter Ratchet & Clank respectively.

Probably one of my more controversial retro gaming opinions here, I think Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within is extremely underrated and every bit as good as The Sands Of Time; I’ll try to put only one game per spot from now on but I seriously can’t decide which of these I like more. These 2 games give me fuzzy, nostalgic feelings.

I grew up playing both. At home I had The Sands Of Time and Warrior Within I played when at extended family’s house because I was much too young for it… but with the ‘supervision’ of older cousins, it couldn’t be helped. The Sands Of Time has the better atmosphere, one of gaming’s great love stories and superior platforming but Warrior Within has this dark, grungy, Middle Eastern gothic aesthetic with brutal, gory combat, a fucking sick soundtrack and a story that means a lot more to me as an adult. It was panned back in the day for being ‘edgy’ and… well, yes, it is but there’s more to it than that and 2 decades later, I find it super evocative of those times.

Ubisoft need to stop pissing about and make another 3D PoP game.

This was a very easy pick to be quite honest. I’m going to expose myself to flak as a retro man and say that I broadly have a preference for 3D games over 2D: there’s only so much you can do with a game in the 2D space in my opinion, so it takes a lot for this kind of platformer to really hook me and DKC just makes me smile every time I play it. Donkey Kong Country’s one flaw is that the hit detection can be a bit suspect, other than that? I think it’s the perfect sidescroller.

Many people prefer this game’s sequel and that’s a fantastic game too, DKC2 has the more interesting level design, a sharper difficulty, even more impressive visuals and overall excels in the variety department, however, I find the difficulty erodes that sweet, comfy feeling I get when playing a classic platformer and DKC2 will never have the associated CO-OP memories with my mum either.

Many prefer Sonic 3, some may even choose Sonic CD or Sonic Mania as their favourite but it has to be Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for me; this is the entry in the 2D Sonic franchise I have the most hours in, even if the sequel is arguably better.

Sonic 2 refined the gameplay of the original while vastly improving the level design and gave us some of the most iconic stages on the Mega Drive. As always with this series, it’s got plenty of rough edges and many would point to the Shinobi games or Ristar as better titles but they aren’t as unique or as stylish as Sonic. If the original Sonic trilogy hadn’t been re-released ad nauseum, I think they would be scrutinised and picked apart less by the internet; I never see people going back to discuss what a shit game Super Mario Bros. 2 is in the same way that they rip apart the original Sonic, yeah, I said it. Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z don’t remember how good pre-Xbox 360 Sonic was and it shows.

Rondo Of Blood is my favourite Castlevania game and easily one of the hardest games I’ve ever finished; I did it as Richter, not Maria and good God was it an arduous task. This game opens with an Orthodox prayer and you’ll need it because to conquer Rondo, you’ll have to embark on a theosis of your own.

It’s not all about challenge though, Rondo has a beautifully realised 16-Bit world, great music, fairer boss fights than some of the older games and multiple paths and playable characters for maximum replay value. This game’s modern PlayStation exclusivity and origins on a console that never released in Europe can make it a pain in the ass to get a hold of legitimately today but trust me, it’ll be worth it. I’m still furious they sullied my favourite Belmont with the abysmal Castlevania Nocturne on Netflix based on this game.

The strategy umbrella is quite niche so I decided to combine tactics, RTS and grand strategy all in one with this section.

When I tell people my favourite grand strategy game I usually say Hearts Of Iron 4, partly because it’s the one I tend to reach to first and also because I feel obligated based on my mammoth playtime… but I’d still say Crusader Kings 2 is the one, deep down. Compared to the sequel, Crusader Kings 2 is ugly as sin, obtuse and borderline hostile to the player but if you can get over all that it’s a deeper game with more focus, sharper mechanics and despite the popularity of CK3 with YouTubers, this one has the wackier options as well; I have sealed portals to hell, fought off Aztec invasions of Europe and become immortal in CK2 before.

This game started my grand strategy obsession back in 2016 and is one of those titles that instantly brings me back to a specific time and place in my life. As a teen my adult tastes were beginning to form and after heavy days of study and itchy secondary school jumpers, CK2 was the game for me. I still play it more than the third game.

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is my favourite RTS game ever made by a wide margin. The scale of this game, intricate balance of its original 3 factions and the dedicated modding and PvP communities for it ensure that it will probably stay that way forever too.

Forged Alliance is a standalone expansion to the original game which is itself a spiritual successor to 1997’s Total Annihilation. Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance -like the rest of this community, I will pretend SupCom 2 never happened- are games focused on massive scale and WMD’s. Maps are enormous and facilitate units on land, air and in the sea as well as extremely powerful experimental units and you can also build stuff like nuclear weapons and long-range missile silos. The story is nothing to write home about but the 3 factions: UEF (United Earth Federation) Cybran Nation and the Aeon Illuminate are all balanced in really interesting ways; the UEF has the best naval forces, strong sentry turrets and its units are very tanky to make up for their reliance on conventional ballistics so they are my favourite. This game had a decent Xbox 360 port which I have great memories of, PvP-ing with my mates.

Forged Alliance adds a fourth faction: the Seraphim but they aren’t as well balanced and are probably the least popular.

Up until 3 weeks ago I would’ve told you that XCOM: Enemy Unknown was my favourite tactics game and given you a whole explanation about its merits over the sequel, the dated original and other titles I’ve played in the resurgent tactics genre… but then I gave Three Houses a try on a whim and it’s one of the best games I’ve played in years.

I reviewed this game less than a week ago so I don’t want to talk about 3H at length again here but to summarise its best bits, 3H is rich in depth, highly customisable, has incredible replay value and oozes charm like an overstuffed pie.

It seems inevitable that whenever you profess your love for Halo on the internet, a flock of PC supremacists will insist to you that Half Life 2 was better, retro people turn up their noses at Xbox, Call Of Duty fans will insist that classic CoD was better and the general gaming public regard Halo as the brainless Mountain Dew series with Master Chief on the cover. These people are wrong. The truth is… you just had to be there, in Halo 3’s prime on Xbox 360 it was the game everybody had, it was a wellspring of everlasting fun and it made me friends who I wound up eventually meeting in real life and continuing to play online with for another 15 years. Halo 2 had the better campaign and Halo: CE is arguably more iconic but Halo 3 is the most complete and well-rounded Triple-A FPS game I ever will play.

Halo was always the methodical and strategic counterpart to CoD’s twitchy, hyper-fast gameplay, Halo is about map control, seizing power weapon spawns and trying to put together a deadly weapon combo like the Plasma Pistol and Battle Rifle or the Energy Sword and any indoor space, or the Xbox 360 headset and language that got you hit with the Code Of Conduct and banned for a week. But more than anything, Halo 3 was a party game: a game about sharing your maps and game modes and not taking things too seriously. The Master Chief Collection version of Halo 3 reduces the most community-centred FPS experience in Triple-A history to essentially a texture pack.

Please don’t make me choose between them.

TimeSplitters was the wondrous culmination of all the lessons the ex-Rare employees of Free Radical learned making GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark meeting the new and improved technology of the PS2; the result was the Nintendo 64 FPS formula reaching perfection before fading away for good. TimeSplitters was a nightmare for publishers and under constant behind the scenes conflict throughout the trilogy; as it turns out, it’s almost impossible to market an FPS game set across all of human history but strong word of mouth and high review scores kept Free Radical’s baby going.

A TimeSplitters revival failed to make it to shelves not once but twice and the fan-made TimeSplitters Rewind took so long to come out that most people forgot about it by the time it launched… and I haven’t tried it because it kind of looks cheap and amateurish if I’m being harsh and honest.

I’m very partial to a good tactical shooter/mil-sim game and for me? The pinnacle of that subgenre is Arma 3. I have over 1000 hours in this game and there was a time where me and my former mates’ mod list was over 150GB. Aside from that, I’ll always have fondness for Arma 3 because it made me a PC gamer; I got my first rig specifically to play this game, HOI4 and Space Engineers.

Arma 3 has a reputation as this super hardcore mil-sim game and while that is true, it’s also basically like a mil-sim Gmod with packs made for every franchise possible and with maps imported from all over; a classic recipe for fun is to download all the Halo mods and plug the UNSC and Covenant faction into a random mission generator, throw on a suit of Mjolnir and suddenly, you’ve got a realistic Halo game. The only side-effect of playing a lot of Arma is you get the worrying ability to recognise weapons systems and fairly obscure AK models.

Lost Planet is one of Capcom’s more forgotten franchises and there hasn’t been a new one in 13 years so let me pitch Lost Planet to you like this: do you like Monster Hunter? Do you like shooters? Do you think flying mechs with gatling guns would make Monster Hunter more fun? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you’ll enjoy Lost Planet. The first game was a story-focused title with a surprisingly fun, tacked-on multiplayer so Lost Planet 2 in 2010 was turned into a full-blown, Western-style CO-OP TPS with bombastic boss fights and an improved online experience, again, you sort of had to be there at the time but this game was amazing with friends.

While you can find LP2 on Steam it is no longer for sale which is tragic and I have no idea if the online infrastructure would work on old hardware any more; the first game is also worth playing but Lost Planet 3 was a plodding stinker of a game. The series was put on ice after critics hated the second and third games.

I can practically feel the tomatoes whizzing past my head as they’re launched at me by the audience.

Resident Evil 4 is the favourite Resident Evil game of people who don’t like Resident Evil and don’t know anything about the franchise either. It’s a revolutionary title with extraordinarily fun gameplay, fantastic replay value and satisfying combat… but it’s also spectacularly ugly, turned Leon into a stupid dudebro and set up RE to become a franchise of 6/10 brown shooters for the next 12 years until RE7 put it back on track. I do love this game still but it’s taken me a long time to reach that conclusion and I roll my eyes when people name it the best Resident Evil game when I’m not sure I’d even put it in the top 3.

I’ve never understood how people whinge and moan about tank controls in classic Resident Evil when RE4 has them too and it’s even worse because you can’t see anything without being on a constant swivel. Sometimes, I wonder if people even tried the tank controls at all for more than 5 minutes before complaining; tell me you died to the window dogs in the East Wing L-Corridor without actually saying you died there.

Vanquish came out at a time when the market was saturated with third person shooters: Gears Of War was at the height of its popularity, Lost Planet was very much still alive and other series like Army Of Two were making ground as well. While those shooters were muddy brown, slow and often cover-based, Vanquish was fast, stylish and colourful as Platinum’s Games often are; it was also around this time that publisher Sega seemed to be finally recovering from the misfortunes they suffered 9 years prior with the death of the Dreamcast.

Truth be told, I haven’t revisited Vanquish since I played it back in the day but I really enjoyed seeing others discover this cult-classic when it was remastered a while ago, it truly deserved better when it was originally launched.

Back in the Xbox 360 era, before Don Mattrick had a Wii-induced psychosis around the year 2010 and decided that mature video games weren’t the future of a video game console sold on its mature image for a decade, Microsoft’s console was firmly the first among equals. With Halo 3 on the horizon and play testers being a bit lukewarm on the game the decision was made to entice players to buy Crackdown with bundled in codes to the Halo 3 Beta codes. This helped the game immensely and Crackdown was the 51st best selling game on 360… but in my opinion, it didn’t need any help. This open world crime fighting extravaganza where you play as super soldiers with upgradeable stats and transforming cars is a classic of the era.

Crackdown 2 is a bit more complicated but considering the game was rushed out to market after the original developer collapsed? I think it’s a worthy sequel and the zombie hordes at night were great fun to plough through. These are both 360 must haves and even better if you can play them with friends.

Today, Far Cry is one of the most tedious, unimaginative and milked-dry franchises out there but its beginnings were a lot more experimental.

The original Far Cry -which I somehow haven’t played- was a sort of unofficial rival to Crysis and up until the parts where you fought mutants for some reason, it was a lot more grounded; I’m one of those people who thinks Crysis was a bit crap so I have to assume Far Cry 1 is better.

Far Cry 2 -actually Far Cry 3 and with no connection to the original- went in another direction: gritty, dirty reality. Far Cry 2 sees you playing as one of a wide cast of mercenaries in a corner of Africa ripped to shreds by poverty, conflict diamonds, foreign interference and warfare, you fight for factions nobody has heard of for goals nobody believes in and kill soldiers that nobody will remember in a quest to bump off a notorious arms dealer. Weapons rust and fall apart, injuries are fixed with that trademark Far Cry grossly animated first-aid and the contrast between the lush jungles, savannah and desert with the dilapidated shanty towns and ruined cities make this a deeply immersive and striking campaign.

Far Cry 2 also had a brilliant multiplayer with an insanely deep map creator; me and my mates actually ran the only active lobby on Xbox multiplayer for probably 6-12 months in the mid-2010’s, logging on every day with new map rotations and seeing a lot of returning players. If you were playing FC2 around this time on 360/Xbox One then hello again, we probably met without you knowing it.

Breath Of The Wild has featured in my lists before and I’ve recounted my reasons why as well so I won’t go too in-depth; I’m sure everyone has played this game by now anyway, this is the Resident Evil 4 of the Zelda franchise: the one people who haven’t played a single other Zelda game swear is the best in the series.

To cut a long story short? I wouldn’t be a gamer anymore if this didn’t come out and as much as I hope this version of the series dies off on the Switch 2, it’s a modern classic and fully deserving of every bit of praise it gets.

Subnautica holds a few prestigious accolades in my personal gaming recollection: the Game Preview on Xbox One was the first game I ever bought with my own money when I was 16, it’s easily my favourite indie game ever made… and Subnautica is the only game that frightens me. Not shock from jump scares, legitimate fear. I can happily play Resident Evil until the cows come home but Subnautica is a game I can only handle in short bursts. Deep, dark, vast water has always bothered me: the bit in Twilight Princess where you sink into the Lakebed Temple boss room makes me uneasy to this day and the monster that kills you in out of bounds water in Jak 3 used to scare me as a kid… and Subnautica is all about this sort of thing.

Subnautica is the best game in this genre because it actually gives me something to do, I’m not told to ‘let me imagination run wild’ or some nonsense like that, your character is stranded on an oceanic world infested with plague and nightmarish sea creatures; uncover the truth of the civilisation that once flourished here, cure the plague and escape. Between you and freedom are deep, pitch black waters, slender snake-like sea monsters that roar at you and try to swallow your submarines whole and translucent blue, even bigger monsters that scream at you and countless more fauna you wouldn’t want to bump into on a night time swim.

The moment Subnautica 2 leaves early access it’s getting reviewed, I can’t wait to play it.

It’s hard to describe to anyone who wasn’t there how rapid and all-consuming the rise of Minecraft was.

It started as a whisper: my friend downloaded one of the beta versions on his laptop and was telling me about it on Xbox Live sometime in 2011, then the mainstream publications began to shout about this ugly looking block game from Sweden and how addictive it was, then YouTube picked it up and a gaming revolution began; one by one, sales records were broken, ports were released and the landscape of gaming was upended forever. I still remember the day Minecraft reached Xbox in early 2012 and the game was the perfect bonding tool for me and my new classmates -who later became my teenage years best friends- when I moved across the UK to a big city.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours in Minecraft across many different versions and although the game has gotten a little too overstuffed, over-optimised and corporate for me today, I still log on a few times a year to potter about and enjoy being in that comfy world again.

I don’t hear many people talking about Terraria anymore; this is a game more famous perhaps for how many ‘final update’ announcements it’s gotten over the years before continuing on anyway. Regardless of its fading popularity in comparison to its ‘rival’ Minecraft, Terraria has always been a game of a different sort. Rather than building for building’s sake, or exploring with an option to fight one or two bosses, Terraria is all about housing NPC’s hunting down dozens of bosses and seeking awesome new weapons.

Far from ‘2D Minecraft’ Terraria is a combat-centric adventure… or at least it was back in the day when I was into it. I don’t have people to play with anymore and Terraria is a bit sterile on your own so for now, this one is staying in my past, a great game though.

I know this is a bit of a nebulous genre but I’m going to define it as third person games with a cinematic bent… I think we instinctively know what type of game this is.*

This is another one of those games that instantly takes me back to a specific time and place in my life; when Arkham City came out I was 11 years old, still living in my childhood town in the West Midlands, which is the best part of the UK because it doesn’t feel like the locals want to bang your head in with clubs like Wales, people are friendly unlike smarmy Southern England where everyone behaves like the Malfoys from Harry Potter and unlike ‘teh Norf’, being from the Midlands isn’t people’s entire personality.

Anyway, before I turn any more of my countrymen away from the Journal, Batman: Arkham City is the best superhero game ever made. This game isn’t filled with Ubisoft tedious bollocks like Sony’s Spider-Man games and it even has the late, great Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman, the Arkham series pioneered that hand to hand combat system that so many games still use that relies on parrying and building up a large combo meter as well. Listen, I hate superheroes too… but Batman is the exception and the Arkham trilogy are essential titles from the last 20 years of gaming.

I say it every time but for those of us just joining us on the Journal, I don’t like Sony very much, I think after the PS2 they mostly couldn’t find their way until The Last Of Us made them a load of money and the decision was then made to produce boring Oscar-bait from then on. All that being said, the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s working-it-out phase did produce some games I’m quite fond of and the Uncharted trilogy is the jewel in that particular crown. I wish this was the series that got milked dry and not God Of War or TLoU.

Uncharted 2 is the best of the series. It doesn’t have that dusting of “We wish we were making films instead.” Like Uncharted 4 and it isn#t as janky as the original game or as ‘meh’ as Uncharted 3; I love how you go to corners of the world not often depicted in video games in this one and the big set-piece on the train is a highlight of this era of gaming for me.

I’m struggling to think of more games for this section as of now and I haven’t played enough in the genre for a hack ‘n’ slash top 3 so I’m going to show my appreciation for God Of War 3 here.

I had a PS4 briefly during the late-1010’s and Covid so while we were all under lock and key, I decided to play through the God Of War games, among others; I had the demo disc for the original on PS2 but I was too young to ever be allowed the genuine article. I’m pleased to say I enjoyed all 4 mainline titles (Ragnarök wasn’t out yet) but God Of War 3 was my favourite. All the boss fights in this game are incredibly memorable, I love the brutal QTE finishing moves and the remaster is quite stunning. Gameplay doesn’t really evolve much over the course of the trilogy but it didn’t need to: it was fun on the PS2 and it stayed fun until Kratos’ rancour was over.

There are racing games with better soundtracks than Forza Horizon 4, Gran Turismo might have the better driving and Australia might be more exotic… but Horizon 4 brought open-world racing to the UK and for that reason, it hits different. A British developer making a British racing game focused on British car culture, the results were fantastic. Forza Horizon 4 has Top Gear missions, classic British-made car models and the map is a wondrous pastiche of rural Britannia.

Horizon 4 has long since gone unlisted thanks to the ass-ache of car manufacturer licensing but you should absolutely track yourself down a physical copy if you own an Xbox, this game is an authentic feeling slice of the UK with mud, rain and grey skies included. The roads are more interesting than in Horizon 5’s Mexico and unlike in Horizon 3’s Australia, you won’t be driving upside down.

Rockstar are too high in the fumes of the old and reeking Grand Theft Auto Online to ever bother returning to Midnight Club but as sad as that is, we still have a full series of fantastic racing games to return to.

Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition is frequently frustrating and the randomness of falling telephone poles and the occasional bus can make races exceedingly irritating but you’ll keep playing anyway because this tough-as-nails racer’s sharpest edges are softened by smooth driving, deep car customisation and an atmosphere drenched in 2000’s tuner attitude. When that soundtrack is booming and you’re storming down the road at ridiculous speeds in a classic Supra, there’s nothing else quite like this game, the amount of content on offer for a game of this era too is seriously impressive.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was so good Nintendo had to shift the next game: Mario Kart World into a new subgenre as to not live under this game’s shadow forever.

With a lavish total of 96 tracks, 48 racers and 24 cups, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is stuffed full of 2 console generations worth of DLC and updates. Of course the Battle Mode could be better (like anyone plays it anyway) and they probably could have gone all the way and continued supporting the game into the Switch 2 until every track ever made was included but as it stands? I don’t think there’s any debating that Mario Kart 8D is the best game in the series and gamers seem to agree because this is both the Switch and the Wii-U’s best-selling title. I hope we see this level of support for MK World across the life cycle of the Switch 2.

I’ve mostly given up on VR ever going anywhere these days but I have to admit, the temptation to buy another headset and play more Blade & Sorcery is always there.

Blade & Sorcery is VR’s everything game: like Gmod or Arma 3. It centres on dungeon crawling and fantasy magic and melee combat but you’ll find yourself wielding lightsabers, guns and all manner of other murderous implements after a quick trip to Nexus. I have over 100 hours in this game which I mostly spent LARPing as a Greek hoplite, enjoying some archery -a skill which I almost became a qualified instructor in some years ago- and even battling Sith aboard the Ebon Hawk.

I’m not entirely sure if I can keep away from B&S forever and if you own a VR headset and somehow haven’t played this one then you’re seriously missing out, it’s great fun to pick out actual medieval fencing techniques and to recreate them in battle, or to try and pull off flamboyant moves without slow-motion. I thought development was over which is a reason I let my headset go but ever since I’ve been watching on in agony as cool stuff continues to get added with me having no way to experience it. Bugger.

Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is like the firearms equivalent of Blade & Sorcery, only with the enemies as walking, talking, sentient hotdogs.

Any gun you can think of is in the game and if it somehow isn’t? There’ll be a mod for it. I used to have a great time unwinding on the firing range in this game shooting some of the WW2 era weapons like the M1 Garand or the PPSh-41; there is also a very fun, objective-based game mode where you choose a map and a difficulty and then keep capturing enemy zones for as long as you can with a random weapon you get out of a mystery box at the beginning; throughout you earn money for more hits at the mystery box and for upgrades like new sights or extended magazines, it’s addictive.

There are some funky options in here too, one of the Christmas updates added in a Metal Gear Rex boss fight in a Wintry map and fighting it with a Stinger missile launcher was unironically one of the most awesome things I’ve ever played.

Like millions of other boring British men before me, I think fighter jets and WW2 fighter aircraft are the coolest things ever, so discovering VTOL VR: a sim-cade flight game based all around vertical take-off and landing aircraft -in layman’s terms, jets that can hover and take off straight upwards- was sort of a dream come true.

This is another mod-centric game where essentially, the developer provides the aircraft, tools and tutorials but the community builds the missions, which are integrated into the game with an easy to use menu; you pick what player-made missions and campaigns you want off a list, download them in the in-game briefing room and then you’re off. There is a steep learning curve to VTOL VR and being shot down and spinning towards terra firma can make you feel violently ill but get over all that and you have an unforgettable gaming experience. I used to play this with some friends and running a night mission where we managed to sink an aircraft carrier and shoot down a swarm of enemy fighters is a gaming memory that probably won’t ever leave me.

It’s cool to hate on Bethesda today but the fact of the matter is no other company before or since has managed to replicate the sheer scale and immersion of Tamriel across all its different renditions; The Witcher 3 may be better written and virtually every other RPG has better combat but none of them absorb you into another world and let you be who you want to be in quite the same way that The Elder Scrolls does.

Oblivion is the more accessible of these 2 classics: especially now it’s been remastered and drops you into the Tolkienesque province of Cyrodiil in the midst of a demonic invasion. Your goal is to restore a lost emperor to his throne and to fight back the forces of the invading Deadra.

Morrowind is old and positively hideous but it’s also a more thorough red role-playing game and contains the best main quest Bethesda have ever written. This game tasks you with getting to the bottom of a mythical plague afflicting the strange and hostile province of Morrowind while navigating the intricacies of interspecies relations, faith and cut-throat local politics.

Long ago in the gilded age of the 2000’s, Bioware knew how to write video games and great characters: not walking labels or standard bearers of cultural warfare but actual, likeable, complete characters with personalities beyond their sexual preference. The height of Bioware was Mass Effect 2, which took the brilliant but clunky original and gave it a dash of cover-based shooting and ironed out some of the more tedious RPG elements to make the gameplay more enjoyable; PC players protested but the fact of the matter is ME2 was ‘consolised’ for the better and was a roaring success.

In ME2 you take control of Commander Shepard who is resurrected after a deadly ambush on his ship by a shadowy criminal empire in order to build an elite time of allies new and old in order to defeat an alien species abducting scores of human colonists, presumably in-league with the sinister Reapers.

I didn’t want Bioware to have 2 entries so I’m sticking TW3 here. I’ll continue to insist that this game was a fluke from an otherwise middling developer but there’s no denying that The Witcher 3 is the most significant Western RPG of the past decade. There are a mountain of subplots and side-stories and schemes going on in this game but the gist of The Witcher 3 is that Geralt must track down his surrogate daughter: Ciri amidst an invasion by both a tyrannical empire and extra-dimensional forces.

The world of The Witcher is an intriguing pastiche of Slavic folklore and history which I find myself appreciating a lot as both a history enthusiast and a former Russian Studies major; Nilfgaard evokes the Holy Roman Empire and its constant meddling in Polish affairs and which the Medieval Czech state of Bohemia was a part of, the merchant city of Novigrad bears a strong resemblance to the Russian republic of Novgorod and the city of Gdansk who both traded with the German states along the Baltic sea and Novgorod even fought off a crusade. There is all sorts going on here: pagan imagery as Poland and Lithuania were pretty much the final countries in Europe to be turned to the light of Christendom, a DLC set in a Frankish kingdom, Baba Yaga inspired crones but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how good this game is.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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