Some Video Games I Think You Should Play Before You Die (Or Get Bored of Playing Games Altogether)
Since the release of ‘Pong’ in 1972, there have been quite a lot of video games that have been released on all sorts of different platforms. There are probably just as many good ones as there are good, but there are certain games that a fine cut above the rest. Either because they were revolutionary in one way or another. It can be a bit overwhelming trying to find a new game to play sometimes! Fortunately, I am here to make life a little bit easier for you in that regard.
This is a pretty unoriginal blog topic that has been explored many times before, but I wanted to give my little take on it and give you some games I have played really think are worth your time. There should be something here for everyone.
I tend to waffle during my blogs, so I will try to avoid that so we are not here all day. Any game I have mentioned before in blog form will have a link to the corresponding blog. I will also tell you any consoles you can play these games (legitimately) on, to make life as simple as possible.
I also wish to reiterate that I am only going to mention games that I have played. So if you expect to see classics like ‘Silent Hill 2’, ‘Red Dead Redemption’ or ‘UNDERTALE’ (for example) you going to be out of luck because I have not played them (yet) so don’t get upset if your favourite isn’t here. That is not to say that any game I haven’t mentioned isn’t good either, I am just throwing you some games I like and recommend you play before you die or give up playing video games altogether. Finally, there is no preference or order in which I recommend you play these games.
Skyrim (PS3/XBOX 360/PS4/XBOX 1/PC/Switch)
Any gamer who hasn’t heard of ‘Skyrim’ is not really a gamer. It took the whole gaming world by storm when it was first released back in 2011, almost 10 years ago when this blog was first created. It is still as fresh and exciting as it was then, partly thanks to the modding community as well as the overall really supportive fanbase.
The main quest has you play as the legendary ‘Dragonborn’, whose destiny is to defeat the evil dragon Alduin. If you stop playing the game at the end of that quest, you are quite frankly a fool. This game has hundreds of quests for you to conquer and has many interesting and unique characters for you to talk, fight and even marry. It is one of the finest open-world RPGs I have ever played and I still go back for more every so often to explore such a wonderful world and it’s many dark and dank dungeons for the 1000th time.
And if you feel you that completed all the base, vanilla quests (which is technically impossible) there are the game’s DLCs to try. They are ‘Dawnguard’, which has you face or join a vampire cult or vampire hunters, ‘Dragonborn’ which has you face off a Dragonborn of old, called Miraak in the distant isle of Solstheim to find new characters, new enemies and a new home to settle down with a spouse of your choosing and ‘Hearthfire’, which gives you the ability to build some huge houses in three different areas in the game.
‘Skyrim’ has also one of the most incredible soundtracks in gaming that (was composed by Jeremy Soule and) elevates the game to a whole new level. I have written about the soundtrack briefly before, but you really have to listen to it with the game to truly appreciate the magical majesty of it all.
And thanks to all its glorious milking, there are so many ways for you to enjoy this game…well, unless you try playing it in VR or on the Switch, as sources tell me both of those ports are disasters. That said, ‘Skyrim’, like many of Bethesda's games are buggy and gloriously glitchy.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64/Wii/GameCube/Wii U/ iQue Player/3DS
Like ‘Skyrim’, ‘Ocarina of Time’ is the fifth instalment of its franchise. It was the first ‘Legend of Zelda’ to feature 3D graphics, which was a pretty deal in 1998.
You play as Link in the fantasy land of Hyrule on a quest to stop Ganondorf, King of the Gerudo tribe, from obtaining the Triforce, a sacred wish-granting relic. Link travels through time and navigates dungeons to awaken the Seven Sages, who can seal Ganondorf forever. With some of the most iconic music in gaming (composed by Koji Kondo), engaging yet infuriating puzzles and the most confusing and frustrating water sections, it is a truly wonderful game that I do not want to spoil too much for you.
When deciding what games to put in this blog, both this game and ‘Super Mario 64’ came to mind as they are both iconic classics. ‘Super Mario 64’ could be argued that it was more influential for similar reasons that ‘Ocarina of Time’ was. It took a well-established franchise and made it 3D with lots of places to explore and revamped the combat, thus changing the understanding of how to play a Mario game.
Pretty much all of the ‘Super Mario’ and ‘Legend of Zelda’ games follow their own cookie-cutter formulas but make gimmick changes to each new entry to keep the respective franchise fresh (with some examples of course). After great thought and slightly biased emotions, I put ‘Ocarina of Time’ here because I believe the way it designed its world and overall quest had a lot more impact on how modern open world games would later take shape. I could be totally wrong with that premise, but that is fine as it is my blog and not yours 😉
Final Fantasy VII (PS/PS4/PSP/PC/Switch/Andriod/XBOX 1)
Whilst on the topic of turning well-established 2D franchises into 3D masterpieces, the seventh instalment of the ‘Final Fantasy’ franchise is one I only played late 2018 on the PS4! When I played it, I pretended that I was playing it on the original PlayStation and imagined how the world would have interpreted what many insist is ‘the greatest game of all time’. I’ll be honest, I was totally blown away by the experience! For its time, it was a HUGE game. The original was spread across 3 discs for goodness sake! It is packed to the teeth with cinematic 3D cutscenes against 2D backgrounds that rarely pulled the player out of the immersion of a totally original (and often confusing) story that I dare not explain because I am still pretty unsure about it myself.
Part of my inspiration of wanting to play this game was the excitement that the gaming world and friends built up with the announcement of the ‘Final Fantasy VII’ remake. I always knew that ‘Final Fantasy VII’ was a fan favourite, but not in the volumes I saw during the initial announcement.
I am incredibly curious and cautious about how the developers are going to cram all that the original had to offer one current generation software (if that is what they are going to do). I am also really excited how Nobuo Uematsu’s iconic score for this game would be reimagined and reorchestrated for a whole new breed of players who would have no idea what all the excitement was about.
If you are looking for an incredibly fantastic and timeless RPG with some of the most famous scenes and music in all of gaming, buy and play this game. You will not be disappointed. In fact, buy and play ANY of the ‘Final Fantasy’ games, as they are all brilliant (in my opinion of course).
Flower (PS4/PS3/iOS/PS Vita)
‘Flower’ is the third game developed by Thatgamecompany, who are the people who made ‘Journey’ and ‘flOw’. With this game, you control the wind as you float around collect flower petals in seven levels by tilting the controller of your choice. You may think that that doesn’t sound very interesting or engaging for a game, but like ‘Journey’ and ‘flOw’, there is a lot more to ‘Flower’ than meets the eye.
I could have put ‘Journey’ here, as that is a truly remarkable game that I have waffled about many times before, but ‘Flower’ is not as well known as ‘Journey’, which is a shame, as it’s messages are far more relevant to the sceptical ones of ‘Journey’. Both games are also really short, with ‘Flower’ being one of the shortest games I am aware of. You can easily beat this game in under an hour if you really wanted to speed through it, but don’t do that. ‘Flower’ is a very peaceful game and is a refreshing breath of fresh air if you are fed up of killing things or being killed.
‘Flower’ also has a lovely soundtrack, composed by Vincent Diamante that has different elements that come and go depending on what you're doing at a given level, which means that you will hear this beautiful soundtrack differently each time you pick up that controller. It is a beautiful game in everything you see and hear basically!
I must admit that I am being totally biased with this entry and I don’t even care. This is one of my favourite games and I really think you should play it. It is as cheap as chips on the mentioned platforms, and there is an online bundle on the PS Store that includes ‘Journey’, ‘flOw’, and ‘Flower’ (I believe such bundle exists as a physical platform but my memory fails here) that is also rather cheap. Play all of these games, but for all the purposes of being a consistent blogger, play ‘Flower’ first!
Bloodborne (PS4)
Now, back to killing things!
‘Bloodborne’ is a very bloody, murderous game that is incredibly difficult for newcomers, but anyone who has played any of the ‘Dark Souls’ games and love that style of world building and enemy design should get on alright with this game as ‘Bloodborne’ was made by the same people. That being said, some of ‘Dark Souls’ key elements are removed which may through fans of the Soulsborne games. There is no real punishment when you die for example. You are also not spoon fed a shield either. Instead, you are given a gun that is mostly used for your parrying needs. The combat is quicker and far more aggressive than any of the Soulsborne series before (and after) it. On the surface, it is a dark and gory game with fantastic boss encounters and a brilliant gothic world. If you are prepared to dig deeper and explore all the game has to offer, you will discover several twisted Lovecraftian narratives originally conjured and spat out into the form known as ‘Bloodborne’.
‘Bloodborne’ has some of the finest music in the Soulsborne franchise that features six of the best composers in the business including Michael Wandmacher, Cris Velasco and Yuka Kitamura. As with previous games in the Soulsborne franchise, most of the music accompanies boss fights and they, on the whole, are bloody brilliant (pardon the pun). There is also a DLC called ‘The Old Hunters’ if you fancy a REAL challenge.
If you want to give the ‘Dark Souls’ games ago, but not sure whether you will like it, play ‘Bloodborne’ first. That may sound bizarre, but it will all make sense in time. I briefly cover some of those reasons in my ‘Dark Souls II’ blog, which I will leave for you to read at your own leisure.
Literally ANY Main Entry Pokemon Game* (Various)
I cannot think of any reason why you wouldn’t have played any of the Pokemon games. It is a 20-year old franchise with addictive and simple RPG mechanics with fun worlds to explore and original Pokemon to capture, train and evolve into new stronger, cooler looking ones. Some don’t evolve and they are usually really rarer, stronger ones that you can gloat about to all of your friends about. In the more recent games, there is now some established lore besides which evil organisation is wanting to take over the world with whatever legendary pokemon are on the two boxes for that particular console.
If you don’t know where to start, as there are so many to choose from, I wrote a blog about my 5 favourite Pokemon games (at the time of typing) so go have a look at that if you’re a bit stumped.
*Except Sun/Moon & Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon as they are my least favourites and don’t do much justice to the Pokemon franchise in my totally biased opinion.
Coda
I have played MANY games over the years (as I’m sure you have) and could easily recommend my whole library to you, but I am very much aware that it is very easy to go overboard with this sort of thing, and recommending hundreds of games will overwhelm you and I wish not to do that.
Hopefully, there is enough variety in this blog that will keep you entertained for the next few years if you are not at all interested in any of the amazing games that are expected to come out over the course of 2019 and the amazing library of games that already exist or you have literally all the time in the world.
If you were to recommend me some games to play before I die, what would they be and why? What are some of your favourite games and why?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
