Monday, June 13, 2011

The Five Best Video Games

My first non-introduction post is going to be about - as the title of this post suggests - the five best video games ever made. I would like to preface this post by saying that this is not my opinion. These games are objectively the best ever made, and anyone who disagrees is lying. First up...



Mother 3 is a masterpiece. It took what everyone loved about the previous two games in the series and made them better in nearly every possible way. The writing is top-notch, and it is both hilarious and heart wrenching. It seems that in recent years the JRPG genre has become hated by western audiences, but trust me when I say that even if you don't like JRPGs, you can still like this game. Unfortunately, Shigesato Itoi's magnum opus was never released outside of Japan, but a few years back a fan translation was made. I encourage everyone to play this wonderful game.


Second on my list is Earthbound. It feels kind of weird to make the top two games on my list part of a series, but these two games are far better than any other game I've played. To those of you who don't know, Earthbound is the North American release of Mother 2, and is the only game in the Mother series to be released outside of Japan. Unfortunately, this series was a commercial failure in the west, and that may be one of the reasons the rest of the series never made it here. It is hard to get a hold of this game, it is often sold for over one hundred dollars, but it is well worth that price. If you've never played any game in the series, I would recommend starting with this one. The first Mother's writing is good, but not at the same level its sequels and is made difficult to play through by the time's RPG standards, and Mother 3 is made a thousand times better if you have played Earthbound first.


The third game on my list is Pokemon Gold and Silver. I was tempted to put Red and Blue at this spot, but I think the second generation of this series was the best. Gold and Silver added far more strategy to the game, advancing it beyond the complicated game of rock/paper/scissors that its predecessor was. After this generation, the quality in the Pokemon added to the game seemed to decline, and I sort of lost interest, but I still play through my copy of Gold regularly and have been doing so since the game's release.


Fourth on my list is Portal. There is a reason that Valve is such a successful developer. They have a consistent level of quality in each of their releases. When I first played Portal I was presented with many things that I had never experienced in a video game before ( and its sequel was lacking in these experiences, but that's for a different post ), and it ended up being one of the best video games that I'd played in years. All of the puzzles were challenging, but I never felt frustrated. The game was a perfect length; the story never felt drawn out. This game is perfect and is one of the best experiences that the gaming industry has had to offer in the past decade.



Number five would have to be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. This game doesn't need too much of an explanation, its difficult to find a "Best Video Games Of All Time" list that doesn't put this somewhere in the top three positions. It brought the Zelda series to the third dimension, and I was lost in this game from beginning to end.

Well, that's my list. Hopefully you enjoyed reading it, and were introduced to some new video games.

23 comments:

  1. These are great games.
    I had Pokemon: Platinum as a kid.
    Loved it.
    Show my blog some love!!
    Followed!

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  2. I agree with your list, only replace ocarina with link to the past.

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  3. nice games. this list rules!!!

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  4. Pokemon and zelda are deffo classics! so much time spent on pokemon

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  5. i'm playing portal 2 currently. it rocks

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  6. totally agree, great list! :) keep up the awesome posts!

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  7. Very good list the only thing i'd change is earthbound to rayman or FF9

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  8. I played that pokemon game like for ever.
    +follow

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  9. Man, I really loved Portal.
    One of the best games I ever played.

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  10. Not too bad, but personal choice, which is still pretty solid.

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  11. Earthbound is a seriously brilliant game, its been a long time since ive played but you made me wanna give it another go

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  12. wheres half life and/or counter strike !!!

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  13. Totally agree, I love Zelda!

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  14. I think you should change the title to "5 of my most favorite video games" ;)

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  15. pokemon. thats it, im following! i love pokemon, just installed an emulator on my iphone and am currently playing emerald at the moment. if only nintendo would release a proper pokemon app, one where we can battle each other over wifi, that would be awesome. thanks for posting. other games are pretty neat too. will be checking your blog more and more :)

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  16. I agree with all of your picks. Followed+

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