Making this list was fun. But playing a lot of the games in it again recently was even more fun. Most of them, anyway…
If you’re just finding the list, I suggest you start at the beginning and work your way along from there:
Now, on to the 80th best game ever, as of today…
80 - Infinifactory
This game caught me completely by surprise as a Humble Monthly title (I think?) that landed in my Steam library. Initially I thought it looked like some kind of cheap Minecraft rip-off, but oh man was I wrong. Get past the initial impression of the visuals and dig a little deeper. This game is incredible.
The whole concept of Infinifactory is that you are creating an automated machine unit that will complete its cycle of actions based on your inputs. These inputs are defined by the blocks you use and in what combination you line them up. The first bunch of puzzles are pretty easy, involving moving a crate from one place to another with a conveyor belt. It’s very satisfying when you get these right. You feel very smart.
Then the game starts asking you to do multiple things at once, such as glue pieces together in a particular order, cut pieces into a certain shape, and do some while moving down a hill or over obstacles. It gets very tricky. Then you figure those puzzles out, and you feel like a goddamn genius.
Infinifactory is absolutely brilliant. You can play it at your own pace, often mulling over puzzles for hours at a time, using trial and error or crazy concepts to achieve your goals and it becomes a joyful time sink from start to maddening-but-worth-it end.
79 - Vagrant Story
If you played Vagrant Story on the PS1, well done. You’re probably the only person you know who has. I only heard about it because I had a friend who was a die-hard Square fan at the time, who was hyped for it (somehow!?) prior to release. This game was leagues ahead of the competition at the time in terms of narrative, and holds up pretty well today.
Vagrant Story is by the same development group that was responsible for Final Fantasy and it came out when that same cousin series was a global phenomenon, so missed out on the much deserved praise it should have gotten on release. This game is beautiful.
My favourite thing about Vagrant story is that the turn-based combat is reliant on your character’s skills in combat, down to the level of which part of the enemy you wish to target. Knock a guy’s arm with a blow and you’ll make certain attacks weaker. Target other areas for other effects, based on the attack type and the enemy itself. It’s a system that I haven’t seen used quite the same way since and made the battles seem a lot more dangerous than in other games.
If you have a few dozen hours to spare, consider getting a hold of Vagrant Story and experiencing it for yourself.
78 - Braid
The thing most people remember about Braid is the ending. It’s divisive, but in my opinion, utterly brilliant. I don’t want to spoil it, even if the game is a decade old, so do yourself a favour and play this game right now and come back to me.
You’re back? Good. Wasn’t that a journey?
Braid’s gameplay is multi-faceted and while the surface level is an apparently simple 2D platformer, it quickly begins to show its true colours. Puzzles that involve reversing time, using your own shadow as a teammate to do two-part puzzles… So much more…
I’d rather not say too much more about Braid for fear of ruining one of the smartest puzzle games ever made. Jonathan Blow’s other game, The Witness, didn’t make the Top 100. That game is clever too, but very obtuse and while not bad, definitely not one of the best games I’ve ever played. Braid though, give that your time. It’s great.
77 - QUBE 2
QUBE 2 is one of the most improved sequels to anything I’ve ever played. The first QUBE is immediately forgettable and pretty uninspiring. This game, on the other hand is a worthy distant cousin of Portal. It has the same snappy puzzle design and sci-fi gadgetry thing going on in spades.
The game has a long narrative exposition through it that loosely describes an alien planet and human colonisation. This does start to get interesting towards the end, but is very much just set dressing for what is ultimately an abstract puzzler. QUBE 2 does a lot of things with logic and spatial relations more so than timing, which is a nice change compared to some of the other first-person puzzle games. It also has a visual aesthetic that doesn’t stray too far from Portal’s established straight-line charms, but likes to add flourishes of nature and colour where rival games tended to stray from the beaten track.
QUBE 2 went by fairly unnoticed on release, and I ended up finding it through a game pack of some kind and giving it a try. I was not disappointed. Check it out.
76 - Duke Nukem 3D
Shake it, baby! Duke Nukem 3D was the first FPS I played where you could look up and down. We take that as a given these days, but back in the 1990s, things tended to operate on two planes at most. Duke changed things up a lot.
When 3D Realms dropped Duke Nukem 3D with an 18 age rating, it was pretty frustrating for the many goofy nerds who didn’t care about the strippers pole-dancing in bars or the bad language. We wanted to shoot the aliens that were flying around with jetpacks, or battle boss creatures on an American Football field with twin rocket launchers called Devastators.
Duke 3D also had some great level design to go with its clever gameplay mechanisms. You weren’t just shooting guns, but equipping special items to help you navigate otherwise impossible locations, and every time you went through a portal, anything could happen.
Sure, this game looks awful today and can’t hold its own in a straight fight against more modern brethren, but if you were there when this game originally came out, the speed of the gameplay and the sheer scale of the levels was like nothing we’d ever seen.
The less said about Duke Nukem Forever, the better.
75 - Crazy Taxi
Arcades are not really a thing any more, are they? If I had my own arcade, Crazy Taxi would probably be the first game I installed there. The arcade cabinet was not a sit-down, like most racing games, but a vertical, complete with two pedals and a steering wheel. You could only press one pedal at once, unless you wanted to fall on your ass, and weirdly, the whole experience felt totally right. Look at that thing:
I sunk a lot of time into Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. I remember it had a bunch of modes where you had a preset time limit, but they were for chumps. Arcade mode, where you started out with about 90 seconds, was where it was at. You could combo up cab fares in a way that you would extend that timer a little more each time you executed a perfect run, giving yourself more and more time to explore the city. This game had only two levels, but they were huge, and the appeal of playing Crazy Taxi for me was pushing that time limit further and further each time, just so I could get further from the start point than before.
The gameplay wasn’t anything like Euro Truck Simulator or other similar dry sim games. Crazy Taxi was rapid-paced and encouraged you to take ramps off the road, into the air and show your fare a fun time. It came with a soundtrack of pop-punk tracks that is forever ingrained in my mind. I loved this game, and its sequel, and if you ever end up in a holiday resort that has a dilapidated arcade scene, see if they have that eyesore-yellow upright arcade cabinet and give it a try.
74 - The Turing Test
This must be the section of the list where all the abstract puzzle games live. The Turing Test is another Portal-esque first-person puzzler, this time stuck in a space station with only a computer AI for company. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Don’t let the comparisons put you off. There’s a lot to like in this one.
Some of the gameplay additions in The Turing Test feel so obvious and clever that it’s a wonder why Valve didn’t think of them back in the day. The whole thing with connectors and wires is one that immediately seems laborious, but how the team behind this game use them is amazing. Every multi-room puzzle you find yourself in feels like an escape room, because that’s essentially what you’re doing.
The story that drags its heels along behind you in The Turing Test is mostly filler, but it does add a sense of purpose as we find your way through the labyrinth of twisted scenarios before you. If you had any fun with Portal, this one will probably appeal to you too. I loved it.
73 - Dishonored
Hope you like hordes of disease-ridden rats?
Dishonored is kind of unlike anything else out there. It’s a stealth game. It’s also a bit like you’re a wizard wearing a mask in an alternate industrial revolution era city. It’s also about shooting and stabbing things in creative and terrifying ways.
First and foremost, Dishonored is a murder mystery, where you’ve been framed for the murder. You’re also discovering that the laws of physics are your plaything in many regards and that in order to unravel the mystery, that initial murder certainly will not be the last.
I’m terrible at stealth in games. A good friend of mine watched me play a small portion of Dishonored at lunch-time in work and couldn’t stop laughing at how much of a bumbling buffoon I was, even when cast as the nimble-footed shadow character who almost can’t fail at staying out of sight. So for me, Dishonored may have ended up being more of an action-adventure than it will be for you. It’s feasible to play it that way (as I can attest to first hand!) but I’ve seen skilled players master levels without being seen and that was way more impressive that anything I could do myself behind the controls. I haven’t played the sequel, which I am assured is also excellent, and highly encourage you all to play them both.
72 - Rocket League
Car football.
Honestly, what more do I need to say?
71 - Command & Conquer
I just mentioned how bad I am at stealth in games. That is true. What is even more true, is how absolutely horrible I am at Real Time Strategy games. That is a big reason why you won’t see many on this list. I just can’t multitask that well.
Back in my day, when this genre was being invented, RTS games were a lot less reliant on quick actions and clicking a million things really fast in hundreds of places. They were often a slow build up of hordes of units, resulting in a slow rumbling avalanche over the enemy base, resulting in a guaranteed victory for even the most incompetant RTS gamer (example: me.) That’s why my favourite RTS is the original Command & Conquer. I understand that this is perhaps objectively the worst game in the series to pick, and that even C&C: Red Alert might be a better pick, but something about this one, along with the fact that I could actually play it semi-coherently, just felt like a lot of fun to me.
I loved the cheesy acting in the cut-scenes between levels. The soundtrack was amazing. The sound effects. The little tiny pixel men art.
I also recall building a whole squad of flamethrower units, sending them off to attack a tank, and the guys at the back of my squad roasting the whole army in front of them alive. That was as hilarious as it was devastating. It’s also a pretty vivid look at my skills in this genre.
Feel free to insert your favourite C&C, Starcraft or otherwise here. You definitely know better than I do in this regard.
That was another 10 amazing games, amiright? Next time the list goes to a café in France, Mars, the afterlife, and jackknifing through traffic at breakneck speeds. See you then.