Halo CE

Most of the things this game does well are so subtle and so unique that much of it is still lost on people. Can’t be captured in conventional gamer language. I first played this game as a young child and every time I’ve returned to it my opinion of it has only gotten higher.

Pikmin

The games Nintendo made for the Gamecube themselves were all seriously ambitious conceptual leaps, overlooked for their cute simplicity which disguised their elegance. They work so well we take the utterly original premises and systems for granted. The premise of a game like Pikmin works so well that it feels inevitable.

Pikmin 2

Everything Pikmin did right done again. But weirder, bigger, more reflective. By turns mundane and mythical. We’re on the job and the job is dueling the Minotaur. Keep up Louie, you lazy shit.

Deadrising

Stunning game. Heavy, tactile, responsive, formal and new. Video game tradition and contemporary popular culture played so straight but made into something so strikingly original. Like Halo it’s a game that should become more impressive the more you think about it. Even all these years later few have taken it seriously enough to see what’s really going on.

X-COM

Possibly the greatest “tactical” experience in the history of game systems. The game’s premise feels so realised. Everything that could be relevant is there and just works. A world of objects and entities with characteristics and functions and goals and you have a perfectly satisfying and complete-feeling spread of potential inputs. It’s a game that makes it feel like you can do anything, while also feeling like a complete formal system rather than a chaotic sprawl that stops rather than completes. Conversion mods are being made today of this game that came out on floppy discs. Glorious testament to its fundamental systems.

Killer7

This game feels like something that could have been made in a world where no other video game that exists. That it was made in ours is perhaps even stranger. And somehow Shinji Mikami was involved. I’m sure his steady hand was vital to get this finished, the presence of such a formal-minded veteran had no sway over this game’s utterly alien character and approach to realising its premise. Suda51 is not a video game developer. He’s an outside artist with a multimedia team. They gave us Killer7.

Evergrace

Evergrace is a very weak video game. Far from being a fundamental issue, I simply shift my perception. The video game is not a fundamental element of Evergrace. It’s a multimedia work centered around a few pieces of key visual art and Kota Hoshino’s beautiful “indigenous” soundtrack.

Forever Kingdom

This game’s title screen may have moved me to tears. The title-theme being a more complex and layered iteration of motifs from the first game feels so perfect. This is what sequels to video games aspired to be around this time. Some big recognisable conceptual leap. Evergrace 2 is still a terrible game. But it’s an absolutely stunning aesthetic leap ahead of what is already one of the most beautiful video games ever made. That From produced both of these games in a row feels miraculous.

Super Mario 64

One of the most brilliant game systems of all time. Three dimensional movement that feels tactile and perfect. A complete form on the first try. They could have made a hundred games on this foundation. But they kept going because they’re Nintendo. Another game so perfect its nature feels inevitable.

Death Stranding

Possibly the only justified use of photorealism in rendering human faces in video games. And a remarkable collection of lateral leaps in game construction in an era where games felt disappointingly solved and narrow. In an age where the term “walking sim” had become a term of popular disparagement, Hideo Kojima made THE walking sim. And it’s beautiful. A game about watching your feet and moving from A to B. And the photoreal faces, it’s a game about connecting to people. And I felt it. I cared about Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus. Hideo Kojima pulled it off.

Metal Gear Solid

Amazing, leaping ambition to every part of this thing. The spirit of a Japanese PC game rather than an evolution of the Super Nintendo. Japanese pop sci-fi tropes, but heavy pop sci-fi (so heavy many westerners mindkill upon contact with the premise) realised through open, novel consideration of what the PS1 made possible. Still impressive to this day. Liquid did nothing wrong, and it’s still impressive to see what they decided was possible with the forms and tools at their disposal.

Metal Gear Solid 2

In an age of leaps this was one of THE leaps. Hideo Kojima wanted to give you an insane future-shock experience, again. And what a success. Still feels like a technical wonder because sheer machine-power alone doesn’t deliver this kind of wizardry. You have to think it to build it.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Future-shock in its time. Future-shock today. A game so conceptually advanced it was showing us a world of what video games could be, as its own complete and playable game. And then the rest of the industry went another way rather than catching up. So this game is still as unique as it was in its prime. Like a vision of a AAA game from another dimension. And the Japanese sci-fi dream of the mid-2000s died not long after this, and wasn’t realised visually too many times. Still a stunningly unique premise and world.

This game might never get old. At least it hasn’t yet.

Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain

Just about the last word in three dimensional third-person action games.

Metal Gear Solid up to 4 was comfortably formal. Built on an understanding that limitations create possibilities as they close them off. But with V the fancy gloves came off and the ultra-loose and accommodating standards of western action games were, not embraced, but wrestled down, broken, and rendered formal. Beautiful. With their first try these guys ended western style third person action games.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Another beautiful From game. Slick and refined as a game, you can play this thing if you just like beating your head against contrived virtual challenges for the hell of it. And for the more discerning among us this is another fascinating iteration on what became the central From themes and premises. Especially after Miyazaki’s entry onto the scene as a creative leader. More human and contained than Armored Core and Souls. From can write lucid and down to earth, when they care to.

Resonance of Fate

John Galliano tells sexy jacket man and his sexy teenage wards to take their sexy European handguns and submachine guns to go kill goblins in the poor people section of their immortal steampunk Second Life liminal post-apocalypse clocktower fortress city.

Awesome. And you can spend all of the money John Galliano gives you on gucci loafers instead of JRPG items you need to not die. This might be the best JRPG ever. Not that I’ve played a lot.

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy

I think this is the peak of old fps formality. And the game isn’t even primarily an fps. But it’s about hard blocky three dimensional worlds which feel more like representative and symbolic constructions made using formal video game elements rather than simply the thing inside a video game.

The game is physical, violent, free, monumental in scale, eerily distant and empty at times. “Monumental” is the word, rather than liminal. Like being in an empty cathedral rather than a ballpit.

Rome: Total War

Total War was a game that felt BIG. Big multiplied by tactility to feel unreal. A world full of 3D figures who would move like they were physically marching together, hitting each other, falling over dead. The older games might have had tighter AI and presented a more rounded challenge, the newer games might be faster and contain more novel systems, but this is the one that felt like a crazy new kind of hard bloody war could take place on your computer. Some unquantifiable balance of physics, AI, graphics, it never came together this well again if you ask me. I can hardly play the new ones for an hour.

Vampire Panic

What a beautiful surprise this one. It’s a short and simple game, but doesn’t feel lacking on any level. Everything small or limited about it is justifiable as an element of form. It’s so elegant. Every part of it feels finished. This was how it was meant to be. And to think, never released in the west, in Japan is remembered as the game that had the PS2 Berserk game demo.

The game’s incorporation of AI actors as a central game element is still highly impressive and ambitious. NPCs are hard to do, so even all this time later so few have tried, even to this limited extent. Still a deeply novel and even bleeding edge game system. Such a fine achievement that even today it still feels elegant and even ambitious.

Shadow of Rome

Dead Rising’s older brother. Another deeply formal work trying to do something very new with mostly recognisable parts. Very pretty game. Very elegant and complete systems. Beautifully tactile and violent combat system. With a surprising amount going on beyond tearing people to pieces with swords. A game that aspired to be an experience of Rome, rather than a fighting game wearing a Coliseum skin.

Silent Hill

Beautiful game. Critical mass of artfags somehow concentrated on one Konami project out of nowhere. No one slave-driving unifying auteur here. Artfag collective action somehow taking on a final character that feels perfectly cohesive. Dare I say, Inevitable.

Silent Hill 3

What a beautiful sequel. Silent Hill 1 is such a fine and complete work to me. Opening up such a nicely closed premise is risky. After 2 I was ready to be disappointed. I don’t know if low expectations for a video game have ever been blown higher away. This game is beautiful, contains original aesthetic elements I consider as good as those of SH1, and conceptually is a perfectly coherent and natural expansion of the first game’s premise and themes into a new settled ending which again feels complete, incorporating all elements of each game into a new whole. Silent Hill 1+3 make one greater experience. They pulled it off.

Hotline Miami: Wrong Number

I’m so glad this got made. 1 was so easy to take for what it isn’t. ‘Wrong Number’ is so utterly what it is there are no mistakes possible. This game is not for the weak, looking for affirmations of gay pop-psych about PTSD and male fantasy. This is a weirdo artfag end of the world fantasy. No way home. None of this matters.

God Hand

Shinji Mikami was obviously dissatisfied with the state of 3D action games. I don’t know if he worked this out on paper, refined it to rules, or what. But this feels like a perfect 3D physical contact fighting game system. A game which like Mario 64 can be mastered to completion. To the point where it’s all on you. The game has no flaws which will rob you of agency or deny you an opportunity to express yourself through skilled manipulations. Again, they could have made 100 of these. And aesthetically, again, the intention is successfully realised. A revival of the fun formal elements of arcade with the possibilities of 3D. Incredible.

Jet Set Radio Future

What an aesthetically bold game. Actually about youth and the contemporary bleeding edge. Or at least as close as a video game can hope to get. The game is great. But less of a game than Jet Grind Radio. We aren’t doing Tony Hawk arcade challenges anymore. The game is a frame and platform for the aesthetic experience. Which is being a cool young person immersed in this crazy bleeding edge street culture. Is being in a rush more authentic than your own pace? Who can say. I appreciate the freedom, personally.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

I love this whole series to death, but like Halo this is a game I grew with. Started too young to play this thing, let alone comprehend it. I’ve been going back for over 20 years and I am still finding more to be impressed about. Nintendo’s ability to create novel formal elements to frame such bizarre original premises is so incredible. They never seem to get the credit they deserve as writers or as ambitious artfags. Maybe it’s the ‘Nintendo’ brand obscuring the human elements. I do it myself, of course.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It was inevitable that Nintendo would make this game, yet people managed to be surprised. Superficially there’s some Ubisoft influence, but mostly the trends behind this are Japanese, and even mostly Nintendo, with Monolith next most important.

The fascination with naturalistic systems and logic has existed in these games from the start. The abstract puzzle-boxes of “dungeons” were always a concession to the difficulty of realising compelling natural problems in a video game. No longer. This game does not have four dungeons. The entire game is a dungeon. “Which way is the enemy base?”

“DOWN!”

Drakengard

The meeting between Caim and Angelus is perhaps my favourite cutscene in the history of video games. This whole game is so eerie and unconventional. But not at all bad, don’t let anybody tell you that. I actually quite enjoyed how it played too. The scale and rhythm of the violence was quite striking. And not in an unpleasant way. The music is ominous, but very memorable and beautiful. This game can make quite a lasting impression. Did on me.

NieR

This game pulled me out of a very low place and reminded me what video games could make me feel, a kind of beautiful, mysterious, draw I hadn’t felt in a long time. A friend of mine has noted that the japanese have a propensity for quiet apocalypse stories. NieR is an incredibly serene game, in which the world is dying. The highly saturated daytime visuals, the flat open expanses of grass, the protagonist’s effortless sprinting movements and easygoing nature. The severity and stakes of the primary narrative and the mundane downtime. This game aspired to show you a life under such alien and extreme circumstances. I was so engrossed. There are so many beautiful pieces to this we can point out, but perhaps so much more to it that we can’t.

Angola ‘86

Johan Nagel is an incredible man. He wasn’t satisfied with the experiences of war offered by existing games so he became his own desired market niche. Angola ‘86 I suspect is in many ways one of the most authentic War games ever made. What are the dynamics of a war playing out? Probably if you’re any kind of officer, a lot of ambiguity, tracking, organisation, moving parts, and getting things in the right place for something to occasionally get blown to hell by the right organised elements.

I find this far more engrossing than clicking on my tac-marines to flank into heavy cover.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

My favourite conventional “RTS”. It feels most deliberately built around realising what they all were to me. It’s the living toybox game. The campaign finally shakes off stiffly arranged scenarios in favour of free-form play bolstered by speeches in which every player in the world of Warhammer just gets to go to 100 and hit you with all of their pomp and self-centredness. It’s beautiful.

I still love skirmishing in Dawn of War just to look at the game work. Games with more polygons have been made since. But they don’t feel like playing with living toys, do they?

Myth: The Fallen Lords

I salute Bungie’s ambition. They were always trying more than they got credit for, and getting credit for things they probably weren’t trying too hard at.

People call this a baseless “RTS” with Black Company elements. I call it an experiment in creating a uniquely physical and reactive scenario-based war-game system. It came out at an unfortunate stage of tech development. It’ll never feel great to play, or truly three dimensional, but in some ways it’s still at the bleeding edge despite that. The way things fly, bounce, and impact in this game, how many other games give such a rich sense of stuff being there? This game is Halo’s father, not Quake.

Armored Core 4

Absolutely beautiful game. I enjoy it fine as a game of course, but like Evergrace to me it endures as more of a vision, an aesthetic experience. The key visuals of this game are so powerful, and again Kota Hoshino has made a soundtrack so powerful I believe it can be interpreted as the primary element of the work, and this time there’s also a clear and lucid narrative to follow. From are nailing every element they attempt at this point, but they still produce such abnormally strong results on what are conventionally secondary elements that their work can still be interpreted in this lopsided way if you please. Is Armored Core 4 an incredible action game, another of Miyazaki’s mediations on violence, agency, and fate, visions of light breaking through overcast clouds to distorted chanting rock lyrics that feel like they’re trying to pull you into the realm of religious experience? It’s all of course. And when you’re a team of aces why declare one thing the point?

Armored Core: For Answer

If the base game didn’t make it obvious yet, these games are about Eternally Predaceous Loneliness. Maybe to make it more obvious they should have called the engine’s byproducts ‘Hitler Particles’.

We are more clearly in the realm of the religious now. But what is religion? Well, if you’re good enough at piloting an Armoured Core you’re basically God. Maybe you decide. The World is waiting For Answer.

Beyond Citadel

“FPS” is so goddamn boring now. Renegade artfag triumphs over all. Effortless victory. It could only go this way. Conventions and formal elements are acknowledged, often even respected, but one man with this much in his head he has to get out can’t help but make it all new again.

FarCry 2

Clint Hocking started and ended the new biggest form in gaming first try. Then he got discarded by the industry and they kept making pointless, heartless clones without him. What a genuine tragedy.

Every element of the “open world shooter” or “farcryvaniabornelike” was at its most deliberate and purposeful in Farcry2. An almost completely aesthetically justified game. Most of what people take as technical or design problems with it are actually disagreements with the deliberate artistic premise. We call that getting “filtered”.

Mount & Blade: Warband

Those poor Turks are never surpassing this. Warband is lightning in a bottle. Some kind of perfect video game form and system spawned by some miracle of passion and chance.

So vicious, so grounded, so personal, so engrossing. Shirtless guys throwing rocks at each other as they close over an open field. They tapped into something primal here. Like Open-Xcom the mods should be taken as this game’s glory rather than a sign of shortcoming. The form is so perfect it can bear worlds more than it contains.

Resident Evil – Code: Veronica

Moving slowly, yet efficiently; conserving resources, avoiding combat; exploring a remote nowhere, dreamlike back and forth through a vast daedalian gothic mansion, paranoiacally laced with secret passages and underground biolabs. Saveroom comfyness. The controls feel a bit too stiff by today’s standards; the characters are so simple, so cartoony, that the story might actually benefit from replacing the few bits of dialogue with plain text — but I wouldn’t like that cause the 1st wave of Resident Evils has one of the few examples of genuinely funny games. let me have a few laughs, man