Games of my life

I was reading two very interesting blog posts earlier today about Video Games (because I'm a video game dork to begin with). I was surprised to see how different each person's list of most memorable games was so I started thinking about my own list. Like the others, I wanted to see what kind of relations I could find that could potentially connect all the games that really marked my life.

Of course, there's always the possibility I forgot something and it'll come back to me later like : "Oh my god, how could I forget !?!". But I think these are the 10 games that really made an impression for me :

• Disgaea : Hours of darkness
• DDR (Dance Dance Revolution)
• Diablo 1
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Dungeon Siege 1
• Thief : The Dark Project
• Warhammer : Dawn of War
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Soul Reaver
• Chrono Trigger

These are the games I remember playing like crazy for some reason or another. I really didn't try to follow any logic here. There are plenty other games which were awesome (Gran Theft Auto, Fallout, etc.) But these are the ones that for some reason I always end up thinking about all the time.

So first, in chronological order :

• 2005 - DDR
• 2004 - Warhammer
• 2003 - Disgaea
• 2002 - Dungeon Siege
• 1999 - Soul Reaver
• 1998 - Thief
• 1996 - Duke Nukem 3D
• 1996 - Diablo
• 1995 - Chrono Trigger
• 1992 - Wolfenstein 3D

I was sorta surprised, I always though my most memorable games were all "oldies", but actually I can see a fairly linear progression with an average of 1.4 years between incredible games. A lot of people complains that games are becoming more and more boring with big title only being remake of old famous titles. This might explain why after 2005 I can't think of any game that really really impressed me. There were good games, just not amazing ones in my opinion.

Next, the website metacritic which provides an average rating based on multiple rating websites (ratings are from 0 to 100) :

• Diablo : 94
• Thief : 92
• Chrono Trigger : 92
• Soul Reaver : 91
• Duke Nukem 3D : 89
• Dungeon Siege : 86
• Warhammer : 86
• Disgaea : 84
• DDR : 80

Like the other blogs, I seem to like really famous titles (Wolfenstein was too old to get a metacritic I guess). The average is somewhere around 88.2. I used the highest rating for DDR but I actually mean StepMania, the open-source emulator.

Now based on style and demographic :

• DDR : rythm game
• Warhammer : military science fiction real-time strategy
• Disgaea : tactical role-playing
• Dungeon Siege : action role-playing
• Thief : stealth-based first-person shooter
• Duke Nukem 3D : first-person shooter
• Diablo : action role-playing game
• Soul Reaver : third-person action-adventure
• Chrono Trigger : console role-playing game
• Wolfenstein 3D : first person shooter

And more generally :

• 1 Rhythm Game
• 3 Shooters
• 4 Role-playing Games
• 7 Games rely heavily on reflex and speed
• 4 Games with strong story elements
• 3 Japanese Games
• 7 American Games
• 6 Games are made with compelling reasons to re-play through
• 4 Games lose a substantial amount of (if not all) impact after the first play-through
• All games became a series
• 7 games kicked off the series
• 1 Arcade game
• 6 Games I played on PC
• 3 Games I played on Console
• 4 Games were 2D
• 3 Games used a 3rd person view
• 6 Games were 3D (counting duke nukem and wolfenstein)
• 3 Games with Multiplayer (I'm not counting DDR)