When I was a wee little boy, video games were forbidden in my house. To this day, I still don’t know what my father had against them (though I suppose I could always ask). He didn’t rant and rave about the ‘horrors’ of video games or anything like that. He just wouldn’t let my brother and I have a console in our house, even if all our friends loved their Nintendos and Sega Genesi.

But that didn’t stop me from falling head over heels for video games.

Every time we went to the store, I would immediately run to the electronics department to play their display consoles. That’s where my parents could pick me up once they were done shopping. I played them every chance I could get. I was hooked. I was in love. And it’s a love that’s still with me all these adult years later. That’s right world, this comic book geek also loves playing video games in his free time. It helps that I have a wickedly awesome geek girlfriend who also loves video games, and a squadron of gaming friends!

Eventually my father relented, sort of. When my grandparents got cousin Tyson a Game Boy for Christmas, my father allowed them to get Game Boys for my brother and I the following Christmas. I loved that little, green pixelated thing. Then one summer in high school, my father volunteered my brother and I to work for a week in a hay loft. The farmer, a friend of the family, agreed to pay us. It was hot, sweaty, horrible work, but I convinced my father to allow us to use the money to buy a Playstation, since he’d been the one to volunteer us, after all.

And so my father’s ban on video games was finally defeated. We used the money for games, since once the ban was gone, my aunt got us a Playstation that following Christmas. I haven’t been without a home console since. I upgraded to a Playstation 2 in college with my own money, likewise to an X-Box 360 after I’d graduated. Nowadays I play a mix of X-Box, PC and Nintendo DS games, the DS being the upgraded Game Boy. I love adventure games and RPGs, as well as large, sprawling sandbox games. And I absolutely love creating my own playable characters.

But mostly, I just love video games. So here are My 6 Favorite Video Games of All Time!

6. Metal Gear Solid: This game features one of the greatest stories in gaming history. Or at least it is the most effective and emotional story I have ever played. Back on the original Playstation, it was one of my first experiences with cinematic storytelling in games, as well as emotionally-developed characters and cinematic cut-scenes. Few games have effected me in such a way through their story and characters alone. I can remember my eyes getting a little moist at a few of the death scenes, and those were for the bad guys!

Solid Snake ready to take out some punk guard!

The Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid games are about a super-spy named Solid Snake. His background is pretty complex, so I’ll just say that there is an extended family of fathers, sons, mothers and more involved in a war for true control of the world. It’s told over a series of games, stretching from the original Nintendo to the modern Playstation 3. In this game, Solid Snake must infiltrate a secret Alaskan compound in order to stop a group of terrorists from controlling the monstrous Metal Gear, a giant, robotic mech-suit with the power to hold the world hostage.

The gameplay is fantastic, easily supporting the epic story. Thanks to the Playstation’s 3D graphics, Solid Snake was able to move and sneak through fully-realized rooms and areas. Back then, I was still getting used to anything more than Mario jumping along 2D platforms. Once Solid Snake sneaks into the compound, he must go room-by-room, building-by-building, snowy field-by-snowy field until he finally reaches the big boss and the confrontation with Metal Gear. The game is focused on stealth, with each room having either a contingent of armed guards or booby traps that you have to navigate. You’re free to use whatever weapons you have to storm in guns-blazing, but the true joy of the game is playing cat and mouse with the guards. Watch their movements and use tricks to lure them away, then sneak up behind them and snap their necks!

It was a game rich with real accomplishment. Successfully navigating a room without raising the alarm or alerting any of the guards was a triumph. And Solid Snake moved and controlled so fluidly that sneaking and snapping necks was quite fun.

Also, sometimes you could disguise yourself as a box. Yep.

Snake had a few allies in his fight, from sidekicks in the compound to a command squad on his radio. All of them were fun in their own ways. But the true standouts were the bad guys. The terrorist group had several bosses, each one named for an animal and very unique in their style and personality. There was Psycho Mantis, the skinny mental patient with the gas mask and the psychic powers. Vulcan Raven was a big, muscular Native American with a spiritual side and a giant chain gun. Or Sniper Wolf, the lovely but deadly gunner who Snake’s sidekick has fallen in love with.

These characters were brilliant. They changed boss fights for me forever. Each battle was tough, and I’m sure I died over and over again. But you keep playing, you learn what you have to do and you get better.

The real magic happened when you finally won and the bosses lay dying. These were real people with real souls, and in their final moments with Snake, they opened their hearts and lamented life, death, the world and more.

This is where the game truly got to me. Some of these deaths were so sad. I was unprepared for such emotional depth in a video game. That’s why this game has stuck with me for so long. Even after the various sequels improved the gameplay and made the games more fun, none have been able to match the power and the epic feeling of the first Metal Gear Solid.

5. Spider-Man 2: It’s all about the web-slinging! For the first time in Spidey-gaming history, the game-makers were able to truly nail down Spider-Man’s favorite mode of transportation, and it is pure, unadulterated fun. There are few things more enjoyable in the history of video games than just swinging through Manhattan on Spidey’s webs. The story was good, the combat was fun, but this game was all about the web-slinging. I could just sit and swing around the city for fun, ignoring all other parts of the game just to swing and sling and be Spider-Man.

What’s up? Nuthin’ much. Just swingin’ from a helicopter.

Everybody’s Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has always been a star in the world of video games, with a lot of titles produced for the 2D worlds of Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. I also remember this awesome arcade game back in the days of Time Out at the Fingerlakes Mall, where Spidey teamed up with Black Cat, Sub-Mariner and Hawkeye in a side-scrolling adventure. I could never make it past Venom.

But with the Playstation came 3D graphics, and those making the next Spider-Man game knew they had to reinvent the wheel when it came to the web-swinger. Boy did they ever!

The first game for the Playstation, called simply ‘Spider-Man’, was an amazing achievement! You could swing on webs, zip from place to place with web-lines, crawl on walls and the ceiling, and truly be Spider-Man, though mostly inside buildings. It was a blast! Then the movies came out, and the first movie-based game was similar to the Playstation game, just with a movie look. Still fun.

For the Spider-Man 2 game, however, the programmers took the wall-crawler to a whole new level!

For this new game, simply called Spider-Man 2, the game-makers created a fully-rendered, fully-realized map of Manhattan. They studied buildings and maps and recreated the heart of the Big Apple as best they could. They had the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park and more. In previous games, you mostly played Spider-Man indoors. If he was outside, they had a few 3D buildings in a limited area. When you swung on webs, they connected blindly to some invisible thing off the top of the screen, and you ‘swung’ in a straight line in whatever direction you were facing. But in this new game, the programmers created a system where the web-lines automatically searched out the nearest building and had to attach to an actual physical object before you could go swinging. So you had to make sure there were tall buildings around for you to swing on.

And the system worked like magic.

For the first time ever, a player could actually move and feel like Spider-Man. You could go web-slinging through the heart of Times Square and then wall-crawl up to the very top of the Empire State Building. The entire island of Manhattan was open for you to swing through. Or you could land and run around the streets, interacting with cars and pedestrians. They gave you little games to do as you moved through the city. Like stop a random armored car robbery or catch a purse thief. But you didn’t need those things.

All I wanted to do was swing.

4. Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas: You’ll never find a better RPG or Create-Your-Own-Character game than the Fallout series. Though I’m speaking only of the games Fallout 3 and it’s follow-up, Fallout: New Vegas. Fallouts 1 and 2 are sufficiently awesome, I’m told, but I’ve never played them. I started picking up the series after the game studio Bethesda took over with Fallout 3, and they have made some of the richest, largest, most in-depth role-playing games available. They give you the game world, you give them the protagonist. Gone are the days where you play as Mario, Sonic or Link; now you can play as whoever you want.

I live for games like that.

You brought a hammer to a gun-fight, bitch!

I’m a creative guy and I have always loved creating my own characters in games. Whether it was just a cosmetic sort of look in the Tony Hawk Pro-Skater games, or the awesomeness of Super Clown in the WWE, I love being able to make up a character and give them their own backstory in my mind. The Fallout games have perfected that style of game. Starting with a character’s look, you then play the game and level them up, deciding what skills they will have, what clothes they will wear and whether they will be good or evil. You choose what types of weapon you’ll specialize in to kill your enemies. And, most glorious of all, you get to interact and speak with hundreds of NPCs across the game world. Non-player characters who are there to give you quests, sell you better weapons or just shoot the breeze. The Fallout games have an excellent dialogue system, letting you have a lot of fun with every new NPC.

Or you can just kill them all.

The character looks and acts how you want, and they move through the game how you want. Will you fully explore the massive game worlds they’ve created, finding side quests and hidden treasures? Or will you stick to the main mission and power through? Both are good options. Much like the Spider-Man 2 game, the programmers at Bethesda created these massive game worlds, and you can go anywhere. In this case, rather than a single city, each game is focused around a larger land mass with multiple cities to visit and lands in between to explore.

See exciting new…car wreckage!

I couldn’t choose a favorite between Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. Both feature the same gameplay and the same character creation system. What’s different are the stories and the settings. All Fallout games take place in a post-apocalyptic world, after the nuclear bombs have dropped and reduced society to an irradiated Wasteland. The people who survived now eke out a living in the remains of bombed out cities and mountains.

Fallout 3 takes place in and around Washington DC, complete with heavily damaged monuments. Your story is that you’re trying to find your father, who left home under mysterious circumstances to complete his experiments in making the world a better place. There’s one quest where you have to find Lincoln’s head after it was removed from the Lincoln Monument. And the Capital has been taken over by Super Mutants.

I remember putting on the heaviest armor and bringing as many machine guns, rocket launchers and mini-nukes as I could to assault the Capital! And it wasn’t a quest, I just did it for kicks and giggles!

Fallout: New Vegas takes place in and around Las Vegas, which actually managed to survive the nuclear bombs pretty much in tact. So did the neighboring Hoover Dam, and he who controls the dam controls the power! In this game, you’re a courier who gets wrapped up in a three-way cold war to gain control of the Dam and all of New Vegas. This cold war eventually erupts into a deadly firefight in the game’s climax. You have to choose if you’ll help the corrupt leader of the Vegas Strip, the pseudo-government of the NCR or the bloodthirsty barbarians of Caesar’s Legion.

Or you can just kill them all.

I only created one character in Fallout 3: a super nice guy who went around helping everyone he could find. I created three characters in Fallout: New Vegas: a new version of the super nice guy who helps people and favors the sniper rifles; the badass, beret-wearing NCR commando babe who uses laser weapons; and then the giant, man-mountain bruiser, who wears the largest, spikiest metal armor and wields a massive, skull-crushing power-hammer! It was a blast to play all three a little differently, exploring new quests, new side-missions and new dialogue options. Such is the fun of the Fallout series.

3. Gears of War: Here we have my absolute favorite multiplayer game, introduced to me by girlfriend and Henchlady #1 Alyssa. She’s the reason I switched from Playstation to X-Box when I upgraded to the X-Box 360, and the first game I ever bought for the system was Gears of War 1. I’d timed my purchase because Grand Theft Auto 4 was coming out the following week (see the next entry), but Gears of War was the game she wanted to play with me with the two-player campaign. I was up for it, and I’ve been hooked into Gears of War ever since.

This is one heavy, hardcore, gut-wrenchingly livid shooter.

Emphasis on heavy.

We are men, manly men!

I’ve never been that big of a fan of shooting games. I like the Halo series well enough, and war-based games are fine. There was also that Summer I played nothing but Battlefield 2. But you won’t find me buying the latest Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. But Gears of War re-invented the shooter, and now most games that come out seem like a variation on Gears of War. And for good reason.

Gears of War is a guttural, high intensity shooter that makes you see and feel every bullet that you launch into your enemy’s body. The game has a weight to it that other games lack. You play a group of burly space marines wearing thick, heavy armor, and the way you run, leap hurdles and move around really feels as heavy as the armor looks. Your character grunts and his breath gets heavy. He pulls out his shotgun and groans under the strain of the weapon. When you shoot at your enemy, you can see each individual blood splatter and you can feel the controller shake as your weapon’s discharge.

Compare that to Halo, where you’re a voiceless, breathless, brightly-colored space marine who can leap around like some kind of bouncing pixie.

And I haven’t even mentioned the chainsaw-bayonets. Read that sentence more slowly so it can sink in. The machine guns in this game have a chainsaw at the end. So when you get close enough, you can cut through them with a revving, smoking chainsaw!

Now that’s video games!

The story of Gears of War is bare bones, for both Gears of War 1 and its sequel. You’re the good guy space marines fighting the bad guy Locust Horde, who are basically just humanoid aliens, who wear similar armor and carry the same guns. That makes both sides interchangeable for the multiplayer part of the game. The campaign mode is fun, with neat set-pieces and 2-player cooperative play, so Alyssa and I can play together. But it’s in the multiplayer that the game really shines. The game pits two teams against each other in a brutal, bloody deathmatch. You respawn quickly, and matches come one after another. So you’re always in the midst of battle, rushing to and fro and hunting your next target.

I realize that most shooting games are like this, but there’s just something about the weight and energy of Gears of War that I really love. So I can’t wait for Gears of War 3 to be released at the end of September!

I told you about the chainsaws, right?

Fun story, I actually managed to reconnect with an old high school friend thanks to Gears of War. The magic of the modern age of gaming is that you can now play video games with other people over the Internet. I had only seen Shannon David a few times since graduating high school, and there was always the occasional Instant Messaging chat, but we really connected over Gears of War. I don’t remember how I found out that he played, but he did, as did a few of his friends. Soon Alyssa and I were teaming up with Shannon, Duane and more, filling out nights with epic Gears of War marathons. I got to catch up with Shannon, find out what he’s doing with his life (besides Gears of War), all while we were chainsawing noobs.

Someone has to stop the Locust Horde!

2. Grand Theft Auto/Saint’s Row: I realize I’ve listed two different games here, but they are just so similar that I couldn’t decide which game series I liked more. Let alone which game in each series that I liked best. They are both open world games set in major cities where the protagonist is a criminal. Both are known for the player’s ability to just run wild, steal cars, shoot random people and cause total and complete mayhem for the fun of it. Grand Theft Auto tries to be as realistic as possible and tell a good story. While Saint’s Row tries to be as insane and as awesome as possible, with a good-enough story to keep the events moving.

Eat lead, chopper!

Both have their pros and cons, and both are a hell of a lot of fun to play. Though it should be noted that Saint’s Row is clearly a knock-off of Grand Theft Auto. Not that it matters. A lot of games are knock-offs of other games. The point is that Saint’s Row doesn’t just copy Grand Theft Auto, it improves Grand Theft Auto.

A super Mexican stand-off!

I am a huge fan of open world games, or ‘sandbox’ games as they’re known in the industry. These are my favorite style of game to play, hence their position as #2 on my list.

Just like Spider-Man 2 and the Fallout games, the programmers basically created this giant, open world, and then the player is free to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. Both Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row tend to be based on big cities, so you’ve got streets, houses, skyscrapers, suburbs and various other unique places, like airports, cemeteries, malls, landmarks, landfills and whatever else. Each game is known for being gloriously detailed when it comes to designing their game worlds. The programmers really go the extra mile in creating the nooks and crannies of their world. Especially since, unlike Spider-Man, the players will be walking and driving around on the ground instead of swinging above.

These are my favorite games to play because of the freedom involved. They both have stories to follow, but those stories are only secondary to all the fun that one can have in the game world. You can steal a car and get in a chase with police. You can take a leisurely stroll through Central Park. You can go on a killing spree in Central Park. You can fly a helicopter over the Statue of Liberty and jump out to try and land on her head. You can dress up in a hot dog costume and bring a flamethrower into a shopping mall. I’ve had hours of fun just wandering around these game worlds and causing chaos for chaos’ sake.

If I had to pick between the two, I’d go with Saint’s Row. I’ve only played Saint’s Row 2 (with Saint’s Row 3 coming out this November!), but Saint’s Row 2 is not only multiplayer, but it’s just far more insane than the grounded, realistic Grand Theft Auto. You also get to create your own character in Saint’s Row 2, complete with accent and customizable clothing options. For sheer fun value, Saint’s Row 2 trumps Grand Theft Auto.

Though, if I may have a hipster moment, I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto since before it was cool. I played the hell out of Grand Theft Auto 2 on the original Playstation. It was top-down, instead of 3D, but was still all about exploring an open world and causing as much flamethrowery mayhem as possible! Grand Theft Auto 3 came out in my first year of college. I was so excited for it that I bought the game several months before I bought the Playstation 2 to play it on. Grand Theft Auto was always my favorite, until Alyssa and I gave Saint’s Row 2 a try. SR2 surpassed the game they were so clearly copying.

1. Shadow of the Colossus: The story of Wander and his battles against the Colossi is the most majestic, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping video game experience of my life. It defines the word ‘epic’. Whereas Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row cram their games full of everything they can, Shadow of the Colossus is as sparse as they come. It’s an open world full of mountains, deserts and fields, but there are only 16 opponents in the entire game, and all of them are boss fights. But never have I been so engrossed in a game. Never have I so excitedly gripped my controller and clung for dear life as I tried to win the game.

But Shadow of the Colossus isn’t a game. It’s an experience.

Oh, hi there

As I said, the game is sparse. You play a nameless young man, nicknamed ‘Wander’, who has a sword, a bow and a horse. There is little to no explanation about why you have come to this new land, only that you’re carrying a clearly dead or passed out girl in your arms. Your true love, perhaps? Whatever the case may be, Wander has come to this valley to revive this girl. He’s tasked with killing the 16 Colossi that guard this realm. And so with your trusty horse, Argo, you ride across open plains, cross vast deserts, descend into humongous chasms and climb ancient ruins in your search for this beasts.

And almost all of them are as big as mountains! The game is literally you vs. an army of King Kongs and Godzillas!

The object of the game is to race around the monsters, avoiding their attacks, until you find their weak spot. Sometimes this means you have to climb onto the monsters themselves, clinging tightly to the hair on their backs as you crawl around them like an insect. They’ll struggle and try to throw you off, but you have to hold on, lest you get thrown hundreds of feet back down to the ground. Sometimes you have to kill flying monsters, positioning yourself just right to grab them when they come low, and then hanging on as they soar back into the sky with the wind whipping all around you.

Never has a game featured such scope.

One of the few controls you have is ‘grab’, in which you press a button and Wander grabs onto a ledge or a monster. You have to hold this button down when you’re clinging to the side of a monster, struggling to hold on. You can only cling there for so long before you run out of strength and have to let go. So you need to keep moving and find a place to strike! This game was thrilling as you clung to the giant monsters, holding your breath in awe as you fought to stay in control.

I can remember once losing my grip in the game and getting thrown off the monster’s shoulder. As I fell towards the ground, the monster turned around and I landed on his arm as he raised it up. I quickly slammed my thumb onto the ‘grab’ button and held onto that arm for dear life.

I was floored at the sheer magnitude of that sequence of events.

The Colossi do not speak. They do not threaten you and they do not have plans for world domination. They are just creatures. Epic, seemingly monstrous creatures as tall as skyscrapers. And the tiny, noble little you must defeat them. It’s poetry in video game form. Even when you’re riding your horse across the plains to find the monsters, the game is so quiet and so subtle. You’d think such a thing would get boring, but it never does. The animation of you on your horse is so fluid, so fun to control, that it’s a treat just to ride out and explore the world.

Only to have your breath taken from you as the next larger-than-life Colossus steps into frame.

And that’s why it’s the greatest game I’ve ever played.

Honorable mentions: Neverwinter Nights 2, World of Warcraft, the entire Warcraft series, the Dawn of War series, X-Men: Arcade, Tetris, Red Dead Redemption, Diablo, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and probably many more.