Since I was young, video games have played a major role in my life. I grew up with my father playing the original Tomb Raider and DOOM games and I can remember vividly sitting with him playing Medal of Honor on an old television on my PlayStation 2.

Since that moment, I embraced the culture of gaming and have played some games that have helped me through rough times, sunk me into a world where I lost the concept of time, and even made some life-long friends that I still talk to today.

Here is my list of my personal top ten games of all time. (NOTE: Remember that this is my personal list of games I have played, NOT the best of all time. That list would be incredibly different.)

10. Red Dead Redemption – Rockstar Games (2009)

Red Dead Redemption was a an open-world third-person role-playing (RPG) game based on the later period of the Wild West. You play as John Marston, a former criminal turned hero after being faced with the dilemma of either forgo your criminal ways and help take down your old gang or have your family killed.

It sounds basic but that is just a scratch of the surface, hell not even a scratch. This game was as close to a Wild West version of Grand Theft Auto as you could get.

You could do literally almost anything. As the game progressed you truly felt yourself get stronger as you got better weaponry.

The characters were fantastic, the story was incredible, and the world space for 2009 was unrivaled by any western game ever made, and the game still stands the test of time.

The best moment though is when you think the game ends and you are like: “Hey that’s pretty good,” and then bam, not only is the game not over, but there is a huge area of Mexico now you can go to and the storyline continues.

Plus the ending is one of the few that have made me cry.

The multiplayer though was where this game really differentiated itself. If a player went on a killing spree, you could track them down and collect the bounty on their head and you could get into old Wild West shootouts with other gangs of players and police NPCs.

The amount of time I spent with my friends just owning a portion of the sprawling map for hours on end was like nothing else.

While the multiplayer is now for the most part dead, the campaign is worth playing through if you have never played it and I guarantee you it is pretty cheap now. This game is a classic and is worth owning.

9. League of Legends – Riot Games (2010)

League of Legends is a 5v5 MOBA where the objective is to take objectives and destroy the enemy nexus by sieging their base. The game sounds simple, but the game is the most complex multiplayer game I have ever touched.

The game is about 60 percent mentality and macro play while the other 40 percent is straight mechanics which is basically how good you are at navigating your specific champion.

You have to be paying attention to the map, warding to get vision of the enemy, killing minions to get gold, and communicating with your team to set up crucial objectives that can make or break a game.

All of this is in real time while fighting another player, or in the case of bot lane, which is what I play, two people.

The progress of learning this game is monstrous. I have been playing it for three years now pretty regularly and I still am considered an average player at best, but the progression is oh so satisfying.

Each year I can feel myself get slowly better and better as my pool of champions I can play expands and my understanding of the game increases.

On top of all this, the pro-scene for this game is the largest out of any game in the world and really allowed me to dive into the world of esports as a whole after getting my feet wet with the competitive scene in Call of Duty when I was younger.

I got to see the worlds semi-finals match between the two best teams in the world at the time: SKT and the ROX Tigers. The series was considered the best of all time, where SKT won in a crucial game five.

Finally, this game has the social aspect like no other. My fraternity has their own league where we play competitively against each other in a season-style format, and I have met some of my best friends through the game.

While I would not recommend playing this game because of the massive learning curve, if you are willing to take a crack at it be ready for an investment that is super rewarding in the end.

8. Need for Speed: Underground 2 - EA Black Box (2004)

While younger me had played racing games before, this brought me into a whole new level of racing and love for cars: street race culture.

Massive body kits, huge performance upgrades, customization levels fitting of a mid-2000s pimp, drifting, etc…never have I wanted a Nissan 350z more than I did when you drive the one in the beginning.

I remember getting an external racing wheel that I could use to drive the car in game and let me tell you, nine-year old Alex thought it was the coolest shit in the world.

The game had an open world system where there was no fast travel, so you had to drive across the giant city of Bayview to get to each race and each area that you progressed into was different than the other from the outskirts around the airport that you arrive in to Japanese-style downhill drifting, which was my personal favorite.

So many hours were put into this game that it basically places from nostalgia alone. At a time when Fast and the Furious was still in its young stages (and its prime) and car culture was at an all-time high this game was as good as it got.

Plus, the soundtrack is phenomenal (I still hum “Riders on the Storm” to this day). It is worth picking up if you can find it pretty cheap just to experience how great of a racing game this was.

7. Spyro the Dragon – Insomnac Games (1998)

Spyro the Dragon still stands the test of time as an instant classic and for good reason. The first game in the trilogy was one of the first games that I ever played on my sister’s original PlayStation, and nostalgia takes over once again for me.

I spent hours trying to 100 percent the game, and it is still one of the few games that I have completed literally everything.

Do not get me wrong though, this game is old, and it feels old. If you try and play it now it will feel janky compared to the smooth controls of today’s games but back in 1998 and even when I played it and the entire trilogy when I was around six or seven the game was incredible.

Each world was crafted so uniquely, and the third-person RPG was one of the cleanest and smoothest at the time of release. It is a classic that I would highly recommend especially with rumors of a possible remaster of the original trilogy surfacing recently.

6. The Last of Us – Naughty Dog (2013)

There is a reason this game was close to a 10/10 when reviewers got their hands on this third-person RPG back in 2013.

Naughty Dog was still riding the success of the Uncharted series when they released The Last of Us, a horror-based game that followed the story of Joel and Ellie twenty years after an infection has decimated the human population.

That description does not do the story justice but the story is so good that I do not want to spoil anything. The gameplay is dynamic and you can play it either stealth or guns-blazing and the soundtrack is incredible.

There are few games that are so well done in each area that it can be considered to be on the same playing field as a blockbuster movie and it is easily one of the best games that I have played.

If you have not touched this masterpiece, I would highly recommend picking it up because it is cheap right now and there is a sequel coming out in the very near future.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Infinity Ward (2009)

While I might get flack for putting the second installment of the Modern Warfare franchise over the first, I have so many memories from MW2 that I must put it into my top five.

The campaign in the game was fantastic that had twists and turns that left me wondering what would happen next and the ending was icing on the cake. When you dramatically pulled the knife from your stomach and threw it straight into Col. Sheppard’s eye as you are bleeding out on the ground it left me wanting more and to know what happened to Soap.

The campaign though is only half of that though. The multiplayer was unmatched, and at the time it reigned supreme.

No other game besides maybe Halo was even close to it on console. The times I had with friends on that game rival nothing to this day. Fortnite has gotten close at times, but nothing beats having your friend run support streaks as you attempt to get the fabled nuke.

Nothing beats quickscope battles on Rust or riot shield faceoffs.

I hit this game in the prime video game period of one’s life: middle school, where you would stay up till god knows when on the weekend without a care in the world, energy drink by your side just playing. There is nothing quite like it.

This game’s campaign is good enough to warrant picking up and if you are lucky you might be able to find one or two matches still floating around but the prime days of MW2 are long gone.

It was a gilded age of gaming that you should treasure if you were lucky enough to experience it for what it was.

4. Pokémon Gold and Silver – Game Freak (1999)

A video game list without a Pokémon game would be literally criminal but my choice is different than most.

The two original games, Pokémon Red and Blue and their closely-related cousin Pokémon Yellow usually get the most recognition on top ten lists, but Gold and Silver easily reign supreme in my eyes.

Sequels rarely live up to the hype of the original games but Gold and Silver blew the originals out of the water. Designed for the Gameboy Color, the game was advanced in the color spectrum for the time and introduced so many new things into the world of Pokémon.

Day and night cycles were added, shiny Pokémon were added, a whole new slew of Pokémon were added, a new region in Johto to explore, new poke balls that could be specially crafted. The list goes on and on.

Nowadays though we see most of these added in a new Pokémon game, so what sets this one apart? How about once you beat the Johto region surprise you get to go back to Kanto and fight all the old gym leaders and then you get to beat the scaled-up Elite 4.

Sounds pretty good, but hold on to your hat folks because that’s not all. You then get a chance to face off against the protagonist and player character from the first game, RED, at the top of Mt. Silver.

RED has insanely high-level Pokémon for an NPC character, especially in the original Gameboy Color version (all around level 80), that results in one epic battle.

Not to mention the music that plays during the fight is one of the most badass pieces ever written for a video game. That is how you make a damn good sequel people and developers should take notes.

Plus, you can get a newer version of the game if picking up a Gameboy Color does fancy your interest since Nintendo reworked it for the DS a few years back.

This game is legendary and if you consider yourself a Pokémon fan and you never got the chance to play either the original or reworked game go pick it up. You will not regret it.

3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – CD Projekt RED (2015)

If you play video games and have not touched The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you are missing out on one of the best, and some argue the best modern RPG to this day.

The story is incredible and every choice you make can impact how the game plays out which makes it fresh on almost every play-through, and the open world is breathtakingly beautiful, especially on a high-end PC where you can truly experience the game in all its graphical prowess.

It is one thing for a game to look beautiful though if it does not have depth though. The player character, Geralt of Rivia, and all the surrounding characters are not only complex, but loveable to a fault.

One of the hardest decisions in the game is who you choose as your romantic interest in game, and all this is happening while you attempt to save your adopted daughter Ciri from the entity known as the Wild Hunt from tracking her down.

But that is not all this game has to offer. The world space is unmatched by anything I have ever played in a game. You feel as if you are actually there.

As a Witcher, you are basically a sellsword that handles monster problems for a price and people treat you like literal shit in game because you yourself are a monster despite solving a lot of problems for people.

I can remember walking into Novigrad, one of the major cities in the game, and immediately being called out by a religious/political figure that if I did anything magic or monster related in the city that I would be literally burned alive.

Never in a game have I played a protagonist with basically free will that is looked upon like literal dirt despite everything that “I” have done. By this point Geralt is a well-known master swordsman and expert monster hunter.

You literally have books written about you and how badass you are and people still look upon you as a mutated magical freak who steals children and follows the coin.

Oh, and did I mention the political strife that is taking place in the game? Yeah there is gigantic war happening between all of this going down.

While you do not really fight in it, people will take notice if you wear stuff from one side or the other and who you associate with during the game.

To put the icing on the cake though, the DLC is some of the best I have ever touched for any game, and really adds to the game instead of being a gimmick.

The game simply has depth that is unrivaled by every game I have played except for one, and that is for different reasons.

The whole package this game can offer is incredible. Plus, if you are interested there are books that the games are based on that are fantastic from what I have heard and there is a Netflix series coming out soon which is shaping up to be very good from what I hear.

Still not sold? How about the fact that picking up a copy of the game now will set you back only around $20 (without DLC) and around $30 for the Game of the Year edition which includes all the expansions.

For the sheer amount of playtime, you get for this, you will easily get your money back and a whole lot more. If you enjoy RPG games and have not played this, go play it.

2. Destiny – Bungie (2013)

Destiny is a game that I have an incredible love-hate relationship with but I would not trade the experiences that I had while playing it for anything in the world.

The campaign was shit, literal shit and this game was a shaky as it gets especially at launch. However, the community in that game on top of the end-game content made it one of the most enjoyable experiences of any video game that I have played.

The multiplayer, while never truly balanced, was fast-paced, fun and gave you the ability to give you the montage moments that brought you to the edge of your seat while playing and it gave me so many fun times with some of my closest friends.

The grind to get gear was more satisfying than any game I have ever played including numerous MMOs and RPGs and the end game, the sweet end game, gave me the sense of accomplishment that no other game has ever given me.

Raiding in the game was phenomenal and when done right, nothing else matched the sense of accomplishment when you finally took down Atheon after 37 tries and you got that sweet raid exotic that you had been trying to get for months.

Was it frustrating at times? Sure, but nothing beats that feeling when the exotic piece of gear flashed on your screen and doing with friends made the rewards even sweeter.

It got to the point where I ran one of the raids in the game, The Vault of Glass, so many times that I became someone who would help teach people how to go through the raid.

Being able to hear a younger kid yell in a state of pure happiness after finally being able to beat a raid because I was willing to take the time to help them learn made it one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life even outside of video games.

Then there was Trials of Osiris, the most fun and competitive grind in any video game. The premise was simple: win nine games in a row, and you go to the Lighthouse to get exclusive gear for going on a flawless run and only a flawless run.

Lose and you restart and do it all over again. I was a part of a dedicated team for a little under a month before a team fallout caused us to split, but getting that gear that made me stand out as an elite PvP player in one of the biggest games in the world was incredible.

I truly felt that I had worked my way up from a beginner to a notable member of the huge Destiny community and it was one of the most rewarding things I had done.

While the game was not perfect, and you certainly will not find it on a list of the top 100 games of all-time in almost any notable list, its community and the times I had in the game were nearly unmatched and I honestly miss being able to play that game with friends since Destiny 2 released and has been subpar.

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Bethesda (2011)

No other game on this list has had more time sunk into it than Skyrim. It was the first Elder Scrolls game that I played, and I loved it so much that I went back and bought the two that came before it and played through those.

Skyrim is unmatched by any game I have ever played because of the sheer lifespan and replay-ability of the game. Each playthrough is different and each character I have played has been unique.

The world is incredibly vast and even to this day I have not completed everything Skyrim can offer, which is saying something. All the DLC was incredibly good and added hours upon hours of content to an already vast game.

Skyrim itself though is not better than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as a pure RPG in my opinion though so why is ranked higher?

The answer is simple: creativity and player choice.

In Skyrim you are not forced to be a badass monster-slaying Witcher (which do not get me wrong is pretty sweet), you can be a thief that restores the Thieves Guild to its former glory, a murderous assassin that kills an emperor, a wondering sellsword, the arch mage at a magical college, an explorer of ancient ruins of a forgotten and advanced civilization, a general in a Civil War, etc...the list goes on and on.

To add onto that though is the piece that sets this game apart from all others: the modding community.

Skyrim is the most modded game in the world, with hundreds of thousands of downloadable mods that can be anything from adding weapons from previous games, giving you a sprawling mansion worthy of the most powerful man or woman in the realm, or even turning dragons into Thomas the Tank Engine (I’m serious this exists).

Imagine having a game where you can not only do anything, but you can now make anything too and Bethesda just threw you the keys and said, “have fun,” and that is Skyrim.

That is what makes this game truly great.

So, there is my top ten list for best video games I have played. Like I said earlier this is not the list of the best video games of all-time, and if you want one of those check out this article from Polygon on the top 500 video games of all time.