My Ten Favorites

IGN has a a great schedule of articles where each writer is contributing their personal lists of favorite games of all time. It inspired me to create my own list for the very first time. I love top ten lists, but they sure are hard to put together.

These games are not in order and they are not what I consider to be the greatest games of all time. These are my favorites. These are the games that I have spent more time playing than any others. These are the games I look back on fondly. These are the games that make me glad I'm a gamer. My list, in no particular order, follows.

1. Final Fantasy VII

Final famtasy VII is a dead giveaway. I had been playing games all my life, but this was the first game that showed me games could make me laugh, cry and pee all over myself out of fear. FF7 wasn't a scary game in the least, but sephiroth was a character you feared. That dude murdered EVERYONE. Despite making it through the entire game three times, I never beat Sephiroth. Not because he was too hard, but because I was just too scared to travel to the bottom of the crater to try. I was too young to be able to overcome the emotions I had about that character. I was so attached to Cloud and the rest of my party that I didn't want to risk Sephiroth killing all of them. To this day, I have never beat this game start to finish. Still, with the timeless drama and tragedy of the plot and the superb characters, ff7 taught me that games could tell stories, and that alone changed my gaming life forever.

2. SSX3

The best dreams are the ones we have almost tasted. SSX3 came out at a time when I was snowboarding literally any time I had the opportunity. As I learned to stop, carve and get a third of a second of airtime in real life, I was going home and busting mad tricks in SSX3. The physics of the game and ridiculous courses can't even be mentioned in a sentence with "realistic" but be careful. The way clothing ruffled in the wind, the birds sang and tweeted off of bare branches in a quiet lonely mountain landscape and the expertly crafted animations of the characters snowboarding through that powder, A passby would use that word. I spent hours cruising through the snowy mountain landscape moving from event to event. You could fast travel in the game, but because touching the d-pad ever so slightly would cause your character to lean just an inch to the left or right, making an easy relaxed turn down the hill into the next slope style event. I explored every inch of that mountain...well almost. I made it to 99% completion. I couldn't find the other hidden cash snow flakes, but boy did I try. This game, more than any other, was fantasy fulfillment.

3. Metal Gear Solid 2

Mgs2, like ff7, taught me the kinds of stories games could tell. It excelled in Hollywood cinematic flair, but also created the most interactive environment I have personally ever seen or heard of in a game. Flour bags spilled flour and revealed infrared lasers, fire extinguishers blinded guards, the stem of a wine bottle could be shot off, guards could be hidden in lockers, boxes and a guard would shake his butt if you pointed at his crotch, begging you not to kill him. I've never seen that much detail in a game, and I spent dozens of hours beating it again and again playing around with those environments. Yeah, Raiden sucked, but that gameplay was something else.

4. Maximo: Ghost to Glory

This game is a close win. Ninja Gaiden almost took the cake for being the hardest game I have ever played. But Maximo wins out, making it my crown of action platforming skill. It took me three months to beat this game. Thats significant when you consider that during that time, I literally did nothing else, all day. I just played games. This game is harder than ninja gaiden because, besides the unforgiving platforming action, it's very possible to get a game over and have your save file deleted by the game. You only have so many lives and chances. If you exhaust them, you have to start from scratch. As hard as ninja gaiden was, it allowed me an infinite number of continues. When I beat the last boss in Maximo, I had only a few lives left. I was flirting with the chance of losing three months worth of hard work. The last boss fight was a perfect finale too, because it took place in a pitch-black castle, where your enemy would only be revealed by random lightning strikes in the storm outside the shattered stained glass windows. I barely won that fight. My heart was pounding.

5. Double Dragon 3

My earliest days of gaming were spent playing coop with my brother. We still do it today in the rare event of finding the time, the game and the platform. And the money to support such things. Double Dragon 3 is my earliest memories of coop. The fitting soundtrack was perfect and the adventure took you across the entire globe. I played through this game with my bro dozens of times, and it is among my fondest memories of childhood. We would later move on to other coop experiences. But this was the first.

6. Tales of Symphonia

This is an odd one. The story wasn't the best ever, the blurry environments frustrated both my eyesight and my opinion of good design and the combat system, while a really fresh action rpg, eventually became more repetitious than most jrpg's. It wasn't the best at anything but it was really, really good at everything. Tons of side quests and extra content, coop, and just enough charm and character to absorb you. I beat this 60 hour adventure five times. Once with my sister, Taylor. Great memories and probably the one game that I have invested the most time in. I wouldn't give it any awards, per se. But it's one of my favorites. I just had a ton of fun with it.

7. Dark Cloud 2

Such a gem. Although I only played through the game fully one time, it was the only game that I ever invested 100 hours into a single game file (I probably did in WOW, but I can't confirm that). Of the RPGs on this list, this is the one that I look back on most fondly. I played this game when I was becoming discontent with my seclusion in Canada, feeling alone in the world and helpless in my situation. Seeing Max fix a broken empty world to build a better future was something that really struck me. That gameplay offered more variety than even ff7 and the music was sublime. The combat was intense, intentional but forward thinking. When you fought with a weapon in this game, you did so with the intention of causing it to grow, because that was the only way to level up. The story, about a boy who was looking for his mother, his source of comfort and security, also resonated with my desire to move away from childhood, but also remember what is so important in it. This game gave me a certain kind of peace in those uncertain days. Again, something I was surprised video games could do, but I was very thankful during that time that this game was doing that for me. Among RPG's, this one might be my number one. I wish I could revisit it today.

8. Super Smash Bros. Melee

I could have been a professional player at smash bros. melee I murdered all of the friends with Link. Match after match after match playing against 3 level 9 AI's (free for all. I could do two lvl9 on one but three was just stupid) my buddy Lance matched my skill with Roy, and we spent plenty of time in the fountain of dreams, dueling it out neck and neck. There are several games on this list from the Nintendo GameCube, and several more that almost made the list, but this one is the game I would recommend to anyone who owned that cute little cube.

9. Dynasty Warriors 3

I've played a LOT of dynasty warriors, but 3 was my first experience with the series. My brother and I discovered this game together, And after playing the demo a dozen times, convinced our dad to buy us the game. we unlocked all forty characters and collectively killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers together. This is probably the most time my brother and I spent together in any one game, and, despite being a mature adult, I miss the simple pleasure of the hack and slash action of these games. As shallow as the story might be in the battles, if you look harder through the menus and character relationships, its actually one of the deepest stories you'll find in gaming.

10. Resident Evil 4

The scariest game of all time is resident evil 4. I beat this game literally more times than I can count. I knew every secret, enemy location, weapon upgrade and could quote every gorgeous cut scene. I earned five stars in every stage with every character in mercenary mode, earning me the hand cannon. I beat the piss out of this game. Yet even when I was at my finest hour murdering zombies, the intensity of this game still gave me the occasional jump. You can't beat that. I owned this game on GameCube, rented it on ps2 and bought it again on pc. I played this through my Highschool years and college. In fact, this is the only game on my list that I played during college. That says something.

Honorable mentions:

Contra: Shattered Soldier was the sequel that the world should have received better. I loved playing the original with my brother, but this one holds a particularly special place because it was the first game that I worked for and bought with my own money. I think I ended up playing that game more than I should have, because I was just so proud of the fact that I had earned it. I played a ton of coop with my friend Lance, but I played it by myself even more. Again, a game I never beat. Super hard, but crazy fun.

Way of the Samurai: talk about a choose-your-own-adventure. This game could be beaten in an hour, but the sheer depth of the characters, the conversations and events that happened in every corner of this game made it such a rich experience for me. Every time you play this game, as long as you make one decision differently, will create a completely different experience. Even winning and losing changed the storyline. The glorified rock, paper scissors combat and the danger of your precious swords breaking made the game dangerous, rewarding and urgent. The number of times I beat this game is in the dozens. This game almost beat resident evil 4, but I KNOW I didn't play this are more than re4, so it ultimately lost

Gun: this game only makes it because it was really fun and fulfilled my fantasy of playing a western. I LOVE westerns and this game totally nailed it. A fantastic story, great gunfights and enough sidequests to make an rpg jealous. It falls short on the list because, while there were a ton of things to do, the activities ultimately didn't last that long. The game could be completely beaten in under 25 hours. Because of that, I Ultimately didn't sink months of my life into this game, but that's only because I ran out of content. I did EVERYTHING there was to do in this game multiple times.

Ff12 is, in my opinion, a technically superior game to ff7. The combat is more fun and the story is more focused and mature. The overall design is more consistent and the world is more captivating. Ff7 beat this game to make it on my list because ff7 came first, and I played it more. Now this is tricky because ff12 also came out my freshmen year of college. I had to beat the game in a single 5 week span before I went back to school after Christmas break. I went through the game a second time when I got out of college and got married. Ironically, I also didn't beat this game. The first time I went through it, I got to the end but had to leave for school and the second time I was 80 hours in and just got burnt out (I was trying to level up all party members equally. big mistake) If I had the chance, I would go through this game again, and it might just be giving ff7 a run for its money.

Just for kicks, here are the games that might make the top 10 list ten years from now. These are games that I am currently playing and having a ton of fun playing, with no end in sight.

Spelunky: a score chasers dream. Spelunky captures the rogue like in a side scrolling platformer the dungeons are different every time you play. The game is notoriously difficult and fun. The game is endlessly replayable, and crazy as it may seem, it's actually perfectly fair in its difficulty. I love the randomness of the game, the instant challenge it provides and the drive that it gives me to beat my high score. I also love that I can start it up and play it for five minutes.

Minecraft: Minecraft is a textbook videogame. It is more videogame than any other game I have ever played. It is the definition and bare bones, no-fat added parfait of pure gameplay. It nails the mystery, danger and challenge by the nature of the design, without any incentives from the player or computer. Surviving and improving my place in the world is what keeps me playing this game. I have already sunk 50+ hours into this game and it threatens to do more. It's the ultimate video game toy box, that's easy to pick up, put down and pass around.

Hearthstone: Blizzard's card game hits all the right spots in addiction, pick up and play and incentive. Its optimal to log in every day, but not required. Its beneficial to spend money, but only if you suck at the game. In a perfect blend of strategy and luck, I enter a game knowing that its up to my ability to plan and be proactive in my attack, but I know a curveball can be thrown at any mminute. I think about this game way too much, but it's so ey to pick up and so easy to put down given how little time it takes to okay a game. I see myself playing this, minecraft and spelunky for years to come.

Two Jobs

Ambition is a two-sided coin. Many view it as a positive thing to have, with too few people who can actually embrace it. On the other side, there are and have been plenty of men who's lives are consumed by it.

I have been harping on my wife since we've been married that I should get a second job so we can have some extra money to throw around. It wasn't just to live frivolously. I would honestly like most to have a fat savings account so I could react quickly when there was an emergency car repair or if we needed to make an emergency trip to see family. For the last couple of years, she kept convincing me that it wasn't necessary and that the costs would outweigh the benefits since we would never see each other.

Well the time came when the baby was born that she could no longer work (or at least neither of us wanted her to) and my income from a single job wasn't bringing in enough to pay the bills. So hubby needs to get a second job so we can get ahead. I was already partly employed with a security installation company, though as a salesman. Now they need technicians to install the equipment. Cool, I say. I would be good at that and I've always wanted to do something technical.

So once I get through training I begin installing in the afternoons and then working the overnight shift at the gas station, my primary job, it goes downhill pretty quickly. I'm so tired from working the overnight shift that I don't wake up from a call to get an install. Three times I show up late because of this, and three more times I am expected to go service an account or perform an installation and I have to cancel due to other responsibilities. I get chewed out by my supervisor, then I get chewed out by the office (who I'm sure has no authority to do so, but it happens anyway) and then I get chewed out by the customer when I finally arrive later that day.

Then when it comes to the installs, I am pretty slow. Now, thats ok with me. I understand that I'm learning and I'm driven enough to want to get faster at it. After all, more speed=more money since I am paid a flat rate for each install. But for the first three weeks, I have to travel to each house twice (a 45 minute drive each way, without traffic) in order to completely finish the installation. Then when I leave and assume everything is fine, I get a text from the office saying that I forgot a signature. I don't get paid until I get that signature.

Three trips out and three days later I'm ready to get paid on that account. YES! $50 coming my way! Then I get a call from the office asking me to go fix someone's system. Apparently it is screwing up. So I go fix it in half an hour and then call the office to tell them the job is done. The office then tells me that since I didn't call them to tell them to shut the alarm off remotely, the police are now on their way to the house and I get fined $75 for my negligence.

Four days and 16 hours later, I am $25 in the hole.

And thats why I quit. Because I'm not a charity.

Mind you, all of that is my fault. But there is no way to be in the mindset to think that pre-emptively when you're running on 3-4 hours of sleep. Coupled with the fact that I never see my family and that I'm putting useless miles on an already near-dead car, and the second job causes me to be late for my primary job twice in two weeks and you find that having that second job just doesn't make sense, financially or otherwise.

Would I like to make more money? Absolutely. Do I need to make more money? Definitely. But installing security systems simply doesn't work.

And that, world, is my attempt at managing two jobs.

I may attempt to get a more basic, less demanding second job, but for the next couple of weeks, I think I'm just going to stay in recovery mode, because I love sleeping a full 6 hours.