My All-Time Top Five Games
Video games, the world of trash talking, threats, and general toxicity, but looking hard enough reveals life long friends, bonds, and beautiful examples of cooperative relationships among those who share the same passion.
Video games have been a large part of my life ever since my dad introduced games like Halo: Combat Evolved and Need for Speed Most Wanted to me back when I was roughly six years old. Games and gamers alike have been harshly criticized by news outlets for years, with games like Grand Theft Auto 5 being a prime example, however I think games can be praised for far more than they can be criticized. My passion for gaming has led me to meeting many year long friends who I am still friends with to this day, GTA 5 which I have been playing for almost five years now allowed me to find a group of gamers like myself who loved playing the game in the same way that I did which is magical for those who might not have a lot of friends in the school they go to. This is just a small taste of the good that games can provide to those that are willing to give them a chance, older people might disagree but the short version is that people have always been drawn to each other for having similar interests and passions so this is no different it’s just in a different form.
Now onto my top 5, the first of the five for me at least is Halo 3 which is the third game in the coveted Halo series which was originally created by Bungie but is now in the hands of 343 Industries. Halo 3 was the culmination of the gameplay of CE and the story of 2 which led to this absolute masterclass of game design, being the third and last main installment in the Bungie era of Halo games it has the most climactic ending in the series, detailed level and art design, smooth and polished gameplay that hasn’t been rivaled until the recent release of Halo infinite, and finally the most baller soundtrack that has graced the Xbox until Doom Eternal’s bombastic release. Based on my description of the game alone you can tell I hold this game in incredibly high regard, both the story and the characters get me incredibly invested, the setting of this game is by far the most varied among any of the other games. To say the least, Halo 3 is an example of game design that very few have been able to overcome in my mind and will most likely remain my favorite of all the Halo games.
The second pick goes to GTA 5, if I had to describe this game in one word it would be wow since this game has been the catalyst of some of my longest lasting friendships and memories, I have been playing GTA since it’s initial release on the Xbox 360 in 2013 and have continued to play it all the way until it’s 10th anniversary in September of this year. The story mode alone kept me playing until I finally invested in Xbox live back in 2018 and has since kept me playing until my main character was level 475 and beyond with over three thousand hours in the online portion alone. With having that many hours I feel that I have the authority to say that GTA 5 was one of the best games released in the last decade since it has since then topped the revenue charts of all video games ever released with the only game being higher on that list being Minecraft.
It would be incredibly dishonest of me to not include the game that got me started with gaming on this list so my third pick goes to the one and only Halo: Combat Evolved. CE is not my favorite Halo game by a long shot but I cannot stress enough how much of an impact this game had on my favorite genre which just happens to be shooter games, I mean back in 2001 the concept of having a shooter on a console was entirely alien with only a couple examples that turned out poorly so when Bungie stepped into the ring there was a very high chance of failure. But as us living in 2023 can tell Bungie didn’t fail, in fact their game has changed the gaming industry in ways that very few creators can claim, the two weapon system alone has appeared in so many games after CE you would have a hard time at finding out which game initially started the trend, many shooter games at the time lacked a story which Bungie said “Hold my beer” and made a story and setting that spawned an entire series of games that is still living today which is simply incredible since the Halo series is over 20 years old now.
My fourth pick is a trilogy of games that I only started playing about a year ago which are the Mass Effect games, Mass Effect is one of the best RPG examples in the entire gaming community with the ways that some of the games decide whether you succeed or not being complex to somebody who hasn’t played them before. ME is the best example of branching storylines and decisions that heavily affect the other games, for example one of my favorite storylines which is the geth/quarian war is heavily affected by your choices in ME2 with several endings being available depending on both the things you did and didn’t do. Mass Effect Legendary Edition has been winning my attention over some of the other games I usually play over and over again because of the games’ amazing stories, characters, and gameplay variety and I feel that everyone should play it at some point even if RPGs aren’t your thing.
My fifth and final pick is Rainbow Six Siege. I played this game for a long time as a gold one Mozzie main and this game is one of the easiest games to see your progress from when you started playing to where you are now with you gaining both more operators to play and more weapon/ map knowledge to defeat the enemy team with. R6 takes games like CSGO and turns them up to the maximum with realistic weapon kick, sounds, and muzzle flashes, the game also features level destruction which can be both good and bad for either team with ‘rotate holes’ being important for the defending team to move to and from each objective. All in all R6 is a game of knowledge and mastery with the more you play directly correlating to how well you do in the game, coordination with your team is imperative to rise above your opponent in ranked with your team picking different operators that can defend or attack the objective and work well with the other operators depending on the situation. In conclusion this game is the apex of the competitive shooter genre.
I picked these games based on both the impact they’ve had on me and the gaming industry as a whole and I am confident in saying that R6, Halo:Ce, Halo 3, GTA5, and Mass Effect are some of the landmark games throughout our history. Everybody has their own opinion on what makes a game worth or not worth playing but in my opinion these games are an experience that everyone should have at least once.
