My Top 10 Video Games of All Time - Personal Top 10 Games

A collection of my personal favourite top 10 video games on various platforms since I started gaming in the 80's. Some are even retro.

This was my first game of the series. It was really fun to play the evil genius building dungeons to trap and kill the heroes as they attempt to steal the treasure and slay the evil inhabitants. A really fun twist on the hero RPG. You have to mine out the dungeon from rock, lay traps and populate the dungeon with all manner of evil minions, from goblins to warlocks, spiders to the "Horned Reaper". Very fun, funny and fondly remembered. Several clones have been made, but none capture the essence and gameplay of the original.

Drakan: Order of the Flame was an action-adventure game from the late '90s which follows Rynn and her dragon Arokh on a quest to rescue her brother from an evil sorcerer. The game contains third-person dungeon exploration, adventures with the dragon and aerial combat where you fight other dragons from the back of yours. It was one of the few games to make me sad for completing it because I'd had so much fun playing it, and then it was over. Eagerly awaiting a remake or sequel.

The game is responsible for wearing out the buttons on my Gameboy! It was one of the first major RPGs I played as a kid, and due to the portable nature, sneaking in-game time whenever and wherever possible. I forget how many Zelda games there are, but this was the sixth. You start the game as the main character, Link, who washes ashore on a strange island. You gradually recover your equipment and set out to find your way home, which inevitably involves recovering lost musical instruments and slaying an evil force enslaving the island.

How many hours did I sink into this game? Far too many, probably. Following on from my attempts to play Elite on the BBC, I played the sequel on the Amiga. With better graphics, easier controls and an all-around enjoyable game, it is one of the first sandboxes - do-what-you-want-style games. Trade, mining, mercenary, and courier are a few career paths. I'd eventually reached the coveted Elite rank, got all the ships, explored everywhere, and got all the money I needed. Then what?

My first 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) set in space on a bunch of asteroids. You start with one asteroid colony, explore, expand, and discover other races to exploit or exterminate until you meet the mission objectives. You can mine asteroids, construct fleets of ships, launch missile attacks and more. I had much fun playing this game, and it's another game that I'm eagerly waiting for a remake or squeal.

A relatively unknown game, unfinished, I think, which I picked up as a shareware version on a magazine cover disk. It was a dungeon crawler where you build a party of adventurers and head into the dungeon to explore. I forget the story. It was story-rich but had a fantastic character progression and dungeon-crawling system. The game featured many windows for characters, encounters, inventory management, and so on, and it stuck with me. They did several remakes (Infinite Worlds, Depths of Dejenol, Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan) or continuing development. However, it was never finished and released as a full product.

If you love the Elder Scrolls series or RPG games in general, you have to try Elder Scrolls Online. Don't let the MMORPG tag put you off; you can play most of the game "solo" without getting involved with other players. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of content in the base game and expansions which take you back to original game locations from the previous games and new areas and lore. Although you don't have to get involved with other players, joining a guild and doing group dungeons can be much fun and getting help when needed. Eventually, as you learn to play and improve, you can return the favour and help other players. PVP is by consent only, either accepting a dual or entering a PVP battleground zone. Hence, you can explore Tamriel without worrying about other players spoiling your experience.

One of the vast numbers of platform games I've played over the years, but this, I believe, was the first one that I sat down and completed from start to finish. You play James Pond on a mission to stop Dr. Maybe's dangerously fishy plans for world domination. In a slimy effort to sabotage the world's largest toy factory, he has planted penguin bombs in toy factories inside the North Pole!

A natural progression from playing Elite and Elite 2: Frontier, and after a long wait, there is finally a worthy successor. EVE Online is an MMORPG (the first I played) which sees you in a sandbox universe where you can do almost anything you want, from mining, trading, piracy, bounty hunting, mission running, exploring or anything else you can think of. Then you can join up with (or against) other players, form corporations (guilds), and form alliances and conquer the universe together, or if you want, sabotage their efforts and steal corporation assets. I stopped playing for a while when the game became F2P, and many gankers came to it, and it went downhill. After writing the post, I may give it another go and see if it has improved since.

Skyrim is by far the best Elder Scrolls game made and is huge! The game starts as you are caught up in the capture of Ulfric Stormcloak and captured yourself. A dragon appears before you can be executed, and you escape the chaos. You head to the city to warn of the attack, after which you get caught up in another dragon attack and become "Dragonborn". You now learn the Way of the Voice and seek to destroy Alduin, who wants to enslave the world. The world in Skyrim is vast, with hundreds of missions and locations to discover and all the skills, treasure, equipment and lore to explore. It took me nearly 400 hours to complete, and I loved every minute.

Whilst writing this guide, I was reminded of Dungeon Siege (2002) on the PC. I put it into this list but couldn't bring myself to remove one of the others. Maybe I should have renamed the article "Top 11 games of all time". Dungeon Siege is an RPG that follows a young farmer and their companions as they journey to defeat an invading force. Initially only seeking to warn the nearby town of the invasion of a race of creatures named the Krug, the farmer and the companions joining him along the way are soon swept up in finding a way to defeat another race called the Seck, which is resurgent after being trapped for 300 years.