Your weakpoint was glowing conspicuously for a while; I failed my save last week for the breath attack and now everything hurts LOL really really glad you're getting some dedicated burnout rest. let me know what helps, b/c i'm excited for mine soon

11. League of Legends it had to come up eventually lol. League taught me what live-service games meant. I played Gunbound, Gunz, Runescape, WoW - but League reinvented it. I've loved league since 2010 -It's an honor to give back to what inspired me to always incrementally get better at game design.

10. Dark Souls 2 The most controversial of the Souls, and yes, likely the weakest - but my favorite of the mainline. I loved how it felt experimental; it felt like they were trying so many things, and many of them were ehh, but that game had so much heart. Souls 2 walked so Elden Ring could run.

9. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER - you get the point the only VR game I'll count among my all-time favorites, even if I played Pistol Whip and Beat Saber more. Superhot proved the use-case to me; the feeling of immersion and of solving these puzzles in slow-mo and executing the solution is great.

8. The Beginner's Guide. While Davey Wreden's other work gets more recognition, Stanley Parable hit me nowhere near as hard, nor as close to home, as The Beginner's Guide did. It is, in my opinion, one of the best "games for other game devs." I can't say anything more without spoiling it.

7. Monster Hunter Tri / Ultimate. Tri is silly and has the most reviled mechanic in the franchise, and i adore everything about it. Tri has an immense amount of charm, the best new monsters (Barioth! Barroth! Deviljho!) and music in the series (Loc Lac City!!) and the bosses are peak. <3 Tri.

The second (and not last) Terry Cavanagh game on this list: 6. VVVVVV. VVVVVV taught me the elegance of designing to the natural limit of what a mechanic needs to be, and no further. V is short, sweet, and each screen is memorable, because there's no wasted screens. All-time favorite platformer!

5. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Pure, campy fun. I adore games that don't aspire to be more than that; Revengeance is a straightforward and masterfully executed action game. There's few games where setpiece gameplay actually makes me smile for the joy they had making this. Fun to speedrun, too.

4. Persona 4 Arena. The fighting game that made me finally sit down and get good at a fighting game remains my favorite to the day. The era of 2011-2014 was my favorite time for that genre. P4A has long stuck with me as my favorite, but MvC3, Skullgirls, BBCS, and then USF4 were all so good.

3. Trackmania 2020. www.trackmania.com?lang=en Trackmania's been a relax-game for me for two and a half years now. It's scratched an itch for competitive games for me, as I only have to compete against myself and the goals I set. It's a great "easy to understand, impossible to master" game.