Top Ten of the Decade: Part 5

5. Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001)
Melee isn’t a game, really. The original, and the sequel, are indeed games. Melee was a non-stop experience of pure bliss for a Nintendo fan with friends. To be able to take my favourite part of the Nintendo ongoing mythology (Bowser), paint him black, and have him run headlong into baddies pulled from every game worth mentioning was fantastic. Trophies, the odd bit of gambling, side-scrolling campaign mode, challenges, and of course, multiplayer, were signs that Nintendo could do what no other console manufacturer could: conjure a list of cute, cuddly, heroic little fellows, and have them beat the utter shit out of each other. The Wii sequel was nice, but simply a graphical improvement on a concept proven by its predecessor.

4. Mass Effect (2007)
Every person I know has their personal favourite genre of games, literature and art. Mine is most definitely science fiction, and with Mass Effect, I had the best sci-fi experience of my life. Every concept that came before BioWare’s romp through the stars, from Star Wars to the Commonwealth Saga, were melded into one timeless experience that defined moral decisions in videogames.

Of course, there have been moral decisions before this. But what Mass Effect did – along with creating a fictional universe so immersive it took me days to process the fanboyism rushing through my bloodstream – was never to give you too many clear choices.

Difficult questions, certainly. Do I want to kill a camp of unwittingly infected humans? Do I want to kill a close friend, who refuses to destroy evil technology that will ultimately restore his fallen race to prosperity? Do I kill the last remnant of an alien race? And of course, do I choose Ashley or Kaidan?

Characters die, and with them, so does a part of you. But ultimately, the game will always make me smile simply because it’s the game that makes my girlfriend grin more than anything else. You can buy her diamonds, you can take her on holiday. But by God, she loves her level 60 Vanguard.

3. World of Warcraft (2004)
I was a hardcore raider, once.  I would sit, four nights a week, with a headset on, between nine and 24 friends, and sit in front of a massive boss whilst everyone else panicked trying to keep me alive.

I was a main tank, and a Tauren main-tank at that.

But before that, I was a small cow in a big field, on Christmas Eve ’05, the day I brought it home after much nagging from friends who were already raiding in vanilla WoW. I couldn’t wrap my head around the sheer size of the place. You could run for hours and not reach the coastline, sometimes.

With the rise of the first expansion, I went from levelling guild nub to raider in a couple of weeks, and with that discovered a professional side to a game now played by eleven million people. Grinding, wiping and online screaming and tears were a weekly game we played in Vent, and it took me everywhere, from Azeroth to Outland to Holland. If this was a list of the most significant videogames to the industry, this would be number one, without question.

2. Animal Crossing (2001)
A long time ago, I saw a game in Nintendo: Official Magazine. It was a game available only in Japan, much like the stellar Doshin the Giant, but it was different from any other game I had seen, having seen similar mechanics to Doshin in the recent Black & White. You lived in a town filled with talking, cute animals. You fished, and you did some gardening, and you bought nice things for your house, like Mario pipes, or pool tables.

I imported it, along with Doshin, from Australia – ironic that I was able to find content there and not in the United Kingdom, considering the contemporary “ban everything” situation the Aussies suffer through. After around an hour, I realised this was a game I was going to play for decades in many different forms. It was the first game I got for my Nintendo DS, and it was practically glued into my GameCube; the first title to displace SSX 3 from its hallowed position. I sold it when my GameCube gave up the ghost after five faithful years of service, but never the Animal Crossing 59-slot card. No one was allowed Abnoba Town, and after all, I’d just finished my bonsai tree collection.

1. Team Fortress 2 (2007)
A long time ago, occasional Reso freelancer Barry White wrote an article for The Escapist about how Team Fortress 2 affected the relationship he was in – for once, in a positive light. I smiled and showed it to my girlfriend, as we were exactly the same.

It’s Friday night, and we’re side by side, laptops on a beautiful antique wooden dining table, surrounded by beautiful antique wooden furniture; truly beacons of the 21st century within an environment holding on to its roots in antiquity. Her speakers on, my headset plugged in, we connect to our usual server. She becomes a Heavy, and I become a Medic.

It’s often said that chivalry is dead – that no longer will a man step to the defence of the woman he loves in the face of danger. Bull-shit. Dying, on her last breath, I charge in fresh from a respawn and hit her with an uber-charge. Healed and now invincible, she laughs out loud, in the real world, at the same time as her Heavy does. I follow them round the corner, and she mows down every member of Red Team, along with the sentry guns.

I’ve never been so in love.

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