Finding A Favorite Game

The other day, one of my sons asked me what my favorite video game is – totally fair question! My reply was, “I don’t know.” Then I wondered, “Why don’t I?”

I’ve played many video games over the years, some of which are considered to be among the all-time greats, like one of Nintendo’s Zelda games.

The reason, I think, it’s hard to nail down my mostest-bestest-favoritest video game ever is because it depends on what kind of game I’m in the mood for. They span different genres. Like:

• Platformer
• Dungeon Crawler
• First-person shooter

If you wanna know what game filled me with the most wonder, I might pick a sprawling open-world adventure game full of exploration. If you ask what game makes me most tense, I’d throw out some edgy shoot’em up. Or a game that’s the most fun…Mario in 3D! What game is most engaging to me? One of the Final Fantasy RPGs for sure.

You see, it kinda depends.

So the list of my “favorites” are games that had the most impact on me in some way. They’re in no particular order. And I had to shorten it for brevity.

• Super Mario 64 - Platformer
• Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Adventurer
• Zelda: A Link to the Past - Adventurer
• Animal Crossing - Casual Life Sim
• Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - First Person Shooter
• Super Metroid - Metroidvania
• Minecraft - Open world Sandbox
• Final Fantasy VI (FFIII SNES) - RPG
• Final Fantasy VII - RPG

Most of these games had a way of drawing me into them, like when a book or movie captures your attention.

Story, atmosphere, strategy, graphics, music, suspense, or a combo of these immerse me in a game. It’s about world building. The better a game does that, the more I like it. But I’ll add that despite the quality or ability of some games to do this, I don’t always get pulled in. And I’m not sure why most of the time.

Maybe someday, one of my favorite games will rise to the top as undeniably the best of all. Or maybe I haven’t played the best one yet!

Until then, I’ll have to play more video games.