Video games, or computer games, however you wish to label them, have provided our generation with countless hours of conversation, mild enjoyment, killing sprees, stress relief, unrealistic sports tournaments, Italian plumbers, fear, horror, zombies, vampires, car theft, Mafia-based lifestyles and so much more. Whether your fancy is barrelling down a one way street in a stolen Supra while the police chase after you like dogs at your heels, or simply perusing the libraries of a long forgotten mansion come laboratory, mowing down the undead somewhat similar to machine gun fire during the storming of Normandy, there has always been a game for everyone.
So, what's so great about games? Well, quite simply, they let you do things you simply couldn't (or wouldn't) do in real life. A brilliant way to escape day to day life and pretend you're slinking your way through the Russian jungle during the early 60's. And if anyone can name those three games I brought up just there, I salute you, for you respect the world of gaming. Video games are a great escape, and we are lucky to live in a time when the "next-gen" is really blossoming.
Everyone has their own idea of fun, but video games blanket the whole aspect, really. With games, everyone can enjoy what they want, provided they pay the right price, that is.
So, without further ado, I present the top 10 games you simply must play before you eventually kill yourself from reading this terrible article.
Resident Evil 4
The classic survival horror genre of video games seems to be stretched to breaking point these days, almost to the point of similarity of a pregnant woman's vagina, but CapCom have managed to squeeze one more delectable sample of savage, biscuit-y goodness into our already over crammed, tired, aching jaws. That delicious morsel of video gaming brilliance is Resident Evil 4. Deviating from the classic tried and tested awkward, cumbersome angles of Resident Evil's 0, 1, 2 and all the other spin-offs, this game allows you to see what's actually in front of you, rather than let you watch helplessly from the ceiling or a reflection in a mirror while you mercilessly fall under attack from a moaning madman of death. Obviously, leaving you to operate the controls backwards and upside down as your disease ridden bites rain down upon you like meteorites isn't fun, so it's good to see Resident Evil back up from out of body experience like camera angles. That being said, this game did lack some of its more potent horror aspects, such as not knowing what's around the next corner, and you really don't need to depend on your hearing anymore.
Yet overall, CapCom popped this game out just in time to deserve respect. Although everyone looked around stupidly and asked "Where's the zombies!?" I rather think possessed Spanish villagers had a somewhat more eerie effect, creating a truly frightening and challenging addition to the survival horror family. Play this.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Everyone loves the prospect of being able to do basically anything they like at anytime of the day. Maybe the people at Rockstar games (even though it used to be called something else until the founder, Dan Houser decided to piss himself and trash a hotel room, thus naming the love child of Take-Two Interactive Rockstar) realised this too, and subsequently set about developing the game that would reach sales of over 21.5 million by March, 2008, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This game really was Rockstar's huge break, and catapulted them from so-so average slaughter game title to a world class must have brand almost overnight. Controlling the underdog of society, the user is immersed into a world of gang related violence, corrupt police, family tragedy, sex, drugs, money, music and gambling. Although the graphics weren't "WOW" standard, that didn't matter as San Andreas was a city that came to life. From watching homeless people standing around a fire, to witnessing the police chase down a criminal and unkindly bludgeon him or her with the car, this game brought gritty realism to its height of drunken disorder with all the charisma of James Bond in a Rolls Royce covered with jewels. With a huge expanding storyline, plot twists that rival M. Night Shyamalan's only successful movie, The Sixth Sense, and gritty, adult humour that will keep you sniggering for hours, this game is truly one of the Playstation's biggest achievements, and a must have for any household shut in.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Hideo Kojima, apart from having an absurd name, is a brilliant gaming technician. His brilliance culminated in the aptly dubbed MGS3: Snake Eater, a game where stealth was taken to a different level, raped, broken in half and then glued together with the collective molten gold of all the richest nations on Earth, and airbrushed brilliantly to develop ground territory camouflage that kept the player on edge throughout. This game was an epic tale of war, love and deceit set during the Cold War. The plot follows Naked Snake, not dissimilar from Solid Snake from previous MGS titles, attempting to retrieve a Russian scientist from the depths of hostile Russian territory and destroy an apocalyptical weapon of Hell, known as the "Treading Behemoth". As if that weren't enough, you have to catch your own food to stay alive. Yay! The challenging prospect of waiting, still as a stone in the grass waiting as an unwitting enemy patrol gleefully strolls by, oblivious to your presence is simply thrilling, and unparalleled to boot. Again, Kojima shocks us all with a Shyamalan-esque twist that I won't ruin for you here, but I will tell you to go out and buy this game if you haven't already. With stealth, camouflage, weapons, love, war, deceit, defections and immense boss battles, this game is simply one of the best games around, albeit three years old.
