Top Ten Video Games of All Time

Another meme is doing the rounds ....

Top Ten Video Games of all time ! This one is supposed to be thought of really quickly, so I'm going to brain dump first and then you'll see the filled in post eventually when I hit that publish button.

1. Elite
And its various incarnations over the years. I've played the original on the BBC B, Elite on the Atari ST, Frontier Elite 2 on the ST, attempted Frontier 2 on the PC (far too buggy) and enjoyed Elite Dangerous as well.

These games are an open ended dream, allowing you to set out on an alternate life as a space trucker, mercenary, bounty hunter or a mix of all that. And they all looked amazing in their day, with the latest game being perhaps the most beautiful game I've played.

2. Master of Orion 2
Ahhh, an oldie but a goodie. Think Civilisation mechanics translated into space, centred around stars with a planet to colonise and fleets of spaceships going all the way up to Death Stars to impose your will on the rest of the races of the galaxy. Perhaps a bit of a one trick pony with the races though, as it had a mechanic where you couldn't have all of the technology unless you were Creative, so there were race picks that were massively overpowered. I hugely enjoyed losing days in this one until Stellaris came along.

3. Master of Magic
Another old classic. This one was again heavily inspired by Civilisation, however instead of human races with minor differences, this one had Humans, Orcs, Elves, Dragonpeople, Dark Elves, Trolls and more, each having far more major differences, advantages and disadvantages. This is a legendary game and I really must give Endless Legend another look as the most recent attempt at doing this type of game again.

Oh and one thing this had which was a major plus over Civilisation, there was a tactical battle layer in which to resolve the fights between your units and heroes. Civ never, ever had that. And your character could take an active role in your campaigns, with world altering spells on the strategic scale and the ability to unleash fireballs, lightning bolts and the apocalyptic flame strike in the tactical layer.

4. Revs

This was another game that really pushed the boundaries of what was possible on these first home computers. Revs was a game by Geoff Crammond for the BBC Micro back in the 80s which had you racing around old Silverstone in a Formula 3 car. It was amazing for its day and I loved playing it. There was later an expansion which brought more tracks and it was developed into the Microprose Formula 1 Grand Prix series of games. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the original ideas were carried through to the F1 games of today.

5. Neverwinter Nights
This was a Dungeons and Dragons game from Bioware, which was their next game after the legendary Baldurs Gate 1 and 2. But whereas I bounced off the more acclaimed Baldur's Gate games (and haven't finished either), I was happily addicted to the less complicated but far easier to play Neverwinter Nights. The innovation here was to take the 2d isometric games into the 3d world, within the limits of what could be done at the time again. When I'd finished this game with one character, I was very happy to dive straight back into it with more characters to play through the game in vastly different ways. And then I did the same with the two expansions and the Player Race Consortium (or something other for PRC!) pack which added in all of the 3.5ed Prestige classes for even more variation.

6. Tie Fighter

Another Star Wars game from the mid 90s and another cracker. Whereas the original had you flying for the Resistance in an XWing, this one had you flying for the Empire in their mix of TIE fighters, bombers and interceptors. A fantastic game with a gameplay model which was immensely satisfying. It was superbly balanced between rewarding reflexes, introducing adrenaline and avoiding the frustration that games like this from that time could introduce.

The area where a lot of these games fell down on were missions which were just plain silly, which must have been designed as gateways to stop you completing the game too quickly. Missions with instant fail conditions or where the opposition was just plain daft. You'd play the mission perfectly but because some part of the AI did something silly, you'd fail and not be able to progress. This one was difficult ... but still very possible.

7. Deus Ex Human Revolution
I was very happily addicted to this one when it came out. It didn't do everything that games like even the older Deus Ex did but what it had, it did incredibly smoothly and accurately. The gameplay was tuned to perfection. And I enjoyed the storyline too, completing this game numerous times.

7.5 Mass Effect series
I nearly forgot this one ! How could I ! You play as Commander Shepard, an elite space marine who finds her(him)self on a crusade to save the galaxy from the implacable Reapers. Another classic from Bioware, although it's a shame that ME3 and ME-A suffered from interference from the publisher and were rushed out before they were ready.

8. Motorsport Manager
I'd been after a good racing manager game for quite some time before this one appeared. It's given me excellent chill out times while still being somewhat of a challenge to win. Your decisions have a genuine impact on how your people do in the race and it's no cakewalk. However, the one criticism I'd have is that when you figure out the metagame of how to rapidly grow your team, your group will outstrip the competition in the space of a season or two and then the challenge starts to go.

9. UFO and XCom
These games have been going for years ... decades ! The idea is that aliens have arrived to invade the Earth and your covert XCom organisation is the only thing standing in their way.

These games depend on a steady ramp up of difficulty where more advanced and deadlier enemies appear as your organisation researched the technology to match them and eventually figure out how to repel their invasion. Take too long though and the aliens will win and that's curtains for humanity.

The original game had you starting with 10-14 soldiers, going up to 26 later. It had a sequel called Terror From the Deep and then XCom Apocalypse which added a real time mode. I hugely enjoyed Apocalypse but it did get grindy at the end. The less said about XCom Interceptor the better and then the series effectively died until the recent XCom reboot. The two newer games are excellent as well.

10. Starfleet Command
Lastly for this set is the Starfleet Command games. These were based on the tabletop Starfleet Battles game and is another set that I hugely enjoyed.

The first 2 games covered the Original Series Kirk era, with SFC3 moving to the TNG era. Whereas most of the real time strategy games of the time were based on basic hit points and other resources, this one was about single ships and put much more detail in there. Shields with recharge rates, power generation that had to be managed between systems and it was much slower and strategic.

The story based campaigns were excellent but it was a shame that the online Dynaverse system didn't work too well.

Did I mention being able to customise your Star Trek ships too ? These were excellent games.

Honorable mentions go to :

Stellaris - took over from Moo2 as my space strategy game but the 2.2 patch has damaged it considerably.
Falcon 4.0 - I need to play more flight sims and greatly enjoyed this one. It had the combat elements, the flight elements and put them into a dynamic war campaign.
Star Wars Pod Racer - so close to being in the Top 10. Thrills and adrenaline and fun.
Defense Grid - a tower defense game with a dangerous high score system ... The idea on these is that you have to set up the defense towers to beat back massive waves of enemies of increasing strength and the challenge is to keep enough in hand that you can stay ahead of what you need to stop them winning. I much preferred this one to the sequel.
Planetbase - a chilled out space colony builder game which suffers from very dumb colonist AI.
World of Warcraft - the open world exploration and questing is brilliant, with humour and fun all over the place. But it's let down by the end game and the silly mechanics.
Battletech - I've been enjoying playing through the campaign again. The sad thing is, I know that it should have been better. There was a very solid table top game to build on and the stuff added by the developers just ... isn't very good. There is very little variation in the non story missions beyond "Drop and murder twice your strenght in enemies, repeat in next battle".

That's me list ! Crikey this one has gone on for a while.

Oh - small announcement - I've really enjoyed doing the April 1st posts over the last few years but I may well be skipping it this year. Brain feels melty, this weekend is going to be quite tiring and I'm not feeling the ideas I have so far. We'll see if anything promising comes to mind over the weekend.