The
Idea
So you're about to die. The one item left on your bucket list, play your
first video game. If this sounds like you, then this is your list.
This is not a best
games of all time list. In fact some of these games actually have many issues.
This is in fact a list of the best most pure experiences available in gaming today. No two of these games
will be the similar. Each will be the absolute best gaming can offer, with no
duplicates or wasted time.
In order to uphold this quality, every game on the list will be required
to stand up, and still be good, based on today's standards.
I will announce the games in order, and deliver them every day this week.
Five games will be announced every day, continuing now with Part 4.
Games to Play Before You Die
#5-1
#5. Minecraft – PC/Xbox360
The addiction of
Minecraft isn't one that can really be explained very well unfortunately. It's
best explained as a game that focuses on the compulsion to collect, then allows
you to use that collection to build anything your heart desires. Don't have the
right material to make that bookcase you always wanted? Well go out and get it.
The basis of
Minecraft is this. You are living on a giant randomly generated island, so no
two players live in the same area. As you explore, either alone or with
friends, you find materials. Cut down a tree for wood, turn that into a
pickaxe, then pickaxe copper and iron ore to make tools. Everything you collect
is always leading towards collecting the next thing.
The twist here is
the day/night cycle. Once the sun sets, all heck breaks loose. Monsters roam
the wilderness ready to destroy everything you have spent your whole day on.
Minecraft turns from a building and collecting game into a survival horror.
Your fancy new wooden cottage won't last long against a group of exploding
zombies. Once the sun rises, you clean up what remains, and continue collecting.
Simple and
addicting at first, Minecraft quickly becomes one of the most advanced games
ever made. Your limitations are really only your imagination and patience. For
example, a group of players has managed to recreate the entire Star Trek
Enterprise to full and complete scale. Another group has built all of middle
earth, yet another created the entire city from Game of Thrones. I myself have
a glass city in the clouds with a roller coaster track leading down into a city
underwater.
Your experience
will differ entirely from mine or anyone else, as will what you choose to
build. It is entirely up to you.
What You're Missing: Stumbling upon that one ore you
have needed for so long to finish your underwater mansion, only to have a
Creeper chase you inside and blow up flooding the entire thing.
Closest You Can Get: Building an entire sandcastle
city on the beach while Biff Tannen simultaneously tries to destroy it.
#4. Heavy Rain - PS3
How far would you
go to save someone you love? This line resonates throughout Heavy Rain, from
beginning to end. Of all the games on this list, this is the one game that you
will feel has changed you by the end. This
is due in part to the hundreds of choices you will make across the game’s
winding twists and turns.
Heavy Rain’s game
play is like nothing you have ever played or seen before, I can assure you
that. You are essentially watching a 10 hour long movie, with four main
characters. As the characters progress into their stories, you choose their
decisions, not unlike a ‘choose your own adventure’ book.
One moment sets
this entire game up perfectly. Your child is kidnapped, and you are following clues
to his whereabouts. You are led to an empty room, minus a table littered with
tools. The kidnapper informs you that the only way forward, will be to remove
one of your fingers with the provided tools. You are given a single minute to
not only make this decision, but to do it.
Depending on what
decision you come to, that single minute will set in motion dozens of possible
coming events. Consider then, that decision is only one single minute out of
hours.
No two play-throughs
of Heavy Rain will ever be the same. Although your experience may not be the same
as mine, it will undoubtedly be one to remember.
What You're Missing:
Watching an amazing detective film, only in this movie, you make
every decision. Even if it means some characters don't make it out alive.
Closest You Can Get: Setting two televisions side by
side and watching a marathon of both Law and Order: SVU and the entire Saw
Collection all while playing twister.
#3. Tetris – Everything
Ever
Tetris is the
biggest phenomenon video games have ever, or will ever see. As of 2010’s last count,
Tetris has sold more than 100 million copies. This number would already be mind
blowing enough by itself. However those sales are only for mobile devices. That number is shocking. Tetris has been
released on nearly every gaming platform in history in some form or another.
Created by Soviet Union’s Alexey Pajitnov in
1984, Tetris took the world by a storm that hasn’t stopped for nearly 3
decades. Tetris has been around so long, and on so many devices, it almost
seems pointless to place it on this list. There likely just isn’t anyone alive
that hasn’t played it.
If, somehow, you
are the one person on the face of the planet who has yet to play Tetris, stop
what you are doing. Go to Google, type in Tetris, and play any one of the
hundreds of free versions that will show up. Congratulations, you just hopped
on the bandwagon.
What You're Missing: The single most addicting yet
repetitive music in all of gaming, but you'll be humming it long after you've
stopped playing.
Closest You Can Get: Moving from your studio
apartment, and trying to make it in only one car load. That speaker is
totally gonna fit in the truck with that mini fridge.
#2. Portal – PC, Mac, PS3,
Xbox360
Portal is to nerds,
what Twilight is to teen girls; annoying to everyone who doesn’t know what is
going on. The difference is that everybody who gives Portal a shot falls in
love. With such sexy ladies as Glados and the Companion Cube filling the
screen, who could resist?
The idea behind
Portal is just that. You shoot portals. There is nothing else to the game. It
is both the simplest and most intricate device ever. As a test subject for Aperture
science, you are awoken by robot handler Glados. She provides you with a gun
that shoots, you guessed it, Portals.
The way portal
works is ingenious. One portal always leads to the other. Therefore, if one
were on the ceiling and another on the floor directly below, you would fall indefinitely
through the portals. In fact this particular trick is used to build up speed
for multiple puzzles.
Simply put everyone
needs to experience what Portal has to deliver. Games like this are why I play
video games.
What You're Missing: Everything. This should be an
essential introductory game for every non gamer. If you don't know what the
“big deal” is about video games. This, this is the big deal.
Closest You Can Get: There's always Portal 2.
#1. Bioshock – PC, PS3,
Xbox360
Books have, “Call
me Ishmael.” and movies have, “Rosebud.” Nearly 30 years of video games and we
lacked for so long that famous line ala, “Luke I am your Father.” That was,
until Bioshock.
“Would you Kindly?”
is now engrained into the gaming culture more than any other line, minus the
arguably equal Portal line, “The cake is a lie.” The difference in the lines
though, is how they make the player feel. Once you learn the meaning of those
three little words, your entire world flips onto its head. You question every moment
of the game you had just played, and second guess every experience you just
had. ‘The Sixth Sense’ required another viewing once its ending was revealed.
Bioshock requires an instant replay, maybe even two.
That would be
enough. Those three words would be all I would need to make this my number 1,
but Bioshock brings even more in form of Rapture. The city of Rapture is the
most intricate, well designed, and alive city I have had the pleasure to visit
in my 20+ years of gaming.
Other games just
pale in comparison to the moments this game presents a player. From the city’s
introduction, till meeting your first Big Daddy, Bioshock is always guiding you
through iconic and never before seen experiences.
Rest assured, you
have never experienced anything akin to staring down at a lonely little girl,
and deciding whether to harvest her for power, or let her go for nothing.
What You're Missing: Arguably the best most fully
realized world every created for a game. What Harry Potter did for books, or
what Star Wars saw on film, Bioshock brought to gaming for the first time in
history.
Closest You Can Get: I am sorry; you just can't.
While it might not be the best game ever made, the fact is no game, book, or
movie delivers anything like the truly original experience found in Rapture.
If you disagree with my list, I want to know! Should Portal be #1? Did your game not make the list? Would you kindly comment below and make your case?
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