Hello! You might have spotted Eurogamer is 25 this week, and so alongside the first appearance of a few permanent micro-wrinkles and a sharp decline in people asking us for ID, we’re marking the occasion with something special.
Actually, it’s several things that are special, as editor-in-chief Tom Phillips explained at the start of the week, but this one warrants a bit of explanation. Today marks the launch of the Eurogamer 100, a list of the very best video games to play right now.
The emphasis, you might have spotted, is on that last bit. Somehow, in Eurogamer’s 25 years of publication, we’ve never actually run a list of the best video games full stop. We’ve had lists by platform, by genre, by series, by month and most prominently of course, lists of the best games released each year – with avid contribution from you to our readers’ top 50 alongside it, of course. But to our knowledge we’ve never had one, big all-timer.
Well, technically we still haven’t. Unlike most lists out there, the Eurogamer 100 isn’t a list of the greatest games of all time, but of the best games to play at this specific moment. To make it onto the list, games must be (legally) obtainable and playable on current-generation hardware, which right now means consoles such as the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, the various streaming and subscription services out there, mobiles, smart TVs, leftfield options like the Playdate, and of course the humble PC.
That means no emulation, no dusting off old consoles, no games removed from storefronts everywhere. And it means they have to be in a good place, be that because they’re still as brilliant to play now as they were when they first launched, or because they’ve been gradually improved over time to find themselves in great shape, or been faithfully updated, remade or restored.
There’s a reason for this: I think best-of lists are much better when they’re useful. Video games, much to the sadness of some, aren’t really much like other more static entertainment mediums like film, TV or music. They’re more like restaurants, going in and out of business by changing with the times or failing to; moving the culture forward or following trends; seeing quality change as they lose star chefs or quietly heroic line cooks, kitchen porters or waiting staff. It’s a bit of a long analogy, but it’s worth it: video games are living, moving, and evolving by their very nature, and so a list of what to play should reflect that.
Plus, apart from being helpful to our readers, it’s also our job at Eurogamer to keep a proper eye on the medium at large, to champion lesser-known games that deserve your attention and might need a little help getting it, or to acknowledge the enormous skill and effort required to keep a live-service behemoth rolling along on top form. We value video games’ history immensely – and find the wanting availability of the classics as deeply troubling as you’d expect – but ultimately, there are enough lists out there looking backwards, and too few adapting to the way video games work today. Maybe we’ll take a stab at an all-timer list some day in the future.
To decide this, then, we did a bit of everything. We surveyed our current staff and most regular critics, talked to specialists about their genres, cross-referenced that with Eurogamer’s historical writing on the games in question, and cross-referenced that with how those games are playing today. We’ll then come back to the list and update it once per year, adding particularly brilliant new games that might have launched, old games that have found new life, and replacing those that may have found themselves in something of a dip.
Naturally, the result will be a list you completely disagree with – all part of the fun! – but also, hopefully, one that feels genuinely useful, interesting, informative and, like the medium itself, a little bit alive.
We’ll be publishing the list over four days this week, 25 games at a time – 25th anniversary after all! – building to the full list and very top spot being revealed on Friday. For now, the first 25: read the Eurogamer 100 here.
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