We’re starting to go from the great games to the truly exceptional ones now. Everything on the list from this point on is something special.
If you’re just finding the list, I suggest you start at the beginning and work your way along from there:
On to Number 70...
70 - Broken Sword 2
George and Nico, is there a more iconic video game couple? Yes, probably.
The Broken Sword series is my favourite point-and-click adventure collection, and the second entry in the series is the one that had the best puzzles and story. This beautifully drawn and animated game felt like you were playing an animated movie. Its combination of weird, but somehow logical puzzles, and the tongue-in-cheek narration from George, made it feel like the kind of game you wanted to sit in and play by the fire with a nice cup of tea.
Of all the video games you’ll read about on this list, Broken Sword is the closest you’re going to get to a book. If you want a change of pace and something with a bit of humour, this is a winner.
69 - The Room
Oh, hi Mark.
The best mobile game series ever is The Room series. Hands down. Not only did this game come along and blow everything else away in the visuals, UX and interface areas at the time, it consistently iterated on its proven logic puzzle box formula and got it cleaner and smarter with each new title.
The premise of The Room is that you’re manipulating pieces of the titular room you find yourself in, unlocking and revealing new pieces that gives clues and tools to progress from section to section, unravelling the mysterious diary entries of the force responsible for placing you in this temporary prison, all the while forming a kind of Rube Goldberg machine that comes to ahead towards the end, with immensely satisfying results.
If you ever wanted to feel like a detective in a psychological horror setting (seek professional help) then this is one for you. It should be available on iOS and Android. You can also play them in any order without missing much.
68 - Burnout 3: Takedown
Finally, someone made a car game that was specifically about crashing into things. Sure, we had Destruction Derby years ago, but that was a bit shit. Burnout 3: Takedown (or Burnout Revenge would also be a good shout here) puts a lot of fun into a very simple concept. Go as fast as you can, then crash into something at full speed, doing as much damage as possible. And that was just one of the side games. The rest of the modes were pretty inventive, and utilised some primal need to destroy things.
Burnout 3’s main mode was a bit like most racing games, where you need to cross the line first, but in this one, rather than play fair, you were encouraged to drive into other cars, sending them into crazy jackknifing twists and spins at ridiculous speeds through poles and nearby buildings.
Doesn’t that sound delightful?
67 - Quake 3 Arena
The best Quake, in my opinion, is the only entry in the main series that had no single-player campaign. That’s kind of strange for me. I usually like a good story. I guess the substitute for that in Q3A was the level design. These maps were second to none.
While most Q3A players probably played this one on PC, I didn’t have one that could run it, and played it religiously on Dreamcast in split-screen mode. Rocket-jumping your way from one section of the level to another was a novelty that proved essential to get right, and grasping a precious Quad Damage at the right time gave you one of the rarest of feelings in multiplayer gaming: the sense of absolute power. It was like nothing else in FPS gaming at the time.
Quake 3 Arena’s railgun was my favourite thing about it. If you managed a solid long-range hit with the Railgun to your opponent’s head, it was because you earned it. Take your victories and your achievements unlocked, I’ll have that Railgun headshot any day.
66 - NiGHTS into dreams...
NiGHTS is a very strange game, that came with a very strange controller. Check this thing out…
The Sega Saturn was responsible for a lot of very creative and original games, and nothing felt anything like NiGHTS before it, or since. You play as a dream-dwelling jester who can fly, and your goal is to guide the protagonist characters through their dreams and nightmares and come out the other side safe in the real world. How you did this was by racing from checkpoint to checkpoint within a time limit, collecting orbs and performing aerial tricks that ramped up your score and gave you a stronger chance of making it through to the next section.
NiGHTS had wonderful boss stages, each of which involved using some version of your character’s standard skills but in a new way. Some required you to loop-the-loop around them, causing them to damage themselves, or grab and toss them through sections of the walls.
One other strangely compelling aspect of this game’s charm was the score ribbon. It was a limited time special power where NiGHTS would leave a bright yellow trail behind him as he flew, and you scored points based on the more intricate patterns and loops you could make while it was active. If ever there was a gaming version of yoga, or ice skating, it was NiGHTS into dreams…
There’s nothing like this game. It’s also very much an acquired taste, heavily grounded in the 1990s attitude of replaying levels over and over again to edge your best times and scores. There was a recent remaster for the Xbox 360 that did a fine job of capturing the spirit of the original, and if you feel like trying one of the weirdest games ever made, give this a shot.
65 - Fez
Fez has a gorgeous colour pallette and visual style, done in pixel-art techniques, but with a cool twist. Everything is actually in a 3D space, but you can only interact with two of those dimensions at once. Areas you need to access, and the platforms required to navigate there, are often impossible to see from your current angle. It’s this pseudo-exploration that makes Fez special.
At its core, Fez is a 2D platformer, nothing more. You collect pieces of an artifact required to teleport to new areas and continue that pattern through to the end.
It’s tricky to write about this game and make it sound exciting, but trust me, it’s absolutely genius. Have a look for yourself.
64 - WarioWare Inc.
Every level in WarioWare Inc. is 4 seconds long. They also usually only require one, or at most two, buttons to complete them. Why is that a good thing? Because you and three friends are all trying to do the level at the same time, faster than one another.
WarioWare is probably the best party game ever made. If you like getting together and playing local couch gaming and haven’t played this one, I actually thing it would be worth your while getting a Gamecube (or an original Wii to play this on the GC emulator on it) with four controllers and just disregard whatever other game you were playing before. This is similar in a lot of ways to Mario Party, but the levels are way smarter, shorter, more fun, funnier and the surrounding game itself is not reliant on a stupid archaic roll-and-move dice board game.
WarioWare looks like someone put it together in an afternoon. The visuals are rough. That is part of the charm. Focus on the interactions, the intuitive nature of each level as it presents itself to you one after the next with little or no break between manic scrambles to press the right buttons, and tell you you’ve ever played anything as crazy fun in a party setting as this.
63 - The Talos Principle
The Talos Principle is like, the exact opposite of WarioWare. It’s a very thinky, involved and slow-paced puzzle game. You need your brain firing on all cylinders to even begin to get your wits about you in this game. Right from the off, when you start the first elegant puzzle thrown at you in Talos Principle, you realise that this is going to give you some serious brain-burn.
Of all the video games I’ve ever played and completed, not one single game was as satisfying to finish as Talos Principle. Every meticulous detail that the designers went into to make these puzzles a joy to figure out was rewarded. Every time I found my way through an area, it felt like I was the absolute smartest person in the world. It almost made up for every attempt I ever made at playing a Real Time Strategy game.
Talos Principle is probably the best Portal game not called Portal. That should tell you everything you need to know about it.
62 - Geometry Wars 2
Alright, Geometry Wars 2. Twin-stick shooters became a thing a few years ago, utilising the control scheme that one analog stick moved you around and the other was the direction you fired in. The original Geometry Wars (which was actually a hidden game inside Bizarre Creations’ PGR racing game, and not released on its own at first) was the pioneer of this genre. It was the best, hands down. A rogue-like, one shot-you’re-dead style rampage in a confined space with more enemies than you could ever count… It was glorious. Then the sequel came out.
Geometry Wars is all about movement. You’re constantly at the brink of death. Enemies, large and small surround you and are magnetically attracted to flying right into you. One touch, you’re gone. Game over. And that’s incredible all by itself. The thing that elevates this game to new heights of genius is the black hole system. At timed intervals throughout your run, little circles will appear at specific points on the rectangular map. Usually they’re in the corners. As soon as you mis-fire and hit one (or, strategically shoot one on purpose, you crazy bastard!) these things ignite and start a swirling vortex of destruction, sucking in enemies and your ship with aggressive force. You must tackle this and use this to your advantage in different ways, depending on the enemies swarming you at any one time.
Also, you’d better watch out when there are more than one black hole igniting at once.
Geometry Wars 2 is one of those perfect storms of a very simple core loop that was executed with lavish but minimalistic flare, and that hyper addictive “one more go” tendency. It’s a masterpiece.
61 - Pikmin 2
Tiny aliens in your garden, running away from bugs, fixing their spaceship. Yeah, that could only have been an idea by someone at Nintendo.
Now, technically Pikmin is an RTS game, so when I said that Command & Conquer was the only one on the list, that wasn’t completely accurate. It doesn’t feel like one though. It’s just so bloody charming.
Your goal is to direct groups of different coloured dudes around the level, either collecting items or avoiding enemies, on your way to the goal. Pikmin always felt like the under-appreciated Nintendo series. It’s a shame because it’s a lot of fun.
I haven’t played Pikmin 3 and there’s every chance that’s just as good. Check out whichever game in the series you can find and you’re sure to be happy with the result.
Ten more games down. Sixty to go. Come back for another selection of games soon.