Time to start this thing properly and by properly I mean incrementally of course. Just a touch over six months after my pre-amble to the whole thing and I realise I neglected the minor detail of actually starting the actual list. You know, minor details like that.
So with as little ado as possible let's start what will be my absolutely definitive, unquestionably final and irrevocably vital ranking of my all time favourite video games. A long time in the thinking and not a short time in the making, Entries #100 to #91 let's go...
#100: Black (2006)
The starting point for this list might not be the heaviest of decisions I've ever had to make but nonetheless it took me a while to figure out what did and didn't make the cut at the very top. Black was a gritty PS2-era first person shooter from Criterion Games, the guys who brought us the Burnout series. Both at the time and in retrospect it's not the kind of game you would necessarily expect from this studio. The original Burnout trilogy was already done and dusted by the time Black released, so how did it distinguish itself in a market that was yet to be engulfed by Call of Duty and it's many imitators?
For the standards of the time it was a great looking game, everything felt pretty tactile and responsive. The scenery was destructive in a way that really stood out for that gaming generation too with chunks of concrete and masonry flying out of the walls whenver one of the many, many gun fights broke out.
The plot, relayed in a series of live action vignettes rapidly edited for effect was perhaps not its strongest point. Above everything else it was the exceptional sound design that made this stand a ways above the competition of the time. Proper directional audio would not be a thing for quite some time when Black came out but the sound work here had some serious depth and volume to it. The intensity of the gunfire, the chaos of a prolonged fire fight as you moved to evade oncoming hostiles. A late era PS2 game that put the hardware through its paces and demonstrated why it was the console of choice in the early noughties. A mighty last hurrah for an epic gaming generation before Sony kinda sorta tripped over itself with the launch of the PS3. Black though, this is a game that deserves to be remembered.
#99: Neverwinter Nights (2002)
Changing gears to the humble classic RPG of yesteryear now. You know, I can't say I naturally gravitate towards the fantasy genre. Your Dungeons & Dragons, your dwarves and elven folk, your swords and sorcery. There are exceptions of course, I love me some Conan The Barbarian for instance but I guess that falls more under the grim epic sub-genre of fantasy. As you may have seen from my 2025 game round-up I was a late-comer to the Baldur's Gate series but weirdly and by random chance I was there for Neverwinter Nights at the very start. Just happening to have a modest PC at the time helped but I was perusing the selection at my local GAME store (or was it Electronic Boutique at the time?) when this game caught my eye.
Now Neverwinter Nights doesn't get quite the big-up in the collective memory of gamers, a more impressive game engine aside the plot and characterisation have never been placed on a par with its more beloved predecessors. Nonetheless for me as someone who was very new to this world at the time, I felt this was an engrossing adventure for the time I spent with it. You got a decent sense of atmosphere and place to the entire thing as you sought to free the city of Neverwinter from a dark magical plague and the nefarious forces that beset it. For me, when it comes to classic top down RPG's this was the game that set the standard for quite some time as the genre underwent a decline in popularity long before its return in the age of Kickstarter a decade later. Never actually completed this one now that I think about it and with it getting the modern remaster treatment a few years back I may have to come around to this one again to see how rose tinted my goggles are.
With the rise and fall of the more cinematic RPG in the Bioware vein in the years since the original release, it'll be interesting to see how well it holds up. Still a worthy entry point to the genre that just snuck into the list there..
#98: Shadow Warrior (2013)
Possibly a controversial choice this one, but not as controversial as the original 1997 game that inspired this remake. I have a lot of fond nostalgia for the Build engine and the many classic first person shooters that arose from this humble foundation. A certain blonde haired action movie archetype had his finest moment in a Build engine game but I can't say they were all stone cold classics. There's a lot of commentary out there about the original Shadow Warrior and let's be honest most of it is weighted around the main character being a very reductive, racist caricature of Asian men as seen in various Hollywood movies of times past. Game itself plays fine but I don't know if I personally rate it above and beyond the games of the time.
It's remake though? This was a pleasant surprise. A first person action game with an emphasis on zippy movement, melee combat and a serious abundance of opposition to confront. The new Lo Wang is not a dramatic departure from the old, a self-centred but kinda good natured ass who is handy with a blade. They've just dialled down the racist caraicature a touch. Not exactly a deep characterisation but an improvement on what came before. The game itself moves along at a great pace as Wang finds himself tagging up with a talking magical mask as he stumbles through a plot full of violence, betrayal and well... more violence. There is a pleasing sense of power and momentum to the combat that anticipates what we'd see in DOOM (2016) and Titanfall. It also doesn't overstay the welcome and goes whilst the going is good, alas the same cannot be said for Shadow Warrior 2 which exhibited more of the feature creep we see in games now. Still the first one is a really fun game and worth checking out if you can.
#97: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009)
Funny video games.
Genuinely funny video games.
It might not seem like it now but for a long time this felt like a real rarity to behold unless you were playing a game by 3D Realms or indeed the makers of this game: LucasArts. Very few companies did funny games and even fewer did them well. However when the guys who knew what they were doing here were allowed to do it the results were magnificent. Such is the case with The Secret of Monkey Island, a point and click adventure game that sees you guide hapless pirate Guybrush Threepwood through a series of semi-absurd and fully-absurd scenarios as he looks to fulfil his dreams of becoming a legendary swashbuckler and defeat the ghost pirate LeChuck.
Now my thoughts here mainly concern the 2009 special edition remaster that allowed you to switch between the original 1990 game's presentation and its more modern treatment. Whilst the original is of course a product of its time with a certain level of fiddly awkwardness to the controls, the updated presentation really allowed the game to shine. For a whole generation of gamers the original game was always lauded as an example of a quality game that did comedy right but actually having voice acting here really did it wonders for me. I'm not going to try and do justice to the many highlights here whether it be Stan the ship salesman, the health-conscious cannibals or wielding an array of clever retorts during a sword fight but its safe to say with decades of hindsight that Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and co. were definitely onto something here.
Is it a perfect game? No, even in the special edition the puzzles can feel a little opaque and it can sometimes slow to a crawl whilst you try and reverse-engineer a punchline. Still though, there was no way I could not include it here.
#96: Viewtiful Joe (2003)
This game feels ahead of its time, well ahead of the curve in fact. An action side-scrolling platformer with a fast-forward/rewinding mechanic all presented with a cel-shaded hypoer-kinetic cinematic flourish. All of it running on a GameCube and the PS2 long before indie games would start doing their own leftfield takes on established genres. Of all the games to not get the remaster or remake treatment in recent times, I am genuinely surprised at this particular omission.
It took some inventive leaps making the presentation itself part of the gameplay loop. I was very fond of this game back in the day and reflecting on it now I feel it isn't just a love letter to action films but to an entire era of game production where major studios like Capcom were a lot less risk-averse than they are now..
It's an oddball idea wrapped up in a package that is both visually glorious and decently challenging at the same time. I also think it's a game that would feel as fresh now as it did back in 2003 if it ever did get that re-release. Yeah plenty of games play with time now as a means to progress through levels and solve puzzles but this game did it with a certain manic energy that was all its own. To this day it remains a one-of-a-kind experience and a game that still deserves your time and attention over two decades later.
#95: NBA Street (2001)
If there is one thing I can say for certain, there won't be many sports games in my top hundred. It's nothing personal you understand, it's just never been me really, the whole sports thing that is but there have been exceptions. I've enjoyed playing the odd actual sport from time to time as well as the odd sports game but they have never really figured heavily into my free time.
That said, NBA Street was a really fun back to basics game that captured a certain something about basketball and turned it into a fun game I sank a lot of hours into during my college years. Dispensing with the hardcore authenticity of the main games carrying the NBA branding, this felt like a spiritual update to NBA Jam from a decade earlier.
Stylised at the sweet spot somewhere between real life and action figure, an assortment of real life players play three on three games, employing the use of various skills and power moves to score more points than the other guys for the win. It was such an easy game to get into and in full flow it could get pretty competitive even when playing the CPU. The internet tells me it got a few sequels but has otherwise been dormant for a while.
Believe there may have been a few spiritual follow ups in recent times but whether they grabbed the imagination as much as this one did is a question I will leave for others to answer.
#94: Smuggler's Run (2000)
You know there is something to be said for a simple idea done well. Developed by what is now Rockstar San Diego, Smuggler's Run is a callback to a simpler time in gaming when games didn't need to be anything and everything all in one package. You take charge of one of a number of available vehicles and and as the title suggests you smuggle contraband across a selection of levels evading the authorities or other criminal types as you do so.
It's delightfully uncomplicated and with the bouncy vehicle physics across uneven terrain there was a pleasing sense of chaos and unpredictability to the whole thing. These days Rockstar probably wouldn't approach a concept as focused as this, not when the latest Grand Theft Auto can be a few dozen games rolled into one for your enjoyment.
If memory serves the last time this series was referenced anywhere it was as a new mode in Grand Theft Auto Online some years back. Still I look back on this PS2 title as a quintessentially fun time and I imagine some of the design elements here fed into the vehicular carnage we would see in later GTA games.
File this one under the remake/remaster wishlist as I am pretty confident the core gameplay here has aged well.
#93: Fallout (1997)
Now some may find it surprising that this game is so high up in the ranking as it is here. After all this is Fallout, the Fallout in fact that started the series that has taken up hundreds and hundreds of my gaming hours over many years.
Now just to be clear the original Fallout is indeed a special game to me, a top town isometric RPG in a unique retro futurist setting where the Cold War never ended, old transistor technology got more ambitious and the smiling cynical nostalgia of the past looms over the radioactive post apocalypse of the future.
It was a unique vision that stuck out in the gaming magazines of the time and a real departure from the fantasy settings you got in most RPG's back then. It was also by some distance the darkest and bleakest game in the series that had not yet incorporated the humour and guarded optimism we would later see in its immediate sequel and all the others thereafter. Here the nuclear apocalypse and its aftermath feels heavier, more oppresive with less of the levity that would go on to be such a core part of the series' identity.
That is not why the first game ranks here though, if anything I think the heavier overtone works to its favour. Its more the awakwardness of the gameplay loop, the fiddly controls and the unforgiving difficulty spikes that can make this game a chore to play.
Quintessential gaming archeology in action to play this now in 2026, in fact I played this in the early noughties when it was not that far removed from its release. Even then the shortcomings were apparent. Not sure if another twenty years would be any kinder to the experience as much as I'm fond of it. Still its an important game for me and whilst the series would improve, nearly all the core ideas start here. I think thats worth some recognition at least.
Also, keep a good half dozen save files in reserve if you do play this game at any point. You can back yourself into a corner here far too easily.
#92: Medal of Honour: Allied Assault (2002)
The Medal of Honour series has now faded from the popular memory of gamers but around the turn of the 2000's it could be said to be riding something of a high. Harkening back to a time pre-Halo when the PC master race enjoyed all the best shooters and developers in the console space were all... pretty much playing catch up.
The first few Medal of Honour games were highlights on the original PlayStation and PS2 but console shooters at this point were taking their lead from GoldenEye 007 and the like. So whilst they were fun, that type of game would be superceded in time. In fact it would take some time for consoles to fully close the distance and as a result the best Medal of Honour game would be a PC exclusive upon its release in the early noughties.
To add some context, the first Call of Duty wouldn't arrive until the next year but here we saw a World War II game taking direct cinematic inspiration from Saving Private Ryan and other popular WW2 media of the time. The obvious highlight here is of course the Normandy beach landing level. A core gaming memory for me, an intense onslaught of sight, sound and enemy opposition where every step forward was more agonisingly protracted than the last.
Now like film, games can only be an partial approximation of the real experience but the makers of this game captured something remarkable here I think, something that successive generations of game development have failed to capture when working with the same subject matter. I want to say it's the intensity which is a word that pops up a lot when it comes to first person shooters but here I think they genuinely pulled it off.
Now I can't say the entirety of Allied Assault holds to the standard of this level but given how well crafted said level is I can't not include the game here so here you go.
#91: Theme Hospital (1997)
Now here's a game guaranteed to get gamers of a certain age all nostalgic for bygone times. A hospital simulator with an emphasis on both management and humour. One of those concepts that even now doesn't get tried very often, the main modern equivalent of this game being something like Two Point Hospital.
The original Theme Hospital was something special though, a follow up to the equally beloved Theme Park both created by the much missed developer Bullfrog Productions. Striking a balance between your limited resources and the needs of patients entering your hospital is the name of the game. Said patients are experiencing a variety of comically exagerated conditions which can only be cured by a variety of equally comic cures and treatments.
It's one of those easy to learn but hard to master games that eases you in gently before turning up the demands on your time and money as the days and weeks progress. Most of my games would typically end with widespread sickness breaking out as my janitors struggled to stay on top of their cleaning duties. A deft hand was required to stay on top of things but also anticipate future calamity.
In all honesty I don't think I ever got far into the late game before restarting, it was not an easy game but even now looking back at it I can appreciate the work that went into its design.and its craft. If anything I think I can appreciate the touch of madness that went into its creation all the more now than I did back then and that's why it gets a spot in this list.
...
...well that wasn't too bad was it? I would pat myself on the back had it not, in fact, taken me a decade to get around to this. You won't have to wait six months plus for Part 3, the goal is to finish this thing during the year of our lord 2026 and current projections don't give me reason to think otherwise.
Until next time!
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