10
I hadn’t played a DOOM game since I was very young, back then I played the original on my ancient PC. I remember getting so scared by the Baron of Hell’s screams that I held the power button on my computer and shut it down. If you’re unaware of what this is, it’s this guy:
(LOUD)
You can probably understand why an 8 year old would nearly shit himself.
I heard really good things about DOOM Eternal, and the trailers looked really fucking awesome. I kind of lost my appetite for first person shooters a long time ago, but as soon as I played DOOM Eternal, it all came back to me and I wanted more.
This game is incredible, not only visually but the story and steep learning curve. To say I died a lot would be an understatement but it never frustrated me too much because it was a challenge I wanted to overcome each time, I can’t even imagine how people beat this on Nightmare. This and the DLC that followed really had everything that makes an FPS great.
9
I first played this in Dominican Republic when I was on vacation in an internet café at our hotel, which unfortunately kind of ruined my holiday because I spent nearly 2 weeks binging it like crazy. I didn’t have a GameCube at home, so I wanted to play it as much as possible before I had to leave the country. I ended up investing so much time into it, I did something I hadn’t ever done before… I stole the memory card in the GameCube and brought it home with me. Not too long after, I got a GameCube with Melee only to find out that the card data wasn’t compatible with the PAL version of the game! I destroyed my soul for nothing. OH WELL.
My main was always Sheik, I always thought she was the coolest character by far especially with the insane speed she had. You’d think a fighting game wouldn’t have much content in it, but Melee had so many things to do in it that it kept me occupied for years on/off.
To this day, Melee is still the best Smash game to date, no other game in the series has come close to the same feeling I had with Melee.
8
I remember begging for the N64 just so I could play this game, but my parents were insistent it was too much money so I did my little sulk and moved on, only to find the N64 and GoldenEye waiting for me a week later to my unparalleled joy.
The game itself was surprisingly simple and was one of the first 3D first person shooters, so it’s extremely clunky these days compared to modern titles, but back then nobody knew any better. I couldn’t tell you how many hours I poured into this game as a kid, I’m amazed my N64 even works to this day and my cartridge isn’t a pile of dust. Me and my childhood best friend David would always play this together. I think it’s safe to say we knew this game inside and out, every map, every weapon, every character, all the secrets and glitches.
7
This is an incredibly fun game which, as the name suggests, focuses on Special Weapons and Tactics in both singleplayer and multiplayer. The singleplayer side of things is surprisingly very good and the AI is pretty decent for the time, it really made you feel like you were in a SWAT situation. Multiplayer was a blast, and there were a lot of gamemodes to keep you occupied, if I recall correctly it used Windows as opposed to Linux for its server hosting, meaning not a lot of game server providers existed for it.
I really feel like SWAT 4 was ahead of its time and I couldn’t get enough of it for several years in the mid 2000s where I’d play with a bunch of my friends. I’m amazed we didn’t get a SWAT 5 because the apetite was definitely there for it, but these days the spiritual successor to SWAT 4 is Ready or Not which has the majority of the features SWAT 4 had.
6
I have to say, driving games are boring and I do not understand how anyone can have fun playing them. You’d think that Carmageddon is just another racing title but thankfully it’s so much more, instead of driving in circles for 5 minutes, you could immediately smash into the side of all your opponents and destroy their cars. You could either beat the level by wasting all the cars (The correct way to play) or win the race. As the game progresses it gets very difficult until you can finally build up enough money for upgrades (Armour, Power and Offensiuve). The cops in the game were incredibly tough and it was best you avoided them at all costs in order to have a fighting chance of beating the game. The one thing I remember most about playing back then was how amazed I was at the car physics… this was 1997 and in MS-DOS no less and they somehow made me be completely immersed believing I was driving a real car.
I was first introduced to Carmageddon on a PC demo disc from a magazine (I believe the image below was the one) along with tons of other incredible games.
I knew as soon as that killer soundtrack hit that I was onto something awesome, I’m actually listening to it as I’m typing this and have been ever since I was little. Most countries heavily censored this game, which actually only made it more popular. I grew up with the censored version which replaced humans with zombies and cows, but I didn’t know any better. This game introduced me to metal and all the carnage that this game served up, it really felt like a rebellious game and I was all in.
5
For the majority of my time playing Quake 3, I’d just play the demo that came with a demo CD, and honestly there was too much content on the demo because I didn’t have any reason to buy the game, it worked for what I wanted it to do, play my favourite server (NoGhost FreezeTag).
Eventually I’d buy the full game, which actually felt really jarring because there was TONS of maps and models I’d never seen before, I was used to playing with 4 maps and 4 models. Much like any id Software title at the time, modding was heavily encouraged on its titles and Quake 3 was no exception, and when I finally grew to like the full version of the game I’d spend hours trying out different mods, models, skins, maps… it was the best sandbox game at the time bar none.
I can’t praise this game enough, it has the best feeling gun combat of any game I’ve played. The skill gap was insane, and you’d really have to grind to be the best, which was really addicting to me in my teen years. This is one I return to every now and then, I wish it was still as popular as it was back then, especially the FreezeTag side of things because it’s such a unique game mode with a lot of potential.
4
Back in 2001 I was either 11 or 12 years old, and I had never even heard of the term “MMORPG” let alone seen one before, so this game absolutely blew my mind. It was the first game I played where I was absolutely obsessed, to the point I’d join fan sites and participate in all sorts of events and contests. I spent way too much time playing, going from a very outdoors kid to playing RuneScape for hours upon hours after school just exploring the world and meeting people.
Random fact: I remember I once knew the game so well, that it inadvertently taught me a lot about smithing, a topic that came up in Geography and I somehow became the class expert for a day, never to be replicated again 😜
I met so many good friends playing this game, it introduced me to so many different early internet concepts including participating in forums and making graphics. In the end I played the game for around 3 years nonstop until a year after RuneScape 2 was released (Now known as RuneScape Old School), and lost interest pretty quickly after that. This is one of those games that I really wish still existed, I’m very bummed that I can’t experience it again without making/joining a private server.
I have incredible memories of the game and even made a video sharing my full thoughts on it which you can see below, this will summarise what this game meant to be a lot better:
3
Ahhh Pokémon, the feelings I have around this game can’t be put into words so easily, but I’m going to try my best. I’ve put 6 games into 1 section here because I played them all around the same time and they’re honestly even. This is… such a fun set of games, the adventure you feel is probably second only to Zelda, but there’s a good case to be made that it beats that in the adventure category. The feeling of being able to catch your own Pokémon which had unique stats, names and abilities felt really immersive, I wasn’t just ticking boxes to finish the same game as everyone else, nope, this was my experience and the likelihood of my game being duplicated is slim to none due to all the random factors.
Everyone on the school playground liked Pokémon, and I mean everyone. Whether it was the games, the cards, the shows, the toys… it was everywhere and it was cool. I started off with the cards and the TV show, but I didn’t have the game, it was reaaaally expensive. I borrowed it from my friend Nick and completely wiped his saved data 🤯I thought “New Game” would make a new save state but I went to find out that wasn’t the case, he was PISSED when I returned it to him a few days later. Thankfully a kid named Oliver who was in the year below me said he’s sell it to me for £4 and some cards, which was an absolute no brainer. Funnily enough he was around the same place I was when I gave the game back to my now angry friend Nick, so I kept his save file going and eventually got his Blastoise to level 100 while waiting at my local doctors for my Dad. I then went on to train many Pokémon over the years to level 100, storing them proudly on my Pokémon Gold cartridge… until that fateful day in 2013 when I booted up Pokémon Gold like any other day:
Karma had finally caught up to me. My cartridge battery died, wiping the last 13-14 years of progress. This really killed my spirit for the Pokémon games for quite a while, I eventually rebuilt all my level 100s and stored them safely in Pokémon bank on other games around that time but… honestly… it’s never really been the same since then. I feel like there was an unbroken chain from my first playthrough in 1999 until the day the battery died in 2013, and that was broken with no way to repair it.
2
I had heard for years how good Ocarina of Time was in all the N64 magazines I bought, and from friends too. I frequented my local market quite often for N64 games, and this one time there was a golden shining cartridge buried at the bottom of the pile, it was Ocarina of Time. I tend to paint anything new that’s popular with a really bad colour, I think the worst of it based on what I think it’s probably about. This is something I still do to this day and pretty much every time I experience it, it’s a 180 of my expectations. Ocarina of Time was no exception, I thought it was a dumbed down Super Mario 64. I took a gamble and convinced my Mum to buy it for me. How wrong I was, this game really changed my view on gaming in general, it was hard putting it as #2 instead of #1 and from strictly a gameplay/story perspective it’ll always be #1. I could not stop playing this, it was such an engaging story that really rewarded you if you listened, which is something I tend not to do in games, I just want to play, but OoT really caught my full attention.
It took me a while to progress, I recall doing a lot of backtracking and looking up guides on the old web to get some hints on what to do next. I remember giving up entirely when I got lost in the Forest Temple, I pushed myself to revisit it a couple of months later only to get stuck again on the now famously tedious Water Temple. After another long break, I returned and finally completed it. This was the biggest game I had ever played up until this point and it felt like a huge milestone to say I had finally done it.
I liked it so much that I based my entire online identity on it, using the name “Link” from 2002 – Present, I even recently 100%’d the game fully.
- FIFA 98 – I hate football, but I played this so much for some reason. Seriously well rounded game.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds – I was really surprised I liked this one so much, but it is easily my 2nd favourite Zelda game ever.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – This one took time to grow on me, but you can’t argue how incredible this is after playing it all the way through. Really awesome sense of adventure.
- Payday 2 – I have a lot of hours poured into this game, it’s just really fun to play with friends.
- Super Mario Bros 1-3 – Maybe the first game I ever played? These really stand the test of time and changed the industry.
- Assassins Creed 2 (+ Brotherhood and Revelations) – We need a modern remake of this game, it’s aged surprisingly poor but the story is 10/10 and it’s one of the few games I believe I’ve 100%d just because I loved it so much.
- Skyrim – A really next level game, you’ll always remember your first time playing through Skyrim. The side quests and exploration really make this game.
- Mario Kart 64 – So many hours poured into this one too, it’s truly a wacky game which is 60% skill and 40% luck. Lots of fun playing this with my Dad growing up.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – I waited so long for this game, and it was worth it. The feeling of playing this for the first time was like no other, it’ll always be one of my absolute favourites, and again another I 100%’d fully.
- Rust – No other game in my entire life comes close to the feeling of adrenaline you get from playing Rust. It’s you (And your friends) VS an entire world of selfish players all trying to be the best. One minute you can be crafting a bed, the next you could be defending your entire base from a volley of grenades and C4 explosions. I still play this every so often.
- Age of Mythology – The only RTS game I’ve ever enjoyed playing as far as I’m aware. This is so much fun to play with people or on your own. Even after playing it for nearly 20 years I still suck at it, so I’ll probably be playing against bots if you see me online 😜
1
This game gave me everything I love in life, it’s difficult not putting it at #1 because it really did a lot for me. Back in 2004 I was bored out of my mind playing the same games over and over (Most of the above), because I tend to overplay anything that catches my eye. I knew in my head what sort of game would be cool, one where you could swing a lightsaber around freely in a Quake sort of setting. Luckily that exact game existed in the form of the Jedi Knight series (Specifically Outcast and Academy) which ran on the same engine as Quake. When I first played it, I was blown away by how accurate it was to my vision for the perfect fun game, it really felt like my brain shat out a game out of nowhere.
The main difference between Jedi Academy and Quake (Other than the obvious) is that this game is a lot calmer and more calculated. You aren’t constantly bunny hopping into blood and guts, you’re fighting people one on one (Usually) and taking the time to talk to each other. Quake was fun for the combat, but Jedi Academy was fun for both combat and the social side of things. I played this game more than any other, from 2004 to 2019 almost non stop. I met my beautiful wife on this game way back in 2005, almost all of my best friends and just overall became a better person because of this game. It truly is the best game ever for me personally, which is what this list represents 🙂.
Much like RuneScape Classic, I made a video which better describes my love for this game, which you can check out below: