Top Ten Game Worlds of All Time That I’ve Played as of Sept. 22, 2017….

            Possibly one of the most important things of a video game is the world in which you play. It is the setting of your narrative, can create a physical obstacle for the player aside from all the bullets headed their direction, and can often be extremely unique and very visually creative. Sometimes a game world even manages to do these things and more and sticks with the player. Not often really, usually they are just a backdrop to hiding behind a chest high wall or looking at a mini-map to find the 500^th periodical to 100% the game. Anyways here are my current top ten game worlds out of all the games I’ve played, obviously this list will probably eventually change, I mean honestly I only recently settled on a favorite color and even then its still pretty sketchy, it’s red by the way.

10: The Mansion from Resident Evil (the first one, obviously)

            This entry is so low on my list because I can only play this game for short bursts before the tension gets too high or I get too annoyed trying to figure out what my next objective is and have been eaten by zombie dogs to many times or it’s no longer October. Now you may have gathered from that unreasonably long first sentence that I find the atmosphere of the mansion to be thick, oppressive, and pants wetting. (Oh, I should probably mention that I specifically mean the PS4 HD Remake Remaster thing since that’s the only version I’ve played. Good moving on.) While it is arguably very sort of generic horror it does it so well that you can’t really hold it against the mansion. The lighting and sound design in most every room are all excellent and you never can be too sure when you’re going to round a corner and find an angry undead hobbling along. I quite like the mirror room as it’s a very good use of static camera angles and that horror movie trope of mirrors being just the worst thing ever in a house. That’s why I don’t have any reflective surfaces in my bedroom except the window and a portable tv radio from the late 80s. But the fact that I haven’t finished the game yet and this game world still stands out in my mind says a lot. Also I’m just a big fan of that sort of dilapidated gothic art style. (Which will be a recurring theme in this list; you’re welcome.)

9: Sevastapol Station (or however you spell that) Alien Isolation

  

          First off I’m a huge Alien fan; I even like the first AVP movie and Prometheus and I liked the visuals and sets in Alien: Covenant (And that’s about it. But I digress.) The first several hours of this game walking around the space ship/station were just amazing and it really is like being in an Alien film, unfortunately for you and any hope you had of not being sexually assaulted by a nine foot tall black thing with genitalia for a head. This is another game I have yet to finish (a recurring theme in this list as well. I’m a busy guy with the attention span of a hungry dog at a meat packing plant.) But the thing that keeps me coming back to be horrified and annoyed is, quite literally, the space station itself. Alien had some of the best lighting and sound engineering in film and Alien: Isolation has that as well but in video game terms. Honestly, if you too are a huge coward and bad at stealth games where you don’t have access to wrist knives or Michael Ironsides, you should still play the first two hours of this game where it’s just a really tense walking simulator.

8: Whatever the World of Horizon Zero Dawn is called (I sure am professional)

            Okay so I don’t remember if the world of Horizon has a name that’s specific to it so here we are. Anyways, any game where I’ll happily spend 8 hours in the starting area exploring and looking at the scenic vistas and annoying all of my friends on social media with constant posts and videos about it must have at least one competent person on their world design team, even if it’s just one guys girlfriend who once visited Provo because SURPRISE!

 The whole game happens essentially in my backyard just long after my lifeless body has decayed and become plant food that has also died and become food for another. I really think that it was that revelation that cemented this game world as one of my favorites, it gave a personal connection to this fantastical world with robot dinosaurs and well written red haired female archer type characters. While the actual geography of the state is completely screwed up in a way that makes less sense than that one time Gene Hackman sunk California into the ocean and would probably take roughly that amount of force to rearrange to the state it’s presented as in the game. (Lots of run on sentences this entry, not sure what my deal is sorry) Run on sentences and silly jokes aside, this is a genuinely interesting game world, both visually and narratively, and if you have a PS4 and for some reason haven’t played this one you really should. I really like the viewpoints where you have the chance to see what those ruins in front of you used to look like. It was one of these viewpoints that led me to the aforementioned revelation about the game world.

7: Rapture Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite

            At first I was going to put Talos 1 here from the recent Prey, but I only like tht one as much as I do because of how much I liked Rapture, and Andrew Ryan’s city exists more to the gothic side of the art deco style I think, particularly in Bioshock 2. I know it’s probably a dirty crime to say this, but I really think I like Rapture the most in Bioshock 2, the redheaded step child of the Shock family. What can I say, I have a thing for redheads. But the city’s second appearance is the one that stands out the most to me because of the feeling as the player that you really shouldn’t be here. After playing Bioshock the first one and watching those credits roll you probably assumed like I did the whole city had collapsed, the adventure was over, Rapture was no more. The second outing here really makes you feel even more out of place than before because deep down you get the feeling that everything you’re seeing could collapse if you so much as tap the glass.

 It also helps that advancements in graphics tech led to much more moody and atmospheric lighting throughout the city; and walking on the ocean floor among the rubble of Rapture was very eerie the first time. And don’t forget that little sister dream sequence at the end which was really interesting in a hallucinatory sort of way. So while the other to Shock games have better bosses and stories and Ken Levine and all that, I really think that Bioshock 2 had the best game world.

6: All those places you go in Assassins Creed Rogue

            You can’t talk about memorable game worlds for long without mentioning the Assassins Creed series. While this may seem like an odd choice to many because “Assassins Creed 2 is the best in the series and a near perfect sequel.” Or “The Caribbean from AC4 was the greatest open world sailing since that one time Nintendo blew all of our tiny little minds.” Well I haven’t played ass creed 2 and as pretty and atmospheric as ass creed 4’s open world is it just took too long to get anywhere for me to really enjoy it. While Rogue isn’t free from that issue sometimes, the sailing can be a bit tedious from time to time; part of it for me is just that I like the colder setting. Especially when you go to the North Atlantic and are plowing through ice and exploring frozen ships stuck in icebergs. It helps that Assassins Creed Rogue is one of the only Assassins Creed games I’ve personally finished even though I own almost all of them. So really this one is just up to the fact that I like snow and cold, as well as Rogue being the best send off for the last gen style of Assassins Creed.

5: Gotham Arkham Origins

            On the subject of games in a series that most people either ignored or just pretend they don’t exist which now that I write those two things I realize they are functionally the same but hey moving on; let’s talk about Batman Arkham Origins. Most people just sort of ignore this entry to the series, especially since Rocksteady has taken to calling it the Arkham Trilogy, and while it is flawed I really enjoyed it, in fact I play it every Christmas. I really could have chosen just about any of the game worlds from the Arkham series, they’re all just amazingly detailed and fun to traverse, but I decided to pick just one and this one wins partly because of all the snow and holiday spirit, but also because it’s the most like being in the Batman Animated Series in my opinion. While Gotham from Arkham Knight is bigger and more superior from a technical standpoint, the Gotham in Origins still has that more personal feeling with the lack of a Bat-Tank. And while I’d love to rail on Arkham Knight some more, I’ll save that for another day when it’s more relevant. Back on track now, the game world of Arkham Origns earns the distinction of being my favorite because it captures the feeling of  the Animated Series aong with, at times, that sort of peaceful quietness on Christmas Eve. I find it interesting seeing the gothic architecture of Gotham decked out in Christmas decorations and covered in six inches of snow. I feel it creates and interesting juxtaposition between what is arguably the best night of the year for many, and our preconceived notions of Gotham as the armpit of the world. It also does the most with interesting lighting and texture of the PS3 Arkham games.

4: Mars Red Faction: Guerilla

            It is at this point in the list where the exact position of the items becomes more relative and subject for change depending on my mood and the phase of the moon. For instance, Gotham could easily pass Mars here depending on how close to the holidays we are. However, Mars is this high because it is one of the few game worlds that actually manages to feel alive, which is odd because it’s not even Earth. I think the biggest thing that helps this is that every building can be entered and dismantled with Mjolnir, your mighty hammer. That along with NPC dialogue that just seems like the sort of things that real people might say to one another in a scrappy resistance unit such as while we were heading out on a raid to bring the Man down a peg and one of my soldiers helpfully said to his friend “Don’t forget to take off your safety this time.” Which is both hilarious and probably exactly what most of us would do. Heck I do that on the shooting range when I know the safety is on and I need to take it off. I think it also helps how the rubble and debris from destroyed structures doesn’t disappear until you leave the area for a while unlike most games where it disappears during a firefight and you find yourself without cover. I also like how the rubble has weight to it and you can’t just kick it around either. It all just feels like what you’d expect it to feel like and that’s a good thing.

3: Deus Ex: Human Revolution (I’m not even going to try listing all the places you go)

            This is a very special game for me; I found my copy of it several months before the release of Mankind Divided in the bargain bin at Gamestop for $1.79. I knew nothing about it except that it was a sci-fi game like Blade Runner with guns and stealth and a few memes. I also knew that it was getting a sequel and that sequel looked quite enticing from the one trailer I saw. What followed after my purchase was probably the most fun and excitement for a game I’ve had with my PS3 since playing Skyrim for the first time.          Every location in this game had this sort of lived in almost dilapidated feeling, sort of like real Detroit. The main reason I pick this games world over the one in Mankind Divided is because Human Revolution has a much more diverse selection of locations and levels with lots of opportunities for exploration. While Mankind Divided is certainly much prettier and uses verticality better, its predecessor has much more memorable areas like the aforementioned Detroit, Hengsha, the world news headquarters, that building with the weird dancing mannequin things, the facility in the Missing Link DLC, and the excellent final act in the arctic which I personally found very tense.



 I especially like how Human Revolution makes the exploration of its hub worlds weave into the main narrative along with the side quests which are all just so good. Mankind Divided had a lot of these aspects but was honestly just too short and didn’t give itself enough time to develop a lot of its ideas. Hopefully we get a sequel soon and maybe even a full remake of the original Deus Ex once Adam’s story has caught up to those events.

2: Skyrim the Elder Scrolls V Skyrim (what a surprise)

            You really can’t talk about game worlds without mentioning one of Bethesda’s open worlds. Skyrim is definitely my favorite of theirs that I’ve played, Fallout has always been too bleak and desaturated for me and has the eternal question hanging over it of “why doesn’t anyone rebuild anything?” and Oblivion seemed to take place entirely within the slopes of the uncanny valley. Skyrim is one of the few games that I’ve managed to clock in probably 200 hours on and still look forward to playing it more and discovering more exciting quests and characters.



 I haven’t played the PS4 remaster yet, but even on PS3 it still looks amazing with some of the best vistas and mountain views I’ve seen in a game; and the best part is you can explore every inch of it which earns it a pass in the face of tis many, many, bugs. I really love the additions to the world in the DLC add-ons. Solstheim has an amazing almost alien feel to it and Dawnguard has some of that great gothic architecture I like so much. Dawnguard also plays around with lighting a lot more making its unique areas feel even more alive, shout out to the Ancestor Glade you go to part way through the main quest line for Dawnguard.  

1: The Nightmare Bloodborne (sorta)

   


         Well here’s where the list gets weird again. I didn’t want to give my number one spot to a game that I haven’t finished yet, I’ve made it all the way to Old Yarnam and even got up to the top of the tower to fight the guy with the machine gun once or twice. But regardless of my lack of overall playtime, Bloodborne’s game world is what I really want to see more of in gaming. Less burnt out urban environments and sterile facilities and more diseased gothic/Victorian architecture that presses the boundaries of what is physically possible; because as fun as it is to run around jungles and historical environments, with gaming we have the opportunity to really explore some incredibly unique and bizarre locations in a way that just can’t be done in any other medium except maybe lego.



 I really could have awarded this spot to any of the FromSoftware games, they all have excellent worlds and environment designs that make the space you play in just as beautiful as the sky-box around you. Bloodborne is simply my favorite because it’s the most unique of any game world I’ve played in. It has grounding in reality in the way that locations in dreams have grounding in reality; recognizable elements arranged in a way that feels foreign and bizarre and doesn’t always make perfect sense out of context. So in short, Bloodborne earns my number one spot because of what it represents for gaming as art, it represents creative freedom that ditches convention in favor of its own unique vision for a truly different world that is unlike anything you’ll experience elsewhere.

           Well there you have it, those are my current top ten game worlds of all time. This was actually really hard to narrow down to just ten and there’s a few that didn’t make the list just barely so special shout out to every game world Naughty Dog has created from the first Uncharted onward as well as others like Sanctuary from Diablo which didn’t make it because of the random generation that makes sense from gameplay but does make it hard for the world to have a lasting impact in some ways. Anyways leave a few of your favorite fictional game worlds in the comments and take comfort in the knowledge that no matter what you say you’re wrong because as the site says, this is My Perfect Opinion. And Perfection is absolute.

Images were taken from google images, except the Horizon Zero Dawn ones, those are mine.