My All Time Desert Island Top 100

In this stack: we give little regard to retro gaming--these must be titles I still own or have access to. And because I regularly upgrade without the trips back to Last Gen Land, these all tend to be recent games, with some notable exceptions.

Rank Game Release Date GameSpot Score Acesandelghts's Score
1

Destiny

Engaged community, new game type (social MMOG?), tight controls and fun. Don't forget epic. Gamespot was dead wrong with their 6.
6
8
2

Empire: Total War

Brilliant stuff. More on the order of a proper wargame (think Avalon Hill pushing-cardboard-markers-around-a-paper-map wargame) with awesome animations and battles than an RTS clickfest. If you like Age of Empires III, but want more of a strategic, epic experience, this is your game, as are any in the series really. But this one has guns.
8.5
9
3

Forza Motorsport 4

King of circuit racing. Some complained it had too many cars. Too much depth... that sounds like a valid complaint. Has something for everyone.
8.5
9
4

RalliSport Challenge 2

In my Top 100, there exists a Top Five All Time Desert Island racing games, and this is clearly always in that category. It is simply stellar, to the point of being a cult classic. DICE went on to Battlefronts and Battlefields, never to return to racing, and boy was it a heartbreaker. This game stands and a classic though.
9.3
10
5

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Clearly king of the fan-servicing, self aware, anything-goes sandbox game. Its spiritual successors were more Saints Row than GTA, though GTA V was getting back to roots that this game set down. Good for plenty of laughs and fairly deep too.
9.6
10
6

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The peak of the Call of Duty series. It was outrageous in every way. In a world where a shrewd player could dominate the field and be rewarded with a nuclear weapon that would kill everyone and end the game instantly, what could you possibly do to top that? Well, how about allowing people to carry backpacks full of limitless explosives (the One Man Army build) or pack a machine gun, a shotgun as a "secondary" and top it off with a rocket launcher. You could do all of this. Afterwards, why not send in AC-130 gunships or rain hellfire missiles from orbiting drones? It was anarchy and madness and well I guess you had to be there. It all went downhill from here.
8.5
10
7

Age of Empires III

My favorite RTS of all time, unless you count the slightly more strategic and larger Total War series. Like historical re-enactments of battles that never took place in a frenzied display of gunfire and horses and burning buildings? This is your game.
8.2
9
8

Grand Theft Auto V

A good ressurrection of this series. Quirky characters and grand scale give it a bit more of an old school GTA feel and help gloss over the too-serious and fairly boring GTA IV. Online was a great accomplishment too.
9
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