This is a long-ass blog so I won't take up any space with preliminary banter

# 10 The Witcher (2007)

If Crysis is the new face of PC gaming, The Witcher has to be its heart and soul. No other game has managed to adopt the mature, personal tone that The Witcher maintains throughout, despite its rough edges and quirks. The Witcher made me feel things I didn't even know a video game could make me feel. It's a shame some elements are a bit under realized or overly complex because The Witcher is truly a fantastic experience that anyone who enjoys RPG's in the slightest should play. Few other games put the same gravity into the decisions you have to make, and the fact that most of these decisions are so much deeper than good or evil is a testament to how far ahead the game is in this department. Most RPG's offer such choices as kill this guy, or don't kill him; save this character or save that character; save this town or that town. The Witcher has choices that actually seem more plausible, and your actions have consequences, something that even the best of RPG's seem to struggle with.

#9 Half-Life 2 (2004)

you know that giddy feeling you get when you are playing a new game, and it manages to be fun and fresh and like nothing you have experienced before in a video game? What makes HL 2 so truly fantastic is that is manages to maintain this feeling for its relatively lengthy duration. The sheer variety of gameplay and environments is staggering, and the fact that they are all so well done is equally impressive. No one element of Half-Life 2 sets it apart from other FPS games – the combat is good but not great; the puzzles aren't anything special – rather it's the breadth of the gameplay and the consistently high quality missions and level design that make it a sheer joy to play. It seems that each new level introduces some new element, which keeps the game fresh and exciting throughout. The characters, great weapons, voice acting and story are like icing on the highly varied and near perfectly executed cake.

#8 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002)

This game may seem out of place in my top 10, but it has a special place in my heart for various reasons. First of all, it was the first action-oriented, highly scripted FPS I ever played (I had only played ghost recon and rainbow 6 games prior). It was also really similar to Saving Private Ryan, my favourite movie at the time I played this game (and I later learned that Steven Spielberg was involved in making the game). MoH:AA was intense, fun and highly varied with missions ranging from solo spy/stealth ops to full on assaults. I still hold the Omaha beach assault mission as my favourite single game mission ever in an FPS. Its authenticity mixed with its action is a great combination that no other game has managed to pull off to the same degree of success. It is my favourite WWII fps, and seeing as how the industry is moving away from the era it will probably remain so.

#7 S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007)

When Shadow of Chernobyl finally came out, I was not prepared for what I was heading into. A brutal, cruel and relentless world full of horrible people and mutants that all want to either kill you and loot your corpse or eat your face. Easily the most atmospheric game I have ever played and one of the creepiest, Stalker: SoC does immersion right, and despite its bugs is probably the most complete and enjoyable game in the trilogy (although it's not nearly as polished as Call of Pripyat). Words cannot describe the funny unease that comes upon you as you venture into an abandoned soviet factory, odd sounds and flashing light coming through the windows produced either by anomalies, humans or perhaps some horrid beast. A flash of lightning from behind broadens the small circle of light cast from your headlamp into a brief glimpse at the surrounding landscape – one full of turmoil and hungry mutants, the massive breadth of the factory now apparent. Then, once again, darkness, total darkness, surrounds you as you trudge forth into the entrance of this gloomy factory. Pretty much every moment of this game is as atmospheric and tense as this one, and the sense of mystery is almost complete at the beginning of the game. You really need to play this game to understand its appeal – words simply don't, and cant, do it justice.

#6 F.E.A.R (2005)

I love Fear for the same reason I love the Max Payne games – the game allows you to truly revel in the glory of combat. As it stands, no other game has combat as good as what is found in F.E.A.R – the gunplay, the A.I. and the weapons themselves are all top notch. Add slow-motion and fantastic visual effects into the mix and each firefight is a glory to behold. The horror aspects of the game aren't the best, but the story is great and pretty creepy, and there are lots of tense, atmospheric moments throughout the duration of the game. But in the end it's the glorious, slow-motion firefights where bullets are whizzing through the air kicking up dust and scattering boxes while limbs fly and enemies try to communicate with each other that put this game in my top 10.

#5 Mass Effect (2008 )

There is no one element that makes me love Mass Effect, and I have a hard time explaining why I like it so much better than Mass Effect 2 (as awesome as the game is), but I'll do my best. The original game has much more personality and a much better story – I think these are the two main elements that made me love the game. The galaxy is full of wonder and mystery and just begs to be explored. The ambient soundtrack is probably the best I know of. The environments are gorgeous form an artistic standpoint and impressive from a technical one. While the main storyline is rather short, the replay value is spectacular and the missions themselves are incredibly fun, and almost all of them feel super epic and important, unlike the sequel. The number of characters in your party feels just right; in ME 2 it's hard to get to know all the characters well while in ME 1 I had a much better understanding of them and what they were about. Some people may struggle to understand why I have this game so high up on my list; I do as well sometimes, but the fact is that I enjoyed it a lot, and I have enjoyed each of my three playthroughs of the game as much as the last.

#4 The Elder Scrolls III; Morrowind (2002)

Duking it out with Oblivion for the title of my most played game, Morrowind was a much better game than Oblivion simply because it had personality, character and a ton of charm. Despite its dated graphics, the hand-crafted world was one of incredible detail and wonder, and required extensive exploration to get the full benefit of. And that is what I did – I explored like there was no other purpose to playing games. All the hand-placed special items made exploration incredibly rewarding, and the assortment of dangerous creatures made exploration even more interesting – some areas are simply off limits early on because your character is so weak. The sense of character progression is truly incredible as you rise from someone who landed on a prison boat in a shore town who can have his ass handed to him by a rat to the man who saves the entire island (reminds me of Risen now that I think about it). The story is also incredibly complex and interesting, full of politics and lore; racism and religion. The world that the game takes place in is just so incredibly rich that I couldn't get enough of it. Bethesda's best work to date and my favourite RPG, Morrowind is one hell of a game.

#3 Company of Heroes + Opposing Fronts (2006/8 )

I bought this game on a whim because I felt like I needed a new RTS, and I'd hard good things about the game. What I got in the end was something truly incredible – deep, technically advanced, complex and glorious in all modes. The singleplayer campaign of the original and its expansion are by themselves really incredible, with some missions taking several hours to complete with non-stop action. Recently RTS's have been moving from large-scale to small scale, and Company of Heroes strikes a perfect balance of this – you still build a base, and you still control quite a few units, and there is still a lot of strategy involved, as well as tactics and small-scale battles. The depth and breadth of the game is rather staggering, there is simply so much one has to take into account when playing this game. Unit build orders, unit placement, upgrades, tactics and overall strategy all need to be managed at once, which means intense focus is always required when playing this game, especially when you play online. It was also by far the most technologically advanced game available when it hit the market, with fully destructible environments, insane detail, and particle and explosion effects that are still some of the best on the market today. Opposing Fronts even manages to be atmospheric at times thanks to the slow paced, armour-oriented missions that occur during lightning storms. These two games come as close to perfection as an RTS ever can if you like the tactical, combat heavy modern RTS without giving up overall strategy.

#2 Deus Ex (2000)

Deus Ex, like Half-Life 2, doesn't do any one thing better than other games. In fact, the gunplay really isn't spectacular, and the stealth elements really are a bit awkward. But it's the scope and the freedom you have access to in this game that make it truly exceptional – it is an RPG in far more than just the choices you make and the stats you choose. The game really does allow you to play through every mission any way you want – you can by sneaky, you can go in guns-blazing, you can navigate puzzle-like hallways with hacking skills and EMP grenades – whatever play ****you can dream up, Deus Ex accommodates for. The rest of the RPG mechanics are great – choices and character building, and the story is complex, well told and very interesting. But it's the variety of the gameplay, the number of different ways each mission can be approached, that make the game so exceptional.

#1 Mafia (2002)

As predicted by PredatorRules, my number 1 game is Mafia. Its uncompromising, relentlessly realistic gameplay, mixed with a few small tweaks that prevent it from being frustrating (most of the time), create what is for me the ultimate gaming experience. It takes the realistic approach of the GTA games but does it right. The police system is easily the best I've ever seen; if you speed they pull you over and give you a ticket. If you do something more extreme, you have to escape or face the consequences. Yet, if you drive at the speed limit when a police is near, and avoid crashing your car, you won't be pulled over or hassled by the cops. The driving in the game may annoy some, but for me it added to the immersion in a big way – you live the life of a gangster down to the last detail, and driving around town is just one more thing you need to do. Combined with a fantastic, brilliantly told story, incredibly varied missions, and some of the most memorable set piece moments I have ever seen in gaming and you have something truly special.

One mission in the game involves robbing a bank, and it many ways it symbolizes the climax of the game – the character you play, and his most trusted gangster friend, are fed up with getting money fed to them by their corrupt mob boss, and decide to hold up a bank for some extra cash. To get to the bank, you need to ride a train all the way across town. There is no loading screen, but instead you experience this trip in real time – the tension is incredible as you have been versed on the plan, and its complexity is pretty great. Unlike other games, in Mafia these complexities aren't shown in a cutscene – you are required to do everything yourself, and it was this mission that put me into such a state of awe and made me decide I had never experience as grand in a video game before or since. Simply put, Mafia is the best game I've ever played.

Games I forgot about that would otherwise have been on my list:

Dead Space – probably would have been in the high 20's

Battlefield: 1942 – probably would have been in the low 20's/high teens.

Games I have played, and liked, but haven't played enough to include on my list:

Half-Life 1 – (got stuck part way through then lost the saves when a hard drive failed)

Homeworld (got my ass handed to me part way through, great game but brutally difficult)

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War + expansions – (just couldn't get into the game, enjoyed what I played though)

System Shock 2 – (playing through this right now actually, loving it, will probably make my top 10 if it continues)

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines – (I have this installed now, just need to get back to playing it...)

Thief 2 (still got it installed, may resume playing it eventually).

Assassins Creed 2 – (will finish eventually, platforming controls pissed me off so I stopped playing in the 9th sequence or so)