Mischief makers

In the order I played them in:

• Pokemon Ruby + Pokemon Colosseum
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
• Fable
• Dragon Quest Monster Joker + Dragon Quest 5
• Risen
• Dark Souls
• Dragon Age: Origins
• SMT Devil Survivor
• Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology
• Xenoblade (as a series)
• Witcher 3

There are probably others, but that’s the list I came up with in the moment.

A few that seem under represented here:

Oregon Trail

Sim City 2000

Earthworm Jim

Clair obscur.

Definitely Ace Attorney. It hits a lot of marks; it gives you the feeling of beating enemies by being clever, rather than powerful. It ties in with a sense of justice, and contains some murder mysteries that rival some of the greats of Agatha Christie with twisted, complex motives and multiple lying witnesses. It has VERY creative character designs, making each new face very memorable. Its localization team had their own sense of humor, conveyed well with how they chose to adapt many things. In spite of the humor, they often follow through with deeply emotional endings to each case.

Half life 2. I could conceive of shooter games but until playing HL2 as a teenager, I didn’t quite understand how much storytelling they could pack in. Suddenly, it felt like games could be thoughtful and entertaining pieces of art instead of solely fun time

Great question! For me it’s definitely Minecraft with my kids - watching them discover redstone mechanics and build together taught me so much about collaborative creativity. Also Stardew Valley for showing how peaceful, non-competitive games can be just as engaging.

Fallout New Vegas set my expectation for quest choice and faction interactivity. I could go on about that, but everyone knows what people think about New Vegas.

Last year, I beat Dark Souls. That’s now set my standard for RPG gameplay. There’s bullshit, same as any game, but I don’t think I’ve ever played another RPG where I’ve felt my skill going up alongside my in-game stats. Then you get to the Bed of Chaos, and that kinda goes out the window…

Spyro the Dragon:

This is basically the pinnacle of game design to me. It is a collect-a-thon of course, but the gems always sparkle no matter how far you are from them so that if you are in line of sight you will know that they are there making it easy to find them.

Far off sections of the map are basically always reachable and rewards you for trying to get there and utilizing uncommon paths through the map.

When you beat the game to 100% it rewards you with extra stuff and a little more game to show it had fun being made as much as you hopefully did playing it.

All with a fun story that wraps it up and doesnt require anything special to jump in. I want to see games that have thoughtful level design and world building while using the game mechanics in fun ways. The fact that you jump into levels directly and the loading screen is akin to you actually flying to the world is all engrossing to the world.

When I was 6 I was so excited to get a SNES. I wanted the bundle with super Mario World but it was sold out. So my parents gave me the option of waiting of getting this other bundle with this Zelda game. That sounded kind of girly to me being 6 and knowing nothing, but I was also 6 and had no patitience so Zelda it was.

I got home and started playing and was immediately hooked. I spent the next few years exploring every inch of Hyrule and the Dark World.

To this day I still don’t have Super Mario World and have only played a few levels but I have played every Zelda since.

I’ve played dozens or hundreds of games since thrn, many that were absolutely amazing but nothing until Breath if the Wild gave me that same magic of wanting to discover every nook and cranny of the world just to see what’s there.

Minecraft and Terraria are to me the definitive mining/crafting games you can find.

Stardew Valley sets the bar for farming sim.

The Messenger holds a nice contender of a well-balanced game, one of the best in its ranks.

There will be no better ARPG contender to me than the Diablo series, even if Diablo has made some questionably dumb choices.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall/Fallout 1 and 2 are some games that demonstrate the importance of depth and how your choices matter in their games. Something I feel nearly all RPGs should have.

World of Warcraft. After it, a lot of player retention mechanics became super obvious in other games for me, especially because a lot of said games were copying “the king of MMOs”

Dwarf Fortress is my main go-to example of procgen done right. Whenever there’s discussions of “game X sucks and is lifeless because it’s mostly procgenned”, I look back at DF. Lazy procgen is the problem.

I know at some point I saw a game with absurdly high damage and health numbers, I can’t remember which one it was, whether a mobile thing around 2014 or a korean mmo, but that was the point where I very easily understood “big number better” is total bullshit

Elder Scrolls Morrowind was the first game I’ve played that gave almost complete freedom to the player, with lots of things carrying consequence, especially in relation to NPCs. That shopkeeper you killed? Still dead. This essential NPC that is a literal demigod? Yeah, you can kill him, have fun in this broken timeline you just created where you can no longer advance the main quest.

Zelda: Link to the Past.

How it shapes how I view games is how Zelda creates a lot of subconscious rules we take for granted until we see it not being used.

For example:

You’ll often find the “locked door” before finding the key.

You’ll see the treasure chest at the end, but no way to get there.

You see the cracked walls with no bombs.

A lot of puzzles are clearly pointing out the problems without words.

My Younger days:

• Legend of the Red Dragon
• Police Quest 1
• Anarchy Online
• Bard’s Tale (OG)
• Shadowgate
• Metroid
• Forgotten Worlds
• Super Mario World
• Paper Mario TTYD
• Guitar Hero
• Tony Hawk’s Underground
• Star Wars: KOTOR

More recently:

• Cave Noire
• AC: Odyssey
• Fallout 4
• Cloverpit
• Offline Games (Android)

Mostly tried to stick to a single release per platform for the earlier games. I’m sure I’ve missed some.

Newer games…I know the AC and Fallout titles aren’t most people’s favorites, but I love those worlds. Games are all about comfort for me.

Pharaoh, sims (1), sim city, minecraft. And gta of course, every part except Chinatown wars.