Ba'al

Alongside being well into riffs, turns out the five of us are also well into video games. Is anyone really surprised? Below, each of us has said some words about our top ten games of all time – enjoy.

Richard – Bass

Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer

I’ve decided to order my list chronologically; this was the first proper video game I ever played, when a work colleague of my dad’s gave me her old PS1. It took me about a year to 100% complete as an 11-year-old and I got fully sucked into its colourful world. In particular I’ve always loved how every level has its own distinct and cohesive style, with Stewart Copeland’s incredible score to match. I played through it all again in a week as a student in 2012, and then blasted through the whole Reignited trilogy on PC in 2020. The nostalgia is real, and this is the game that set me up as a gamer.

Spiderman 2

I borrowed this game from a school friend not long after I got my PS1… and kept it for probably about 8 years (I finally bought my own copy a few years back). Rather than playing through the game in order, I mostly used to put in loads of cheats and play my favourite levels over and over again. I just loved the simple combat (especially throwing people off buildings), the badass bosses, and of course the iconic swinging physics.

Worms Armageddon

Worms games are the only competitive multiplayer video games I can confidently say I am actually good at, and can defeat even my most trigger-happy, elite CS:GO-mastering friends – and it started here, with a game I played first on PS1 and later got on PC as well. The humour mixed with the relaxed playstyle and fun tactical options make this a never-ending joy, and one that set me on a path to collect several of the follow-ups over the years. I still sometimes while away hours setting up four-team matches and playing as all four teams myself… (PS1 sidenote: I was very sad to have to cull MediEvil from this list to make 10 – another superb early game in my life.)

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

I am ashamed to say that I got sucked in by many film tie-in games over the years – especially during my PS2 period – many of which are terrible. However, a few stand out as excellent, and the LOTR film games are undoubtedly amongst the best. Hacking hordes of orcs as all of your favourite LOTR characters and executing unreasonably cool combo moves doing so… Does it get any better? The answer is yes: doing it all again co-operatively with a friend, as I used to do often in early secondary school. Saying that, my partner and I went back to this recently and got stuck at Helm’s Deep, so there you go.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy

Both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were obsessions for me for a while as a teenager, and whilst the more challenging former is probably the better game, I think on balance I found Academy slightly more enjoyable. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t partially to do with all the lightsaber choices you get (dual wielding purple and orange was my pick, for the sheer audacity), but it’s also all more expansive, colourful and immersive.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

If I had to pick one, Oblivion would definitively be my favourite game of all time. A friend gave me a cracked copy of it for my laptop in about 2009 (every game in this list I played several years after it was first popular… I was a late gaming bloomer) and I immediately had no free time anymore. As my first open world game experience, it absolutely blew my mind and fully sucked me in with its vast scope, geography and diversity in quests, characters and items. Though, of course, I also love Skyrim, Oblivion just feels somehow more varied and richer. My excitement for the long-awaited Skyblivion project to be released is almost uncontrollable…

Minecraft

At the same time that I got into Oblivion, the same friend got hold of an early copy of Minecraft and we played a lot of both games in the sixth form common room during free periods… I hope no teachers are reading this. Even in its earliest form, when you had to manually type code to give yourself resources to use, a group of three of us were totally absorbed by this new boundlessly creative experience we had access to. It was like dicking about with MS Paint and Lego combined, but in an endless 3D space, and it was amazing. The same three of us would play it until 3am during holidays from university in the following years – I still have a copy of that old world we built saved on my current computer. During the first year of the pandemic, I started a new server with one of the same people and someone new, and the love started all over again. Though I often go years without playing and I really don’t have the creative skill that you see in insane builds on YouTube, Minecraft never fails to bring me joy and calm (until those green bastards show up and blow up your shit).

Sleeping Dogs

Though I love both the Grand Theft Auto and the Saints Row series, it’s actually Sleeping Dogs that takes the cake for me in that sphere of free-wheeling, open world, gang-based havoc. It nails all the important parts of the genre (great driving, plotlines that make you feel like a badass, dank radio station options, the ability to go on an extended and brutal crime spree for absolutely no reason) but adds two extra elements that make it even greater: a) it’s set in contemporary Hong Kong and is aesthetically incredibly pleasing, and b) it’s got a complex and incredibly cool martial arts combat system built into it, which is far more fun than any of the gun play.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

I actually have Nick to thank for tipping me off to this one, which I played in 2020 for the first time on his recommendation and loved. Though I’ve yet to get stuck into any of the classic stealth games that inspired Shadow Tactics (the closest I’ve really come is Hitman), I can’t imagine any of them topping it. It’s a top-down, real-time tactical stealth game with multiple heroes to cycle between in each level, all set in absolutely gorgeous feudal Japan. I absolutely loved taking my sweet time hiding in bushes and planning complex manoeuvres to infiltrate and assassinate, finding myself lost in mental calculations and extreme concentration for hours at a time.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Shadow of War is another game that I only played in recent years but immediately adored. I love Assassins’ Creed (ACIII nearly made this list), and the Middle-earth games take the super-fun mechanics of those games into the LOTR universe, with Shadow of War taking all the best parts of its predecessor and amping them up hugely. The endless generation of unique orc captains with different skills, weaknesses and associated quests and locations, plus the nemesis system that promotes orcs that defeat you, meant that I spent many more hours hunting down and humiliating orcs who were getting too big for their boots and forcing them to join my army to fight their friends for me than I did doing the main quests. Truly endless entertainment that never gets old.

Joe – Vocals

System Shock 2

The spiritual successor to the popular Bioshock series, playing System Shock 2 back at the turn of the millenium is an experience that has stayed with me. A truly eerie game, the well voice acted audio logs, the hybrids pleading with you to kill them as they attack you, The Many and Shodan being truly disturbing antagonists, all in a time before internet access was easy and spoilers were prevalent, the twist part way through the game and Shodan’s reveal was something 14/15 year old me found genuinely terrifying.

UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-Com Terror From The Deep

The original X-Com games were masterful in turn based strategy. I’m cheating a bit by selecting two for one category, but sequel TFTD is essentially the same game but wetter. I must have amassed so many hours on these games.

Doom 2

There’s not much to be said about the iconic Doom. Loading this onto our PC with five floppy discs is a funny memory though. Demon killing mayhem, so awesome.

Beneath A Steel Sky

Point and click adventures were a big part of my childhood, the first I played being Monkey Island. Beneath A Steel Sky combined dark sci-fi dystopia with incredible humour and a wisecracking robot sidekick. Genius.

Half Life

Again, not much to say here. While it hasn’t aged well it was given new life by the Black Mesa reimagining. Revolutionary at its time.

Devil May Cry

The first Devil May Cry was the game I got with my PS2. Fun combat, truly imaginative monsters (the marionettes were pretty disturbing) and just an all round awesome aesthetic made this my favourite game for some time

Premiere

Amiga platformer that has been sadly forgotten, so much so I thought my memory of it was some kind of Mandela Effect because I’ve never met anyone who played. Player enters different movies to retrieve lost film reels (western, horror, sci-fi etc). Whoever did the soundtrack deserves an award.

Body Blows Galactic

Daft fighting game on the Amiga with a variety of monster fighters. Has aged horribly by today’s standards and had some very unbalanced characters, but I loved it.

Jet Set Willy

First game I ever played on the ZX Spectrum when I was about 4 years old. Showing my age a bit now…

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I think I’m on my eighth playthrough. The majority of time spent on this game has been waiting for Paarthunaxx to get to the fucking point.

Nick – Guitar

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Ultimately, this is not a very good game, however the vice grip of nostalgia is insurmountable here. Having spent many of my early childhood hours engrossed in the visually magnificent Ralph Bakshi animated Lord of the Rings film, you can imagine my excitement at being able to play as some of my favourite characters through my favourite story. This was the first video game I ever played (I was around 5 or 6 years old at the time) and I simply adore everything about it, from the occasionally (and unintentionally) hilarious voice acting to the actually pretty stunning atmosphere, it all just reminds me of being a child and being blissfully unaware of the horrors that would await us all in adulthood. The barrow wight still haunts me to this day.

Jet Set Radio Future

This was the second game I ever played, however, unlike The Lord of the Rings, this is a spectacular game. The visuals are stunning, with beautiful cel-shaded graphics that I had never seen before, the soundtrack is quirky as hell and still gets frequently circulated to this day, and the story is as strange and colourful as they come. Perhaps most importantly though, the gameplay is just so much fun. I remember growing up wanting to be a roller-blading graffiti artist in a futuristic Tokyo because of this game. Sadly that dream never truly materialised…

Fable

Without hesitation I would argue that Fable 2 is a superior game, and ultimately a game that I sunk far more hours into overall. But the series’s first entry gets the nod here on the basis of nostalgia. I adored this game from the moment I found out it existed, and to this day, Albion remains one of my favourite RPG fantasy worlds. It’s full of dry humour, engaging lore and is a visual treat even to this day, and the role playing is so engaging, especially for a 17 year old game. But I think what sets this game (and series) apart from other fantasy RPGs is that it dared to do things just a bit differently.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

As far as Star Wars content in general goes, this game is right up there with The Empire Strikes Back. I think this is perhaps the finest example of a completely new story being written within an established universe, and I honestly think the narrative is on par with, and maybe even exceeds, that of the original trilogy. The innovative combat is complex yet rewarding and on the whole, the game just feels ahead of its time, and oh boy what a twist.

Divinity Original Sin II

My absolute favourite fantasy RPG of recent years, I actually came across this game by chance and bought it in the Nintendo sale thinking it looked kinda cool. Turns out it’s an impeccable gaming experience with an outrageous amount of depth and replayability. The world is absolutely gorgeous and full of compelling characters, side quests and locations. The turn based combat is more exciting than a turn based combat system has any right to be, and the writing is phenomenal from start to finish. I’ve played through this game twice and spent more time on it than any other game on switch, which says a lot.

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

The undisputed champion of RTS, surely. This game was both a blessing and a curse to me, as it would mean I compared all other RTS games to it and I would often spend all my time thinking ‘eh it’s good but it’s not AOE’. Honestly I think I learned more about history because of this game than I did in 5 years of history at secondary school, it was way more interesting as well, and made me actually want to learn more outside of the game. History teachers, take note.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut

I’ll get this out of the way, I love everything about the cyberpunk genre. The aesthetic, the narrative tropes, the crap techno, everything. Human Revolution captures all these things I love about cyberpunk and delivers it in a perfectly balanced stealth game. The neo-Detroit setting dominated by all-powerful corporations, Daedalian examinations of transhumanism and an enthralling neo-noir atmosphere make this a game that eclipses pretty much anything else this oft-rehashed genre has to offer.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

A game that helped redefine the survival horror genre and one of the most unsettling ordeals I’ve ever experienced in a video game. The setting is perfect and creates an atmosphere that is absolutely haunting. The sound design and set pieces conjure a sense of dread that you never shake off throughout the entire game, and even when you’re in a safe area, you never feel anything close to ease, especially after seeing a gatherer for the first time. It’s an exceptional slice of horror that relies on skin-crawling terror rather than jump scares or gore.

Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is all about the writing for me. This game is about 90% dialogue and attempting skill checks (sounds dull right?) and yet I’m unable to find a single game as engaging and consistently hilarious as this. The game tackles very real moral dilemmas in a fantastically surreal world and pivots between heartbreak and hilarity with equal aplomb and it currently stands as the only game I’ve ever played in which I never skipped a single line of dialogue.

Mass Effect 2

As gaming trilogies go, I think Mass Effect is as close to perfect as you can get. Yeah the ending of ME3 could have been a little more immersive and there were a few creases in ME1 that would get ironed out later in the series but ultimately, I can’t think of many fictional universes that even come close to the level of vibrance and detail that this series illustrates, the sheer level of lore is astounding. For me, this trilogy is the ultimate sci-fi gaming experience that gets every element pretty much spot on. There aren’t really enough superlatives to describe Mass Effect are there, just frickin play it alright?

Chris – Guitar

Final Fantasy VII

I’m a huge fan of the whole Final Fantasy series, so picking a favourite (single-player) entry is tough. Each of the PS1 era games (VII, VIII and IX) have a very special place in my heart, but VII just wins out – the characters are unforgettable, the soundtrack is flawless, the story is epic and the mere thought of it fills me with nostalgia. I’ve played it innumerable times, and the recent FFVII remake that they released just cemented my love of this world – I absolutely can’t wait to see what they do with the next episode of the remake!

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

This is the king of RTS games. It’s not overly complicated, so it’s easy to pick up and get started – there are few things more satisfying than building up a huge army (usually cavalry for me) and marching into an enemy’s stronghold. I used to spend hours fortifying my base, usually by strip-mining every corner of the map and building castles every couple of metres. The story campaigns were great (albeit with silly voice acting), and really helped fuel my love of history. An intensely satisfying game all round!

Metroid Prime

This is (for my money) the best Metroid game, even when compared to the excellent Super Metroid. Claustrophobic and lonely throughout, it really evokes the feel of being a lone hunter on an alien planet. It also boasts a stunning soundtrack, and some genuinely frightening/harrowing sections – I still have nightmares about having a Metroid latch onto my face!

Stardew Valley

Wholesome all the way through. Delightful pixel artwork and nails the satisfaction of slowly building up a thriving farm – scratches the Harvest Moon itch I developed from playing the SNES game in a very satisfying way. It turns out that planting turnips and potatoes and harvesting honey can be just as satisfying as shooting monsters, who’d have thought it?

Mirror’s Edge

First person platforming doesn’t sound like it should be fun, but Mirror’s Edge nails the brief and presents a beautifully minimalist world for you to parkour through. It’s all about achieving flow state and zipping through the levels as efficiently as possible – you don’t ever need to pick up a gun, and the soundtrack (by Swedish artist Solar Fields) is flawless.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

If we’re going purely off hours played, Skyrim is second on this list – I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time running around the various domains of Skyrim, uncovering every bit of environmental storytelling, every vista and every Dwemer ruin. I know it’s a running joke that it’s been released more times than the Bible, but even in spite of all the Bethesda bugs, it remains a near-flawless experience.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

There are a lot of very good Zelda games, and I agonised over whether to include this over the psychedelic/traumatising Majora’s Mask, the pixel-perfect Link to the Past, the classic Ocarina of Time or even the sprawling ambition of Breath of the Wild. In the end, Wind Waker squeaks ahead by virtue of the sheer vibrancy and joy of its world. I can’t think about it without humming the sailing theme to myself and getting the urge to hop on board my boat and traverse the waves. The cel-shaded graphics fit the vibe of the game perfectly and it plays like a dream. Release the HD version on the Switch, Nintendo, you cowards!!

Terranigma

This is a fairly obscure little SNES action-RPG, made by Quintet/Enix well before they were absorbed by Squaresoft. You play Ark, a boy from a village inside the Earth tasked with helping our world wake up from a long apocalyptic slumber – which means you progress through history, helping humans invent things and develop civilisation. It somehow marries this with an emotive fantasy story. I can’t explain exactly how it works, but it really does, and the ending really hits home!

Final Fantasy XIV

I have poured countless hours into FFXIV, and it’s a true testament to the quality of the game that the story continues to hold up after some 200 hours. It absolutely gives you the MMO wish fulfilment of being a super-tough hero who’s saved the world multiple times, but it also spends a lot of time making you care about the NPCs your character interacts with. The Heavensward expansion made me cry, which I’d hold up as a good example of emotive videogame storytelling!

Mass Effect 3

Speaking of games that made me cry – Mass Effect 3 is right up there. The whole trilogy is fantastic, and 2 really introduces some thorny moral dilemmas for you to grapple with, but ME3 (in my opinion) absolutely brought the huge sci-fi drama of the series home. All the relationships you’ve built up over the series are tested, and you really feel the weight of the decisions you’re making. I spent way longer than I thought I would agonising over the final decision! On top of that, it plays beautifully – blowing Reapers’ heads off never felt more satisfying.

Luke – Drums

Path of Exile

I have had this as one of my main games for about 9 years. Am I obsessed? Maybe….. But this is the ARPG that just keeps giving. With their 3 month development cycle churning out new content on a regular basis, changing up metas, fleshing out all aspects of the game, there is always new stuff to try out. The game itself is free and you pay for quality of life and aesthetics so I’d strongly recommend that fans of the genre try it out if you haven’t already!

Factorio

This was my lockdown game! Basically you play a character who has crashed on a planet with hostile aliens and you need to collect resources so you can research science and build a factory, which requires more resources and complex material processing and logistic solutions which let you research more science so you can figure out how to build a rocket and GTFO. And if that’s not enough then you can always flavour the game to your liking with mods! But this game really tickled my puzzle and problem solving side. Working out optimal solutions to resourcing problems, completing the in game challenges and playing around with a mod which enables self building factories. But I’m now at the point where the game kinda feels solved to me now so I’ll wait for a big ole update before I pick it up again.

7 Days to Die

The last of my 3 regular games I have on rotation. This is probably the only 1st person game I’ve ever really enjoyed. You’re stuck in a zombie apocalypse where you go looting for stuff, build a base, do missions from a vendor and on every 7th night, you get swarmed by increasingly difficult packs of zombies. For me, this is a great combination of 1st person combat, crafting systems, looting, character skill progression, random generated open worlds, and also a great game for group play. And in case zombies aren’t tough enough for you, you can always try to pick a fight with a zombie bear!

Guitar Hero 3

It just has to be on the list. I saved my pocket money for ages to get a Nintendo Wii, and eventually was able to get guitar hero and it just introduced me to so much good music as I’m sure is the case for a lot of my generation. Funnily enough, we also got further iterations of the games with e-drums and despite being a drummer, I could never get the hang of guitar hero drums as easily as could the guitar hero guitar! But so many hours were spent on this and its various iterations and despite being booed off stage repeatedly, it was always great fun and an exciting way to discover new music.

Star Wars: Empire at War

I loved strategy games. But what if your military force could include a Death Star? This and the newer (but still hella old) counterpart Forces of Corruption let you conquer the galaxy. But what really stood out is the way the main game pauses every time a planet is invaded and you move to a skirmish where you forget about your whole galactic conquest and focus on what can be really detailed attacks on land and in space. I think it’s a shame that this game hasn’t had any more developments as there is so much which could be added with since the newer films and series have come out.

Empire Earth 2

Another strategy game! For me this game has to be in here primarily because of one playthrough in particular where I nearly got wiped off the map right at the start by those pesky AIs. But some villagers escaped across seas to the opposite corners where I managed to build back up from nothing, until the end of the game where me and one AI had half the map each and there was a constant back and forth where neither side would make significant dents in the other, no matter how many futuristic laser-wielding robot tanks and nuclear weapons we threw at each other. Obviously I won in the end, but it was the most fun RTS playthrough I’ve ever experienced.

Pokemon Sapphire

Back to the good ole GameBoy Advanced. This was the first and probably the only Pokemon game I ever properly played. Looking back, this seemed to be a well designed game with so many puzzles and quests. I even remember having to learn Braille to figure out the codes to find some of the secret uniques.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I haven’t actually played a lot of this game, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have put into it. The way in which they managed to implement the turn based combat allows you to put the time in to come up with well thought out approaches without losing the tension and pressure of the fight. Personally I loved my snipers, but there were so many ways you could kit out your task force depending on playstyle preference.

Space Engineers

It’s Minecraft in space! Well, kind of. Honestly I just really enjoyed designing ridiculous spacecraft in sandbox mode, duplicating them, and flying them into each other! My favourite creation was definitely the donut spaceship. But this game also allows for some interesting use of logic to control various actuators based on sensors that you can install. In particular there is a unit which lets you automate functions using C# code so I actually started learning a bit of C# because of this game.

Code Combat

Similar to how Space Engineers got me to learn C#, this game is actually entirely based around learning to code. Players implement code in the language of their choosing to program a character to do a task in a competitive setting against other players. I basically taught myself Javascript fundamentals by playing this game and coming up with new ways to solve problems giving the limit of how much code you were allowed in the programs. It’s super nerdy, but this has to be on the list because I found it so much, and it is a great way to learn a skill which can actually be useful (unlike shooting zombies with a mouse and WASD….)