Best Video Games of All Time

1. Red Alert 2
2. Sims 2
3. Portal
4. Mario Kart 64
5. Starfox 64
6. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
7. Wii Sports
8. Sim Earth
9. Black & White
10. Rock Band 2

–More–

Red Alert 2

I don’t really know what it is about red alert 2. There seems to be so much to do with the sheer intensity of it all. I suppose it’s simply that I wouldn’t change a thing if I remade this game. Red Alert 2 keeps me coming back again and again and holds a special place in my heart, representing the halcyon days when EA didn’t suck.

Sims 2

Replayability. Hot damn can you play this game over and over again. The cool thing about it? The more you play it the more fun it gets. Once you have great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren there’s a whole legacy behind each of your sims. With witches and werewolves and vampires there’s just more to do here than in a lifetime. Luckily you can have as many lifetimes as you want. The only thing I’d change is some kind of difficulty setting. I’m not sure how it would work but the appeal of Sims 2 is in it’s ability to wrap you up in your sims lives, not give you an actual challenge. Sims 3 looks on schedule to replace its predecessor on this list.

Portal

GlaDOS, simple premise, badass puzzles, some intrigue. This game is just perfect. It would have made the top spot if there was any extended replayability value.

MarioKart 64

Multiplayer heaven. MarioKart 64 is just awesome in a way none of the others are. I’ll admit I haven’t played the DS MarioKart, and it does look to have some promise. Best racing game ever.

Starfox 64

Original title for N64 and it can still put me in a trance, single or multi. Easy to learn, simple maps, yet those battles are epic every time. The necessity to unplug a controller to decrease the number of players puts me in stitches every time.

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter

Hot damn is this a good game. With pretty much no graphics at all, they capture absolutely everything you need on a star destroyer. You have complete control over everything in your ship in a way that no Star Wars game has done since. X v TIE will leave you yelling at Battlefront II that that’s not the way the TIE’s lasers work. Priceless game, so long and with so many bonuses and secrets that there’s alot of replayability in there too.

Wii Sports

Wii Sports is too young to have withstood the test of time, yet I find myself popping it in the Wii over games that I paid $50 for. This is the ultimate party game. Wii Bowling takes little enough concentration that it doesn’t have to take center stage in a gathering and it can still be fun for everyone. Let’s also not forget that this game brought video games into vogue in the party scene.

Sim Earth

Will Wright is a genius. Not yet harassed by EA execs, Maxis made the only truly great mixing of video games and science. Sim Earth teaches and has infinite replayability. Ever wondered what a 2% change in albedo effect will do to arthropod population levels in the arctic circle? Wonder no more. Lets not forget that none of us would know what a cetacean is without this game either.

Black & White

Creatures. The creatures were awesome. I trained mine to poop on enemy houses as a way to keep their towns from growing too powerful. What other game has that? Teaches conditioning, even caring for an animal. This game is sweet. Big problem with the 1.0 release crashing in single player if you made it to the 5th level though. Sloppy debugging.

Rock Band II

The original Rock Band might deserve this title, as it has everything great about Rock Band II. This game is just a blast, and the center of any party it’s at.

Feel free to argue.