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I like video games.  I’ve played them in one form or another pretty much all of my life.  From Pong in the early-mid 70s, to the Atari 2600 to today’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii.  So, with 30 some years of playing video games behind me, what have some of my favorites been?  I’m keeping this to stuff from within the last 15 years or so, and, like always, it’s not in any special order.

 

It wasn’t the first "First Person Shooter", but it was the one that gave the genre some attitude. Prior to Duke, you controlled a silent, lacking in personality gun-toting killer.  As Duke Nukem, you were treated to witty one-liners (even if most of them were stolen from other sources) and a character who openly had a penchant for hot babes. In fact, the women seemed to be Duke’s driving force; mess with the women and feel Nukem’s wrath.

 

Part RPG and part shooter, Deus Ex forced you to face some moral choices and offered various ways to play the game.  You could run and gun, try to be silent and deadly or a combo of both.  Upgrades allowed you to fine-tune your character to your liking.  And while the story choices didn’t offer tons of variations, there was enough deviation to give you the illusion that your choices resulted in your outcome.

 

A step up and beyond ‘Deus Ex’, "KOTR" gave you the choice to play as evil or good (Sith or Jedi) and these choices DID impact the game.  Add in the fact that it was Star Wars, the ability to wield all sorts of cool Force powers and a twist ending that rivals any Hollywood movie and you one of the greatest games ever.

 

Not the first "survival horror" game, but certainly the one that brought the genre out in the open.  Clunky controls, D-list caliber voice acting and ham-fisted dialog aren’t enough to drag this one down.  Zombies, zombie dogs and mutated monsters coupled with plenty of puzzles (some simple, some kind of hard and others just frustrating) made them game fun.  Jump scares and some fairly horrific images made it scary.  At least scary enough that you didn’t want to play it with the lights off.

 

Post-apocalyptic Washington, DC and the surrounding area.  I might be a little biased since this is my neck of the woods, but it’s kind of cool to see areas I know and check for a slight level of authenticity.  Like ‘Deus Ex’ and ‘KotR’, you make moral choices here and, unlike those two games, those choices have lasting impacts on how the game plays out.  Act like a jerk to someone and the info you needed from them might just be gone forever.  A wide variety of weapons makes up for the fairly small number of different types of enemies.  The quests are fun and just walking around shooting bad guys (or good guys) is entertaining.  The only drawback to this being a perfect game is the level cap you run into as you advance your character.

 

Taking the red-hot Grand Theft Auto 3 and making some game play changes, graphic updates and setting the game in a fictional Miami-like location was how a really good game got better.  Maybe it was the 80s setting which meant 80s music, but ‘Vice City’ was loads of fun.  Go where you want, do what you want – the GTA "sandbox’ game play has been aped by many and very few have pulled it off as well as GTA:VC did.  Great voice acting, a decent plot and fun quests make up for the few short comings the game play might have.  Nothing beats pushing 100mph down busy streets while ‘A Flock of Seagulls’ blares on your car stereo.

 

Playing this Lucas Arts "point and click" game was like playing a cartoon.  A bada$$ cartoon.  Your character, Ben, played like Duke Nukem’s cousin as he battled his way through evil biker gangs, comical scenarios and a nail-biting ending. If there is a God, this will get a release in Xbox Live marketplace.

 

Horror by way of live action scenes.  It was mostly just a point and click game, but the gory and well scripted story played out over something like 6 or 7 CD-ROMs and was very hard to put down. You played the female protagonist as she explores the creepy mansion that her and her slowly-going-insane husband recently purchased.  Haunted by demons and the specter of the former owner, there is plenty do besides watching cut scenes. 

 

Throw a good number of Marvel Comics’ coolest characters together, pit you against a variety of different levels and missions and let you pick and choose which heroes you want to use as your four-man team and you’re on a good start to making a good game.  Throw in alternate costumes for the characters and make a few of them unlockable and you’re moving up the ladder.  Add some RPG elements to it and make the gameplay fun and easy to pick up on and you’re almost at the top.  Ultimate Alliance had a few faults, but nothing major, and certainly nothing that takes anything away from the game.  Not the greatest game of all time, but for a fan of Marvel Comics and the characters, it was a must-play.

 

There’s tons more that could have easily made this list, but this is what I’m sticking with for now!  What are your favorites?