The 100 best games of all time (2024)! (40-36) – That’s Gaming

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The 100 best games of all time (2024)! (50-46)
The 100 best games of all time (2024)! (45-41)

40. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (2011)

The Elder Scrolls series was already very popular among fans of Western RPGs, but Skyrim is absolutely the best in the series in our opinion. Hundreds of hours of side quests, pickpocketing, collecting weapons, selling weapons, trying not to be seen or just running like crazy at enemies, buying houses, fighting dragons, making discoveries, shouting Fus Roh Dah!, looking at objects (and spinning them around) and being the knight. Many a gamer has spent months, if not years, playing it.

It has been “only” thirteen years since Skyrim came out and it is considered the sixth installment of the Elder Scrolls series, but in the meantime, more different versions of Skyrim have been released than the number of Elder Scrolls games before Skyrim combined. In addition, you can play the game on just about any device since Xbox 360/PlayStation 3. Whether you have a VR helmet, a PC, console or even on an Alexa, you can play Skyrim!

So it’s about time a new installment was released, but that seems to be a while away. Yes, a few years ago the game was more or less announced with a concept teaser, but since then we’ve really only been told that it will be quite a few years before we can get to work on The Elder Scrolls 6. In the meantime, you could try The Elder Scrolls online, maybe it will keep you entertained for a while. Still, we’re betting on a nice new installment during the next generation of consoles.

39. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Super Mario Bros. franchise was already very popular and especially in elementary schools. We do remember that there were always kids who were a little too eager to be “cool” and they would try to achieve that status with lies about games. At that time you could make up anything you wanted, because you couldn’t just check it on the Internet. And so all kinds of nonsense stories came along, including “I have discovered World 9!”, but also “There will be a fighting game with Mario!”. That sounded too good to be true, although we all still had no idea what such a thing would look like, because at that time we weren’t even familiar with games like Street Fighter, there wasn’t even a Super Nintendo yet.

It wasn’t until 1999 that it finally became a reality to see Mario in a fight with Luigi, for example, and the announcement was also accompanied by a delightful trailer. In it, a number of people could be seen dressed up as characters from the world of Super Mario. They first walked hand in hand, but soon they were fairly beating each other up. It ended up being Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, followed by Melee on the GameCube, Brawl on the Wii and For Wii U/3DS on the Wii U and 3DS (duh!). These games all worked differently than your average fighting games, giving the series a unique style.

So how can you still make a better game? Well, that’s very “simple”: you just make a volume with all the previously released characters, levels and soundtrack! Then you add a whole mess of characters as well and you have a pretty packed game to boot. Choose characters from the Super Mario universe, lots of characters from other Nintendo games and even all sorts of cool characters from games by other publishers and developers. For example, you can take on Sonic or even Solid Snake with Banjo & Kazooie! This game will keep you busy for quite some time, and we don’t expect another installment to come out for a while, because how can you top this again?

38. Kingdom Hearts (2002)

It might seem a bit niche: a game for fans of the Final Fantasy games that also breaks down on everything Disney! Well, at least at Square Enix they thought it was a good idea and we agree with them wholeheartedly on that. The first installment was an instant success and it showed that you could experience a fine RPG in the world of Disney. From Goofy and Mickey Mouse, to Donald Duck and to almost all the Disney princesses, they are all in it. By the way, you play with Sora, a character who looks typically “Final Fantasy,” with a beautiful pointy haircut and a very large key. With that wrench you also smash enemies in the face, very pleasant!

So is this installment immediately the best in the series? Yes, we think so, although the other parts on the console are also very strong. The only problem is that the series started acting a bit difficult after it with all the in-between parts and half remakes. In addition, we enjoyed Kindom Heart games on handheld and mobile less, but then again those are part of the whole story. This ultimately makes it all very difficult to follow, but much is made up for by the Disney franchises that are different in each volume. There are sections where something new is done with such a franchise, but much more often you kind of play along in familiar scenes from Disney films.

Again, the first part keeps it fairly simple and is still a joy to play. Check out the remake if you can find it. In addition, it is also great fun to play it with the somewhat smaller children, although they are not always the biggest fans of the ‘terrifying’ enemies of the ‘Heartless’. But then again, when we were kids we also regularly had trouble sleeping after watching Disney movies. Yes, you too, you really have nothing to be ashamed of.

37. Assassin’s Creed (2007)

A game with “ass” in the title twice must be popular, and the Assassin’s Creed series is just that. When the first installment was announced, we were immediately sold by the bizarre mix of history and science fiction. The game is actually set in the future, where you can use a machine to experience memories of your ancestors. What follows is an interesting story and an even better setting: the third crusade in the Middle Ages. Thus, you pass through three cities: Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus, and these are spread far apart, although that also has to do with the time when the first part appeared. Nowadays we know much larger games.

So why the first Assassin’s Creed in this list, but not all the other parts of the series? It’s very simple: the setup was new, the atmosphere unmatched and the travel to another city was masterful, despite being quite criticized by gamers who found it boring. After that, a new installment was released almost every year, of which the second one was definitely the most popular, but for us the fun was actually quickly gone. Sure, many impressive cities passed by, but frankly, we felt that you could find them all with interchangeable. Often we still got the idea of doing the same thing over and over again, whereas the first part surprised us with its wonderful atmosphere.

You also have to look a bit at the games of the time, because, for example, the way you can climb up buildings very smoothly in Assassin’s Creed had not been done before. In addition, we were also not very used to the many npc running through the cities and that you can also use them to your advantage by blending yourself into the crowd to remain unseen. After the first volume, we’ve been almost all over the world by now, but it sometimes seems that the more often this series poops out a new volume, the faster we get bored of the concept.

36. Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt (1985)

The first entry in the Super Mario series at number 36 in the list of the best games of all time? Yes indeed! We also did get to a place where it almost doesn’t matter where a game ranks, as there are many top games to follow. We also combine it with a spot for Duck Hunt, since chances are you once got a double cartridge of Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt when you bought an NES. These games are then inseparable for us as we look back to the early years of the oldest editors in our newsroom.

Everyone knows Super Mario Bros. by now, but it’s pretty special that the game still plays away very nicely. The moves you make Mario do are still “pixel perfect” and the music is still one of the most famous game soundtracks ever! At the editorial office we still like to play on an old NES and sometimes even hold Duck Hunt championships, although it is increasingly difficult to connect such a device to TVs. In fact; you can’t even play Duck Hunt on newer TVs anymore, since the technology behind the ‘light-gun’ only works on those old TVs with such a huge butt.

You’re probably going to find another Super Mario game or two in this list that we think are better than the original in the long run. Still, it also hurts a little that we have the game ranked relatively “low. By the way, several versions of this game have been released, but at least try to avoid the versions for handhelds, as there are often whole sections of the screen “cut off” due to resolution differences. To at least be able to play Super Mario Bros. on your newer TV, we recommend purchasing the NES Classic or else a version of Super Mario All-Stars. In the latter, you can play with the first three Super Mario games, given a “new” look.