The classics that didn’t quite make the cut
KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO
DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2
BUGS BUNNY: LOST IN TIME
CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE
The series entries that caused the hottest debate
TOWERFALL ASCENSION
RACHEL WATTS STAFF WRITER
MIRIAM MCDONALD OPERATIONS EDITOR
OSCAR TAYLOR-KENT EDITOR
JESS KINGHORN GAMES EDITOR
MILFORD COPPOCK MANAGING ART EDITOR
SPIDER-MAN 2
You may be expecting me to mention Shadow Hearts or Koudelka here but one thing I love about those gothic horror JRPGs is that they’re far from Top 100 material. So, speaking of getting messy, I’d like instead to spotlight a heartfelt adventure that made too much of a splash not to get a mention. Chicory: A Colorful Tale takes place in the colouring book locale of Luncheon, where you’re tasked with reintroducing colour between the lines and beyond by scribbling directly on your controller’s trackpad. At the same time, your protagonist grapples with their own creative journey in a way that hit me like it knew where I lived.
UNCHARTED 2
Usually I’m a single-player kind of guy, and the vast majority of games on our Top 100 are just that. Huge, serious single-player experiences. But where are the fun multiplayer games like Towerfall Ascension? I’ve lost track of the number of lunch hours I’ve spent over the years cursing team members over an expertly (or more likely, luckily) aimed arrow in Towerfall’s single-screen shooter! Great fun!
This open-world webswinger is iconic for a reason. A movie tie-in, it went hard on the physics: Spidey’s webs actually connect to buildings in New York to generate momentum. It also greatly expanded on the second Sam Raimi movie with additional storylines, introducing Black Cat and having Mysterio challenge you to swing around the Statue Of Liberty. But we couldn’t help but feel our memories were a little bit too rose-tinted. It was fun to revisit, but the masterpiece we remembered it was not. And so it didn’t make it onto our list.
I’m sad that Cardboard Computer’s weird pointand-click adventure had to be cut, but I understand that a magical-realist story about the search for a highway that may or may not exist isn’t for everyone. Kentucky Route Zero is dreamlike in its atmosphere but the truths it tells of hardship in the economic backwaters of the US hit hard. These tales are told through working-class folk you meet during your journey and are conjured with artful imagery and evocative storytelling. In Kentucky Route Zero, truth, myth, and the supernatural tangle together in one fantastical road trip adventure that will stay with you.
There’s something deeply satisfying about whacking things – trees, rocks, monsters – with a ruddy great hammer. It’s even better when your violence is rewarded with materials you can use to build homes for people and weapons to take on the monsters threatening a series of charming worlds. DQB2’s not perfect. For one thing, it includes possibly the most ill-conceived stealth level in the entire history of videogames. Yet the charming characters, including your sinister BFF Malroth, cute monsters with the puntastic names, and the free build island where you can construct whatever you choose, are captivating.
There are some seminal RPGs that were a bit too niche to make such a hotly contested list, like Shin Megami Tensei III and Vagrant Story. But the tie-ins were the ones I was saddest to lose. In most cases, the fact they failed to make the Top 100 is reasonable, but for many players they defined early gens. While The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Spider-Man 2 came awfully close to making it, deeper cuts like Toy Story 2 and Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time stood no chance. The latter time-hopping adventure remains underrated once again. Nostalgia plays an important role in crafting lists like this, but in the end that can only get you so far.
It’s a PlayStation great, and better than the rest of the PS3 trilogy, but Uncharted 4 got into the Top 100 thanks to how the improved stealth and grapple hook improved combat. Still, Uncharted 2 is a joyous must-play. Nate’s all over the place, from Tibetan temples to war-torn Nepal, with fab set-pieces throughout.
PlayStation has been kicking around since 1994, when the original grey box of joy launched. At the time there was nothing like it. The 3D polygon gaming it delivered was revolutionary in a way that no generational leap has managed to match.
PROJECT ZERO II: CRIMSON BUTTERFLY
BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY
That was 28 years ago. The years since have been packed with brilliant games, so assembling a list of the 100 best is a tall order. It’d be easy to create a list twice as long, or maybe even ten times longer. Where do you even begin? You could try to look at things objectively, to quantify how well games have aged, the impact they had, or how good the visual design is. But games are basically collaborative works of art. Everyone’s response to one game or another is going to be unavoidably subjective. Thankfully, Team PLAY is rife with opinions, so we made sure each of us had a say.
We’re still baffled that the fourth game received a remaster instead of this one. It’s one of the scariest horror games we’ve played. Trapped in a haunted village, your twin sister is kidnapped, and it’s up to you, armed only with a supernatural camera, to save her. You have to wait for ghosts to get near to harming you before you can deal with them. But there’s a little too much clunk to the proceedings, and too much back and forthing.
Like Two-Face tossing a coin, whether we prefer Arkham Asylum or Arkham City changes day to day. You could argue that City’s open world gives a sense of freedom as you zigzag between baddie lairs. You could also say that those lairs feel more trivial than the labyrinthine asylum. Heads or tails, though, we always win.
We limited entries to one game per series, otherwise a quarter of the list would be every God Of War, Metal Gear Solid, and Naughty Dog hit. The exception, we decided, would be for games representing meaningful shifts in a series’ makeup – the difference between Assassin’s Creed’s RPG entries and its earlier iterations, say, rather than Uncharted adding a grappling hook to swing from PS3 to PS4. We put together a longlist, did a roundtable to make that a shortlist, voted on the top entries, then roundtabled our way through ordering the rest.
“IT’D BE EASY TO CREATE A LIST TWICE AS LONG. WHERE DO YOU BEGIN?”
TITANFALL 2
METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN
It hasn’t been easy. Debates raged over whether to pick Uncharted 2 or Uncharted 4, and whether you can really call all of FromSoftware’s individual soulsbornes different series. [You can – ed.] For older games, how do you balance the impact they had on release versus how well they’ve aged? Should a true great be as good to play now as it was when it was groundbreaking? And how long does it take for a recent release to settle in the mind as a classic? Deathloop might be one of the most impressive PS5 games we’ve played, but at only a few months old how can it compare to the likes of Dishonored 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3?
Home to one of the most inventive single-player FPS campaigns we’ve played, it pained us to cut this. Your relationship with AI-mech BT-7274 is a joy, the parkour mechanics make shooting feel dynamic, and the level Effect And Cause, where you hop between timelines, is masterful – but that’s is an small slice of a now-dead shooter that’s been usurped by Respawn’s very different Apex Legends.
The stealth mechanics here are some of the best around, combined with open world design that offers plenty of playgrounds for having fun with your tools. The problem? There’s too much repetition, and it was released in a clearly unfinished state. We yearn for what could have been.
HOTLINE MIAMI
These violent delights
FORMAT PS4, PS3, PSV / RELEASED 2013 / PUB DEVOLVER DIGITAL / DEV DENNATON GAMES
100 Talk about coming in hot. Featuring fast, unrelenting action, one wrong move here means death. Thankfully, this top-down action game doesn’t leave you waiting around after each demise. When you restart each stage you’re always woefully outnumbered, but this time you have the advantage of perspective and experience over your enemies, increasing your chance of success. Every iterative run is a wild, bloody rush – but the whole time the question of what ends this violence serves hangs over you. The narrative only gets twistier from there, and to say too much more would be a massive spoiler. If this somehow passed you by before, the 2014 PS4 rerelease is worth picking up.
SUIKODEN II
Bros opposed
FORMAT PS1 / RELEASED 2000 PUB KONAMI / DEV KONAMI
99 A tale of friendship torn apart by war, this JRPG is remembered for its affecting story. It sets its sights on an ambitious exploration of the central conflict, unspooling through a huge cast of 108 recruitable characters (with lots of entirely missable side-stories between them for good measure). Combat takes three forms: six-person turn-based fights; huge strategy-based battles; and one-on-one duels that leave a lasting emotional impact. There’s plenty to sink your teeth into – though it’s no slouch visually either. It wasn’t a great success when it launched; now it’s seen as a classic.
VANQUISH
Sliding in with style
FORMAT PS4, PS3 / RELEASED 2010 PUB SEGA / DEV PLATINUMGAMES
98 This third-person shooter boasts style by the bucketload. Clad in the Augmented Reaction suit, you can dive stylishly around destructible cover and slow down time as you take aim at your foes. Shots come at you from every angle, forcing you to keep on the move. Fortunately your suit enables you to pull off more than a few traversal tricks, and it’s truly a shame that rocket-powered butt-sliding didn’t become a genre trope in the wake of this game. This shooter’s to-the-point campaign will only take you a handful of hours and is easily playable via the 2020 PS4 remaster.
DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION
Give a hand
FORMAT PS4, PS3 / RELEASED 2014 PUB ELECTRONIC ARTS DEV BIOWARE
97 Let’s have a moment of silence for the series fans who have been waiting eight years for a sequel – and then pour one out for everyone who romanced Solas. In this expansive RPG, a hole in the sky spews demons upon a world already torn by civil unrest. It’s just as well your amnesiac protagonist holds the power to close the rift in the palm of their hand.
Remembered for its absorbing plot and the many paths through it your Inquisitor could take, there’s always more to see in Thedas.
DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION
Armed and dangerous
FORMAT PS3 / RELEASED 2011 PUB SQUARE ENIX DEV EIDOS MONTREAL
96 This prequel has it all: a brooding new protagonist; some killer renaissanceinflected looks; and arm swords. This cyberpunk future still sucks, though, as that body augmentation tech isn’t readily available to everyone and shadowy organisations pull the strings from behind the scenes. As protagonist Adam Jensen – he of the aforementioned arm swords, who famously never asked for any of this – you’re tasked with picking your way through this action RPG’s trash future as best you can.
TEARAWAY
Folding fantasy
FORMAT PS4, PSV / RELEASED 2013 PUB SONY / DEV MEDIA MOLECULE
95 Taking place in a world inspired by papercraft, this is a truly hands-on adventure. Few games made the most of PS Vita’s rear touch panel but Tearaway shows Media Molecule’s talent for innovation, seamlessly folding in this oft-overlooked functionality. Running your fingertips along the panel allows you to manipulate the environment, from turning wheels to squashing pests hassling your paper protagonists Atoi and Iota. There’s masses of playful tactility in the original handheld release, but if you lack a PS Vita you can still enjoy this adventure in the 2015 PS4 remake Tearaway Unfolded.
ISS PRO EVOLUTION 2
Goal-den age of sport
FORMAT PS1 / RELEASED 2001 PUB KONAMI / DEV KONAMI
94 We’re prepared to be given a red card for this – but older sports games were just better. Over the years, changes have become more minute, bogged down in the details of realism (not to mention the siren song of microtransactions). Few have had the sort of impact this early PES did. Even FIFA diehards have to admit the simple-yetelegant mechanics here are top-notch, and (crucially) the rivalry between the two series pushed both to improve. Returning to ISS2 is a joy; the kicks and passes have a certain arcadey charm whether you’re playing against a mate or tackling the surprisingly dense AI.