Tag: Gaming

My Top Five Video Games

Everything I’ve been writing recently has been really heavy and emotional and I need to work on something a bit lighter. Somehow though I’ve managed to pick something that still leans into the dark, gothic, and dour. Alas, what can one do? No matter, it’s nice to not write about the complicated things. In no particular order these are what come to mind when I think of my top five favorite games ever. I’ll add a bit of justification, gushing, and some criticism where necessary.

  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

My fascination with SotN started watching my older cousins play through it at their home, and eventually I was allowed to borrow it and play for myself. It quickly became one of my favorites. No game before had combined all of it’s elements so smoothly for me. The music is nigh perfect, the UI is spectacular, SFX are spot on, and the graphics sell the whole gothic package with gameplay that rewards exploration and experimentation. It is truly a masterpiece in my eyes. I’ve probably completed it over a dozen times across multiple platforms, and is first on my list of things I wish I could experience for the first time again. It’s biggest downfalls are that it’s incomplete and can be way too easy without self-imposed restrictions.

  • Dark Souls

I once described this as 3-Dimensional Symphony of the Night, and I stand by that. While tonally there’s a huge difference, the gameplay expectations are actually pretty similar. Explore, fight, experiment, and improve. It has one of the most interesting game worlds I’ve visited and easily one of my favorite combat systems. While the music is understated and more ambient, nothing compares to hearing the Fire Link Shrine theme, or struggling through a difficult section and hearing the burst of flame from an ignited bonfire. Whether remastered or not very little compares to Dark Souls 1, not 2, 3, Elden Ring, Sekiro, or Bloodborne. I’d include Demon’s Souls but I haven’t played enough to comment.

  • Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

While I could’ve put KotOR 1 on this list, the gameplay opportunities and writing make this a better replay for me. Character builds are a lot more loose allowing for some weird but satisfying approaches to breaking the game in your favor. Not to mention the characters’ and their writing is just some of the best, with nuances according to player choices. One could probably write a book on Kreia’s philosophy alone.

  • Vampire – the Masquerade: Bloodlines

No other game has made me feel like I was in a different world more than VtMB. From the music and ambience to all the different characters you interact with and the different places you can go. Not to mention that the first time I finished a play through of this I was in the LA area. It certainly has it’s weakpoints particularly it’s lack of polish and bugginess but when I want to live in a dreary rain-soaked slice of southern California replete with Vampires, Ghosts, and Werewolves only one thing satisfies.

  • The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim

I considered cutting my list to just four entries or putting something else here entirely like Fallout: New Vegas but Skyrim, despite it’s action-focused-not-as-much-of-an-RPG slant, does something no other game does. Like VtMB, Skyrim takes me to another world but unlike VtMB this one isn’t gloomy and gothic, but fantastical and fun. There’s a broad palette in Skyrim including gloom but the idea of living in a fantasy world of sword & sorcery has never been so fully realized as it has in Skyrim. Like all games it has it’s issues but what it does right, it does so more than anything else.

Splinter Cell

This past October my family came to visit and see my newborn daughter who was about three months at the time. While we did spend a lot of time around Zelda, my daughter, they needed some time outside of the house. My wife and I were, and still are, quite house bound as we navigate the difficulties of everyday life with a new little person to care for. Only just recently have we started going out to eat, something my wife really enjoys. In fact, the first time we took the baby to a restaurant was when we met my family at a local Mediterranean spot. All this to say is they needed to do their own things while here as we were/are boring.

My obvious game collection in the living room held a part of family history though, that being the Splinter Cell series on the Original Xbox. What makes this so important is that my father who’s avidly a non-gamer of any kind (board games, card games, etc…) seemed to gravitate to it and beat the first three in a couple of days each. For such a thing to happen, was for my young mind, something to boast. To this day these games are heralded as classic stealth games, requiring patience, awareness, and effective planning. If you don’t have any familiarity with stealth games, they often provide several approaches, violent vs. non-violent, seen vs. unseen. The hardest way to beat them is usually what’s called a ‘ghost’ run where you proceed all the way with zero enemy casualties and always unseen. My father beat all three almost entirely as a ‘ghost’. Not because the game asked him to but because that’s how he wanted to play the game. I don’t think I’d be able to do that personally even with years of gaming experience, and yet he comes in and does because that’s what was fun to him. Obviously, this made a strong impression when I was younger, so when I started collecting, I made sure they made it into my collection. I did so not only because of their status as stealth classics but because they were artifacts symbolizing a shared appreciation with my father.

Long segue aside while here he eventually decided to pop the first one in. Even though my setup to play original Xbox games on a modern HDTV hadn’t yet been tested I got it up and running with him five feet away from the screen due to short controller chord lengths. He knew he wasn’t going to beat it, but he wanted to experience it again. The game, Splinter Cell, is still impressive visually but shows its age in the more stilted control schemes of yore. Him being able to pop it in and experience that nostalgia is one of the reasons I have a collection. It’s a window into my past, his past, and gaming’s past. It’s certainly not a cornerstone of our relationship but to be able to bond over it then and now is a magical thing. This is what games have always been about for me. Experiencing something with others, sharing in that experience, and holding onto those memories formed through it. He played for maybe 90 minutes before he had his fill and that’s ok, it felt gratifying to me. As though my collection was finally fulfilling its purpose of sharing those memories.