10. Deus Ex -- Ion Storm
If there's one common element you're going to see in this list, it's blending. When a game takes multiple genres and mixes them into one cohesive experience, they have my respect. Deus Ex took the tired first-person shooter premise to a whole new level, and used it as a platform for, of all things, an RPG. Deus Ex has roughly 10,000 pages (no exaggeration) of dialogue written by a professional novelist, and a plotline so twisted and paranoid that it puts X-Files to shame. And on top of that, the game was designed from the start to accommodate several different styles of play. Don't like violent video games? You can play the whole game without killing one man. In fact, your lethality is something the other characters react to: kill lots of people, even bad guys, and some characters will cheer you on while others will frown at you. And here's the kicker -- there were points where I actually found myself wanting some of these fictional characters' approval. Like any game, it had its problems -- the graphics were dated, and the FPS interface seems more conductive to an action game than an RPG (though props to Ion Storm for trying something new!). None of these, however, were enough to detract from the luster of this instant classic.

9. Blade Runner -- Westwood Studios
Here's a funny thing: I played this game when it came out in 1997, and loved it. Fascinated by the premise, I went and saw the movie. It was okay, but compared to the video game, I was a little disappointed. But from that I learned it was based upon a book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep[i] (don't ask me, I still don't know what the title means to this day). So I read this book. It sucked. I mean really, it was awful. So anyways, Blade Runner the game was the best of the three, which in some ways makes it more impressive in my eyes. But here was what was cool from the start. A) The graphics. For 1997, they were [i]bitchin'. B) The plot. This game used an engine which keeps track of everything you do and say to everyone, and the other characters in the game respond to this. I've played about four times and gotten 3 different endings and had a different play-through path every time. From minute one the story branches out, and two conversations with the same person during two different play-throughs can be completely different. How cool is that?

8. Metal Gear Solid -- Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
This game pretty much speaks for itself. Great plot, great voice acting, lots of action but plenty of story too, but the best part was the attention to detail. Want to grab an enemy's attention? Back up against a wall and press the O button, and you can knock on it. Walking through the snow? Be careful; not only do you leave footprints, but the enemies notice them and follow them as far as they go. Caught in the cold without your shirt (long story)? Better get inside quickly -- you can catch a cold, and after that you periodically sneeze, making sneaking up on people damn near impossible! And on top of all that: Vulcan Raven. Can you beat a six-and-a-half-foot tattooed shaman with a gatling gun taller than he is who can deliver the line "The raven on my head -- it thirsts for his blood!"? I think not.

Oh, and the Ninja kicks ass^[(infinity)/0]. That is all.

7. The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time -- Presto Studios
Time travel rocks. Wanted to get that out of the way right off. And this game, though it does have paradoxes and inconsistencies, carries it off well. You're Gage Blackwood, Agent 5 from the first Journeyman Project, and in the year since the last game, you've become known as a hero. Except one morning, a man in a metal suit appears in your living room. The faceplate opens, and guess who it is? You! He tells you that he's from the future (about 9 years, to be exact) and that he's been framed. He needs someone to prove his innocence, and since nobody but he can use his DNA-encoded jumpsuit, he needs your help. You have to travel to four different time zones (Chateau Gillard, Chichen Itza, Leonardo da Vinci's studio, and the Farnstein lab space station) to gather clues and piece together the mystery of your future self's framing. The detail is just bloody amazing. Presto Studios researched this stuff out the wazoo. Chateau Gillard is recreated brick for brick from the original blueprints, Chichen Itza's High Priests' Temple is covered in Mayan murals (which aren't there anymore in our time), and da Vinci's studio is populated with tons of machines and inventions from the master's sketch books. And! And! Arthur! You can't really understand unless you've played it, but just trust me: Arthur rocks my time travel socks.

6. Final Fantasy VII -- Squaresoft
Everybody's played this one, and everybody loves it, so no need to explain too deeply. This is traditional RPG gamemaking at its best, plain and simple. But don't try to understand the Cloud/Zack subplot. Honestly, you'll just give yourself a headache.

5. Toonstruck -- Burst Productions
Okay, think Who Framed Roger Rabbit inverted. Christopher Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a jaded cartoonist disappointed with his career. He started off with big dreams, but ended up as an animator for the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show. So while working late one night (on orders from his boss, Ben Stein), he gets sucked into the tv. Don't ask -- the game doesn't explain, and the manual tells you not to think too hard about it. Upon arrival in cartoon land, Lloyd witnesses a flying saucer zap the cutesy landscape, making it barren and evil-looking. He soon learns that Count Nefarious (Tim Curry) has built a Malevolator, and is transforming Cutopia. Horrors. Whatever you may think of its makeover, your job is to find the elements that make up a Cutifier, so the damage can be reversed. With the help of your sidekick, Flux Wildly (Dan Castellenetta), you restore the natural balance of the world. The grab? Well, if you didn't guess from the voice actors, this game is hilarious. Play. You can't possibly understand otherwise.

4. The Dig -- Lucasarts
An asteroid's heading for Earth. Yeah, I know, original, but that's just the starting point. You're Boston Low, commander of the shuttle expedition to place nuclear charges on the asteroid, Attila, to blow it into steady orbit. Don't worry, this is about the first 10 minutes of the game. You do, it does, yada yada. You and your team go exploring Earth's new moon. Except inside you find artifacts, and once activated, the asteroid transforms -- into an FTL starship. A blink, and you find yourself stranded on an alien world, apparently abandoned for centuries. Good animation, great voice acting (Robert Patrick, the T-1000, is the voice of Low), superb music by Michael Land, and a really cool plot dealing with the obsession with immortality and the dangers of technology all contribute to making this one of the finest games ever made. Originally a movie concept conceived by Steven Spielberg, it was given to Lucas and made by his company, with Orson Scott Card writing the dialogue. Highly recommended.

3. Anachronox -- Ion Storm
This is the game I finally beat last night (BECCA IS GOD!), so I'm going to rave for a bit. Please bear with. The game, like all great RPGs, starts off humbly enough. You're Sylvester Buchelli (aka Sly Boots), an out of work, down on his luck detective with a drinking problem (or lack of one) and some pretty heavy debts. After a run-in with one of Detta's goons, Boots decides it's time to get a job -- and gets caught up (kicking and screaming) in a quest to save the universe. When you start the game, you're playing for the immediate satisfaction. The game is just hilarious, almost to the point of being a satire of RPGs (as well as sci-fi and video games in general). But then, by degrees, the game surprises you by sneaking in real plot while you aren't looking, and suddenly, they smack you with a huge fish labeled "REVELATION", and we the gamers gape. Simply fantastic plots (primary and sub-), great voice acting, hilarious writing, and just general overall coolness make this game an instant classic. It was cut in half for time purposes (the developers knew they were never going to finish it if they didn't release it toot sweet), and now that most of the dev team has been laid off (ironically, because it didn't sell very well at all), I don't know if it will ever be finished. But this game is Great, and I'll play it over and over until I get my Anox2, even if I have to make it myself.

2. Soul Reaver 2 -- Crystal Dynamics
If you've played any of the Legacy of Kain games, you know what I'm talking about when I say these games have atmosphere. This series is so steeped in fictional mythology and lore that there are whole sites devoted to Nosgoth's history. I choose Soul Reaver 2 as my 2nd favorite game of all time because it easily has the most complicated plot I've yet seen in a video game. Twisting in on itself and knotting as only time travel stories can, you had better have the time to play this one twice, and you have to know your Nosgoth lore before you start, because this one's a doosey. It's a testament to the quality of storytelling that half an hour into the game, a scene between Raziel and Kain, the villain of the previous game, forces you to completely rethink the drive of Soul Reaver. As always, fantastic voice overs (not just great acting, but cool voices from Michael Bell, Simon Templeman, and Tony Jay) and great dialogue all make for an immersive experience, and Amy Hennig's storytelling is simply superb. Be warned: the cliffhanger ending makes the previous game's look practically like closure. Prepare to have your brain tied in knots.

5. Ico -- Sony Computer Entertainment Japan
Holy shit, folks. This game is amazing. I'm placing it in slot #5 because I just finished playing it 10 minutes ago and I'd like to be conservative until the euphoria wears off. But god damn. God freaking damn. That was cool.

Okay, so, premise first: background information is scant as hell in this game, but the opening cinematic shows us three men on horseback traveling through a lush forest, with an 11- or 12-year-old boy (who, inexplicably, has ox horns sticking out of the sides of his head) seated in front of the man riding in the middle of their single-file line. The boy doesn't look happy. The four ride to a cliff overlooking the sea, and a short ways from shore we see a large, cliff-walled island with a huge structure built over it. The structure is clearly ancient, even the stonework is falling apart, but has a vaguely temple look to it. Next we see these four traveling by boat to the island. Then they're in a cave parking their boat. Then they're inside the temple, and they use an odd-looking glowing sword to unlock a door. Last, we see them enter a large hall, lined on each side with tier upon tier of what look like big metal jars or pots. One opens. They place the boy inside, and one says, "Do not be angry with us. This is for the good of the village." The pot closes, and they leave. A section of the floor rises up to cover their exit; no leaving that way. But the shaking makes the floor under the boy's pot crack, and the pot tumbles forward and cracks open, dumping the boy on the floor head first.

Now, after a rather odd and disturbing dream portending later events in the game, the boy (I assume this is Ico, because I don't have the game manual but that word isn't used anywhere else) wakes up. Shortly thereafter, after running around and throwing switches, he comes upon a cage suspened within a tower, just as he saw in the aforementioned dream. Inside is a girl (assumably much older, as she is taller by head and shoulders), who, for reasons also not explained, seems to glow white. For a mental picture, thing of a photograph of a pale girl in a white dress which has become overexposed. He busts her out of her cage, and but she speaks a language he doesn't understand, so they don't talk much. After this, you must play through the game by leading this girl (who, we find out later, has the unfortunate name of Yorda) literally by the hand. You must solve extremely clever puzzles (more on this in a moment) and protect Yorda from the hordes of shadow demon thingies <shiver> that keep on popping up and trying to drag her into little vortex thingies by (literally) beating them off with a stick.

Now, one of the most interesting things about the game is the necessity of leading and protecting Yorda. Ico has no health meter; he does not take damage when he is smacked around (which is a good thing, cause he takes some bad spills in some of these cinematics). The only thing that can kill him is if he falls a great distance. So the tension comes not from staying alive, but from keeping Yorda safe from the shadow demons. And you must take her with you as you explore, for two reasons: A) she has the ability to open doors like the one that the sword from the intro opened; and B) if you leave a zone/room without Yorda, it won't be long before you hear a frightened gasp from the zone you just left, and if you haul ass you might just make it back in time to drag her out of the vortex she's being pulled into. Thus, as you progress through the game, you actually start to feel sort of parental. Yorda's very childlike; she can't defend herself, and she can't find the way on her own. You have to do all the work. Now, I am not the biggest fan of useless distressed females in video games. I believe I got tired of the notion about halfway through the third Mario Bros. game. And yet, only once or twice did I find myself getting annoyed with Yorda (though that time when we were almost out and the big gate was closing and she tripped... yeah). Rather, the game fosters a sort of big-brotherly, protective feeling toward the character, which baffles me as much as anyone. Criticize if you like, but play it and see if you can stay annoyed. Dare ya.

The puzzles. Ah, the puzzles. I had to look online for solves twice during the course of the game. One I think could have been prevented had I been given the manual -- if you hold the O button while hanging on a chain, Ico kicks his feet out and starts you swinging, which can get you into otherwise inaccessible areas. The other... well, maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, cause it seemed reasonable enough. But here are some examples:

- a large room has two levels, and the floor of the bottom level is riven by a big damn chasm. The upper level has a bridge that goes across. However, it's the far side of the lower level you need to get to. You climb up into the rafters, to where a large chandelier is hanging. When you jump on the chandelier, it falls, dumping you on the bridge and crashing into the chasm. When you go down to the bottom level, some of the candles landed on your side. You use them to light your stick, then use that to start the fuze on these little bomb thingies that look like christmas ornaments. Then you drop the bomb next to the bridge's support beam, and run like hell. Voila. The bridge collapses, forming a ramp from the starting side of the upper level to the finish side of the bottom level.

- For those of you still reading (if any), this one will be shorter, promise. You're on a wooden bridge and there's a section that's standing up on end, like a drawbridge, on the far side of a gap. Now, as Ico, you can find a way around, cause you're cool like that. But Princess Toadst- I mean, Yorda, doesn't like climbing and swinging and falling, so you have to make a path for her. There's a chain hanging from a tower on the far side (where you are now), close to the upright section of the bridge. You climb up to that, and swing, and fling yourself at the upright segment. Ico gets a little bruised, but the segment falls down and Yorda can walk across safely. Aww.

- okay, one more, real short. This is my favorite; it was in the demo. You have to get to the top of a windmill. I could explain more, but as I said, I'm keeping it short. Unfortunately, the convenient ledges and handholds stop about halfway up the side. What do you do? Take a flying leap at the spinny propeller dealy, and edge your way along it hand over hand so that when it goes vertical, you're hanging on at the corner, and you can leap off onto the top of the windmill. Yeah, I like that.

Okay, that's all for examples. In summary for the puzzles, they were extremely creative and involved things I'd never before seen in a platformer. Almost every single one was unique, and none were cliches (with the possible exception of some light block puzzles). Simply brilliant.

Well, I think that's it. Complaints? Don't have many. The game was pretty short; I don't know how long exactly, because the end of the game doesn't let you save for a while before, but I'd estimate five or six hours. However, I have to say that while I love this game and do sort of wish there was more, it really was the perfect length. Any longer and they would have been stretching it; it was exactly as long as it needed to be. Other than that... hmm. I found it odd that the game's dialogue (what little there was of it) was subtitled. All the voice acting was in Japanese (except the gibberish Yorda kept babbling). Uh. Yeah, I think that's it.

Okay, so, rant over. Simply awesome game. I propose this one for SuperBodacious Holiday Extravaganza -- it's short, and lots of fun, and the ending is neat.

I leave you with two things.

1) The game eventually leads you full circle back to the hall with the ceramic pots. Up on a raised dais, several shadow demons are standing in a circle and doing something ritualistic. You run up there ready to kick some ass, and they scatter. But in the center of what was their circle, sits Yorda (who was captured a bit earlier), who has been turned to stone. You charge after the demons, beating them up until they turn into shadow vapor. They seem endless. Not that it's a hard fight -- you can't be hurt. But they keep on coming, and it starts to feel hopeless, and there's Yorda, staring into space as a statue.

And then...

You start to realize that the shadow vapor that's left when you kill each one of these things gets drawn into one of the pots. And the pot, thereafter, starts to glow...

2) You're standing in the windmill area. The game, as you have seen, is gorgeous. But here you can see the far shore, with its lush forest, and the waves crashing on the rocks. There's a little pond next to the windmill, rippling and reflecting everything.

...And if you leave Yorda alone, she'll walk around the area by herself, looking at the far shore, at the sky, at the reflections in the water. She'll walk toward birds, and when they take flight, she watches them go.