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If you can’t tell by that royalty-free image above, yesterday was my birthday. 25 years of life now gone, and maybe 75 more to go. Anyways, that was why I was inactive yesterday. To celebrate my 25 years on this planet, I decided to do a post of the top 5 games I’ve played throughout the years. I’ll go from early years to today, so sit back and enjoy.
The Early Days
Ahh, the early days before my crippling addiction to video games. God, I wish I never picked up a Gameboy… Anyways, my first absolute favorite video game was probably Pokémon Emerald. I had played games before, but this was the one that got me hooked. It still is one of my favorite Pokémon games today, due to just how challenging it got and because Swampert was in the game. He was, and still is, my favorite starter ever. With his only true weakness being grass, and that was a deadly weakness at times, he brought me to my first Elite Four win. Not only did that really kick-start my love for video games, but it also got me into Pokémon for a while.
Continuing with my early life, another of my all-time favorite games, and one I’ve brought up before was Freedom Fighters. A WWIII game based on the idea of the Soviet Union invading the United States, Freedom Fighters had a relatively unique style to it. You’d recruit freedom fighters to fight alongside you on multiple missions, with each mission affecting other missions. For example, you’d have a mission to blow up helipads, and if successfully completed, there would be no helicopters on the other missions. Being able to command your troops by having them attack, hold position, follow, and seek and destroy targets was a blast for younger me. Still is, and I don’t think I’ll ever not miss playing that game. I managed to hook up my old PS2 recently and played it again. It still held up after all these years, apart from the usual things like outdated graphics. Still had some challenge to it as well. Still hate those damn Heavies with armor and LMGs…
Mid-Life Gaming
Moving on down the line, the next all-time favorite game I played during the middle part of my 25 years on this planet was Modern Warfare 2. Yep, another game I brought up in the past. The late nights with the bois, the pre-game lobbies full of spite and hatred, the guns, the maps… everything. Even when the rage was building up, I was still having tons of fun. The story was also incredible too. Plus, we had the spec-ops missions that were tons of fun and also pretty damn hard too—definitely one of my favorite CoDs and video games in general. Damn you, Shepard.
The other favorite game from the middle of my 25 years is another FPS, and I’m actually going to pair it with the sequel too. Battlefield Bad Company, both 1 and 2. The stories were amazing, and the multiplayer was a blast too. The first game was admittedly a little challenging to get used to with the controls, and only gods could fly the helicopters without crashing and dying. Knifing the enemy to collect their tags was a sign of disrespect above the classic T-bag. The second game fixed some of the troubles from the first game and was still just as fun. We even got Battlefield Vietnam too, which was also tons of fun. If only we could get a Bad Co. 3…
Today’s Greatest Hits
The last game I’ll list is the most modern game I absolutely loved. That game is Call of Duty: Cold War! No, I’m kidding. Not even remotely close, for that matter. The real game is red Dead Redemption 2. Yup, again. That game had the best story I’ve played in forever, and online was fun for a bit too. But the fact that I was so invested in the story and could easily play it over and over again just to live out one of the oldest fantasies in the book makes it my all-time favorite modern game. There really hasn’t been much competition lately, but even if there was, RDR2 would still come out on top. A truly impeccable game that I honestly believe should be played by any real gamer, even if they’re terrible at it.
In Conclusion
While those are some of my favorite games I’ve ever played in my life, there are many, many more that just fell short of this list. In any case, these are the games that’ll live on forever in my memory, or at least until I start forgetting things. I can only hope there will be many more games that I can add to a list like this one, but these will hold a special place in my heart.