GregHowley.com

Seems like I've been kind of into lists recently. What's with that? Anyway, I got to thinking... Hey, I'm having a lot of fun playing Oblivion. When's the last time I've had this much fun playing a game? And so I figured it out. This isn't the list of the games I think are the best, or else the oldies would likely not be in here. It's a list of the games I've had the most fun with.

10. Psychonauts (PS2) Yes, I know I've written about Psychonauts quite a bit, reviewed it, and then mentioned it again, but it's simply that good of a game. Only game that ever made me laugh out loud, and I've played through it twice.

9. Adventure Construction Set (Commodore 64) Back in my Commodore 64 glory days, when I had the free time to sit at the computer all day, back when my monitor was an old TV and I'd switch to channel 8 while waiting for the battles in Pool of Radiance to load, one of my favorite games was a little EA title called Adventure Construction Set. In 1985, it was amazing. You could create a world map with multiple regions, and each of those regions could have many rooms. You could create your own graphics, creatures, weapons, items, spells, and dialogue. You could have multiple players. And if you wanted, you could have the game randomly generate an adventure for you, although the "quest" would generally be something like... The goal of this adventure is to find the Copper Candlestick. It may hold a pleasant surprise... I spent many hours playing with the adventure maker, and came damn close to solving the bundled Rivers of Light adventure more than once.

8. Neverwinter Nights (PC) The appeal of Neverwinter Nights was much the same as the appeal of Adventure Construction Set, only more so. Now, you could not only create worlds and adventures, you could put actual C-like code behind it. Being a programmer, this was amazing to me, and I spent an average of three hours a night for about a year designing my adventure. The fact that you could add scripted events and add new rulesets made it a very engaging and time-consuming experience. But I feel that all that coding probably was useful to me professionally. And it was a lot of fun. I'm not sure I'll have the guts to buy Neverwinter Nights 2 - I don't want to sink that much time into a game again, and I would be tempted.

7. Starcraft (PC) To this day, Starcraft is the best real-time strategy game I've played. I've played through it twice, and I will play it again someday. The last few missions in the expansion weren't fun, but the majority of the game was very fun.

6. Ultima V (Commodore 64) Back before MMO games existed, people with addictive gaming personalities played games like Ultima. And although I'd played Ultima III and IV, Ultima V surpassed its predecessors by such a large margin. It was the first and only Ultima game I've ever completed. I believe that the number of gameplay hours involved in finishing Ultima V was probably greater even than the number of hours to complete a more recent game like Oblivion, largely because of the amount of tedium involved. But at that age, and in that era of gaming, we accepted it. Nay, we embraced the tedium. I want to spend hours hunting the ocean for that tiny island! I want to wander the underworld in search of Lord British's Amulet only to die and have to do it all over again! I want to go on a crazy scavenger hunt from town to town, taking pages and pages of notes to remember who I have to talk to next! At age twelve, I ate it all up.

Ultima V was groundbreaking in a number of ways. Although the battle still took place in a top-down grid like the previous Ultimas, you now could fire missile weapons in more than the four cardinal directions! If an enemy was eight squares up and two squares over, you could shoot him with your bow. You had to find or buy ingredients (reagents) and mix them in order to cast spells. And there were area effect spells! Characters in towns had daily routines - shopkeepers would go to bed at night, and leave the shop to eat lunch! For the 1980s, this was amazing.

5. Indigo Prophecy (PC) Although my time with this game was short, (I played through the entire game in one weekend) I enjoyed it immensely. It was at its heart similar to many other adventure games I'd played, such as Syberia and Still Life, but so much more had been added. Action segments, mini-games, time-sensitive puzzles, stealth sequences, and the game even let you skip portions that were too hard. The story never got bogged down and I never got hopelessly stuck. Great game.

4. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (PC) The only game on this list the I'm currently still playing. It's actually really impressive that this game made it up to number four, given that I'm including games I played twenty years ago. Damn, I feel old. I have yet to write a detailed review on this game, but I will. For now, let me say only that I'm enjoying the game immensely, and spending way too much time with it.

3. Beyond Good and Evil (PC) I've raved about this game for years, and with good reason. It's one of the best games I've ever played, and given the number of games I've played, that's saying quite a bit. It's probably built for a joypad, and the first time I played it on the PC the WASD controls were annoying to me, but when I replayed it after having gotten used to FPS controls via Half-Life 2, it was much better. If I replay it a third time, I'll likely try a USB joypad.

Beyond Good and Evil has a phenomenal story, and varied action. You get to fight, sneak, explore, collect, ride vehicles, and play minigames. There's even a little FPS-like action, although the FPS interface can be nearly as bad as guns in the original Splinter Cell. Still, the game is a few years old and doesn't look outdated - If you haven't played it yet, go and buy it now.

2. Resident Evil 2 (PS1) Back when I was living with mom in Connecticut, my friend Rich convinced me to buy a Playstation for myself during a period where I was kind of feeling down. I played many great games on the PS1: Armored Core, Castlevania SotN, Tenchu Stealth Assassin. But none were as good as the gem that was Resident Evil 2. I haven't yet played Resident Evil 4, but I can say without reservation that Resident Evil 2 is by far the best of the series that I've played. I can't count the number of times that the game made me jump - literally pop out of my seat - while playing. It's the only game that has really scared me. I feared for the life of my character. I loved the story, I loved the game's music, I loved the game. I went back and replayed it about a year ago. Still fun.

1. Half-Life 2 (PC) I had never been into first person shooters. I had seen people play Doom, I had tried Jedi Academy, I had even played a good way through Heretic, but I never really got it. I never enjoyed it as much as other games. But when I bought my computer, it came bundled with a copy of Half-Life 2. I'd never played Half-Life 1, so I had no idea what to expect, and feared that I would be a bit lost as far as the storyline. I didn't know that being lost was supposed to be part of the experience. As you can tell if you read my review of the game, I really like it a lot.

On June 1st, Valve is releasing the first in a series of episodic sequels to Half-Life 2. I'll be overcoming my obsession with Oblivion and playing that start to finish as soon as it's released.

If you've read this far and found my mini-reviews interesting, I'd like to know what games other readers have enjoyed most over the years - leave me a comment!