Top 50 Games - 13. Baldur's Gate / Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

Baldur's Gate was the one that got me into gaming. Yes, if there is the one for me, Baldur's Gate is it. When I was maybe seven years old I watched my dad play through the AD&D-based BioWare RPG on his Mac (before this past decade's savvy marketing blitz saw the Apple brand become truly popular on the East Coast). I had learned Magic: The Gathering maybe half a year earlier, and was fascinated with swords & sorcery, especially the kind that came in game form. While the isometric Infinity Engine isn't much to look at now, back then it came close to blowing my mind. I remember the opening hours clear as day, even though it's been years since I last played Baldur's Gate. There was the conversation with the innkeeper who called you an arse (further into the game my dad had to explain what a prostitute is), an item hidden in the haystack, the mentally volatile Chaotic Evil character you met on the road who could join your party for a while, your starting quarter-staff... This is easily one of the most powerfully nostalgic games I've committed to memory. My dad and I made our player-character a Good ranger named Vinsor. To this day, Vinsor is the name I use for a game series in my head that may one day become reality. I remember the random roadside ambushes, the ale-soaked taverns where plenty of interesting conversation was had, warrior Minsc's pet mouse Boo, moving through the black "fog of war," and so much more. One of the coolest memories I have of Baldur's Gate is the epic final confrontation with Sarevok: it was a difficult battle (or at least looked like it; my dad was still playing) forcing you to fight against Sarevok's magic-spamming advisors before taking on the main target himself. The floor was decorated with a booby-trapped version of the skull on the game's front cover that forced you to consider your movements if you hadn't already disarmed the traps. Every moment of that glorious battle is permanently impressed into my brain, and I'm glad for it. I know I've spoken exclusively of the original Baldur's Gate so far: it is, like I said, the game that got me into gaming, but Shadows of Amn is tied with it simply because it's a better game. BG2 reunited me with my old teammates, presented a much more aesthetically interesting world, and was so goddamn deep I don't think I even scratched the surface in my playtime. Unlike the original, I played Baldur's Gate II on my own, and the experience was revelatory. The deeply tactical spacebar-centric combat, party options, customization, sidequests, NPCs... It was overwhelming and all of the highest quality. I know nostalgia may greatly inform my opinion, but with or without it I might go so far as to say that Baldur's Gate is the best Western RPG series ever created. Who says Macs aren't good for gaming? *nervous laugh*

Top 50 Games - 14. BioShock

System Shock 2 was a masterpiece of intelligent, forward-thing genre combinations. BioShock, its 2007 spiritual successor, is not quite as innovative, but it is many times more powerful and memorable. Taking the story-driven FPS template from Half-Life and System Shock and running with it, BioShock is a certifiable artistic powerhouse, the kind of game that is talked about years after its release. By now I'm sure you've heard of Rapture, the game's setting, but either way, I'll briefly describe it for what may be the hundred-thousandth time. Rapture is a glittering Art Deco Atlantis, the work of one man's singular vision and uninhibited creativity. That man is Andrew Ryan, an ex-Soviet mad genius whose faith in Randian objectivism appears stronger than the Pope's faith in God. A plane crash over the Atlantic circa 1960 leads player-character Jack to discover a bathysphere leading into the failed utopia. This intro sequence, narrated by a lo-fi voiceover from Ryan himself ("Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?"), is easily one of the greatest in all of gaming. The direction, the exposition, the sounds and sights and ability to move and look around. It's a breathtaking display of new-generation techno-wizardry and designer artistry. Once you dock (rather violently) and enter into this beaten and bloodied underwater dystopia, the real adventure begins. The game's cannon fodder, encountered as early on as said bathysphere docking, are splicers: once-sane citizens who have taken to excessive genetic modification in order to survive the civil war between Ryan and his rival Frank Fontaine. The player is able to genetically modify himself as well, with what are called plasmids. These plasmids can give you powers beyond the realm of belief, from telekinesis to shooting a swarm of bees out of your hand. You can use plasmids and conventional weapons in conjunction to deal with the splicers, and doing so is at once chaotic, sad, and fun. Much has been made of the game's Big Daddies and Little Sisters: hulking monstrosities that emit whale moans from deep-sea diving suits and pale young girls that drag around large syringes, respectively. Together they patrol the dilapidated halls of Rapture searching for Adam, the city's precious sea-slug derived resource for genetic modification. Their relationship is fascinating, with the Big Daddy passionately protecting his Little Sister at all costs, engaging the player in awesomely destructive and frightening "boss" battles when he attempts to intervene. The words printed and breaths expelled about these two characters are not for nothing; they are iconic creations, now-legendary symbols for well-executed artistic ambition in video games. While I don't think the save/harvest moral mechanic for the Little Sisters deserves as much recognition as it's gotten, the first time you're presented with the choice, it's pretty harrowing. Rapture is a detailed environment full of things to play with, from hacking cameras and turrets to experimenting with plasmids. The levels are very well designed, with Fort Frolic, the residence of batshit insane 'artiste' Sander Cohen, becoming one of my all-time favorites. It's so creepy, so full of clever exposition, disturbing circumstances, and great acting that I couldn't get it out of my head for days. Audio diaries are scattered around Rapture's unique districts, and where they might be a storytelling crutch for a lesser developer, in BioShock they're absolutely haunting and superbly voiced personal accounts of Rapture's fall. Of course, we all know the greatest storytelling moment BioShock has to offer. When the player reaches this point and is struck in the head by the epiphany, he may very well never look at video games the same way again. A relatively high-brow game about unoriginal but interesting topics like objectivism, idealism, failure, and genetics becomes a deeply philosophical commentary on the nature of the video game. For all of these reasons and more, BioShock is and will remain one of this industry's few true masterpieces.

Top 50 Games - 15. Final Fantasy XII

Final Fantasy XII. Man did I pump some hours into this one. Mind you, I'm not the type of player who spends literal years exclusively tethered to one game, but for me 200 hours is a lot. I don't think I regret a single minute spent on my journey through Ivalice. A vast sea of picky and excitable whiners, the RPG community at large did not rapturously receive FFXII upon its Halloween 2006 arrival. You see, Square (now Square-Enix) knows that if no fundamental changes take place between each entry in their flagship series, the JRPG as a whole will stagnate and fall to the wayside. Many fans believe that Final Fantasy VI perfected the Japanese role-playing game; that no further changes are necessary when it's possible to return to VI's flawless model. It's true that sticking with a proven formula is less risky, but we should all acknowledge that by those means, no progress will be made; we would never be able to surpass FFVI. Final Fantasy XII, following the almost ignored MMO Final Fantasy XI, which followed the beloved PS2 debut FFX, took inspiration from both, as well as from the classic Playstation strategy RPG Final Fantasy Tactics. FFXII, as mentioned, takes place in Ivalice, the same world that Tactics occupied. Ivalice is a sprawling, majestic patchwork of tiny kingdoms, looming empires, desolate ruins, wide plains, lush jungles, arid deserts, bright beaches, dark caves, and snow-capped mountains. The events contained in FFXII take place only on certain extents of Ivalice's bigger continents, but the world map is still satisfyingly large. This world has a distinctively Mediterranean cultural and aesthetic vibe, though it's hard to explain due to the amount of variety. The starting city of Rabanastre is a haven of civilization surrounded by deserts and dry grasslands. The Ozmone Plain resembles an African Savannah, with Antelope-headed hunters engaging native game. Balfonheim Port is what it sounds like; a rich seaside docking and trading city full of pirates and merchants. Archades resembles a successful European city, full of artful architecture and advanced technology, with flying taxis and skyscrapers. There are bazaars and temples and more, with the art direction pulling in the most romantic elements of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to create a stunningly cohesive virtual realm. I said that this game is partly inspired by Final Fantasy XI; where XI is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, XII is a massive role-playing game with some adopted MMO ideas. For the first and now last time in the series, battles in FFXII take place in the same 3D environment as the rest of the game and are transitioned into seamlessly. When a character in your party gets "aggro" from an enemy (meaning the enemy sees and wants to engage the party member) and the player does not hold the R2 button to disengage and run away, then the party draws its weapons and circles around the target. ATB meters are back and differences in the speed attribute can affect the rhythm of battle. The player takes control of one party member at a time, making him the leader and enabling his action menu to be opened and operated by the player, along with his movement. The rest of your allies are controlled with the gambit system, an effective and strategic AI coordinator that lets you input simple logic commands in a prioritized list, i.e. "Ally is poisoned -- use antidote." It's a very workable mechanic that gets more strategic and involved as the game goes on. The triangle menu can be opened and gambits can be changed at any time, leading to some very cool on-the-fly tactical management. Enemies can be seen and fought on the field and spamming of the X button is minimized, alleviating many of the franchise's past annoyances (of course people still complained about the new system). Other mechanical additions include the License Board, a menu-accessed contraption in which you can spend acquired License Points on new Licenses, which allow the party member in question to use a new ability, equip a new armament, etc. Through the gambit and License systems, the player can choose to place the party in tight, specific roles such as White Mage, or they can opt to make every character pretty much the same; all in all, the combat and customization mechanics are very flexible and satisfying. The story in Final Fantasy XII is neither the best nor worst in the series. Its main themes include power, corruption, destiny, and home, and these are approached with grace and thoughtfulness, for the most part. XII's is easily the most political tale in the series, which might be a turn-off to some looking for Final Fantasy's character-centric melodrama. I think the style works well for this game; it never gets too dry or talkative (in fact, I think there may be less dialogue here than in any other Final Fantasy since the NES days). This isn't to say, though, that there aren't noteworthy characters; on the contrary, some of the most well-realized and adult personalities in the series contribute to FFXII's plot. Basch is a weary and disheveled knight, aware of the treachery present in the world, but still uncynical. Ashe is a fugitive princess beset by tragedy, almost cold and mean, and really the story's main character if there is one. Balthier is a romantic and arrogant sky pirate, an adventurous outlaw who claims to be the "leading man." Fran is the party's only non-human, a rabbit-like ranger whose dry and calm sarcasm lends the events a touch of relaxed wit to counterbalance the drama. Even Vaan, the typical Japanese-developed effeminate young man, isn't quite a dud. And Penelo is okay, but nobody really pays attention to her. The characters benefit from Akihiko Yoshida's mercifully un-Tokyo designs, a great script, and even better voice acting. The world of Ivalice is a beautiful place to explore, with many striking details such as the seasonal change of the Giza Plains from a dry grassland to a rainy marsh, or the overwhelmingly convoluted network of sandy underground caves and tunnels that is the Zertinan Caverns. Like I said, a lot of my time has been spent here tracking down rare beasts, dueling mysterious Eastern warriors, discovering hidden treasures, recruiting the aid of powerful fallen angels called Espers, and tricking the system into quickly maxing out my party's stats. And I absolutely loved every moment I spent watching my party perform on autopilot; haters be damned.

Top 50 Games - 16. Halo 2

I know that my entries have been getting longer as I move closer to the top of my list, but I don't think I have a whole lot to say about Halo 2. This is not because there's nothing left to be said about it. It's not like Ocarina of Time, where thousands of raving fans have exhausted their weak little lungs hurling superlatives at the game. No, I think my job here is to briefly but somewhat effectively defend a game that I feel does not get the positive attention it deserves. I think a lot of people regard Halo 2 the way I regard Halo 3 (that is, not particularly well). I'm not exactly sure what I can say to change anyone's mind (probably nothing), but I will claim wholeheartedly that Halo 2 took the solid FPS w/ vehicles design of its predecessor and polished it up till it shone like --insert simile here--. Halo has always been the arcadey, pick-up-and-play type of shooter, and Halo 2 embraced that. You could jump higher, you could dual wield like in a John Woo movie, you could hijack vehicles, you didn't need to worry about health packs. I remember that I loved the vehicles in Combat Evolved and wished they were more prominent; Halo 2 made my wish come true. There was less backtracking and overall better level design, the graphics for the time were pretty neat, the music was even better and to this day is one of the best video game soundtracks out there, and although many complained about it, I thought the story and alternate hero were more nuanced and interesting. Where the original Halo felt like a true justification for the Xbox and non-Goldeneye console FPS, Halo 2 (at least at the time) just felt perfect to me; it had the glow of a true masterwork. Now... the multiplayer. I won't get too deep into this, but Halo 2, despite not seeming very innovative, truly set the standard for online console gaming and allowed Xbox Live to become what it is today. The multiplayer mode, whether you're playing CTF or Slayer, online or split-screen, is the heart of the Halo experience and I truly cherish the hours that I've spent mercilessly fragging and being fragged by my friends. And just as a final fuck you to the haters: I was satisfied by the campaign's cliffhanger ending. So put that in your pipe and smoke it or something.

Top 50 Games - 17. Fallout 3

The RPG is facing difficult times. Once a niche genre adapted from the tabletop to the computer screen, the 90's saw Square turn the Japanese role-playing game into blockbuster material, offering stories and visuals that got as close to Hollywood as games had ever been. But now the JRPG is stagnating and nobody knows exactly what to do. The western RPG evolved from D&D-based dungeon crawlers to Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, garnering much success in the modern era, although if ME2 is any indication, today's WRPG is starting to lose some traditionally indicative features. Bethesda had been developing its first-person Elder Scrolls series for years, truly breaking into the mainstream with Oblivion. The fourth entry brought complex role-playing to life in the new console generation, satisfying the desire for both immersive realism and statistical abstraction. Following the game's success, Bethesda picked up the Fallout franchise, a post-apocalyptic isometric Interplay WRPG that hadn't received a sequel in years. Taking many liberties, Bethesda fused the black humor and art direction of Fallout with the gameplay model and first-person perspective of The Elder Scrolls. The result was Fallout 3, a huge affair that is nonetheless meaner and leaner than Oblivion. The fat had been cut out and replaced with succulent, satisfying RPG meat. As I mentioned in my piece on Oblivion, Bethesda knows how to take an unoriginal setting and make players feel like they're interacting in a real place. The Elder Scrolls is typical Tolkeinesque high fantasy, but Fallout is much more interesting: an idyllic 50's-style America nuked to hell by Red China. It's a fascinating landscape to explore, and explore it you can, with every dull brown horizon able to be reached on foot. Fallout 3 has a lot to offer players, but in my mind the most enjoyable and effective moments come from wandering around the Wasteland and coming across new places of interest, be they quest-critical or merely atmosphere-enhancing. While the wide empty spaces may seem all but lifeless, there is so much to discover out in this virtual world that the 100-hour mark seems like nothing. In my lonely travels I've found a crashed UFO (in which there is an awesome Alien Blaster), a verdant oasis (as its name, Oasis, implies) high up on a mountain, a place where you can die of radiation poisoning in 0.1 seconds, and much much more. Apart from aimless wandering there are tons of worthwhile quests to undertake, all of which are interesting and rewarding in one way or another, and many of which present difficult choices to the player. Gameplay mechanics include the spectacularly entertaining V.A.T.S., which pauses the game to lock onto an enemy and let the player pick out body parts to shoot at. I used the V.A.T.S. method as much as possible, eschewing typical FPS run-and-gunning for the more involved, deliberate, and sadistic pseudo-turn-based style. One of the most inaccessible parts of Oblivion was the menu, and this complaint has been addressed wonderfully in Fallout 3. Pressing B on an Xbox 360 controller brings up the Pip-Boy 3000, an arm-attached computer that lets you access your inventory, stats, map, etc. very easily, and in a highly charming manner. Fallout 3's Wasteland is filled with so much great content, I still haven't seen all of it. I've never been to Paradise Falls, I've never completed the Nuka-Cola challenge, I've never been to the White House ruins, and I've never figured out what the hell is down there that can get me to die of radiation poisoning in less than one second. And I'm glad I haven't found this stuff out, because it only serves to augment the enticing mystery and wonder of Fallout 3, the uncanny ability it has to get you thinking about what we've seen and haven't seen long after you put the controller down. If the apocalypse is this much fun, then I say bring it on, China (just kidding).