Breath of the Wild
After a game like Twilight Princess that blew so many minds after the shell shock that was The Wind Waker, I think most Zelda fans were expecting another dark Zelda game with that same big game feel we got with Twilight Princess. But unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen on Wii hardware and we ended up with Skyward Sword, the same year games like Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations released.
It wasn't a good look for Nintendo and something needed to change and change it did in 2017 when we got a Zelda game unlike any other that not only stood toe to toe with other big action adventure games of the time, but redefined what a Zelda game could be and inspired a similar approach in other franchises that have grown stagnant and lost their flame.
While some of the choices made in the game were seen as controversial by some, myself included, I still couldn't help but feel like this was the exact refresh the series needed. While it may not be everyone's ideal Zelda game, it was a game changer and the perfect foundation for the future of the series. After 500 hours and 2 playthroughs, I still think about Breath of the Wild and how much I would like to play it again and that means more to me than any gripe or preference I may have for the game or series.
I have never been so invested in a game before like I was with Breath of the Wild. So much so that it altered my perception of the real world. I had spent so much time looking for suspiciously placed rocks and patterns in hopes of finding a Korok that I started to notice these same patterns everywhere I'd go. Things I would never pay attention to suddenly pop right out and it was because of Breath of the Wild.
I even caught myself looking up at the night sky on my way home from school and sort of half expecting a star fragment to fall. I was so immersed and this game was on my mind that much and that has honestly never happened to me before with any game. Even when I finished it for the first time and decided it was time to move on to the rest of my backlog, it took a while for another game to click with me because I still wished I was playing Breath of the Wild.
Resident Evil 2
This game was a dream come true for me and I really mean that. Not so much Resident Evil 2 as a remake, but what this game represents as a whole. Along with Zelda, Resident Evil is easily one of my top fandoms and for a long time and to some extent, even today, it's been one disappointment after another. It's been a hard franchise to stay a fan of for all this time, but I've always managed to find something to like about each game even if they didn't quite grasp what I as a long-time fan found so intriguing about this series to have become such a loyal fan to begin with.
With Resident Evil 4, it was the return of fan favorite Leon S. Kennedy and the game's shiny new presentation that would redefine third-person action games. With Resident Evil 5, it was the story that took us back to more familiar territory with the return of Chris Redfield and long time villain Albert Wesker. It also allowed me to share my passion of Resident Evil with my brother who got me into the series through co-op gameplay. Resident Evil 6 had the return of zombies and lots of fan-service. The Revelations games were a neat novelty that attempted to capture the spirit of the classic games but Resident Evil 7 proved that Capcom was fully capable of making a full blown survival horror game again.
These were all perfectly adequate video games with plenty to love about each one, but I can't honestly say any of them were good Resident Evil games. They all retained some elements of classic Resident Evil for brand recognition, but at the end of the day, they were more or less just pimping the name Resident Evil with new trends until they struck gold. There was always potential in each game for something truly great, but time and time again, they just never took that extra leap or step that I was looking for.
That was until 2019 when Capcom somehow managed to make the best Resident Evil game since the first Resident Evil remake. It was like everything I had been saying about the series for years had finally been validated and acknowledged with this one game. While it left me with more to be desired as a remake of one of the greatest sequels of all time, what they achieved with Resident Evil 2 remake is undeniable and set the blueprint for what a modern Resident Evil experience should be like and it was exactly what had been missing from the franchise for damn near 2 decades. It was almost like the game was made for me.
Red Dead Redemption II
The first Red Dead Redemption was a game that came out of nowhere for me. It released in a time when my tastes in games were very limited and not much interested me except for the things I was already into. Yet for some reason, this game spoke to me. It's like deep down I knew there was something special waiting for me if I just opened my mind a little. As a fan of GTA, I decided to trust in Rockstar's vision and give their western a try and I haven't been the same since.
The characters, the story, the atmosphere, and eerie undertones just all came together and made, for me at the time, Rockstar's best game. Which is saying something as a huge GTA fan. This game meant so much to me that not even its sequel could excite me. I was unable to buy into the hype until I could play the game for myself because it was already set in stone in my mind that there could be absolutely no way they were going to make me care about another character like I did John Marston without it feeling like a pale imitation.
Yet, they didn't just pull it off, they outright told the greatest story in gaming with an incredible cast of characters, in what is easily the most impressive open-world in gaming yet, and didn't just retain everything that I found so alluring about the first one, but also enhanced and enriched it and gave me so much more. I didn't think another game would impress me quite like Breath of the Wild did so soon after and then Red Dead Redemption II came along and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.