A bustling little clockwork village, living at the same time, on the same day, in the same season, as our own. A little place you could visit anytime you wanted. It's still there, if you want to go.

An astonishing amalgam of walking simulator, Italian giallo, minimum wage ennui, absurdist humor, zine culture, Junji Ito, and post-everything societal critique, wrapped in an eye-searingly garish but strangely beautiful hand-drawn 2D/3D art style. Anthology of the Killer is a definitive example of games as pure, out-there pleasure.

The Beginner's Guide is a game about game developers and game development, and about the blurry line between fact and fiction and self and identity. It is a visual, interactive epic poem, a feat of illusion. It is one of a kind.

The world of Rapture, and the character of Andrew Ryan, are indelible pieces of the video game narrative canon. It is an honor to have been able to contribute even a little bit to the series.

There are personal games, and then there's Butterfly Soup. There are funny games, and then there's Butterfly Soup. There are heartfelt games, and then there's Butterfly Soup. There are other games, and then there's Butterfly Soup.

The moral ambiguity of playing as a fascist enforcer who joins the rebellion after being betrayed by his own overlords was uniquely compelling for the era. There's no light side/dark side points here— just how you choose to play your role.

If you asked me which From Soft game I had the most fun with, or would recommend you play first, it would be Elden Ring— but if you asked me which From Soft game I’d be coming back to 10, 15, 20 years from now, it’d be the one that changed it all: Dark Souls. Demanding, beguiling, confounding, and rewarding in equal measure, Dark Souls has more than earned its place in the gaming pantheon.

Along with Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle introduced me to the way that hilarious writing and stellar voice acting could elevate a production to another plane. The game's mind-twisting, time-jumping leaps of logic are in a league of their own.

Radically political before games touched real-world issues with a ten-foot pole. A game that feels as deep and expansive as the global conspiracies it wrestles with.

Hands-down the best-written game I've ever played, period. Computer RPGs were invented so Disco Elysium could exist.

A love letter to the Immersive Sim, by one of the founding fathers of the subgenre. An absolute triumph.

Double Dragon was a kind of wish fulfillment for a nerdy, bullied, beat-down kid in the '80s-- that I could be cool, and kick ass. There wasn't a lot of "hardcore" or "badass" in games before Double Dragon; I reveled in its jump kicks and chain whips for all they were worth.

The hook is that you get to romance a bunch of hot dads; the heart is a touching, too-real relationship between father and daughter. Gorgeous art, uproarious humor, and depth of feeling combine into something sincerely affecting.

In 1997, Dungeon Keeper let you be evil, and evil was good.

The cheeky humor of No One Lives Forever was dissolved in acid, then sprinkled over the heart of this gritty, blood-soaked playground of bullet time and bicycle kicks. I couldn't be more grateful that my first level design job allowed me to run around in F.E.A.R.'s back yard.

Somehow, I was obsessed with Fallout from when I first saw a prerelease blurb about it in PC Gamer magazine. I downloaded the demo over dial-up, I checked the Interplay message board daily, I preordered— lucky me that it turned out to be one of the greatest, most unique and influential RPGs of all time.

To me, Fallout 3 is about as perfect a modernized reimagining of a classic game as there can be. As a day zero Fallout fanatic, I was and am so thankful for this game.

While the unique gameplay concept behind Fatal Frame-- using a haunted camera to fend off hostile ghosts-- is great, what I find really gripping about the game is its specificity: the collapsing traditional Japanese manor house you explore, the connection to local myths and rituals. Fatal Frame is not just something you play, but somewhere you go.

Much podcast has been spilled about Far Cry 2, but it's the combination of its influences and its ambitions-- to present a treacherous, grim open world that embodies the emergent gameplay ethos of the Immersive Sim-- that makes it truly sing, and live on far beyond its vintage.

There's something unparalleled about Firewatch-- the sense of place, the warmth of voice. A crystalline memory, its vistas rendered in Technicolor.

Sweet and simple, a beautiful little interactive graphic novel about the mundanity and romance of life.

Probably the game that was the single most "important" to me when I played it, at the tender age of 13. It showed me how games could be a full sensory experience, with cinematic animation, awesome licensed music and a sweeping but personal story, brought to life with top-notch voice acting. Full Throttle changed everything for me.

I was a devoted fan of the Hitman series from the time its prerelease demo dropped over Thanksgiving break in the year 2000. Almost two decades later the series truly found it groove, combining the best of its dark-but-ridiculous, open-ended-but-puzzle-like, completely unique, completely odd, completely charming style into a series of slapstick murder adventures beyond compare.

A private little moment, vividly remembered, presented with humor and grace.

One of the earliest breakthrough examples of a commercial console game that really felt like "art." Its quiet confidence in the player would go on to inspire so much.

The Mechwarrior 2 engine was repurposed to spin a low-poly tale of bell bottoms, betrayal, and muscle cars beefed up with automatic weaponry. Hey Stampede, how about a poem?

It's just kind of unbelievable that this was a commercial release way back in 2004, and a franchise-making hit to boot. The greatest video game soundtrack of all time is just the cherry on top of this heartfelt, iconoclastic creation.

A rippingly unique combo driving/lightgun/co-op arcade game that blends awesome early-'90s anime style with American buddy cop bravado. Experiencing it in the original two-person seated cabinet is a must.

The NES version was my introduction to the point-and-click adventure genre; thank god for a Nintendo Power cover story, and the video store down the street keeping their NES rental shelf stocked. A deeply strange and special thing to encounter when everything I knew was Mario and Zelda; a game that fundamentally changed me.

What we have here is a triple threat: technical marvel, groundbreaking game design, next-level cinematic presentation; the original Metal Gear Solid presaged the following 20 years of AAA game development at least.

The incredible craft and personality of the pixel art in Metal Slug was absolutely mind-blowing to stumble upon in a mid-'90s video arcade. Still unsurpassed to this day.

If somehow a PS1 game could be played off of a grungy VHS tape you found while trespassing in the horror section of an abandoned, condemned video rental store, that would be Puppet Combo's games. At their best, they are truly riveting, sometimes uproarious, always terrifying odes to the lo-fi tension of horror games and horror films from yesteryear, whether it's Resident Evil meets Silent Night, Deadly Night meets the Easter Bunny with Murder House, or Thief: The Dark Project meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Stay Out of the House. The vibes are bad; the vibes are perfect.

The No One Lives Forever series was far ahead of its time, and the second game delivers on all the promise of the first. Cate Archer remains the forgotten hero most worthy of icon status.

Tiny, personal, deeply relatable— a moment in the turning point from adolescence to adulthood that we've all lived through, beautifully encapsulated.

Short-form. Non-violent. Narrative-focused. All voiceover, no characters on screen. A clear personal inspiration; a sea change for the medium.

A campy, terrifying, and utterly strange feat of commercial art that drew heavy inspiration from Alone in the Dark, filtered it through Japanese game design and George Romero's canon, and established an entire genre.

Flawless. Revolutionary. Available on every platform the world has ever known. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Shinji Mikami and Capcom.

As a little kid obsessed with Double Dragon, River City Ransom's layering-on of RPG-lite and mini-open-world mechanics were pretty horizon-expanding. My personal heaven would be visiting every little shop the game has to offer, forever.

One of the most wry, funny, dryly absurdist adventures of all time, featuring pitch-perfect voice acting and comic timing that make it eminently replayable to this day.

At its best, a vivid little portal into the mundanity and wonder of another time and place— the Japanese suburbs of the mid-'80s. An extravagantly-produced slice of life like no other.

"In my restless dreams I see that town, Silent Hill." And it has never left me.

Systematizing suburban American consumerism and turning it into a huge commercial hit-- The Sims is either a bone dry social critique that went laughing all the way to the bank, or a simple product of its time and place. Astounding either way.

Much media has dramatized the zombie apocalypse; State of Decay thrillingly (and somewhat jankily) systematizes it, to harrowing, chunky, satisfying ends.

A practically wordless, perfect game. That a peak like this was reached as early as 1994 is simply humbling.

Being just 11 years old when the game came out, Syndicate was my first exposure to anything 'cyberpunk'— and so its diorama-sized depiction of brutal corporate warfare in a technodystopian future was an edgy revelation to me.

Re-releases have made this early, and notoriously obtuse, Immersive Sim much more accessible, and I'm grateful for it— more people should be able to play through the origin point of so much of what was to come.

The second game in the series, and the first developed by Irrational, brought heavy RPG elements ala Ultima Underworld back into the Immersive Sim— as well as a focus on narrative vibrancy that would fuel later efforts in the subgenre.

Though Ultima Underworld and System Shock are the geeky progenitors, Thief is what I see as the true beginning of the modern Immersive Sim.

Wong Kar Wai meets the Quake 2 engine, resulting in a feat of cinematic, interactive alchemy that will change how you see games forever.

A very overt… "homage," let's say, to the twisted manga genius of Junji Ito. World of Horror understands its source material so perfectly that it's almost like it was born of the man himself.

The Yakuza series truly found itself (and its audience) when Yakuza 0 took us on a surreal, hilarious journey through the organized crime underworld of '80s economic bubble Japan. The series's long-awaited worldwide popularity could not be more well-deserved.

One of the best reasons to invest in a CD-ROM drive in the mid '90s has just kept on going, irreverent, eccentric, and oddly educational as ever.