Now we’re into the home stretch. We started at top fifty, but now we’re into the top twenty: my favorite games of all time. Encouragingly, three games in this list didn’t yet exist when I wrote up my original list back in 2007.

20- Ultima V (Origin, Commodore 64, 1988)
I’m a great lover of computer role-playing games, and Ultima V was the first truly great one I ever played. Before Dragon Age, before Baldur’s Gate, even before SSI’s Dungeons and Dragons Gold Box games, there was Ultima. Ultima V came out the same year as Pool of Radiance, just as Ultima IV had come out alongside Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale.

Initially, I found it amazing that you could attack enemies who were not directly above or to the side of you. You could actually fire an arrow at an orc who was five squares above and two squares over from you! The initiative system was complex: occasionally, one of your quicker characters would attack twice without a slower character getting a turn in-between. It was as if Mr. Fast attacked every 12 initiative segments but Mr. Slow only attacked every 15 segments. I loved that system.

But what really grabbed me about Ultima V was the story. Sure – it had me running back and forth, backtracking all over the huge world map many times, and took me literally years to complete, but when I was fourteen, I had that kind of time. At the outset, I learned that the evil Lord Blackthorne had taken over and was enforcing twisted versions of the eight virtues. Throughout the game, I traveled the world, picked up companions, battled enemies, and learned more of the story. I infiltrated the enemy’s ring of spies, joined the resistance, and learned mantras which let me meditate at the hidden shrines. (once I’d found them) I followed the path laid out in the journal portion of the game’s manual, which had me take a painstakingly specific route in my ship and transfer to a skiff, intentionally going down a whirlpool to enter the underworld. I then followed a river to the location where the Shadowlords had captured Lord British. There, I found Lord British’s amulet.

I undertook similar quests to get his sceptre and crown, both of which were essential. I had to talk to people to learn the magic passwords to each of the world’s eight dungeons, and then traverse each dungeon to the underworld for various reasons. Amongst those reasons was to collect the three shards of the shattered gem of Mondain, which allowed me to destroy the shadowlords. Of course, I had to follow a particular ritual and had to learn each shadowlord’s true name.

All of this took more hours than I can tell you. The story was complex, and I’ve only detailed the parts I remember now, more than two decades later. I spent hours each day for years. Ultima forces you to purchase ingredients for each spell that you cast, and there exist two ingredients that cannot be purchased, only gathered in the wild. You can ride horses, ships, skiffs, hot air balloons, and even a magic carpet – or else travel by moongate if you learn the phases of the moon properly to guide your travel.

More than twenty years later, Ultima V is a more complex game than any other I’ve played since. And I treasure the experience that I had in playing it.

19- Trine (Frozenbyte, Playstation 3, 2009)
If daddy Castlevania and mommy Gauntlet got together and had a child, it would be Trine. Trine is the modern-day evolution of these old two-dimensional sidescrolling platformers and action RPGs. The graphics and the soundtrack are both beautiful, and up to three people can play simultaneously. You get three characters to choose from, and each character is drastically different and has different ways to solve the same problems. I had an absolute blast playing Trine, as you can probably tell by the fact that it’s the only platinum trophy I’ve got on the Playstation 3. I busted my ass finishing the Tower of Sarek on Very Hard with zero deaths.

The game has three characters: Knight, Wizard, and Thief. The Knight has armor, sword and shield. His shield allows him to block attacks from any angle, which is very useful, and he’s got the best direct attack in the game. He can also jump and land on enemies, killing them mario-style. But he can’t swim. At all. In water, he sinks and drowns. The Thief is the best character in the game: she can jump high, grapple from any wooden surface, and has the game’s only ranged attack. And while swinging, if she hits an enemy, she’ll kick for massive damage. The thief is all about mobility. The wizard is the most difficult to use, but can be a lot of fun. When you play the wizard, you have a cursor which can be used to levitate objects or to create boxes and planks. You can drop things on enemies and crush them. This is the wizard’s only attack, which means that when enemies get close to you, you’re pretty much screwed.

The game has plenty of items to collect. Each level has two chests containing magic items. These can be anything from leg armor which reduces damage from hits (only the hits which connect with the character’s legs) to a magic necklace that lets the wizard create an extra box or plank. Each level also has a number of green experience vials. Collecting all of these is probably the most time-intensive achievement in the game, but the experience will allow your characters to go up levels. As they go up levels, the knight, thief, and wizard gain new abilities. which you can select. The knight gains a flaming sword, a magic thunder hammar, and the ability to charge. The thief can shoot multiple arrows or even a flaming arrow. And the wizard can create progressively more items, and eventually a floating platform.

Trine is probably tied with Pixeljunk Monsters for my favorite PSN game. If you’ve got a PS3 and haven’t picked up Trine, I heartily recommend it. It’s also available for PC on Steam.

18- Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo Wii, 2007)
Let’s face it – first party Nintendo games are just good. Whether they’re Zelda, Mario, or Metroid, the games are just good. Mario’s latest evolution is Galaxy, and the games are wildly creative. It’s got levels where you swim underwater or fly, levels where you roll around atop a ball using only the Wii remote’s tilt, and levels where you jump around atop floating planetoids which pull you in with their gravity. In an age of 3d games, Mario Galaxy may be the only true 3d game – it’s often impossible to judge which way is up!

Mario Galaxy has you surfing atop a manta ray, transforming into a giant spring or a bumblebee, and playing in old-school 2d levels. There are boss creatures, hidden levels, and an extra level of replayability created by the comets, which turn levels you’ve already played into silver coin collecting games, sudden-death levels, or a race to collect everything inside a time limit. Mario Galaxy is certainly one of the best games on the Nintendo Wii.

17- Dead Space (Visceral Games, Playstation 3, 2008)
In a time when the survival horror genre has gone out of vogue in favor of games like Doom 3 and Resident Evil 5, Dead Space took a much-needed step in the right direction – backwards towards the survival horror classics of yesteryear. Don’t get me wrong – Dead Space is first and foremost a shooter – but it’s got the survival horror chops that Resident Evil has lost. I played Dead Space only at night, and generally while wearing a good pair of earphones. Good times.

Dead Space is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played. There is no heads-up display to detract from the immersion, and the game’s sound design is amazing. When you enter a vacuum, the only cue you need is the sudden transition to the echoey, disconnected, inside-helmet soundscape that insulates you from the sounds of enemies rushing towards you. In space, no one can hear you scream.

If you know anything about Dead Space, you’ll likely know that in order to kill Necromorphs, you’ve got to cut off their arms and legs. I’ll admit that this mechanic, while novel, is hardly innovative. But it’s certainly no reason to roll your eyes and decide not to play the game. It has so much more going for it. The game’s weapons are the most diverse and fun to use I’ve seen since the last Doom game. The weapon and armor upgrade system involves welding new modules into specific nodes in your armor or weapon for different effects. And the story…

The setting of Dead Space is so rich that I can’t begin to absorb it all. But just knowing that the entire universe out there exists gives me the warm fuzzies. The immersive scenes at the game’s outset when approaching the Ishimura mining vessel really help to put you in character. They’ve gone with the Gordon Freeman silent protagonist approach with the character you play: Isaac Clarke (an amalgam of Isaac Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke) As the story progresses and you restore functionality to portions of the ship that allow you greater access to information about what has gone wrong, you’re gradulally exposed to more story through Bioshock-style audio and video recordings which are played on both wall-mounted displays and on your portable holo-projector which displays a screen right in front of you. You can even walk around while watching the video. Normally the recordings are placed where you’re unlikely to be attacked while viewing one.

I could write a whole lot more about Dead Space, but as this list nears the higher-ranked games, I should struggle for brevity and call it quits for this week.