Day 25: Looking back at the 6th Generation.

The 6th Generation of Video Games. This is the era of the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube. The period roughly runs from 1998 (Dreamcast launch) to 2005 (Xbox 360 launch) but the first two games on this list are from 2006 due to the PS2 still seeing significant releases well into the PS3's life. These are my top 5 games of the 6th generation. In all fairness, this is a little biased (aren't all 'best of' lists biased?) due to the time period being a formative one for myself. What with boarding school and preparing for college there was little time and money to dedicate to games so there weren't many games eligible. Nonetheless, these games are anything but insignificant. Anyways, here we go.

5.     Final Fantasy XII: This game pushed the PS2 to it's limits with enormous maps detailed exquisitely and a real time, almost strategy battle system not unlike an MMO. In essence, the scale and battle system makes FFXII feel like an MMO without the 'O' which isn't surprising given Final Fantasy XI was an MMO. The story was a mostly forgettable tale of political strife between two warring empires and the victim nations caught in the middle. The characters were likable but inconsequential to the story which conflicts with Final Fantasy's typically character-story driven style. The tradeoff here is 100's of hours of exploring, looting and monster hunting.

4.     Guitar Hero 2: The first game was a great concept that married Harmonix's prior rhythm games with RedOctane's top of the line gaming peripherals and influenced by Konami's Guitar Freaks. The sequel worked out the kinks of the original and introduced a whole new set list that's arguably the series' finest to date. Guitar Hero jumped the shark shortly afterward and Harmonix introduced the Rock Band series which didn't quite achieve the commercial success it deserved. This is the game that allowed both franchises to make billions of dollars, more so than the original. That fact alone speaks to the quality of Guitar Hero 2

3.     Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Grand Theft Auto 3 completely changed video games by executing an excellent sandbox game where before one didn't exist. Thereafter every other action video game developer had to start stepping their games up. Vice City improved GTA3 in every aspect, brought us a new city to conquer and featured arguably the series' best voice cast, setting and story much like Al Pachino's Scarface. While future games may have been bigger, bolder and badder, Vice City has a distinct, 80s style world and a property tycoon focused plot unlike any other GTA game before or after. While Vice City isn't the best GTA game in all regards it does host my favorite setting and plot. 

2.     Diablo 2: Much like GTA has spawned plenty of GTA-clones, Diablo 2 is one of those games that other games that want to be like. The hack'n'slash, swords and sorcery, point and click, loot-fest is as addicting as a video game can get. Combine that with a lengthy campaign, tons of monster types, countless character builds and randomly generated dungeons there's no true end to the game. It's the kind of game that keeps you grinding for hours on end because you never know what you might find next. World of Warcraft, a similar game from Blizzard, borrows a lot of the most addicting parts of Diablo and rolls it into a subscription based game that numbers in the 10s of millions of monthly players. Both games, and their success, is a testament to how masterful Blizzard is with their craft.

1.     Half-Life 2: Half-Life was a shooter unlike any other that married story and gameplay together without ever taking players out of an interactive role. Instead the story being told to the player, the player discovered the story themselves over the course of the game. Half-Life 2 took that, added incredible graphics (at the time) and physics puzzles. Practically everything you'd want to do in an action game is here. You get to shoot down helicopters, kill lots of aliens, blow up stuff, and some driving and puzzles. For my money there's no action game campaign that comes close to Half-Life 2, even today, imagine how mind blowing it was in 2004, which is two years younger than half of the games on this list.