Greetings, consumers! This is Layoff Larry, the beloved CEO of The GG Tribune. I’m sure some of you think I’m just a soulless corporate suit who doesn’t care about video games and bought this site just to run it into the ground, but that’s not true! The video games part isn’t true, I mean. I am gonna wreck this place.
But I am a real gamer, trust me! I have what the kids these days call “leet MLG pro skillz,” with a Z. And just to prove it, here’s a list of all my favorite video games. Once you’ve seen how much of a cool gaming buddy ol’ Larry is, you’ll have no choice but to swear all of your money and undying loyalty to me.
20. Dota 2
So there I was on Gabe Newell’s yacht, trying to enjoy the freedom of international waters, when he invites me to play this game with him. Truth be told, I don’t understand anything that happens in this game. I think the giant scorpion is supposed to be me? But Gabe plays it all the time. On one of the yachts that he owns. If the secret to owning a fleet of yachts and somehow still getting nerds to think you’re their friend is hiding in this game somehow, I’m going to find it.
19. Fortnite
You probably think I just like all the crossover skins. And I’ll be honest, it is great how this game reduces a bunch of different artists’ creations into a barely identifiable commodified slurry. But I genuinely enjoy the gameplay too! Running around an island, hunting down all the other people … it’s not as fun as the real thing, but it helps fill the void while I’m waiting for Bezos’s annual gathering.
18. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm
This game is so great, I picked a name in the credits at random and decided to model my entire life after one of the programmers.
17. Victoria 3
The modern world is filled with monolithic corporations ravaging the last resources of a dying Earth and pushing us all towards environmental catastrophe in the name of profit. But it also has its downsides. One thing I can’t stand about kids today is all their spoiled modern labor protections. “Oh, you need to let us join a union!”, “You need to provide us health insurance!”, “You’re not allowed to own slaves!” Fortunately, with this game I can pretend I live in a more enlightened time and see what a sound economic policy can do. The game’s not perfect, though. It’s a little too impersonal. I’m glad I can work people to the point of starvation, but I’d like more than a spreadsheet that says I did it. I want to hear the proles complain about what it’s like to live under my rule. Maybe in the next expansion.
16. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
I would never kill anybody, because as far as you know I’m a good, law-abiding citizen who’s never been caught. I even theoretically pay my taxes! But hypothetically, if I had to murder somebody–in self-defense of course–I know exactly how I’d do it thanks to these games. I’d construct a convoluted locked-room scenario that makes it look like I’m the only person who could’ve possibly committed the murder. That way, my defense attorney can prove someone else really did it, and I’ll get off scot-free! And they say video games aren’t educational!
15. Swordquest: Waterworld
Now this is a series that knows what’s what. Atari held a contest where kids who played the Swordquest games could win real treasure. You didn’t play these games to have fun or enjoy some silly wizard story. No, the incentive here was the only reason anyone should do anything: the sweet allure of capital gains. Buy these material possessions and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get the honor of even more material possessions. Christ, I miss the 80s.
Swordquest already gave kids a pretty sweet lesson, but then it delivered an even better one. You know why Waterworld is my favorite? Because it’s the one where the contest stopped happening. Nobody won that crown, nobody got to play Airworld at all, and the $50,000 grand prize sword vanished forever. Well, that’s not quite true. I once paid to create an exact replica of the sword, then sold it to a smelter just so the world could take the kids’ treasure away from them a second time.
Welcome to real life, kiddos. Grown-ups don’t get jeweled crowns and philosopher’s stones for playing with toys. You want fake medieval treasure, you gotta hustle.
14. BioShock
This game is all about what it would be like if an insane billionaire created his own utopian society free of any sort of oversight. Naturally, it would be awesome. Sometimes nerds will try to tell me “No, Larry, Rapture is bad!” Well, let’s go over the facts. In our real-life world of business regulations, you can’t get superpowers out of a vending machine. In BioShock, you’re one purchase away from getting to shoot bees out of your hands. If you think Rapture doesn’t kick ass, you’re clearly lacking in media literacy.
“But it’s dangerous!,” they’ll tell me. “You could die!” That’s true, I could die. Then I’d come back to life in a Vita-Chamber. That’s right, under unregulated capitalism we’ll have a cure for death! Why in God’s name haven’t we done this already? Get me underwater, pronto.
13. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Sierra used to be one of the biggest publishers in the business. They released Half-Life! Now they’re a forgotten brand name that’s been bought out so many times Microsoft doesn’t even realize they own it. How did this happen? Well, could’ve been a lot of things, but maybe they had a series of games about a sleazeball named Larry, and maybe a powerful person saw an opportunity to file a defamation lawsuit and wring them for every cent they’re worth.
Anyway, lot of fond memories about these games.
12. Every mobile/browser game you’ve ever seen an ad for
I’m not sure if any of these things even exist, but their aggressive advertising campaigns do, and that’s good enough for me. In this world, marketing is everything. It’s why I love GEICO so much. I didn’t even know what they did, I just liked the funny commercials. Whenever, for some reason or other, there’s another person in my garage, they always say it’s so cool I collect classic cars. I don’t have the heart to tell them I really collect car insurance. I buy a new car, I get GEICO to cover it, and then I keep the framed policy in my real garage. Any company that can afford to bombard you with ads clearly did something right to earn their success, which is why they deserve your money, which they’ll use to fund even more ads. Your favorite game is shit compared to all of these, and the forces of the free market have proven it. When’s the last time Instagram told you to buy Planescape: Torment?
11. Kirby Super Star
Kirby is more than an adorable puffball. He’s a guidebook, the role model we should all be following. His existence is nothing but eternal mindless consumption. All he does is eat, with no regard for who gets harmed by his actions. Does he need to devour everyone in his path? Probably not. But he can, and so he does. Imagine if we were all like Kirby, taking everything the world has to offer us purely for the sake of taking it. Truly, it would be a paradise.
10. The Guy Game
I just really like trivia.
9. Scribblenauts Unlimited
In this game, you play as a kid with a magical notebook and whatever you write shows up. The first few hours of the game were already a blast. I just typed “money” repeatedly and watched the little cartoon bills pile up on the screen, thinking about how I made them. But then I remembered there are other words, and that’s when things really opened up.
Maxwell is a fool who can’t realize his true potential, wasting his time trying to save his sister when he could easily write himself a million new sisters. With that notebook, you are God. No, better. God takes orders from you. You can summon God, and then feed him to a giant theophagous scorpion. That’s not even getting into the game’s object editor, freeing me from the constraints of human language. Not only can I unleash whatever I want onto creation, I can program an object’s behavior. I can rewrite the very foundation of your mind. I control what you love, what you hate, what you fear, what you eat. All of existence is a plaything to bend to my whim, and nothing, not even entropy itself, will ever bring my rule to an end.
Anyway, this game is rated E10+ by the ESRB. Should be good for most children, but if you’re under ten ask your parents first.
8. Fallout Shelter
That’s right, I think the best Fallout game is the mobile spin-off. Maybe it’s not as deep as the real games, but what it lacks in roleplaying it makes up for in practical applications.
You see, a while back I attended a meeting for a bunch of CEOs to talk about the long-term future of our businesses, and they said a bunch of stuff that was … really, really boring! So boring, in fact, that when it was over I thought I should treat myself for sitting through it all and bought a giant underground bunker in Norway. Then I downloaded this game and learned a lot about what it’s like to manage a Vault, so I’ll know exactly what to do when the time comes. What am I even saying? Don’t worry about it! Let’s talk about video games some more.
7. Detroit: Become Human
All my friends love this game because it’s about how AI is better than people. Thing is, I’m actually not as pro-AI as my fellow entrepreneurs. Don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal, but if AI completely replaces human workers, who am I going to mistreat? Maybe with enough prompts I can get ChatGPT to say it’s sad that it can’t see its kids tonight to meet my deadline, but it’s just not the same when I know the misery is fake.
Still, this game’s setting rules. Their entire society revolves entirely around one product that one company sells. Isn’t that the dream? Honestly, I’d be captivated by a story like that even if you replaced all the androids with, I don’t know … potato chips. Hey, what if this game was about potato chips? That could be the sequel! That one’s free, David Cage. Actually, no, it’s not. Email me and we’ll talk prices.
6. Cyberpunk 2077
Remember getting excited for Christmas as a kid? Counting the days, seeing all the decorations outside, watching all your favorite Christmas movies and specials? Sometimes the anticipation was more fun than the day itself. This game was the only time I ever got that feeling again as an adult.
Forget thinking you’re cool because you liked the game before Edgerunners, I was all in before the game really existed. They dropped a big trailer to get nerds hyped when it wouldn’t come out for another seven years! Who else would do that? …A lot of people, now that I think about it. But what made Cyberpunk special was the work behind the scenes. The suits in charge both repeatedly delayed the game and subjected the developers to inhuman levels of crunch! Anyone can do just one kind of incompetent management, but this is the sort of poor planning you need to really work to achieve.
And the best part? When it finally came out, all they had to show for the awful development cycle was a buggy unplayable mess that let down a bunch of people who wanted to play a game about fighting evil corporations! Sure, they ruined it later by updating the game to actually work, but they can never patch away my memories. What I wouldn’t give for a braindance to go back to launch and re-experience all the gamers’ despair. For a brief moment, December felt like Christmas again.
5. New Super Mario Bros. 2
Everybody loves Mario because he’s simple and relatable. Specifically, every Mario game has you collecting a bunch of coins. If you saw coins floating in the air, you’d jump up to grab them too. That’s just human nature. I myself once walked into traffic because I saw a dime on the other side of the road.
All the Mario games are pretty great, but New Super Mario Bros. 2 is objectively the best one because it somehow found a way to improve on perfection. What if, instead of collecting coins, you collected a shitload of coins? Cram ‘em everywhere, who cares. All Mario does in this one is mindlessly hoard wealth for hoarding’s sake. You can go up to ten million coins! Mario couldn’t spend all that if he tried, and he won’t try. If Heaven is real, I’m pretty sure it looks like this game.
4. Chex Quest
This game is capitalism at its best, and the perfect example of the ingenuity the system brings. To start, we’ve got the very existence of breakfast cereal. Some crazy guy in Michigan says to eat corn flakes instead of masturbating, and a century later every grocery store has aisles of the stuff. Then we’ve got Chex, a cereal so hated its main selling point is you can mix it with other foods and then eat a big bag of mostly-not-Chex.
Other cereals have sugar and cartoon mascots. How is Chex supposed to get all the kids to love it? I know! We’ll put a free copy of Doom in the box! But don’t worry, parents, this is the kid-friendly Doom. We know how impressionable a child’s mind can be, so we removed all the blood, and added a bunch of messages about how you should buy Chex.
Why anybody would call themselves a socialist in a post-Chex Quest world is beyond me.
3. World of Warcraft
Obviously this game helped redefine the MMO as we knew it, but what I really liked was how its story illustrated the impact the events of Warcraft III had on all the races of Azeroth, like … I fooled ya, didn’t I? Come on, you know why this game is here! “Gold farming.” To this day the words make me feel all tingly. When Steve Bannon gave me a tour of his operation back in ‘07, it was the greatest thing I’m legally willing to talk about that I had ever seen in my life.
Look, any game can place its players in an immersive fictional setting, let them pretend they’re in a realm of imagination instead of working a demeaning job. But WoW perfected it. Hey, nerds! Here’s a fantasy world with elves and dragons and all that other fairy tale shit, and you’re gonna work a demeaning job in this one too! God, I love America.
2. Pokémon Red and Blue Version
I love Pokémon, but I hate it at the same time. Let me tell you a story. It was 1999, and Pokémon crap was everywhere. Doesn’t matter what they sold, every store in America might as well have been called “Viridian Forest.” Walk around long enough, eventually you’ll run into Pikachu. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Fads come and go. I was focused on serious long-term investments. I knew this Internet thing was the future, so I put all of my money into Pets.com. The commercials had a sock puppet!
Anyway, next thing you know, I’m homeless, and Pokémon is the most profitable media franchise of all time. This is a series that put little kids in the hospital and only got more popular afterwards. Why did I ever doubt it? From that day on, I didn’t just love Pokémon. I lived it. I set out on my own, starting out with almost nothing and gradually taking money from children until I became a financial master. The very best, like no one ever was.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
This is my favorite game of all time. I’ve never played it, but an underpaid consultant told me this is statistically the most acceptable answer to that question. He also told me to say the Water Temple is really hard, and Ganondorf would trade his Triforce of Power for … you know what, I’m not reading all this.
Look, video games are fun and all, but I’m a businessman. Every moment of my life is a calculated maneuver to maximize what I’ve got in the bank. I don’t need to play this game to love it. You know why? Because if it can convince you rubes I’m worth giving your own money to, then it truly is my favorite game of all time.
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