What shall I talk about? hmmm, let's see, how about my two favorite games of all time? Deus Ex and System Shock 2. and nooooooo, not Invisible War, the original Deus Ex. The great one.

These two stand out in my mind as pinnacles of all the gaming experiences I've ever had. Perfection? Maybe not, but as damn close as humanly possible. System Shock 2 was my favorite game of all time until Deus Ex came around, and funny enough, DE was an impulse purchase. Despite DE taking SS2's throne as best ever, I will still hold SHODAN as the best gaming villian of all time.

"Look at you hacker...a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"
-SHODAN

I can remember now the exact moment I found out exactly who (and what) SHODAN was and I can also remember my body freezing and tensing up, and I stared at my old CRT monitor while I tried to fathom this new enemy I had discovered.

Plus, the music! Looking Glass studios released all the game music on their website a few years back free to download, and I immediately downloaded it all. There was even some fan created works on there (mainly remixes of the main title track). I'm not sure if their site still exists, but if so you should check it out, and download some mp3's. I still to this day listen to some of that music when it comes into rotation on my random playlist. Greatness.

Then came Deus Ex. Oh my. I'm not even sure exactly what to touch on first... The inventory system? The RPG elements? Multiple endings? Fucking awesome story? Worst voice acting evar? lol, for as much as I love Deus Ex, I think they'd have been better off hiring Stephen Hawking to voice the characters.

Back to point. I can remember thinking to myslef "wow, this is the best story I've ever seen in a video game ever" and still to this day I don't think any have surpassed it. You have to realize that I love Sci-Fi, and while I don't put any merit into those conspiricy theories like Illuminati, I still love reading/hearing about that kind of stuff. So that game hit home like no other.

I don't think I need to go into all the stuff like how you could play the game any style you wanted, stealth, rambo, mixed, etc... or how the inventory/level up system was pure win, or any of the other awesome things, I'll just say that I can also remember that it was 4am, and I HAD to get to bed for school the next day (was I in high school when that came out? damn...) but I couldn't. I NEEDED to see all the endings, so I kept reloading and playing the different endings. Awesome.

So, if anyone reads this, what are your top 1 or 2 games?