Top 50 Games - 27. The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda deserves about 30,000 metric tons of gratitude for birthing the greatest franchise in the history of video games. But Miyamoto's original fantasy adventure is great for more than being the ancestor of masterpieces like A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. While not everyone appreciates this particular game's intrinsic merits, I find the first NES LoZ to be barrels of swashbuckling fun. The Legend of Zelda was an ambitious, forward-thinking product of a bygone era. It featured the option to save one's progress without the need for a password and presented gamers with a huge world with loads of secrets, but it also threw them into this environment with hardly any guidance except for this eternal nugget of wisdom: "It's dangerous to go alone!" The game also forced players to rely on their imaginations to immerse themselves in its 8-bit model of Hyrule. This is what makes The Legend of Zelda both a peculiar artifact and a timelessly enjoyable adventure. Back in 1986, Nintendo wasn't afraid to sit back and let its precious customers struggle with a real challenge. Nintendo has certainly changed its tactics over the years, but the human imagination has remained fertile, and so journeying through the first conceived version of Hyrule has not become obsolete. My mind's eye superimposes extra detail onto the screens, filling them with a liveliness and beauty that I'm convinced is there hidden within those charming pixels. The relative lack of context in The Legend of Zelda also makes the adventure seem much more adaptable to a player's individual fantasies, whether it's sailing on the high seas, traversing an unforgiving dessert, trudging through a dungeon, or stumbling upon forgotten treasure. The Legend of Zelda provided the perfect template for the action/adventure genre, introduced nonlinear gaming to millions, established a consistently wonderful series, and most importantly housed the Overworld Theme. Bum bum, b-b-b-b-buuummm!...

Top 50 Games - 28. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

I don't really have much to say about this game. It's really fun and pretty much the only sports game I've ever loved. It almost plays like a perfect 3D platformer, but on a plank with wheels. Popping ollies, grinding huge rail lines, keeping your combo going with the manual, opening up new areas, collecting the SKATE letters, building your own parks, bobbing your head to Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine. Good times. Yeah, so in conclusion, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was and is really fun.

Top 50 Games - 29. Guitar Hero II

Guitar Hero II is an important game. Some say the original Guitar Hero sparked the music game craze of the latter aughts, and they may be right, but I feel that its excellent sequel is the one that really wrote the genre into the pages of video game history. However, Guitar Hero II is important for more than just providing Activision with another cash cow. It served as my official introduction to the wonders of rock & roll. Of course I had listened to rock before, but never passionately; never of my own voracious accord. Picking up Guitar Hero's goofy plastic axe was a new challenge for me. I hopped into Practice Mode, selected Surrender by Cheap Trick on Easy (the game's first song in order of difficulty and one that now holds near-nostalgic value), and tried my best to hit the strum bar with the correct fret buttons held down as the colored gems dropped to the bottom of the note highway. It wasn't pretty. But that's part of what was so great about the early GH games that is lost forever; they presented gamers something new to learn and master. And learn it they did, as many Youtube videos can attest. In a world of big guns and bigger monsters, a game that let you live out your rock star fantasies was a breath of fresh air. As well-crafted and enjoyable as the gameplay is, the music is what makes this game, surprisingly, a keystone in my evolution as a cultural appreciator. While now I'm embarrassed of my "classic rock" phase, I'm extremely thankful that I was able to be so turned on to (usually) good music. In terms of music games, we may never have another 2007, but thank God we did, or else it might have taken even longer for the glory of rock & roll to have been revealed to me.

Top 50 Games - 30. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

E3 2006 was the coolest video game trade show I've ever seen second-hand via the internet and magazines. One of, if not the most impressive showing was the epic 15-minute trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Purportedly the last game in the Solid series, that E3 video, with its beautifully bloomy Middle East setting, its rambling but intriguing talk of mercenary armies and proxy wars, its nostalgic reunion of characters, and its striking image of an old, mustachioed Snake literally biting the bullet, was awe-inspiring. I remember thinking, upon peeling off my headphones and blinking myself back into reality, "How cool would it be if this actually turned out to be like the best game ever?" 2 years later, the publications from which I had first absorbed the E3 hype gave MGS4 perfect 10's, and I, astounded, wondered if my question was prophecy. Later that summer, I played the game on my new PS3 and found out for myself. It turns out, if you go by this list, that it's only my 30th favorite game of all time. So what? It still kicks ass. The graphics are jaw-dropping; in 2008, they really clued me in to the difference between the visuals of this generation and the last. Look at Old Snake's stealth suit: never before had I seen more convincing cloth, rubber, and plastic textures outside of Pixar. The surprising variety in environments, from South America to Eastern Europe to Alaska, shows off the blinding fidelity and polish in the game's graphics. From Snake's slow ground-humping crawl to him scratching his back, the animations are full of personality and detail. In fact, one of the Metal Gear Solid series' most redeeming values is its ridiculous attention to detail; it's hard to find other games so rife with easter eggs, self-aware gags, and surreal, utterly surprising instances of creativity. One facet on par with the graphics is the audio. MGS4 was the first showpiece for my new surround sound and headphones, and it might still be the best. The sound in this game, whether you're listening to the in-game iPod or to the nerve-wracking rattle of war, is heavenly. The mixing is divine, the variety is suburb, the music is full of memories, the effects are pristine and effective. Don't think that the A/V aspect is all that's without fault in MGS4, though. The controls in past Metal Gear Solid games were praised by some as in-depth and full of options while derided by others as convoluted and unintuitive. MGS4 reconciles the two: the layout is clean and logical while retaining its sophistication. For all of its technical perfection and artistic ambition, Metal Gear Solid 4 somehow isn't "the best game ever" or even one of my top 10. Why? To be honest, I don't really know. Part of it, I think, is that the Metal Gear series is better played at a younger age, when its occasional stupidity goes unnoticed. Part of it is that, being the last chapter in the saga of Solid Snake, Hideo Kojima tried to tie up nearly every single loose thread, which encumbered the experience and in many cases (but not all) took away the supernatural aspects that make Metal Gear so much more than just James Bond meets Rambo. Regardless of my hard-to-pinpoint faint disappointment, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is absolutely brimming, overflowing even, with Kojima's distinct genius. Lying on my stomach in the middle of a warzone, flipping through a Playboy while listening to a relaxing instrumental blues. Staring at the amazing menu screen, which depicts Snake in a flowery graveyard, pistol in hand. Transitioning from the unexpected pre-intro commercials to the haunting cellos in "Theme of Love." Mech battles. Crawling through a giant microwave in split-screen. You're such a goddamn mastermind, Hideo, that I may just forgive you for pretending to turn off my TV.

Top 50 Games - 31. Final Fantasy VI

You know how I know that my life is good? One of my biggest regrets concerns a video game. Specifically, the tear-jerking fact that I never got into Final Fantasy VI when I was at that perfect age. I was captivated by FFVII, and I bought Final Fantasy Anthology, which contains VI, for relatively cheap. I booted it up on my Playstation, trudged through the snowy coal city of Narshe, got to Figaro Castle, and then I got stuck. I didn't know where to go next and I was not at this point in my life using the internet. Frustrated and bored, I hastily sold Anthology back to my nearest EB Games. Only recently have I realized the error of my ways. Honestly, if I had persevered and been able to have sunk my teeth into this meaty RPG, it's likely that it would be among my top 5 favorite games ever. Playing this game now is intensely bittersweet; I hear those brilliant Uematsu melodies and imagine humming them on the playground at 11 years old. I breeze through a boss fight now and picture myself struggling against a seemingly insurmountable foe. I gain access to the airship and think of the freedom I would have felt coursing through me as I navigate the Mode 7 world map. Take away my personal feelings toward FFVI though, and you're left with what may be the greatest RPG of all time. The combat system, while surprisingly easy, bellies a lot of varied options, and is approached elegantly. Features like magicite and relics make more sense than most series additions since, and contribute to the title's addictive depth. The steampunk art style and its slightly muted color works very well to establish a compelling universe. The Star Wars-like story is interesting and entertaining without being too complex or too simple. There are two areas of the game that shine most brightly, however: the characters and the soundtrack. While it's a bit hard for me, at my age and without a very extensive background in 2D gaming, to get into the heads of the 16-bit sprites and empathize strongly with them, I can, even at a passing glance, like almost all of them. From "treasure hunter" Locke to noble warrior Cyan to maternal and pure Terra to my favorite (and most others'), the slightly ethereal but strong-willed Celes; every character in Final Fantasy VI is adorable without being cutesy, cool without being (too) gimmicky, and each one is given the time and care needed to really get fleshed out via flashbacks, etc. The first time that Final Fantasy VI really moved me was during a scene in which Cyan watches, helpless, as his murdered wife and child board the Phantom Train and depart for the other side. Cyan runs down the platform after the ghostly locomotive as his son says goodbye and assures the proud knight that everything will be okay. It's fair to call the large main cast, of which there are pretty much no duds, the best in the series (before Tetsuya Nomura got his greasy Tokyopop paws all over the character designs and went batshit for zippers). Probably more impressive, however, is the game's music. Arguably Nobuo Uematsu's finest hour, the soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI is a work of breathtaking scope, majesty, lushness, melody, and emotional weight. The use of leitmotif for the characters is brilliant, infusing every one of them with musically represented personality and style. The overworld theme, Terra, with its melancholic beauty, is the best in the series. The real gem, though, is the Aria di Mezzo Carattere, which plays during the game's most memorable scene, at the opera house, and has now become one of my all-time favorite video game songs. Its unbelievably perfect melody, its surprisingly rich midi orchestration, its at-first funny but later disarmingly gorgeous synthesized voice, and its unforgettably emotional context all serve to greatly enhance the song itself, the scene in which it plays, the character (Celes) who sings it, and even the wonderful video game that houses it. The epic, enchanting, and heartfelt product of Square's RPG wizards operating at the height of their powers, Final Fantasy VI is truly one for the ages. Oh, and lest I forget to mention him, Kefka is pretty evil. In a good way, of course.