My Top 10 Favorite First-Person Shooters

In my recent review of the No One Lives Forever series, I made the comment that those games were among my favorite first-person shooters of all time. That's how I felt when I first played them ten years ago, and replaying them a few weeks ago reminded me of just how much fun they remain, even to this day. That got me thinking: where would I actually rank them among the dozens of FPS games I've played in my lifetime? Thus, after some thought and consideration, I came up with this list of my top ten favorite first-person shooters. Spoiler alert: No One Lives Forever and Doom will be somewhere on this list.

The games that made it on to this list, as well as their relative rankings, are based on the following criteria: (1) How good do I feel the game is, (2) How much of an impact did the game have on me as a gamer, and (3) How interested would I be in replaying the game right now. I also wanted to include only games where FPS gameplay is the primary, defining element; a game like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines would rank higher than a lot of games on this list, but it's an RPG first and foremost, so I had to exclude it. And as much as I wanted to include Metroid Prime, it's really not an FPS at its heart, even though FPS gameplay is a major part of it. Spoiler alert: Vampire Bloodlines and Metroid Prime will not be on this list.

16 Game Mechanics & Tropes That Need to Die

Video games are as much a science as they are an art; for every subjective opinion there also exists objective fact. Much of video game criticism stems from personal taste, with different individuals liking different games based on their past experiences and their own preferences. As with any art form, beauty ultimately lies in the eye of the beholder, but there are occasions when we can look at a certain aspect of a particular game and universally agree whether it's good or bad. If an advertised mechanic doesn't work the way it was intended, it's both fair and accurate to say that mechanic is broken and hurts the game's overall quality.

Over the years, a lot of mechanics have worked their way into the games we play. A lot of them are welcome innovations for the sake of convenience and have contributed positively to games as a whole. Some mechanics, on the other hand, show up with the best of intentions and ultimately prove disappointing and underwhelming. Some of these mechanics have stuck around and become so prevalent that their presence in games has started to annoy me, while certain other longstanding tropes have really begun to wear their welcome with me. The following are, in my opinion, 16 game mechanics and tropes that need to die.

The Top 10 From 2012: Editorials

With 2012 now a distant memory, it's time to reflect on the year's greatest achievements and rank them in order of their success. Since I hardly ever play new releases, I can't compile a list of the top ten releases from 2012. Instead, I'll be highlighting some of my best articles from 2012. Shameless self-promotion with an opportunity to get some of my favorite pieces on the front page again. Huzzah.

This time I'll be ranking some of my favorite editorials, those opinion pieces where I talk about some aspect of gaming and compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of a few games. Continue reading for the full list.

The Top 10 From 2012: Free Indie Games

With 2012 now a distant memory, it's time to reflect on the year's greatest achievements and rank them in order of their success. Since I hardly ever play new releases, I can't compile a list of the top ten releases from 2012. Instead, I'll be highlighting some of my best articles from 2012. Shameless self-promotion with an opportunity to get some of my favorite pieces on the front page again. Huzzah.

I didn't play as many free indie games as I would've liked in 2012, so this list isn't much of a "top 10" -- it's more like "the only 10" ranked in order of preference. Some of them were a little disappointing, but the top half of the list were all outstanding, and even the bottom half showed a lot of potential. Continue reading for the full list.

Top 10 Alternatives to Skyrim

So you've played 500 hours worth of Skyrim and have finally finished experiencing all there is to do? Or maybe you only played for a short while before getting bored with it? Perhaps you don't want to pay $60 for a brand new game, and don't even own Skyrim? For whatever reason, we all come to a point when we stop playing Skyrim and search for games to fill the void it's left behind, whether that be a craving for more games like Skyrim, or for good RPGs in general.

As it turns out, there are actually a fair number of recent "fantasy-themed role-playing games" that are all good and worth playing, so I thought I'd compile a list for anyone looking for an RPG fix after Skyrim. Continue reading for the full list.

The Top 10 From 2011: Best Reviews

In which I highlight some of my best articles from 2011. Shameless self-promotion with a chance to get some of my favorite pieces back on the front page. Huzzah.

Just to round out a solid trifecta, this time I'll be ranking ten of my best reviews. These won't be the ten best games I covered, because a lot of the games I covered sucked, quite frankly. These are the ten reviews that I had the most fun writing, and which I feel are some of the more descriptive and analytical ones. Exempt from this list are any reviews I wrote of free indie games, since I've got a separate list linking back to those articles. Click the full article for the full list.

The Top 10 From 2011: Best Editorials

In which I highlight some of my best articles from 2011. Shameless self-promotion with a chance to get some of my favorite pieces back on the front page. Huzzah.

This time around I'll be ranking ten of my favorite editorials, those opinion pieces where I rant with divine authority on the industry: what's wrong with it, what needs to change, things that are good and we need to see more of, etc. I apparently had a lot of opinions back when I started this blog; here are some of the more interesting ones that also tend to have more original ideas and analysis than what other critics come up with. Click the full article for the full list.

The Top 10 From 2011: Free Indie Games

It's that time of year when everyone reflects on the year's greatest achievements and ranks them in order of their success. Since I hardly ever play new releases, I can't compile a list of the top ten releases from 2011. Instead, I'll be highlighting some of my best articles from 2011. Shameless self-promotion with an opportunity to get some of my favorite pieces on the front page again. Huzzah.

I played a lot of free indie games in the past year. Most of them were pretty good, but some of them were a lot more memorable than others. Some of them had that extra spark of creativity to make them truly unique and original. Some of them were just a lot more fun than the rest. Not all of these games were released in 2011, but here are my top ten favorite free indie games that I covered in 2011. Click the full article for the list.

10 Games to Play for Christmas

'Tis the season, as the saying goes, to be jolly and play lots of video games. And yet there aren't very many Christmas-themed video games that are all that good. There's Elf Bowling as perhaps the epitome of stupid Christmas games, but then most of the others, like Santa Claus Saves the Earth, are so obscure that they're almost unplayable.

So what, then, are we left to play for Christmas? Luckily there are still plenty of games that come close to the essence of Christmas, even without being overtly related to the season, and yet more that are especially enjoyable in light of the season. So here are 10 games to consider playing in the weeks surrounding Christmas.

My Top 10 Horror Games

Horror is a tricky genre; it's really easy to get your game billed as "horror," just by throwing zombies and blood into it, but the best horror games are the ones that evoke a genuine feeling of dread, discomfort, and, well, horror. A lot of so-called "horror" games aren't really scary or horrifying, and it always boggles my mind that these faux horror games always top the mainstream "best horror games" lists.

So here's my pick of the games that best capture the essence of horror. As an added bonus, I'll even throw in a couple of honorable mentions to titles that accomplish some of the crucial aspects of horror, despite not being full-on horror games.

Top 20 Video Game Soundtracks

"Top 20" is kind of misleading, because I don't even want to begin trying to rank these. But it wouldn't be very stylish to call this a "List of 20 Great Arbitrarily-Ranked Video Game Soundtracks," would it? In fact, it might not even be 20 soundtracks at all, as I'm almost certain I'll suddenly remember one or two more as soon as I post this.

The criteria for selecting these soundtracks is based primarily on how well I could remember music five, ten, fifteen years after playing the games. I looked over my shelves and collections of games just trying to see if I could remember anything about the music, and these are the 20 that I actually have lasting memories of. And that, I feel, is perhaps more important than a soundtrack's technical merits.

Continue reading the full article for my pick of top 20 video game soundtracks, complete with four embedded tracks from each of the games. Can you guess which games and songs will be featured?