20. Half-Life 2
The greatest FPS of all time, thats the label HL2 gets when it is spoken about. Lets clear that up, best modern FPS ever, the original Half-Life set the standard that pretty much every story driven FPS follows, HL2 perfected it and it is still the best. The hype for HL2 was almost unlike anything, there was this feeling like we were getting the future of gaming. It wasn't just a sequel, it was the best graphics ever and new physics which lead to new gameplay situations. The gravity gun was a revelation, one of the coolest gadgets in a game used in so many ways, its originaly coupled with expert game design is why HL2 is so revered. I remember some behind closed door E3 showing of HL2 and the talk from those that saw it was like they saw something from the future. It's almost unbelieveable that not only did HL2 live up to the hype but exceeded it.
I did not get to HL2 until it came out on xbox about a year later. By then it won a massive amount of GOTY awards and was considered to be the greatest PC game ever made by a bunch of publications. But I was mostly a console gamer, I played HL1 on the PS2. I am not even a big fan of FPSs, but the attention this game generated made me want to play it any way possible (my PC could not run it) so I waited for this dumbed down xbox port which had the full game it just looked ugly. It didn't matter, graphics don't concern me, gameplay does and HL2 exceled in every way. It is a roller coaster ride from start to finish, a game with fresh new ideas every few minutes. A game not afraid to change things up on a whim. A game that has no down time. A near perfectly crafted action game the likes we have rarely seen... about the only other came out that same year in RE4.
I played HL2 after RE4 and it's the game I had to compare it to the most. It is that relentless attention to gameplay scenarios to make sure the player is doing something different with every change in location. You are avoiding guards and drones in an apartment escape, you are in a car chase down a coast with flying drones trying to take you out. Enter a ruined town overrun with headcrabs and zombie monstrocities in darkness, all of a sudden a horror game breaks out. Solving physics puzzles while fighting off hordes of giant bugs. Battling building sized walkers in a city wide war zone. This game has everything, I could not stop playing, I was in awe at how many interesting situations would come up. Valves experitise at crafting levels and situations was near RE4 levels of greatness. To this day I call HL2 the RE4 of FPSs, a perfectly crafted action game that is lengthy but never has a boring moment. About the only poor part of HL2 is the ending which was very anticlimatic, also its lacking traditional bosses as most western games do. There is a reason HL3 is always mentioned as one of the most wanted sequels, HL2 proved Valve was one of the greats. To see one of the greatest game developers sit on their laurels and become the Steam company is a shame, hopefully Alyx marks the return of the Valve we loved.
Boy time sure flies when you’re having.....?
He's waiting to finish it for Half-Life 3 so it can take the number 1 spot on his list. 
Lol, a lot of time it comes down to do I use my free time to play a game or write a new entry and well play a game wins like 99% of the time.
19. LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2
Some games are experiences, moments in time that you can’t ever recreate. These are usually online games where the experience you had with others was a big part of your love for the game, something you can start up today and recreate. In 2008 Sony released on of their most experimental games, a sort of game creator tool that is part platformer. With the level of playfulness and ingenuity of a Nintendo game, developer Media Molecule created LittleBigPlanet, a game that celebrated the joy of playing and creating a game.
The motto was simple, play, create and share; sure you can say games have had user created mods for a long time. There are open engines that allow anyone to make games but never had it been presented together in one easy to use package. A package that made the experience of creating and sharing as game like as playing the levels themselves. A series of excellent tutorials narrated by the lovable Stephen Fry were a joy to get through. Little by little the game introduces new concepts to you, eases you into making a simple platformer and eventually giving you the tools to make almost anything that fit the restrictions of this mostly 2D physics based game. Imagination takes over and ideas never thought possible started to be created. LBP started as a make your own platformer but quickly became an exploration of the creativity of a user base, an outlet for some who didn’t have the means to create games on their own.
To top it off there was a great full length platforming campaign. Yeah yeah it has floaty jumps, there was a lot of mocking about that and yet the games level design is phenomenal. Level after level of new ideas specifically made to inspire players to look at the tools a certain way. It’s a fantastic platformer on its own with clever boss battles and themed worlds. It had plenty of secrets that allowed you to unlock new items to use in your creations, a great synergy between the campaign and create mode.
What made me deeply fall in love with this game though was the way you can simply explore user levels like a YouTube channel and you can do so online with others. The beta in particular was magical, it was unlike anything I have ever played. I found a great crew of other players from gaf and we would explore these brand new creations every night. Since it was the beta everything was fresh, the first time you saw someone create some insane boss as a dragon using these simple tools was mindblowing. Then someone made working calculator, what? Someone made some top down battle games. The rules started to be broken, what I thought was possible was just the beginning. I was in awe of the creations more so than playing them. Yes there were a TON of stinkers but there were some genuinely inspired levels as good as MM made.
I spent close to a hundred hours making my own level, Vertical Velocity. I did not want to make a traditional level, this was free flowing and let you tackle multiple objectives in any order. The tool set isn’t exactly the most intuitive so learning to build the level was a challenge of its own, like a giant complex puzzle. I was completely hooked but the effort it took to make just one was exhausting. I could not imagine the hours put in by the greatest level creators.
As time went on we got very cool add ons that added much needed new gameplay mechanics the best being the MGS level kit which gave us a gun and shooting. Now metroid like games were possible to make. MGS characters would fill the levels with classic music from the series. It was just the start of a million tie ins that saw pirates of the Caribbean to marvel, sonic, and so much more.
A few years later we got LBP2 which increased the amount of gadgets five fold. Gravity panels, crazy goo that makes you move quick, jet packs, bouncing pads, it added so many excellent ideas. Again MM packed LBP2 with a tremendous campaign that highlighted all these new mechanics and was a blast to play. Then the community got hold of LBP2 and that’s when the insanity began. LBP2 ushered in some of the most awe inspiring creative levels I have ever seen. Genuinely great platforming levels, cool strategy games, fun arcade shooters, space sims, it was crazy. Creators became stars, many got hired by MM to work on future games, never have I seen such a connection between a developer and it’s community.
LBP1 and 2 are special games, the campaigns are still traditional enough to pop in and play but they are not why they are on this list. It was that blast of creativity, the boldness of a unique vision on consoles where a developer trusted a community with the tools to make a gaming ecosystem that exists a collection of games and art. Since we have moved on to LBP3 and now dreams going back to play LBP1 and 2 levels is more of a novelty now but for that time it was one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.
Too floaty.
I was never able to find any decent player-made levels, which is weird, as PC mods are often great.
However, the co-op component was fantastic, and the floatiness actually added to the silliness when playing with friends, rather than being frustrating.
As with SMB, I'd sincerely love to have vader over to demonstrate in person why LBP is a good game.
Meh.
phantom_leo said:Meh.
Now post more!
But it was a good sound platformer, with a fantastic art style that we had never seen before. Online co-op was good whether you're playing with just one other person or up to three. Couch co-op was good too. This was actually one of the first games my son really got interested in and the two of us put in quite a few hours in it.
As far as the user created content, it was pretty hit or miss, with many more misses than anything else. worst thing they did with the game was tie the trophy system into the content mode. That just created a flood of really crappy levels that were just there to Get a trophy. But if you knew how to search, you could actually find some pretty good stuff. I don't recall finding anything that was significantly better than the levels in the actual story mode, but there was some fun stuff there all the same.
travo said:Too floaty.
Yeah that’s what I thought as well plus I just didn’t really care for the art style either. Tried to get into those games but they just never grabbed me.
18. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Its early 2000s and I have a DC, PS2 and GC but refused to get an Xbox. Its just too many consoles I said. My friend got the Xbox and we would play Halo with LAN parties, thats all I needed from the Xbox. Then Sega went third party and started to put a bunch of their games on Xbox, hmm ok, maybe I want one. And then Lucasarts annouced an epic RPG coming to xbox, an epic Star Wars RPG where you play a Jedi, holy shit. So I needed an xbox and I got one shortly after KOTOR came out, with KOTOR of course. Mind you I had never played a WRPG before. Never played a Bethesda game, never played a Bioware game, the only RPGs I knew were the japanese kind. So KOTOR was a totally amazing experience not just cause of the expert use of the license I love so dearly but because it was a kind of game I never played before.
One of my first memories of the game came from reading the manual and me thinking "what the fuck is a dice roll?!" There were all these stats and some number would randomly be rolled every few seconds and it needs to pass some defense check before htting the opponent, I knew this would be different than what I knew. And yeah it was a bit of an adjustment but man did I love real time combat. What a breath of fresh air compared to random battles that would stop the game and enter a seperate battle mode, this was seemless, the action frantic with many choices having to be made on the fly. It starts simple enough with blasters and maybe a vibroblade but once you get to the academy and become a Jedi then the fun begins.
They nailed the feeling of being a Jedi not just in combat but in the fantastic story scenarios that would pop up. I can't think of a better property than Star Wars for an RPG about choices and playing good or bad, light and dark is built into the lore. I loved role playing as a nobel Jedi, making tough decisions that didn't make my game easier but it was the right thing to do. Bioware were masters of creating great storylines for not just your character vut your whole squad. What a great cast of characters from the Han Solo like Carth, to Ballista and the scene stealing HK-47 who was hilarious from start to finish. I loved the squad, I got to know them, have relationships based on my decisions, never had I played an RPG where my actions changed the story. I played the game back to back being an evil fucker the second time and it did feel cathartic to murder some scum I desperately wanted to before but took the high road, my dark side version was not as merciful. Also everyone likes dark side powers more than light side.
I was in awe at the size and scale of the game. Visiting famous star wars planets, many that we never seen in movies and this was before any of the TV stuff. Every planet was a treasure trove of new missions and great side quests. My favorite was a murder mystery where you serve as a sort of investigator and bring forth evidence to a judge, I scenario that Bioware would use over and over in many games but it was fresh this time. Above all KOTOR captured the essence of Star Wars perfectly in a time where the prequels seemed to miss what made the OT so great. Lets not forget the incredible story which I would put up against the movies, perfectly told with a twist ending worthy of "I am your father". It easily became my favorite RPG ever, I thought wtf was I wasting time with JRPGs if all WRPGs were like this! Well they arent all, this was Bioware at the top of their game. I would go on to buy every single Bioware game since, some hits, some misses; I thank them for opening me up to this new kind of game.
Kotor is probably my favorite rpg of all time. Unfortunately I never finished the second one because of a glitch that froze the game in the same spot every time. I would love a chance to play it again, without purchasing a Xbox One.
A bit bloated, but a solid Star Wars experience.
Foolz said:A bit bloated, but a solid Star Wars experience.
You're bloated, meatbag.
HK_47 said:You're bloated, meatbag.
Holy shit lol
Same thought about Witness has occured to me 4-6 times in the last 2 weeks.