 This video has been sponsored by my pet snake Steve. He says you should listen to my band. We might be coming to your city here pretty soon. Who knows? We're called Raccoon Tour, links below. So I've been playing video games for about 20 years now. That's two decades. That's longer than most of you guys have been alive. I have hundreds and hundreds of titles under my belt. I tend to prefer more narrative stuff. I don't really like stuff like Overwatch, Call of Duty, League of Legends, et cetera. When a video game affects me, it really, really gets to me. Like movies and TV shows, they're one thing, but like being in the center of the action, you know, all the pew-pews and all that stuff. Damn son, that's a whole different level. I love sharing pieces of art with people who I care about, so I have compiled a list of 10 video games that I adore. These aren't necessarily like the 10 games I think are like technically or objectively the best. It's just they speak to my soul in ways that nothing else really does, you know? A game like Bloodborne is technically brilliant, but like it didn't make me question who I am, you know? I know that there are definitely some nostalgic goggles going on, some biases, but the thing is, I think that a biased nostalgic list is a lot more interesting than some rigid objective list, you know? Before we get rolling, I just want to toss out these honorable mentions on screen right now. ["Okey Dokey"] Okey dokey, on with the list. I played Far Cry 3 when I was 13 years old and my parents had no idea. That game practically took my virginity while I was in middle school. When I was a kid, there was nothing cooler than Far Cry 3 with its crazy explosions, insane amounts of violence and brutality, shocking and explicit subject matter, oobees, and an oddly beautiful soundtrack. Now, if this game were to come out today, it would probably be a really solid seven out of 10 experience with the classic bare bones of climb up a tower, visit these spots on a map, gameplay. However, this game was the one that basically invented that formula. And the reason that formula has been jammed down our throats for the past decade is because Far Cry 3 did it so well the first time. And obviously, Voss is one of the most riveting and incredible villains in any video game ever. The charismatic monologuing villain has become a trope because of Far Cry 3. For laying down the foundations that so many games try to replicate, having one of the best stories and rogues galleries in any FPS game and still being a blast to play in the year of our lord, Far Cry 3 is a classic and any 13 year old watching should probably play it right now. Fight, fight, fight, fight! Some of the most cherished video game memories I've ever formed were all with Smash Bros Ultimate. I remember there was a YouTube animator tournament at VidCon 2019 and I threw my hat in the ring. I beat a few folks, but I ultimately lost to someone. I can't remember who you were. I remember I had a silly rivalry with a creator named Naderbug because we had the same childhood nickname. I was like, bro, I'm gonna destroy you on Smash on Twitter for like a week until we actually played and he proceeded to three stock me. Smash Bros is a guaranteed good time with friends on the couch. There are so few video games that encourage hanging out in real life and that's one of my favorite things about Smash. The game itself is a blast. It goes to great lengths to cultivate the ingredients for a good hang. It's a community builder, a social cornerstone and an old friend who I fondly visit consistently. Grimpy, farmer, perverdex. The Sims 3 is better than the Sims 4 in every regard. The gameplay is more fleshed out and varied. The open world is objectively more interesting than the Sims 4 garbage tiny chunks of property. It is a living, breathing place to spend time in and I love spending time in this game. This game was my jam when I was a kid and I have tons of personal nostalgia buried in here. Out of every game ever made, this is probably the one that I have dumped the most hours of my life into. It's very homey and relaxed. There are moments in the game where I'm watching my dude play on his computer. The windows are fogging up. It's dumping snow outside. I hear the gentle hum of the game's air conditioning and everything is okay. The Sims 3 is a snapshot of that golden era before social media absolutely destroyed everything. It's the year 2011 in a bottle where smartphones are present but not all consuming. People still go outside and get up to shenanigans. Emo's Rupi Hair is everywhere and My Chemical Romance is still on the radio. The Sims 3 is the ultimate comfort game in every way, shape, and form. I highly recommend you visit this one. It's objectively more fun than the Sims 4. It's cheating! It's cheating! At one point in my life, I thought card games were for nerds. Why would I play with cards when I have games that allow me to fly rockets, blow stuff up, woo-hoo the entire neighborhood, and rob banks? I thought that until I played Inscription and it blew my mind. This is not a card game that you can play in real life. It's too dynamic, too many little things going on, et cetera. I got hooked on this. The card mechanics burrowed into my brain and I would strategize and imagine plays as I lay in bed at night trying to get sleep so I can wake up and play more Inscription. Good card mechanics are fine and all but what makes Inscription really special is everything else. If you've played the game, you understand exactly what I mean. This game has a soul buried deep within it that allowed for one of the most incredible playthrough experiences I've ever enjoyed. Inscription is special because I walked into it expecting to play a card game with a serial killer in a cabin in the woods. I certainly got that and that was super cool but what I wasn't expecting was for the story to go in a completely unexpected direction and tug at my heartstrings by the end. This was a world that I was fully immersed in. There is so much thought, love, and passion put into this game. You should play this game on a computer and go in completely blind. Do not read about it, do not watch Let's Plays, do not read reviews, just purchase it and play it. Especially if you're like me or the words roguelike, indie deck building, card base, escape room, puzzle adventure tags, they mean absolutely nothing to you. Inscription is scary, it's funny, it's deep, it's complex, it's heartfelt, it's surprising, and it's beautiful. Kill'em and Jaro. I was molded into a man on the Valhalla map. I know the layouts of Halo 3's multiplayer maps better than I know the layout of my own town. I had formative experiences blasting my friends from across maps with Spartan lasers that generated dopamine highs that no street drug could ever replicate. Believe me, I've tried. Halo 3 is the best first person shooter ever made. It is the best multiplayer game ever made. If you disagree, you're stupid and wrong and I don't respect your opinion because this isn't a matter of opinion, this is a perfect work of art and I can prove it with math. Halo 3 is special because the environment that it cultivates with its multiplayer games is less focused on stats, min-maxing, gear loadouts, and it's more focused on teamwork and joy, fun. It is fun to play capture the flag with alien fighter jets and gravity hammers. It is fun to blast people with rockets and zero gravity. This is so much cooler than Call of Duty or Apex Legends or Fortnite or any other game ever. Halo is fun, Halo is cool. If you disagree, you either punch holes in your wall or you're a cop. Come to think of it, those two things tend to go hand in hand, huh? Rehab was supposed to be a fresh start. Speaking of cops being awful, Disco Elysium is without a doubt the best written game ever. I can't think of anything in the medium with this level of depth, complexity, thoughtfulness, and humanity in the story and dialogue. Roger Ebert famously said that video games can never be art. He has an entire article on the topic. No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison to the great poets, filmmakers, novelists, and poets. He said poets twice, that's not my fault. And I kinda get his points. Video games are art, duh. But are there video games that fill the human soul in the same capacity that fine arts did by the greats? Is there anything that broaches the human condition with the same depth and nuances, say Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoyevsky? I mean, there's not a lot. We do have Disco Elysium. This is a dense game. It's lovingly crafted, it feels special, this game feels important, and it is confident during its entire 25 hour length knowing that it has something special and profound to say about everything. It is surprisingly insightful in its discussions on global politics compared to any other video game I've played anyway. It is layered in the philosophical nuances that it pulls from. The meditations on the burdens of the past, the heartbreak of loss, the reasoning to continue to live in a miserable world, it's all tackled with a thoughtfulness of a great novelist. This is the kind of game that Roger Ebert was probably hungry for. It is a work of fine art from the visuals to the music to the performances to the masterful craftsmanship of the people and discussions that populate this world. Disco Elysium is a mature game, not in the sense that it is graphic or vulgar but rather because it broaches many topics and perspectives that are best explored through more lived eyes that can truly engage with the soul buried deep within this work of art. Perfect, everything down to the last. This game came out in 2007. I was in the second grade. My baby brain knew that this was special back then. I grew up a bit more, revisited it and realized that I loved it even more. Of course, Mario Galaxy is a level design, musical atmospheric masterpiece. Nobody would ever think otherwise. This game has been spoken on at length and there's not much I can add that hasn't been touched on. However, I will say this. This game has more soul than any Mario game ever made. What always stuck with me were the quiet moments that this game was not afraid to have. Mario Galaxy 2 is fun and bombastic and a nonstop barrage of new ideas and colors and mechanics, but Mario Galaxy 1 is patient. It's quiet sometimes. There is this melancholy darkness hidden within it. Outer space is nothing. It is immeasurable, empty, nothingness, populated by bursts of life and joy. How incredible is it to be anything at all in the midst of these vast oceans of oblivion in our universe? How lucky are we to be in a time and place in position where we can visualize flying to other planets, going on adventures, swimming with penguins and saving the people who we care about? There's a great joy in the human condition if you truly consider the conditions that we were all crafted in. And Mario Galaxy manages to capture that joy by not being a nonstop waterfall of laughter and colors, but by remembering to take a moment and be still and ponder. This game planted a seed in my heart as a kid. I signed up for a silly fun game about talking mushrooms and princesses and spaceships and I got all of that, but I also got something lovingly crafted. Mario Galaxy 1 will always have my heart because it had a far more tender and special vision beyond raw gameplay and spectacle. It had soul and that's one hell of a cherry to throw on top of a game that's already pretty much perfect. Side note, Jacob Geller actually has a stellar video on this game that captures a lot of my feelings and puts them into words. Check this video out, marvelous essay, great channel. I love Jacob Geller. Adventure! I wish I could scrub my brain and experience Breath of the Wild for the first time again. The unadulterated joy of surprise is everywhere in this game. There is so much in this world and Breath of the Wild could care less if you uncover all of it. I know Far Cry 3 is awesome. That game felt like a big action movie with its choreographed explosions and set pieces, but it never felt like a genuine adventure though. My playthrough was going to be very similar to pretty much anybody else's. Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, is a loose and versatile offering of something truly memorable and different where every single person who plays it has something completely different. You know those moments with your friends that are infinitely funnier than any movie or TV show you've ever seen? Those moments are wonderful because they were caused by seemingly random collection of elements, conversation topics, and circumstances coming together to form something hilarious and unexpected. That is an example of serendipity, the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Serendipity sounds like it's completely random, right? Wrong. Serendipity comes up when you lay down a good foundation for good things to happen. Breath of the Wild masterfully creates endless opportunities of natural, authentic, exciting, and random, wonderful adventures to pop up all the time. The world's physics and nature have rules that are malleable and exploitable. The enemies are consistent enough where you know how they work and yet varied enough that they keep you on your toes. The elements spring up at random and they force you to think outside the box. Breath of the Wild is special because it creates those moments of raw adventure and discovery. Serendipity. You will have numerous memorable moments with this game, not because they're scripted and expected, but rather because this game is so rich that you're bound to stumble on some exciting coincidences that elicit a more raw emotion and reaction than something like Far Cry 3. And for those reasons, Breath of the Wild is undoubtedly the best adventure video game I've ever played. I rolled a one, I rolled a one, fuck. It's not recency bias, Baldur's Gate 3 is different. I imagine that building a huge video game comes with a certain level of challenge, mainly because building something so huge requires an incredible amount of work to balance everything. Baldur's Gate 3 not only has a huge story that took me 130 hours to beat, hundreds of characters that I cared about as if they were real world friends, combat systems that captured my imagination and pumped me full of excitement, amazing visuals and graphics that added to the richness of the world, but it's also the steamiest dating simulator I've ever enjoyed. When I ended the game, I was legitimately distraught that my wizard boyfriend did not propose to me. That's when I knew that Baldur's Gate 3 was a masterpiece. When I'm at work, I'm thinking about Baldur's Gate. When I'm talking with friends, it's about Baldur's Gate. When I'm watching a movie, I'm wondering why I'm not playing Baldur's Gate instead. When I'm playing Baldur's Gate, I am dreading the moment that I have to stop playing Baldur's Gate. This game served as an actual obstacle in my life a few months ago. I've been working with some amazing friends to help me get my art endeavors in a more stable position, but I kept missing deadlines because Baldur's Gate 3 was better than economic and emotional stability. I skip real days of work for this. While I'm a bit of the wax poetic about Disco Elysium or Mario Galaxy, Baldur's Gate 3 has become one of my most beloved works of art simply due to how masterfully well it does everything. It is as close to perfection as I've seen any creation on any medium approach. Baldur's Gate 3 swallowed me whole and forced me to live inside of it for over a month. While I was there, I made actual friends. I explored so many beautiful and terrifying places. I uncovered a story that had me feeling scared, happy, horny, sad, and shocked. Numerous times over. Baldur's Gate 3 is not special because it's a deep exploration of the human condition. It's not special because it reminds me of my childhood. It's not special because it cured my dog of dementia. It's special because it represents perfection and virtually everything that it sets out to do. It's like trying to explain to somebody why Ocarina of Time is a masterpiece. It's just so well made that you can't help but marvel at it. This video game made my heart swell. It made my palms sweaty. It was a journey that I will remember for the rest of my life. Not only is it the best game of 2023, eat your heart out, Spider-Man. Baldur's Gate 3. It will probably be remembered as the best video game since Half-Life 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3. It's up there in the big leagues. If you have not sacrificed your soul to Baldur's Gate 3 yet, please do so. Let's go and film Moomin Valley with crime. Come on. This is my favorite video game ever. It's like an alternate reality version of me became a game developer and sent this to me when I needed it. Kind of like that black hole scene in Enterstellar. Video games are the best art form available to the human race right now. They're special because they're a combination of so many other disciplines coming together to make one thing that is meant to engage you far more fully than any other medium can. Night in the Woods works because it creates a specific snapshot of a specific moment in adolescence. It's a coming of age story, not in the sense that it follows a kid on the way to becoming an adult, but rather an adult on the way becoming a person. Night in the Woods has a lot to say about how much of ourselves we owe to people that we love, grieving a better time that has come and gone, coming to terms with spending your most foundational years and a time period that seems to actively want you to fail and it explores the foundational human implications of all of this on a very existential level. I grew up in a small town in Idaho where I got into trouble with my friends. There were so many inside jokes shared amongst us, familiar traumas, adventures, bonds that came and went. The town we all grew up in became a character of its own. We all knew the unique landmarks, what place had the best pizza, kooky local characters, and we all felt the changes it underwent as corporations ate up the small businesses we grew up in and slowly milked it of its authentic culture. In Night in the Woods, you step into someone else's dying gasp of childhood, the weird few years after high school graduation when you're still trying to figure out what to do. Our character, May, returns to her hometown to find that it's changed, it's dying. Her friends are moving, her parents are not immutable bastions of stability anymore. The inside jokes have grown tired and it's time to move on to something greater. She just doesn't feel like she's equipped yet. This is a real intangible sadness that I've felt in my own life many times over. In Night in the Woods is a perfect snapshot of the tiny nuances that come with all of that. A game like Red Dead Redemption 2 may have a more technical engine, a denser story, a more compelling gameplay for sure, but Night in the Woods is a more focused sniper shot to make you feel and think a certain way. It does so with mastery I have not felt from anything else. Night in the Woods is a game about the vibe, the emotion, the nostalgia, the tiny moments that are so concisely conveyed that these friends and places feel like yours too. May's morning becomes your morning, her relationships become yours, her inside jokes belong to you now. This game is like having another rich childhood absorbed into your own. It's another run through of growing up, all contained in 12 hours. I play in a band called Raccoon Tour and I wrote an album about nostalgia and growing up in a hometown that wants to kill you called The Denton Weaver and there are certainly a few flashes of Night in the Woods and the imagery and themes at play. This is mainly because Night in the Woods has so deeply shaped how I view these themes and I've implemented them into my own life. Night in the Woods has made me a better and more whole person. One of the most significant ways that I tell a friend that I love them is I buy them a copy of Night in the Woods. I have a shrine for it in my room. I wrote a whole goddamn album with the theme shaped by it. It's next on my list for tattoo ideas. This is a list of my 10 favorite games, not what I think are the best games. What Night in the Woods lacks in graphical fidelity, complexity or moment to moment gameplay, it makes up for in spades with pure tangible heart. I think every person born in the last 30 years will come away from Night in the Woods deeply impacted. Pick up this game, mew it to yourself. Take care, be kind to yourself and stay spicy. I'll see you later.