My top 10 games of all time.

This list is in no particular order, it is just 10 of my favourite games some are newer than others.

Guild Wars

I shall start the list with a MMO under the name of Guild Wars, I believe this game has been the under dog in the MMO market especially compared to the likes of WoW. Yes it does have quite the core fan base. But any casual gamer if they have heard of it and a lot of them will tell you no. The game is getting on a bit now as it was released mid 2000's, 05 if memory serves me correctly as of probably beginning of this year I finally escaped it's grasp on me, yeah I do have a few titles left to grind away at before I can say I have absolutely nothing left to do in game, to be honest I can live with my legacy left behind in the Guild Wars world and until Guild Wars 2 comes out I probably won't be getting back in to it. I have dabbled in a number of other MMO's but Guild Wars was the only one that took hundreds of hours of my life from me. I still to this day don't know why I was so addicted to this game but it does hold a special place in my heart.

Half-Life
The game that started Valves journey in to the hearts of many, many gamers. This game was probably the first game I played that had quite an in depth story behind it. Everything I had played before this game shooter wise, the story was 'There's the bad guy go kill him. Why? Because he's the bad guy.' While I still love those kind of games that essentially just give you a gun and tell you to go nuts, this game changed that. There was a lot of thought effort and time put in to the story, not saying it was the first one to do that of course it was my first story telling shooter game. I am much more of a fan of this game than the sequel. Half-Life 2 I still love that game to bits but there is far to many holes in the gap between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Valve totally could of done other games to fill in the missing pieces. Even if they had done a sequel to Blue Shift and Opposing Force that would have been more than enough game to explain a little more. I still think they should do a Blue Shift 2 with Barney and the events running up to Half-Life 2. You start off and he is undercover with the combine. You could have easily made a game with Barney and his time under cover with the combine, watch him make choices he later regrets so he doesn't blow his cover. I could sit down and come up with many situations you could make a story for a new Blue Shift or Opposing Force game. It has so many missing links you could fill in and you know from Valves huge fan base that people would be all over the games should they be released. I'm gonna stop my little rant there anyway and go play through Half Life up to Episode 2 as soon as I'm done writing this.

Road Rash 2
Now I am going back even further in time to one of the games from my childhood which I used to play the crap out of. Road Rash 2 for my Sega Mega Drive. I loved this game, it's racing motor bikes while trying to beat your opponent with bats and chains what is not to like. My only gripe at this game is the lack of save ability, but that's more at the console than the game it's self. Saying that though if I was able to save my game and beat it, the replay value probably wouldn't be as high as it was. Saving on this game involved leaving the console on with the game paused. All that time spent playing this game just so I could get the best bike available, I believe I got it about 4 times but because it took me so long to save up for it, I never got that used to the bike and crashed a lot due me not being used to the handling and speed of the bike usually ending up in me getting game over.

Final Fantasy IX
That's right Final Fantasy 9 not 7. Not to say 7 isn't a good game but it's not my favourite. I was a little late to jump on the Final Fantasy bandwagon getting into it with the release of the 9th in the series. But it is my favourite of all the Final Fantasy games. I have played it through so many times I could probably sit down and tell you the entire story start to finish.

Burnout Series

Burnout is probably my all time favourite racing game. Probably Burnout 3 being favourite of the lot. It's the most fun you can have crashing cars without being hospital bound.

Deathspank

It is a small(ish) game from developers Hothead Games. I am including all three games as this entry as well. I fricking love Deathspank and his random humour, abuse of orphans and just the generally weird ass hack and slash adventure. If you haven't heard or played any of the Deathspank games, be it the original, Thongs of Virtue or the latest adventure with our random hero, The Baconing. I suggest go invest in one of them, I believe they cost round about a tenner for each game. It's definitely worth the money.

Team Fortress 2

I have been a fan of Team Fortress since the days of TFC, never did play the quake mod though. I have only one gripe again TF2 and believe it or not it's not about hats. It's about how escort maps such as Hunted were never brought along with all the other game modes. For those of you unaware of this map type. Basically one person was a VIP which one team had to protect while getting them to a certain area to win the game while the other team had to assassinate them. I spent more time playing escort maps than any other type. I should really go look see if modders have made custom maps with escort objectives. I realise we have payload which is technically an escort type game but it's not the same. Anyway rant aside, this game is well it's fun as hell whether you enjoy using the variety of weapons available or just using the stock loadouts through one of the many vanilla servers which don't allow anything but stock weapons.

Left 4 Dead

Third entry in my list from Valve. This doesn't really much explanation why it was put in my list. It's killing zombies with your buddies. How can you not like it.

Unreal Tournament

This game was probably the first multiplayer competitive shooter I played. Epic totally need to revive this game and when they do they need to make it just a tournament, no storys like UT3, just pure good old fashion killing the other guy purely for the fact that you want to be better than them. They have Unreal if they want to put a story behind the game, Unreal Tournament should be kept as a Tournment nothing more nothing less. Anyway before I get in to a full blown rant I have to admit this game is fantastic, and whether you pick up the original or any other version of the game it doesn't matter.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge

While this is technically an expansion pack, one which I dub greatest expansion in existence, you can argue with me all you want you will never change my mind on the matter, I believe this game could have easily stood by itself without a problem. This game along with with Unreal Tournament was one of the games that got me into lan gaming, primarily with my brothers, while I haven't been to a lan for ages as it's a lot easier just to play online, I used to love sitting in playing over lans trying to out do one another. Though I hated playing my younger brother as he was always Yuri and made sure he was near enough to both Allied and Soviet bases so he could just send in Yuri to get their construction yard and get the best of each faction. I always swayed away from Yuri and went either Allied or Soviet, had a solid plan for each team though. If I was Allied it was simple as getting a shed load of rocketeers and prism tanks. If I was Soviet I just defended my base until I had a ridiculous amount of Mammoth Tanks, I would go for a minimum of 50, this would be followed by the complete and utter destruction of anything that got in my way, while this massacrer was in progress I would be preparing a second wave of Mammoth Tanks to join them.

Team Fortress Arcade

I recently came across a little game called Team Fortress Arcade, as you may well have guessed it is based off of a well known Valve title we know and love under the name of Team Fortress. The game itself is actually a old school side scrolling beat um up type game like Final Fight or Streets of Rage. I guess it's more shoot um up than beat um up but never the less, you get to play through 9 different levels as one of the 9 different characters from the Team Fortress series with up to 3 other people playing with you. They have tried to get the characters as close to their Team Fortress counter parts, with them all having the correct health, speed and weapons.

Each playable class has different attacks which I am stealing straight out of the read me file for the game just so you get an idea of what each character can do in this game and here we are:

Scout: Can double jump by pressing "jump" again when in the air.
Soldier: Can rocket jump if you press "attack" right after pressing "jump."
Pyro: Flamethrower and flare gun do after burn damage to enemies.
Demoman: Fires sticky bombs at the ground when you press "attack" in the air.
Jump again to ignite them.  You can sticky jump by being on top of the sticky
bombs when you jump.
Engineer: Hit your sentry once to make it a level 2 sentry.
Hit it again to make it level 3.
Medic: you can control the height of your jump by holding down the "jump" button
longer.
Sniper: Hold your "attack" button to charge your sniper rifle.  A fully charged
shot blows through multiple enemies.
Spy: Hold the "attack" button to cloak and become invisible to on-screen enemies.

At the moment the game does not include online multi player, which would be a nice touch as at the moment controls for all 4 players are spread out on a single keyboard and I have not worked out how to change them yet due to a lack of options in game. You could easily get a couple people playing quite happily with one using the wasd controls and another using the numpad, but you would be hard pushed to get 4 people comfortable while playing this game. At the moment I had no one about to play this with at the time of writing this so I gave the game a go on single player. I have tried out a few different characters as it gives you a chance to choose and or change which class you want to play as. Classes such as Pyro, Heavy and Soldier you can quite happily play the game solo, but some other ones such as Sniper or Engineer were really quite difficult to play this by your self with and would be much better suited to multi player. You will also see some familiar aspects of game as well such as payload and command points levels implemented in to the game which is pretty cool. I kept dying on the payload race level, I think it was level 4 but don't quote me on that, while I'm on the topic of dying, when you do all that happens is you get a continue countdown in the corner, and this feature is unlimited, so as long as you keep continuing you can die as many times as you want. I like to think of it as the respawn system that Team Fortress has.

It's a fun little game and takes next to no time at all to download, so if you have a spare 10-20 minutes and want something to do, I suggest giving this a wee download and try it out.

Happy Birthday Team Fortress.

So Team Fortress turns 15 today. For the next 24 hours, if you play TF2 you will get a free party hat (more hats yay...), A free noisemaker (which will probably be annoying as hell) that have unlimited uses on TF's birthday and can only be used each year on that day! Free cake and gifts (in the form of remodeled health kits and ammo packs)!

You will also see some birthday items of previous years including: a TF birthday beach ball and the Celebration Gib, which causes gibbed players to explode in a shower of balloons and confetti (which sounds pretty cool)

I never have been about for any of Team Fortress's birthdays so I think I may go for a couple games of 2fort and get my free hat. Also I haven't played any TF for a week or 3 so it's a good enough excuse.